time to pretend (1/?)
Chanel 2.55. Louis Vuitton Speedy. Louis Vuitton Monogram Classic. Balenciaga Le Dix. Marc Jacobs Stam.
Little Jenny Humphrey counts designer handbags by the Bergdorf's window displays, Coach baguette in one hand and Starbucks green tea frappe (no whip) in the other.
She is thirteen years old and hungry, and wonders if any of them can tell that she got her bag for less than a hundred dollars at an outlet last summer, and still gets her hair cut by her embarassingly thrifty Mother for free. (If they can, maybe she can pretend Allison Humphrey is an up-and-coming hairstylist at the John Barrett salon and that her totally five-year-old cut is actually the latest thing in hair, but it's kind of a long shot.)
The women swirl by like pages from a magazine, Irving Penn photographs come to life, and Jenny feels both sick and exhilarated all at once, like maybe life is even more unfair than the movies say and the modern Cinderella has to make her glass slippers all on her own (on the bright side, Jenny has always been pretty handy with a sewing machine).
Some fat girl decked in Chloe from head to toe smokes a sulky cigarette beside her, and Jenny feels like screaming
I belong here more than you do
but her voice feels trapped in her throat, and it doesn't really count if Jenny has to be the one to say it.
Jenny looks out onto the street once more and pretends other people are simply thinking it instead.
---
Jenny thinks Serena Van der Woodsen might be the prettiest girl she's ever seen.
Her brother, Dan, goes to St. Jude's, an infamously elitist all boys private school on the Upper East Side where the boys all play lacrosse and go to Aspen for the winter. Jenny will be attending Constance Billard starting next year, St. Jude's equally exclusive sister school, also filled with ridiculously glamorous trust fund brats with monthly (weekly?) allowances that probably cost more than her apartment's rent.
She discovers Gossip Girl through Dan, strangely enough. Her brother isn't exactly the type to obsess over the lives of the rich and famous - celebrity worship has always been more Jenny's forte (Dan quotes Hemingway and makes himself an outcast at school before his peers get the chance to first, a mistake Jenny certainly does not intend on making). But Dan is a guy (a girly guy, but still technically male) so when some impossibly gorgeous blonde actually speaks to him at a ninth grade birthday party one year, he falls head over heels in love with her and makes her - as he calls it - the Beatrice to his Dante (whatever that means). Luckily for Dan, he's hardly the only person obsessed with the life of Serena Van der Woodsen, the Upper East Side's ultimate It Girl - there's a whole website dedicated to reporting her every move, every socially awkward stalker's dream come true.
Still, it's kind of hard to blame her brother for being so lovestruck by Serena (or, as Gossip Girl calls her, S) - Serena is tall and blonde and impossibly leggy, and Jenny can already tell that she has one of those smiles that lights up a room the way Jenny has always wished hers could. Plus (perhaps even more importantly), Serena is a Van Der Woodsen, a modern day princess with what Jenny imagines to be no shortage of suitors competing for her fair hand (and sizeable dowry).
Dan doesn't stand a chance, of course. Not that this makes it any less funny to watch him spend long, agonizing hours plucking daisies over the faintest glimmer of hope that he might.
Dream on, Lonely Boy.
---
Jenny discovers Blair Waldorf her first day of art class at Constance, and falls in love for the first time the way people in old movies always seem to - from across the room with flushed cheeks and a half-lidded, hypnotized stare. Jenny can't remember the last time she saw somebody so perfect - sure, Blair isn't effervescent (Dan's words, not hers) the way Serena is, but S has apparently disappeared from the Upper East Side roughly two weeks before Jenny transferred in anyways (Dan not-so-slightly freaks out, Jenny peruses Gossip Girl for clues that don't exist), and Blair Waldorf is exponentially better in person than she is over the internet.
