Through a Glass, Darkly
The thing with Hudson is that it's boring, and that in the end it doesn't matter whose decision it was to send you there. Mom is kind and mild, walking softly, softly on the metaphorical eggshells in slippers so ugly they have to be heaven on the feet, and Jenny feels stifled, half erased. The silences are deep as drowning, no Rufus or Dan or Eric, no cell phone jingles.
Mom became unreal a long time ago, slipped out of the family pictures like a ghost, her edges blurred by old tears, and sitting across from her at the kitchen table is like sitting across from a part of her childhood made flesh. It's not real.
I waded across the river of blood and into the Faerie Lands, and when Titania offered, I ate the fruit and drank the wine, and now I can't go back.
She snorts at herself, staring out the window because there are worried parental conferences over the phone when she spends too long gazing blankly at the TV, and thinks that that sounds like something Dan would've written. Well, something Dan might've written if his knowledge of elves was based about equally on a couple lectures on A Midsummer Night's Dream and a ton of urban fantasy novels everyone read for the smut.
It might be more of a Vanessa line, actually.
She clutches too hard at her hair, her nails tame now and her palms safe, collecting new adjectives to modify, to pacify, herself.
So she stands there and clutches too hard at an unravelling extension, ratty and worn because she's not Blair who looks perfect with any beauty enhancements, or Serena who looks perfect without them.
Chuck said, The world you were looking for only exists from the outside. The only reason I survive in it is because I always knew it was empty.
Jenny isn't surprised, really. This is the guy who tried to rape her when she was fourteen, this is a man who considers people a low-price commodity, except maybe Blair, and what sets her apart is nothing more radical than the price tag.
Jenny always knew that he would lie to her. That's what Oberon does.
These days, it's what Jenny does too.
Agnes and Vanessa are out of the picture, like Nate and her old family and her new one, like the minions whose names have slipped her mind; like Jenny herself. By now it's just Eric left, her fake brother, fake friend, fake boyfriend for a few heady minutes of daydreaming before she'd (d)evolved beyond that.
Perhaps it's left a mark, though, because every boyfriend Jenny has had or has wanted to have has been pretence, snatched away by the real UES royalty.
Jenny knows that, despite what the candy-colored Disney movies she used to love tell her, you can't become a princess. That in the real world princes are of discerning taste and would never care for Cinderella. They'd give her a dance, maybe, and a romp, and then she'd be cleaning their shoes, their sheets, their princess girlfriends' jewellery.
So it is fitting that she plays pretend with Eric. Besides, it's only fair; she rescued him when he was the damsel locked up in the dragon's tower, did she not?
If Jenny had been in his place she might (would) have said: So? You didn't do it for me, you did it for Blair, it was all about her, I never mattered.
Raised in Serena's gold-tinted shadow, Eric must know this, but Eric is fair, in that way Dan likes to pretend he himself is and Jenny likes to pretend Nate is, and because of this he still calls her every Sunday, and they tell each other pretty, petty lies.
The pretence isn't only for him, because the real Jenny, stripped of lies – if she exists, it's as something so dark and so deep down that she's scared to find herself.
Most of the time, though, she's just scared to look because she isn't sure there's anything to be found, and if there is, if it will be worth finding.
Years ago, when he was on one of his existentialist-Marxist trips, Dan talked about there being no fixed identity, no essential, natural self. He said this was freeing.
Just like Chuck, Dan keeps lying to her without ever quite meaning to.
It's not fair, because no matter what they say, they are both certain to death of who they are, of what they want.
For Jenny, now, there are only the plucky girls at school, nameless as her minions and without ambition, and the pimply, grinning, polite boys, so for from either Prince Charming or King Oberon.
Of course, neither of those was ever for her.
And so there is this stillness, this afterwards that feels like it should be a beginning because it's too empty to be a proper ending, only there's no more story to be spun out of it.
And Jenny would not say she's obsessed with Blair, but by now everyone knows Jenny Humphrey's a liar.
Blair, who, she has come to realize, would never pour dairy on anyone's head. It's vulgar, and in any case Blair would never hurt Eric.
And maybe that's the real difference, not the money or the charisma but the fact that Jenny discarded her people and Blair didn't, wouldn't ever.
Jenny was so sure she would, that anybody would, that this was what you had to do, but Blair played by different rules all along, maybe played a different game altogether.
Now they're neither of them playing anymore, and Jenny's lost.
It's not fair that Blair can have that brightly sparkling empty world, and have it not be empty. It's not fair that only Jenny had to give up people who were hers.
She pushes her plates away and sustains herself on the image of Blair's wounded face, when Jenny thought: I did that, and victory didn't taste like Blair's phoenix tears anymore, it tasted like Chuck, and suddenly it wasn't victory anymore.
By hanging out with a not always perfectly sober Nate she's heard some alarming stories about the costumes stashed in the penthouse, and on the train out to Hudson she realised that was a kind of amusing, wondered if their sex too was a form or roleplay for Chuck.
She's tried it on, now, the other world. She's appropriated Blair's clothes, Blair's friends, Blair's crown, and now finally Blair's boyfriend, and it's still just a game she can't win, she's still just an impostor, a runner-up.
Blair and Serena are supposed to be the wicked stepsisters, Jenny is supposed to be Cinderella, and why does nobody understand that, even Jenny, anymore?
The thing with New York is that it's not boring, and that in the end it doesn't matter whose decision it is that will send you there. It's still where Blair is.