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The day after Blair realized Serena had left for Connecticut and probably want coming back was probably the hardest day of her life to date. This was their junior year, the most feared, stressful year of high school. As if her nerves weren’t enough, now she had to get through the year alone. Serena’s leaving was abrupt, she didn’t have time to brace herself for the Serena shaped hole in her heart or the aching loneliness she felt as she sat on the met steps before school. Serena was her sun and Blair felt as if she had been forcefully locked into a metal bunker with no windows.
She still had her minions but she never considered them her friends. Truthfully, Blair didn’t have many friends. She had Serena, who was now gone, and Nate but he was her boyfriend and a boy so it definitely wasn’t the same. There was Chuck who she basically hated. She only tolerated him because their parents were friends and he was Nates best friend. He was a vile person, at least on the exterior, and Blair wasn’t sure she wanted to know about the inner workings of his mind. All she knew was that compared to Chuck, she was a saint.
It was only a few months ago that Blair remembered sitting at lunch with Serena and planning out what classes they were going to take their junior year. They didn’t have many classes in common but both of them were praying to have the same pre-calculus class. That was Blair’s last memory of fully having Serena before the hectic end of sophomore year when Serena and Georgina went off the rails and left Blair behind.
Now Serena was gone and she didn’t reach out to Blair very much. She had sent a few emails just rubbing in how good her life was but once the summer ended Serena went radio silent. Maybe that was Blair’s fault. She never replied to the emails. But what was she supposed to say?
“Hey S, glad you’re having fun screwing every guy in sight. My life is falling apart back at home. Love Blair.”
She wasn’t pathetic. Serena would get the silent treatment. She was the one who had left not the other way around. Her gaze flickered to the bustling city streets. People were awake now, the street was a blur of school uniforms and middle class professionals rushing to get to work. Blair saw many girls her age, other Constance students, but she didn’t ever click with any of them. They were all just background noise when Serena was around. Now that her best friend was gone, Blair felt lonelier than ever.
When Serena was still around, they considered Nate to be the third member in their little trio. The third best friend. Unfortunately, Nate was a guy so he was off at St Jude’s. Plus, with Serena’s absence Nate had gotten all mopey and impossible to be around. Blair had never realized that Serena was the glue that held their social circle together. Without the blondes magnetic presence, there was no reason for their whole group to spend time together other than the fact that their parents were friends.
She shifted from looking at the bustling streets to watching Kati and Is climb the steps to come join her. The two of them were a pair of their own, inseparable, and dedicated to following Blair’s orders. Like Serena and Blair used to be, one was never seen without the other. Seeing their friendship made Blair’s stomach twist. She had never been envious of her minions before. They were all boring girls, followers who drifted from one leader to the next and then back to Blair. She didn’t envy their lack of ambition but she desperately wished to have a best friend still.
The pair perched on the steps beneath her. Blair couldn’t bring herself to greet them, instead she glanced at them with feigned boredom and then looked away. She couldn’t stand to look at their friendship for any longer. She would probably throw up—and it wouldn’t be self induced.
She knew her condition was something to hide. What she did disgusted her and if it ever got out her public perception would be ruined. She knew the risks but she continued the endless cycle of resting until she binged and binging until she purged. When she began her freshman year she told herself she couldn’t eat in front of anyone except maybe Serena. She had never seen powerful women eating in public so to emulate them she cut out meals entirely. Lunch was now a time where she sat and gossiped, not a time for food. Breakfast was a meal she would lie to Dorota about. She never ate breakfast. Only at dinner time would Blair actually have a meal.
Serena knew that Blair had a few quirks when it came to eating but she seemed oblivious to the deeper meaning of it all. Sometimes, Blair wished she could just open up about all of it to Serena. They were supposed to be best friends and best friends didn’t have secrets. She felt awful each time she returned from purging and didn’t mention a word of her suffering to Serena. She liked to believe that her best friend wasn’t withholding information from her and she should do the same. The issue was, despite years of friendship, the voice in Blair’s head told her that Serena could not be trusted. No one could know that Blair was bulimic.
With Serena gone, the secret became much easier to keep. She could continue to skip meals until people began to notice and praised her discipline or her new figure. Maybe Serena’s absence would made Blair’s life easier.
Still, she found it hard to accept that she would spend days if not weeks or months without speaking to her best friend. It wasn’t her choice. Serena was the one who had left her. She didn’t even think to warn Blair at the end of the summer when Blair talked about her fears for junior year. She didn’t mention a thing when they hugged and talked about being best friends forever.
She recalled her last sleepover with Serena. The word sleepover seemed so childish now and Blair needed to mature. She needed a new word. It wasn’t a sleepover it was a soirée. Blair recalled her last soirée with Serena. They were at the Waldorf penthouse, Serena was sprawled out on Blair’s bed in a tangle of long limbs and messy blonde hair. Blair was perched over her, fingers running through Serena’s soft, shiny hair as she detangled it. They were both in a state of ennui, there was absolutely nothing to do. Gossip Girl was down for some reason, school was out, Georgina was off doing something Blair didn’t care to remember, so it was just the two of them. Neither of them had enough energy to go out and have fun so they talked.
At that last sleepover—no soirée—they planned their future together. Everything from the matching heels they would wear at graduation to the neighboring summer homes they would have in the Hamptons. Blair mentioned marrying Nate but in her perfect fantasy Nate was just her faceless husband and none of it mattered as long as she had Serena by her side. She liked to think of herself as being above everyone else but truthfully she was equally sucked into Serena’s magnificence just like anyone else. Serena had an overpowering force that even Blair wasn’t immune to after over a decade of friendship.
That was why Blair’s heart ached when she thought about Serena being off at boarding school. She could pretend to be mad or aloof but internally she would always miss her best friend. Maybe the days of them being close were over now. Serena would find a new best friend and escape from the toxic world of the Upper East Side forever. It was possible that Serena would never come back. She was a drifter, like the girls at school she would flutter from one interesting thing to the next. Without Blair there to ground her and keep her out of trouble Serena would become a beautiful, helpless mess.
Blair had enough literary and cinematic knowledge to understand that long distance friendships never worked out. Honestly, she could gather that much from the brevity of Serena’s emails. Her once best friend couldn’t possibly seem any more conceited than she did in her two sentence emails she sent once in a while.
She would probably have to meet someone new—a new Serena. Her best friend had probably already replaced her. Serena was more extroverted, more charismatic, effortlessly charming, it was impossible to believe she didn’t already have people lining up to be her best friend. She probably didn’t even mention Blair anymore. She wasn’t as fun as Serena but Blair could make friends too. She could find a replacement if she wanted so. She was the queen of Constance now, with Serena gone she had no more competition. Surely one of her minions would be suitable to be her new closest friend.
She didn’t need Serena. She was above friendships, they all fizzled out eventually. As long as people thought she had close friends, Blair would remain untouchable. Serena could come and go as she pleased but she would no longer be part of Blair’s life. This year would be her year, her time to shine, and Serena couldn’t stop her.