Jenny goes home and reads all the parts about Queen B she skipped back when her Gossip Girl stalkings (consisting mostly of spying on S to find new ways to torture Dan). Gossip Girl has never been known for her mercy or her restraint, and in time, Jenny learns all about the divorce between Harold and Eleanor Waldorf and some sleazy male model named Roman who barely speaks English and steals Blair's father away to the Mediterrean. As somebody whose parents have also recently separated (though Jenny still holds onto the hope they'll one day reunite), Jenny feels her heart swell with sympathy over Blair's similar dillemma.
At school, Blair is almost unruffled to a fault, a living porcelain doll with the most elegant manners and regal command Jenny has ever seen, and it occurs suddenly to Jenny that unlike the seemingly invincible Serena, Blair actually has to work at being perfect.
It's this very realization that causes Jenny to ditch her long, straight blonde hair for headbands and a curling iron, and spend hours making invitations for Upper East Side parties at Blair's request. After all, maybe - just maybe - if she can befriend a girl like Blair Waldorf, the rest of the lifestyle will somehow follow.
She's fourteen years old. She's allowed to believe in magic, still.
---
Serena comes back to the Upper East Side in time, of course.
(Dan makes believe that he doesn't care.)
Jenny runs errands for Blair and wishes Serena would hurry up and take back her throne instead (she's sick of running all over the city at lunch trying to find Blair the right kind of frozen yogurt, because god forbid Blair would get a cup of low fat instead of non fat, oh, quelle horror!). Unlike Blair and the rest of her little entourage, Serena actually seems to be nice - it's just a shame Jenny can't be friends with her since Blair has already blacklisted Serena into being well - a social pariah (Jenny learns this way how beauty isn't actually everything, because at her old non-UES school, nobody nearly as hot as S could ever not be invited to a party, no matter how much everybody else secretly hated her).
If Jenny hadn't already worked so hard at winning Blair's favour, and Blair's flavour was something of a little less value around the Upper East Side these days, Jenny would probably have run over and defended Serena in a second. Too bad the social climate at Constance (i.e. Blair) these days is hardly so forgiving.
But Jenny doesn't like to think of herself as another one of Blair's little minions, so she inks Serena's name onto an invitation for Blair's Kiss On The Lips party and crosses her fingers everything will turn out okay. After all, if Jenny is lucky, Serena will usurp the Constance throne soon, and remember that Jenny was the first one who helped her get back her crown.
Unfortunately, Jenny is still a Humphrey, and luck doesn't really follow the Humphrey name, so the Kiss On The Lips party is an utter disaster (Jenny gets stuck up on the roof with Chuck Bass, better known as the devil's spawn, who clamps her mouth shut when he tries to... well, she doesn't really want to think about it because it kind of makes her sick to her stomach), and Serena manages to make herself even more of a social outcast when she shows up (with, shockingly enough, Dan) to save the day.
And Jenny? Well, Jenny's still stuck with Blair.
Tough luck, Little J.
---
If Jenny thought that climbing the steps to the top of the Met was hard, she's realized by now that staying up there is so much harder. Jenny isn't like Blair or Serena - she wasn't born with a diamond tiara on top of her head, and it's unlikely some mysterious benefactor is going to come along one day and drop one on her for being young, cute, and blonde, either, no matter what the fairy tales say.
But Jenny isn't like Dan, either, content with watching the glittering carousel ride from the outside (except that somehow, hell has frozen over and now Dan is all lovey-dovey with Serena, to the shock of everybody involved). Nonetheless, Dan considers himself an intellectual - and, as he puts it one day with his head behind a copy of Anna Karenina, it is the duty of the intellectual to see the evils of society for what they really are, for evil prevails when good men do nothing.
Jenny doesn't really see it that way. She isn't really sure how to express it, but Jenny sees Blair and the uncanny way she makes everybody around her bow to her will and can't help but think that this is because Blair is strong - and, okay, maybe a little evil too, but mostly because girls like Blair refuse to be broken or give up what they want just because the fates were a little kinder to them in the beginning the way Dan expects Serena to constantly apologize for being born with a silver spoon in her mouth.
