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focus on consoling Dan. “How many other seventeen-year-old kids have you heard of with poems published in
The New Yorker
? It’s amazing,” she murmured gently. “And as soon as the admissions officers at the colleges you applied to find out about it, you’re going to get in everywhere you applied, and maybe even places you didn’t.”
    “Maybe,” Dan responded hollowly. It was easy for Vanessa to sound so confident. She was already
in
.
    Vanessa propped herself up on one elbow. There was one sure way of making Dan feel better, at least for a little while. “Remember what we were doing right before Ruby called?” she purred like a mischievous black kitty cat.
    Dan frowned up at her. One black eyebrow was cocked at a sultry angle and her pale nostrils were flared. He hadn’t thought he’d be up to it anymore, but his body surprised him. He pulled Vanessa down on top of him and kissed her hard. If anything could make a boy feel more like a lion than a mouse, it was a little purring.
    Me-ow
.

Disclaimer: All the real names of places, people, and events have been altered or abbreviated to protect the innocent. Namely, me.
    hey people!
    Senior slump
    I’ve heard the expression “senior slump” many times, but I never knew what it meant exactly. Now it’s crystal clear. Senior slump is when you blow off your afternoon classes and go back to your friend’s apartment to order veggie lo mein, drink chardonnay, and smoke cigarettes. It’s when you wind up in bed with a boy at three o’clock in the afternoon. It’s when you skip third-period calculus to stock up on clingy silk jersey wrap dresses at Diane von Furstenberg’s private sale. It’s when you accidentally sleep till ten on a Thursday.
Oops.
Last term we were such goody-goodies, teachers’ pets. This term we’re badasses. We’re also feeling our wild oats. I’m pretty sure half the girls in my P.E. class were off kissing boys on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art instead of doing chin-ups on the monkey bars in the gym. Keep it up girls— hooking up is
much
better exercise!
     
    Sightings
    J and a tall, freckled girl with an unfortunate haircut giggling during a dance class at Constance Billard. Guess J has a new friend. N and his buddies ordering chai at Starbucks , in the hopes that it might be laced with something mood-altering. V at the NYU store buying an NYU mug, an NYU sweatshirt,
and
an NYU baseball cap. And she claims not to be a sucker for that sort of thing. D combing his local newsstand for an advance issue of
The New Yorker
. S and A enjoying a little PDA as usual. She’s never had a boyfriend for more than five minutes, so we’ll see how long this lasts. . . .
    Okay, I admit it. I’m cutting class as we speak. Promise you won’t tell!
    You know you love me.
    gossip girl

s is in love
    Standing in a drift of old snow outside the Constance Billard School for Girls on East Ninety-third Street, Aaron Rose waited for Serena to come hurtling through the towering royal blue school doors and into his arms. Mookie, his brown-and-white boxer, sat panting beside him on the sidewalk wearing the red-and-black plaid doggie jacket Serena had bought him yesterday at Burberry. In Aaron’s hands were two steaming cups from Starbucks. Ever since they’d gotten together at Serena’s wild New Year’s Eve party six weeks ago, this had become their little ritual. Aaron would meet Serena after school and they’d amble down Fifth Avenue arm in arm, drinking soy lattes and stopping now and then to kiss. New Year’s Eve had been a total fuck-it-we’re-both-in-the-mood-so-why-not-hook-up? spontaneous sort of thing, but over the past month they’d spent every out-of-school moment together, and they were now known as the best-looking and most adorable couple—well, threesome, if you included Mookie—on the Upper East Side.
    Suddenly a ray of bright winter sun flashed on Serena’s cool blond head as she pushed open the school doors, skipped