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"I do not know this person. Who is Pete Fairman?"
She couldn't spare a look for Serena now, though she idly wondered if she thought Blair had made some kind of ridiculous error in putting down the names. But there had been no mistake.
"Pete Fairman was the man who saved my life," Blair began, taking a deep breath. It was an true attempt to brace herself for this speech, but her audience should assume she was nervous to reveal something deeply personal, not preparing to risk her life plans on the major lies she was about to tell. "I'm afraid I owe you an apology, Dean. You asked during my interview for me to share something that wasn't in my file, and I should have shared then what I am now. And that is that I am 16 months clean."
She had the complete attention of the room now, and she was going to keep it for the rest of the night and weekend if this went well.
"You see, my mother is a designer - Eleanor Waldorf - and it's easy to be seduced by that world, as I unfortunately was. I managed to keep my academic life on track, fortunately, but in private, I was spending time with models and artists and those that live and support the supposedly glamorous life, a life that includes easy access to drugs."
She blinked rapidly, hopefully appearing to hold back tears.
"And it was great fun, for a while. It's so easy to garner attention for the wrong reasons. You get your picture on Page Six and all of New York knows your name, but you can't even see how shallow it is. How notoriety isn't a substitute for fulfillment; how unrewarding it is having your fashion sense copied when you could be inspiring minds instead of accessories." Many in the audience were nodding now, the ones she'd been most careful to impress earlier, the ones she knew were leaders in the tenured faction who didn't agree with the dean's move to bring in students based solely on the press releases that could be crafted from their acceptance.
"Pete was the one who opened my eyes, not to the emptiness of that world, but to the dangers we all know of that I'd been willfully ignoring." She swallowed and again visibly steeled herself. "Because I was there when he died. I didn't know him, had only met him a few minutes before. We were with mutual friends, and he did a line of coke and had a seizure. I tried to help, called an ambulance while others ran, but it was over too quickly. He was gone, and the rest of us were just lucky.
"And that was it for me. I stopped partying, I got help, I stayed away from temptations, I reapplied myself to schoolwork and I stayed out of the limelight. I imagine saving me from a fate similar to his own would be small comfort to Pete, but if I could meet him again for just a moment, much less a whole dinner, I would thank him nonetheless."
For a moment more, the room kept the absolute silence everyone had fallen into when she'd said Pete died, then the dean spoke. "Thank you, Miss Waldorf. That was truly inspiring, and you've all given the faculty present tonight a sense of what you'd bring to our institution." He included the rest of the prospective students in his summation. "I thank you all for your attendance and participation, and hope to see some of you tomorrow before you return to your homes."
That signaled an obvious end to the evening, and as some applicants moved toward the door, she was practically swarmed with professors who all seemed to want to say how brave she was, how moving her speech was, and best of all, how much they agreed that the life of the mind was so rewarding and that gossip rags and the celebutantes they followed had no place in a place of tradition and knowledge such as Yale.
She had half seen Serena turn to her after the dean's goodbye, but there had been no time to speak before her first admirer approached, and by the time she was done thanking people for their kind words of support and agreeing wholeheartedly with their estimation of it girls and their ilk, she was actually the last student left. Even the dean, whose plan it had been to up Yale's Q rating by issuing press releases when various bright stars came to visit or attend Yale, had not seemed upset by her speech giving support to those who opposed his ideas. He escorted her out personally and asked her to stop by his office in the morning, saying he'd love to speak with her again, as he understood how nervous she must have at their first meeting, taking full blame for the kiss incident (not mentioned directly, of course) after he'd put her on the spot regarding a past she must often want to leave behind.
And that was it. Every possibility of the many things that could have gone wrong with this scheme that had occurred to her after running into Serena at the beginning of the party faded away, and only this perfect outcome was left. She had won. She walked around a bit more before returning to her assigned dorm for the weekend - she thinks she even saw Dan Humphrey tied to a statue, but he's hardly worth a second thought - and then fell into bed, dreaming of having her bedroom repainted Bulldog Blue.
The next morning, her second interview completed easily, she exited the administration building to find Serena on her way up the stairs. She looked miserable, and Blair's heart gave an involuntary tug, but Serena spoke first and gave her time to remind herself why she had behaved as she did.
"Did you have to make me look stupid, Blair? You could have just used one of your many other answers to impress the professors, why did you have to fake me out and steal my life?"
"Are you sure you want to accuse me of stealing answers here?"
"Maybe I shouldn't have used Sand, but that was just an author the dean likes, not someone you actually cared about. Pete was a real influence in my life, a man I watched die, and you used him in some stupid game. That's completely over the line."
"Please, Serena," she said sarcastically. "Turnabout is fair play. You gave me a big speech on how you were going to be your true self no matter what I or anyone else thought, and a day later you've decided to be me instead, taking my answer, taking away my dream. Well, if you want to prove you can be me, I thought it fair to prove I can be you."
"Maybe I shouldn't have said all that, but..."
"But you did. And you can't unsay it, or apologize and have it forgotten. And you know what? Maybe you were right that my insecurities aren't your fault, but don't act like the world at your feet is somehow what you deserve. You're just pretty. So go. Be pretty. Shine as bright as you want. You don't have to hold yourself back for me, just don't think I'll be there to hold back your hair next time you need it. Because you will fall, S. You always do."
"No. I've changed. And I'm sick of you and everyone else looking at me like I'm teetering on the edge of some cliff of self-destruction."
"And I'm sick of looking like Darth Vader next to Sunshine Barbie, so feel free to cross me off that list. I won't be looking at you, or after you, anymore."
"So that's it? A decade of friendship is just gone?"
"It's been a long ten years. Frankly, I'm tired."
The girls stopped speaking and stared at each other until a backpack-burdened student bumped into Blair on his way down the stairs. She didn't even make a bitchy comment regarding his behavior, just sent a last look at Serena and continued on her path to her car. Serena turned to watch her go, but only for a moment, before she too walked away.
Not actually the end, that's just the chapter title. So...review?