"I don't make people do what they don't want to do," Blair tells her one cool autumn day, brown eyes crackling with quiet passion - "anybody so deluded as to suggest such a thing is, of course, woefully mistaken. Everybody has free will. Everybody does something for a selfish reason, no matter how much they pretend otherwise. If I were to ask you right now to use the hem of your skirt to polish my shoes, you could perfectly well refuse. But you'd choose not to, of course, because you'd know that you have absolutely nothing to gain by refusing me - right?"
"You're not going to actually ask me to polish your shoe, are you?" Jenny laughs nervously and tries to keep the dread out of her voice.
"I should hope not. That'd be a terribly degrading thing to ask, and I'd never be so vain as to use my position unfairly. You don't think I'm some kind of monster, do you?"
Blair's voice is sweet. Saccharine, actually. Bad sign.
"No - no, of course not!"
"Good, because we're friends, and friends don't think other friends are monsters."
"Right. Totally."
Blair stares intently at Jenny, searching for sarcasm, suppressed hostility, hidden defiance, and finds none. Her smile deepens, and Jenny feels a chill run up her smile at the very sight. "It's funny the way life works, isn't it? One day you can be sitting at some - quaint Brooklyn loft trying to sow together a knock-off McQueen dress? - and the next you can be having the time of your life with your girlfriends at, shall we say... seven o' clock at Butter? My treat, of course."
"Oh - no, really - I couldn't - I mean, I have to study for an English test tomorrow, and..."
"Friends don't say no to their friends' dinner invitations either, especially when that friend has graciously offered to pay for one's dinner. Consider it a... reward, of sorts. You were rather impressive at my sleepover last night, after all, and a good performance ought to be rewarded, wouldn't you agree?"
Jenny bites her lip. "Um - well, in that case, thank you, Blair. Really. I mean it. I mean, I love Butter, and I love hanging out with you guys even more."
It isn't until later that night when Blair leans over and whispers in her ear that sometimes the reverse Cinderella story happens too, and if Jenny suddenly decided to stop playing by Blair's rules she could be spending her free time chatting with Cedric the Cabbage Patch Doll faster than either of them can say Becky Sharp.
---
As it turns out, Blair is right. Blair is always right.
There is a masked ball, during which disaster strikes in the form of a blonde-haired, blue-eyed, dumb-as-fuck prince called Nate Archibald (okay, so Nate is actually really nice and really hot, but Jenny has to blame somebody for the whole thing, and Nate's kind of an easy target). To put things more succinctly (because Jenny is hurting way too much to get into some Dan-length narrative at the moment), shit happened, and it happened - as per usual - to Little Jenny Humphrey of the misguided good intentions and big fat stupid mouth.
Jenny tries to tell herself that this is a good thing, that maybe her Dad and Brother are right about girls like Blair being ninety pounds of vapid, shallow girly evil and thus totally not worth her frustration and tears or the ninety pounds Jenny is going to gain by eating non-stop Ben and Jerry (not likely - Jenny's a stick, always has been - thank god she inherited her Mother's metabolism).
If she closes her eyes, Jenny can still feel the cool metal of a diamond bracelet dangling from her wrist, can still hear the champagne-tinged laughter of elegantly dressed crowds behind exquisitely crafted Venetian masks.
Dad and Dan are hardly a comfort when she remembers these things - they're men after all, anticapitalist former rockstars and wannabe intellectuals whose favourite pasttimes include commiserating over the corrupt state of a consumerist society and discussing the inherent superiority of classic rock over indie.
Jenny thinks of her Mother, and reminds herself that if she was courageous enough to go defy the tyrannical Blair Waldorf at one point, she is certainly more than brave enough to make one phone call to her own Mother.
Somebody in this family has to, even if that somebody happens to be herself.
(Spoiler alert: it turns out to be a bad idea. Jenny wishes this development would've surprised her more.
It doesn't.)
