Free Nobody Does It Better by Cecily von Ziegesar Page A

and I will be reading the newspapers in his study. Don't be difficult, darling. It's just a party. You like parties.”
    “Not this kind of party,” Serena grumbled. Her mother raised her thin gray-blond eyebrows so fiercely she decided not to mention that she'd much rather see the Raves play than schmooze with a bunch of kids and their parents all gloating about the fact that they'd gotten into one of the toughest colleges to get into in the world.
    Serena went back to her room and grudgingly changed out of her jeans and into the gray pleated Marc Jacobs skirt laid out on her bed, pairing it with a beaded aqua-colored t-shirt and her orange Miu Miu clogs instead of the boring navy blue blouse and baby blue suede Tod's loafers her mother had chosen.
    And the pearls? Sorry, mom.
    Her last effort was to pull out the messy ponytail and run her fingers through her pale blond hair. Then, without even a glance in the mirror, she strode out of her room and into the front hall.
    If only we could all be so sure of our exquisite beauty.
    “Mom! Dad! I'm ready!” she trilled, trying to sound excited about it. She'd give the party five or ten minutes- just enough time for her parents to get involved in some supremely boring and involved conversation with Stanford Parris III or one of the other ancient dull Yale alumni who'd been attending these parties for centuries, than she'd slip out and head downtown to the Raves gig.
    After all, if she was going to spend the next four years being intellectual, she needed to enjoy herself while she had the chance.
    As if she didn't always enjoy herself.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

Gossip Girl 07 - Nobody Does It Better
    DRIFTING, DRIFTING, OVER THE OCEAN BLUE!
     
    Jeremy, Charlie, and Anthony would not shut up about Bermuda, so when they got onboard the Charlotte, named after Nate's paternal grandmother, Nate did a search for ports in Bermuda on the boat's computer and then programmed Horseshoe Bay into the navigational system. He set the motor for .5 miles per hour. That meant they were headed to Bermuda very slowly. In fact, even though they'd left the dock in lower Manhattan nearly twenty hours ago, they were only drifting past Coney Island, in Brooklyn.
    Friday night had oozed into Saturday night, and the sun hung low over Staten Island as the sailboat motored slowly southward. The air was cooler than on land and smelled like wet dog. Nate and everyone else on the boat remained stoned, sprawled on deck wit their eyes half closed and their mouths hanging lazily open, or drifting languidly below decks in bare feet to replenish their stashes of beer and snacks.
    It had dawned only recently that Blair wasn't onboard. He recalled that she'd called him last night from the Plaza, and that he'd sort of blown off meeting her. Of course he would have called her, but his cell phone was missing, and when he tried to use Jeremy's phone, he discovered that he'd only ever speed-dialed Blair from his stored address book, and he didn't even know her number. And when you've been stoned for almost twenty-four hours, doing something like calling information to find your girlfriends number seems impossibly complicated.
    Hello, lameness?
    Nate and his father had built the Charlotte themselves, up on the Archibald compound on Mt. Desert Island, Maine. It was one-hundred-and-ten-foot ketch, huge enough to comfortably ferry one hundred-plus passengers from Battery Park City to the Hamptons, or seventten high-school kids to Bermuda. In preparation for the upcoming cruise to the Hamptons
     , the kitchen had been fully stocked with artisanal cheeses, Carrs table water crackers, smoked oysters, Belgian beer, Veuve Clicquot champagne, and vintage scotch. The four bathrooms were equipped with hot showers, navy blue Frette towels, and handmade shell-shaped mini soaps with CHARLOTTE
     printed on them in gold. The cabin was equipped with the latest computer mapping and communication systems, and there were