Serena, having missed office "hours" -- because, as the professor explains over text, he waited for five whole minutes -- comes back home bedraggled and late and sad and close to getting expelled. FOR NO ACTUAL REASON. "You know there's a clock on your cell phone, right?" Serena lies that she knew that, and she swears that it wasn't her fault. And yeah, this time -- maybe she was so very late for his office hours that she was five minutes past the end of them? -- really she's just blaming Vanessa for being a bitch. Actually, that's probably better than a doctor's note. "You know Vanessa Abrams?" Oh, you sweet child. Sit right down, I'll get you some Earl Grey tea-flavored tea. "Thank you, that's my favorite tea flavoring."

So Serena immediately emailed the prof -- come 2 the hamton house party? im in that club lol plausibl denaibility -- and so everybody in the whole world is going to this exclusive location for an exclusive party that only three of them have any right to be at. Apparently the entire faculty will be there, rubbing bows with the kids, administrating staffing and class schedule decisions like you do at a party. Juliet was literally thrown out of Hamhocks by its board of regents for being super slimy, Dan Humphrey's cheekbones aside he has no business there, and Vanessa's just going to grunt and piss on everything about how just one of these hors d'oeuvres could feed a family in Haiti for like twenty years.

Vanessa steals Serena's purse without thinking twice and gets her phone out and hacks it and reads this, about which I am ever so fucking sure: "If Vanessa thinks something more than a kiss happened between us, even though it didn't, I need to show her I'm willing to do whatever it takes to make things work." I write emails like that all the time and it never looks suspicious or like a lie. "Remember when we DIDN'T STEAL THAT MONEY?" Juliet totally drive-bys Vanessa on her way to getting the phone herself -- "You're not the only one with Serena insecurity!" -- and then makes Vanessa "stand guard" long enough for her to some terrible thing. Vanessa comes back and is like, "What should I do, now that I know that thing I already knew five times?"

Juliet's like, "Boys are dumb. Just fuck him and that will shut everybody up inside your mind." Vanessa's like, "I want to say something nice but I have never done that in life so this might come out weird but your hair is really hair-shaped? And you and Nate are a couple." Juliet's like, "That's right, we are..." And then the screen goes all wavy and her voice echoes and she realizes that not only is she about to cross the line and snort the heroin of Nate's insanely sick body, but that she wishes her fake life were her real life and she didn't always have to wear this one dress or always be on the phone with jail.