---
Jenny has never thought of herself as the vengeful type, but her big mouth got her into trouble in the first place, and it's also going to get her out - in a manner of speaking, anyways (technically, Blair's forgiven her for the whole Nate incident because Jenny pretty much saved her ass at Cotillon, except Jenny is still treated like something lower than the non-existent gum at the bottom of Blair's Chanel flat, so forget pretend forgiveness and walking around on eggshells, right?).
Besides, Blair Waldorf was the one who taught her what a bitch karma could be, so it's only fitting that Jenny is the one who gets to dole it back out to Blair. (They're learning about situational irony in English class. Jenny is pretty sure this is it.)
Blair and Chuck, thinks Jenny, and can't even come up with two people who deserve each other more. Screw playing her hand slow - Jenny's got a pair of aces, and even though she can barely remember the rules of a game of Texas Hold'em, she's pretty sure this is would they'd call 'in the bag' - Little J isn't going to hold back any longer.
It's all too easy to look Nate in his big, blue eyes and say those three little words (it was Chuck, not I love you - Nate's definitely more than crushable, except Jenny's pretty sure Kevin Federline has better odds of selling a million albums than Jenny Humphrey does of snagging Nate Archibald - but then again, look at Dan and Serena). Nate reacts completely predictably, which is to say he makes a scene in front of the whole school and slams Chuck's ugly face against the windshield of his limo all the while cursing both Blair's and Chuck's names.
(There are all sorts of metaphors Jenny could use to describe Blair's delicious downfall, but witty aphorisms about toppled crowns and melted witches have always been more up Dan's alley.)
She doesn't even feel a flicker of sympathy when Blair turns to her afterwards and practically begs Jenny to throw her a bone. Blair's face is anything but humble, and there's a veiled threat in her "peace offering", but Jenny isn't scared at all. She's played the game and taken the queen - check, and mate. Penelope and Hazel give her big, shiny smiles and suddenly Blair is the one on the outside looking in, wishing she could be Jenny.
I belong here more than you do, Jenny says silently, and there there's liquid hate in Blair's wide brown eyes.
This time, she doesn't even have to pretend.
Little Jenny Humphrey counts designer handbags by the Bergdorf's window displays, Coach baguette in one hand and Starbucks green tea frappe (no whip) in the other.
She is thirteen years old and hungry, and wonders if any of them can tell that she got her bag for less than a hundred dollars at an outlet last summer, and still gets her hair cut by her embarassingly thrifty Mother for free. (If they can, maybe she can pretend Allison Humphrey is an up-and-coming hairstylist at the John Barrett salon and that her totally five-year-old cut is actually the latest thing in hair, but it's kind of a long shot.)
The women swirl by like pages from a magazine, Irving Penn photographs come to life, and Jenny feels both sick and exhilarated all at once, like maybe life is even more unfair than the movies say and the modern Cinderella has to make her glass slippers all on her own (on the bright side, Jenny has always been pretty handy with a sewing machine).
Some fat girl decked in Chloe from head to toe smokes a sulky cigarette beside her, and Jenny feels like screaming
I belong here more than you do
but her voice feels trapped in her throat, and it doesn't really count if Jenny has to be the one to say it.
Jenny looks out onto the street once more and pretends other people are simply thinking it instead.
---
Jenny thinks Serena Van der Woodsen might be the prettiest girl she's ever seen.
Her brother, Dan, goes to St. Jude's, an infamously elitist all boys private school on the Upper East Side where the boys all play lacrosse and go to Aspen for the winter. Jenny will be attending Constance Billard starting next year, St. Jude's equally exclusive sister school, also filled with ridiculously glamorous trust fund brats with monthly (weekly?) allowances that probably cost more than her apartment's rent.
