Serena Vanderwoodsen's Arc

Chapter 2 of 7

Blair finished pulling leaves from her hair and dropped onto the marble bench, still laughing. Serena slid her phone into her pocket before Blair could see the screen. The mansion suddenly felt wrong. Every tall window faced the trees. Every hallway ended in glass. Serena needed a room without a sightline, a place to think without Blair asking why her face had changed. "We're leaving," Serena said. "Not the forest. Just the house." Blair frowned. "We just got warm." "I want somewhere with no windows on the road. Somewhere he wouldn't guess." Serena kept her voice light. "There's a ballet hall in the village. My mother rented it once. It's empty this week." Blair studied her. Serena held her smile until Blair shrugged and stood. They took the side path on foot, snow suits zipped high. Serena walked half a step behind Blair and checked the treeline twice. Nothing moved. The pink building sat at the end of a short lane, tall and quiet, painted the color of the inside of a shell. Wooden nutcracker figures stood in the upper windows. Cursive letters spelled the word above the doors. Serena tried the handle. It opened. The caretaker knew her mother. That was enough here. Inside, the air smelled of rosin and cold wood. A rack of rehearsal dresses stood in the center of the floor, pink and white and silver, layered in ruffles. Blair walked straight to it and touched a silver skirt. "Okay," Blair said. "This I forgive you for." Serena locked the door behind them and slid the bolt. She checked the tall windows. The glass faced an inner courtyard, walled on all sides. No lens could reach them here. Her shoulders dropped for the first time since morning. Blair pulled a white dress off the rack and held it against Serena. "Try it. We came all this way." Serena stepped out of her snow suit and let Blair zip her into the white one. Blair took the pink. For twenty minutes they spun on the wood floor in socks, and Blair laughed the way Serena had wanted her to laugh all week. Serena watched her and felt the phone in her pocket like a stone. Then Blair stopped spinning. "Your phone keeps buzzing." "It's nothing." "Serena." Blair's hand was already out. Serena hesitated one second too long. Blair crossed the floor and pulled the phone from the snow suit on the bench. She read the screen. Her face went white under the stage lights. "He knows my name," Blair whispered. "He knew we were in the trees." "I was going to tell you." "When?" Blair sat down on the floor in the pink dress. "Serena, he followed us here. He had to. You picked this place an hour ago." Serena looked at the bolted door. She had found the private spot. She had also just handed Blair the fear she'd spent all day carrying alone.