Free Psycho Killer by Cecily von Ziegesar Page B

minutes and she’d already made her first kill!
    Aw, how cute. The killer has a stalker.

s ’s other fan
    The minute Prayers was dismissed, Jenny pushed past her classmates and darted out into the hallway to make a phone call. Her brother, Daniel, was going to totally lose it when she told him.
    “Hello.” Daniel Humphrey answered his cell phone on the seventh ring in his toneless speaking-from-the-land-of-the-dead voice. He was standing on the corner of Seventy-seventh Street and West End Avenue, outside Riverside Prep, chainsmoking cigarettes. He squinted his dark brown eyes, trying to block out the harsh October sunlight. Dan wasn’t into sun. He spent most of his free time in his room, reading existentialist haikus by long-dead Japanese poets. He was paler than a corpse, his hair was shaggy and lifeless, and he was dead rock star thin.
    Existentialism has a way of killing your appetite.
    “Guess who’s back?” Dan heard his little sister squeal excitedly into the phone.
    When Jenny needed someone to talk to, she always called Dan. She was the one who had bought them both iPhones. And it was a good thing too, because Dan was more of a loner than she was.Sometimes he went for days without speaking. He’d even considered cutting out his own tongue, just to see if it would make any difference to anyone, including himself.
    “Jenny, can’t this wait?” Dan responded hoarsely, sounding annoyed in the way only older brothers can.
    “Serena van der Woodsen!” Jenny interrupted him. “Serena is back at Constance. I saw her in Prayers. Can you believe it?”
    Dan watched a plastic coffee cup lid skitter down the sidewalk. A red Prius sped down West End Avenue and through a yellow light. His socks felt damp inside his faded brown suede Hush Puppies.
    Serena van der Woodsen
. He took a long drag on his Camel. His hands were shaking so much he almost missed his mouth.
    “Dan?” his sister squeaked into the phone. “Can you hear me? Did you hear what I said? Serena is back. Serena van der Woodsen.”
    Dan sucked in his breath sharply. “Yeah,” he said, feigning disinterest. “So what?”
    “So what?” Jenny repeated incredulously. “Oh, right, like you didn’t just have a mini heart attack. You’re so full of it, Dan.”
    “Not really,” Dan said, pissily. “What do I care?”
    Jenny sighed loudly. Dan could be so irritating. Why couldn’t he just act happy for once? She was so tired of his pale, miserable, introspective poet act. Half the reason she called him during the school day was to make sure he hadn’t thrown himself in front of a bus or locked himself in the furnace room at school. Dan courted death the way most teenage boys court pretty girls. Someone had to make sure he was still alive.
    He’d be way more fun if he tried killing other people instead of himself.
    “I’m pretty sure she had blood on her sleeve,” Jenny continued breathlessly, sure this little tidbit of information would grab Dan’s attention. “And everyone’s talking about how she got kicked out of boarding school for killing boys. This one guy already died at a party this weekend, and I’m pretty sure she did something to this girl in the senior class just now during Prayers. I have the chills. I mean, it’s like she’s come back to save us all from something, you know? I mean, I don’t really know what I’m talking about, but oh my God, she’s like, so cool it’s scary!”
    Dan wasn’t even listening. He was too distracted by his golden memories of Serena: her deep blue eyes, her swinging swath of luxurious blond hair, the way the world always seemed to be perfectly lit in her presence.
Serena
. He closed his eyes dizzily and then opened them again.
Serena
.
    “Dan? Hello? Are you alive?”
    “Watch it!” a bicycle messenger shouted as Dan stepped blindly off the curb. He was always stepping blindly off curbs, as if willing that moment’s sudden intake of breath to be his very last. But now Serena was back