She discovers Gossip Girl through Dan, strangely enough. Her brother isn't exactly the type to obsess over the lives of the rich and famous - celebrity worship has always been more Jenny's forte (Dan quotes Hemingway and makes himself an outcast at school before his peers get the chance to first, a mistake Jenny certainly does not intend on making). But Dan is a guy (a girly guy, but still technically male) so when some impossibly gorgeous blonde actually speaks to him at a ninth grade birthday party one year, he falls head over heels in love with her and makes her - as he calls it - the Beatrice to his Dante (whatever that means). Luckily for Dan, he's hardly the only person obsessed with the life of Serena Van der Woodsen, the Upper East Side's ultimate It Girl - there's a whole website dedicated to reporting her every move, every socially awkward stalker's dream come true.
Still, it's kind of hard to blame her brother for being so lovestruck by Serena (or, as Gossip Girl calls her, S) - Serena is tall and blonde and impossibly leggy, and Jenny can already tell that she has one of those smiles that lights up a room the way Jenny has always wished hers could. Plus (perhaps even more importantly), Serena is a Van Der Woodsen, a modern day princess with what Jenny imagines to be no shortage of suitors competing for her fair hand (and sizeable dowry).
Dan doesn't stand a chance, of course. Not that this makes it any less funny to watch him spend long, agonizing hours plucking daisies over the faintest glimmer of hope that he might.
Dream on, Lonely Boy.
---
Jenny discovers Blair Waldorf her first day of art class at Constance, and falls in love for the first time the way people in old movies always seem to - from across the room with flushed cheeks and a half-lidded, hypnotized stare. Jenny can't remember the last time she saw somebody so perfect - sure, Blair isn't effervescent (Dan's words, not hers) the way Serena is, but S has apparently disappeared from the Upper East Side roughly two weeks before Jenny transferred in anyways (Dan not-so-slightly freaks out, Jenny peruses Gossip Girl for clues that don't exist), and Blair Waldorf is exponentially better in person than she is over the internet.
Jenny goes home and reads all the parts about Queen B she skipped back when her Gossip Girl stalkings (consisting mostly of spying on S to find new ways to torture Dan). Gossip Girl has never been known for her mercy or her restraint, and in time, Jenny learns all about the divorce between Harold and Eleanor Waldorf and some sleazy male model named Roman who barely speaks English and steals Blair's father away to the Mediterrean. As somebody whose parents have also recently separated (though Jenny still holds onto the hope they'll one day reunite), Jenny feels her heart swell with sympathy over Blair's similar dillemma.
At school, Blair is almost unruffled to a fault, a living porcelain doll with the most elegant manners and regal command Jenny has ever seen, and it occurs suddenly to Jenny that unlike the seemingly invincible Serena, Blair actually has to work at being perfect.
It's this very realization that causes Jenny to ditch her long, straight blonde hair for headbands and a curling iron, and spend hours making invitations for Upper East Side parties at Blair's request. After all, maybe - just maybe - if she can befriend a girl like Blair Waldorf, the rest of the lifestyle will somehow follow.
She's fourteen years old. She's allowed to believe in magic, still.
---
Serena comes back to the Upper East Side in time, of course.
(Dan makes believe that he doesn't care.)
Jenny runs errands for Blair and wishes Serena would hurry up and take back her throne instead (she's sick of running all over the city at lunch trying to find Blair the right kind of frozen yogurt, because god forbid Blair would get a cup of low fat instead of non fat, oh, quelle horror!). Unlike Blair and the rest of her little entourage, Serena actually seems to be nice - it's just a shame Jenny can't be friends with her since Blair has already blacklisted Serena into being well - a social pariah (Jenny learns this way how beauty isn't actually everything, because at her old non-UES school, nobody nearly as hot as S could ever not be invited to a party, no matter how much everybody else secretly hated her).
If Jenny hadn't already worked so hard at winning Blair's favour, and Blair's flavour was something of a little less value around the Upper East Side these days, Jenny would probably have run over and defended Serena in a second. Too bad the social climate at Constance (i.e. Blair) these days is hardly so forgiving.
