Because I'm Worth it by Cecily von Ziegesar Page A

items that didn’t exactly belong to her out of a well-known department store? She’s in rehab, too, but don’t worry—the film industry will find a way to bring her back. In fact, that’s what distinguishes the flavors of the month from the real stars. We kind of
want
to see her again. We want to know that there’s life after being busted. We want to see her rise to new heights, whereas we don’t much care what happens to Sally. At nineteen, she was already tired.
    The ins and outs of rehab
    Rehab and college are actually very similar as far as status is concerned. There are the select few, which are filled with celebrities and the children of the very rich, and then there are the rest of them, which are filled with regular people. Getting into the best ones is highly competitive, but once you’re in, you’re
in
. So I wouldn’t worry about our darling N . He may be in trouble, but his parents aren’t about to send him to the rehab equivalent of community college.
    Your e-mail
    Q:     Dear GG,
    I’m an intern at Les Best Couture, and I heard Les sent a spy to S ’s school to check out what she looked like. He was kind of mad that she was hired without him even seeing her.
    —lilintern
    A:     Dear lil,
    I bet he’s not mad anymore though, right?
    —GG
    Q:     dear gossip girl,
    how come you never mention K and I anymore? It makes me wonder if maybe you are one of them.
    —eyespy
    A:     Dear eyespy,
    I’ll never tell, so wonder away!
    —GG
    Sightings
    K and I —there, I mentioned them—in Bryant Park , freezing their butts off in skimpy Blue Cult denim miniskirts as they tried to get the interns working the doors of the Fashion Week tents to give them first- or second-row seats for Friday and Saturday’s runway shows instead of their usual ones toward the back. B renting
How to Steal a Million
, starring Audrey Hepburn , for the seventeenth time at Blockbuster on Seventy-second and Lex. I guess that’s
one
way of preparing for your Yale alum interview. N headed up the Merritt Parkway toward Connecticut in the back seat of his parents’ black Mercedes SUV . On his way to rehab, maybe? V in Barneys , of all
    places, checking out a frayed black hemp driving coat with chain-mail seams and vintage hook-and-eye buttons by Culture of Humanity by Jedediah Angel . She looked tempted, but at that price she’d be better off ripping up her own clothes and fastening them together with paper clips.
    My problem isn’t getting into the first row—it’s which show to go to. They
all
want me! Sigh. Being popular can be seriously hard work.
    You know you love me.
    gossip girl

j and e explore their problem areas
    “Five more minutes, ladies,” announced Ms. Crumb to her Constance Billard ninth-grade creative writing class. She pulled her curly black hair out of the way and prodded the wax in her right ear with the eraser of a yellow number two pencil. “Remember, it’s not
what
you’re writing about but
how
you describe it.”
    None of the girls looked up. They were too busy writing, and besides, they really didn’t want to see what Ms. Crumb was doing when she thought they weren’t looking. They’d already been grossed out enough times.
    According to the girls,
all
the female teachers at Constance Billard were lesbians, but Ms. Crumb was the only teacher at Constance who was officially out. She wore a rainbow pin to school every day, shared a country house in New Paltz with five other women, and often referred to her “partner”—as in, “The other night my partner was drinking Amstel Lite and watching Barbara Walters, who she has a total crush on
,
while I sat in the kitchen and graded your papers.” Every year the ninth graders looked forward to having Ms. Crumb’s creative writing class, assuming she’d be cool and down-to-earth since she was so forthright about her sexuality. But after a day in her classroom her students realized they weren’t just going to sit around for forty-five