But Jenny doesn't like to think of herself as another one of Blair's little minions, so she inks Serena's name onto an invitation for Blair's Kiss On The Lips party and crosses her fingers everything will turn out okay. After all, if Jenny is lucky, Serena will usurp the Constance throne soon, and remember that Jenny was the first one who helped her get back her crown.
Unfortunately, Jenny is still a Humphrey, and luck doesn't really follow the Humphrey name, so the Kiss On The Lips party is an utter disaster (Jenny gets stuck up on the roof with Chuck Bass, better known as the devil's spawn, who clamps her mouth shut when he tries to... well, she doesn't really want to think about it because it kind of makes her sick to her stomach), and Serena manages to make herself even more of a social outcast when she shows up (with, shockingly enough, Dan) to save the day.
And Jenny? Well, Jenny's still stuck with Blair.
Tough luck, Little J.
---
If Jenny thought that climbing the steps to the top of the Met was hard, she's realized by now that staying up there is so much harder. Jenny isn't like Blair or Serena - she wasn't born with a diamond tiara on top of her head, and it's unlikely some mysterious benefactor is going to come along one day and drop one on her for being young, cute, and blonde, either, no matter what the fairy tales say.
But Jenny isn't like Dan, either, content with watching the glittering carousel ride from the outside (except that somehow, hell has frozen over and now Dan is all lovey-dovey with Serena, to the shock of everybody involved). Nonetheless, Dan considers himself an intellectual - and, as he puts it one day with his head behind a copy of Anna Karenina, it is the duty of the intellectual to see the evils of society for what they really are, for evil prevails when good men do nothing.
Jenny doesn't really see it that way. She isn't really sure how to express it, but Jenny sees Blair and the uncanny way she makes everybody around her bow to her will and can't help but think that this is because Blair is strong - and, okay, maybe a little evil too, but mostly because girls like Blair refuse to be broken or give up what they want just because the fates were a little kinder to them in the beginning the way Dan expects Serena to constantly apologize for being born with a silver spoon in her mouth.
"I don't make people do what they don't want to do," Blair tells her one cool autumn day, brown eyes crackling with quiet passion - "anybody so deluded as to suggest such a thing is, of course, woefully mistaken. Everybody has free will. Everybody does something for a selfish reason, no matter how much they pretend otherwise. If I were to ask you right now to use the hem of your skirt to polish my shoes, you could perfectly well refuse. But you'd choose not to, of course, because you'd know that you have absolutely nothing to gain by refusing me - right?"
"You're not going to actually ask me to polish your shoe, are you?" Jenny laughs nervously and tries to keep the dread out of her voice.
"I should hope not. That'd be a terribly degrading thing to ask, and I'd never be so vain as to use my position unfairly. You don't think I'm some kind of monster, do you?"
Blair's voice is sweet. Saccharine, actually. Bad sign.
"No - no, of course not!"
"Good, because we're friends, and friends don't think other friends are monsters."
"Right. Totally."
Blair stares intently at Jenny, searching for sarcasm, suppressed hostility, hidden defiance, and finds none. Her smile deepens, and Jenny feels a chill run up her smile at the very sight. "It's funny the way life works, isn't it? One day you can be sitting at some - quaint Brooklyn loft trying to sow together a knock-off McQueen dress? - and the next you can be having the time of your life with your girlfriends at, shall we say... seven o' clock at Butter? My treat, of course."
"Oh - no, really - I couldn't - I mean, I have to study for an English test tomorrow, and..."
"Friends don't say no to their friends' dinner invitations either, especially when that friend has graciously offered to pay for one's dinner. Consider it a... reward, of sorts. You were rather impressive at my sleepover last night, after all, and a good performance ought to be rewarded, wouldn't you agree?"
Jenny bites her lip. "Um - well, in that case, thank you, Blair. Really. I mean it. I mean, I love Butter, and I love hanging out with you guys even more."
It isn't until later that night when Blair leans over and whispers in her ear that sometimes the reverse Cinderella story happens too, and if Jenny suddenly decided to stop playing by Blair's rules she could be spending her free time chatting with Cedric the Cabbage Patch Doll faster than either of them can say Becky Sharp.
---
As it turns out, Blair is right. Blair is always right.
There is a masked ball, during which disaster strikes in the form of a blonde-haired, blue-eyed, dumb-as-fuck prince called Nate Archibald (okay, so Nate is actually really nice and really hot, but Jenny has to blame somebody for the whole thing, and Nate's kind of an easy target). To put things more succinctly (because Jenny is hurting way too much to get into some Dan-length narrative at the moment), shit happened, and it happened - as per usual - to Little Jenny Humphrey of the misguided good intentions and big fat stupid mouth.
Jenny tries to tell herself that this is a good thing, that maybe her Dad and Brother are right about girls like Blair being ninety pounds of vapid, shallow girly evil and thus totally not worth her frustration and tears or the ninety pounds Jenny is going to gain by eating non-stop Ben and Jerry (not likely - Jenny's a stick, always has been - thank god she inherited her Mother's metabolism).
If she closes her eyes, Jenny can still feel the cool metal of a diamond bracelet dangling from her wrist, can still hear the champagne-tinged laughter of elegantly dressed crowds behind exquisitely crafted Venetian masks.
Dad and Dan are hardly a comfort when she remembers these things - they're men after all, anticapitalist former rockstars and wannabe intellectuals whose favourite pasttimes include commiserating over the corrupt state of a consumerist society and discussing the inherent superiority of classic rock over indie.
Jenny thinks of her Mother, and reminds herself that if she was courageous enough to go defy the tyrannical Blair Waldorf at one point, she is certainly more than brave enough to make one phone call to her own Mother.
Somebody in this family has to, even if that somebody happens to be herself.
(Spoiler alert: it turns out to be a bad idea. Jenny wishes this development would've surprised her more.
It doesn't.)
---
Jenny has never thought of herself as the vengeful type, but her big mouth got her into trouble in the first place, and it's also going to get her out - in a manner of speaking, anyways (technically, Blair's forgiven her for the whole Nate incident because Jenny pretty much saved her ass at Cotillon, except Jenny is still treated like something lower than the non-existent gum at the bottom of Blair's Chanel flat, so forget pretend forgiveness and walking around on eggshells, right?).
Besides, Blair Waldorf was the one who taught her what a bitch karma could be, so it's only fitting that Jenny is the one who gets to dole it back out to Blair. (They're learning about situational irony in English class. Jenny is pretty sure this is it.)
Blair and Chuck, thinks Jenny, and can't even come up with two people who deserve each other more. Screw playing her hand slow - Jenny's got a pair of aces, and even though she can barely remember the rules of a game of Texas Hold'em, she's pretty sure this is would they'd call 'in the bag' - Little J isn't going to hold back any longer.
It's all too easy to look Nate in his big, blue eyes and say those three little words (it was Chuck, not I love you - Nate's definitely more than crushable, except Jenny's pretty sure Kevin Federline has better odds of selling a million albums than Jenny Humphrey does of snagging Nate Archibald - but then again, look at Dan and Serena). Nate reacts completely predictably, which is to say he makes a scene in front of the whole school and slams Chuck's ugly face against the windshield of his limo all the while cursing both Blair's and Chuck's names.
(There are all sorts of metaphors Jenny could use to describe Blair's delicious downfall, but witty aphorisms about toppled crowns and melted witches have always been more up Dan's alley.)
She doesn't even feel a flicker of sympathy when Blair turns to her afterwards and practically begs Jenny to throw her a bone. Blair's face is anything but humble, and there's a veiled threat in her "peace offering", but Jenny isn't scared at all. She's played the game and taken the queen - check, and mate. Penelope and Hazel give her big, shiny smiles and suddenly Blair is the one on the outside looking in, wishing she could be Jenny.
I belong here more than you do, Jenny says silently, and there there's liquid hate in Blair's wide brown eyes.
This time, she doesn't even have to pretend.