Meanwhile, Serena's reading her own Page Six adventures while Lily gets ready for the day. "You excited? Me at your alma mater?" Lily is very much so, but wonders if that's definitive re: Serena's disinterest in touring Yale, and the private invite to do so. "Brown's always been my plan, just like it was for you." Not that Lily didn't love it, but she would have been pleased as punch to get a Yale invitation. "Handwritten, Serena. In cursive." (As opposed to the cartoonish bubble-script with hearts on the i's so typically preferred by men of letters? Besides me, I mean.) "Yale is for overachieving bookworms and preppies: the Blairs of the world. Even though the two of us aren't exactly on speaking terms, there's no way I would step on that particular landmine."

(A word that comes back in a later act, and tells us here that Serena would like nothing better than to visit Yale, because she knows her mother is right, but rules it out without thinking twice, because she knows how she affects Blair just by existing. So she's already going back on the whole Being Her Own Windkeeper promises from last week, because it's a lot easier to make definitive, overall rules and stick by them if they're only theoretical, and if she learned anything from the Year of Dan it should have been that letting other people manipulate you out of their own neurotic need is easy to decry but really, really hard to stop doing; it's a fact of life that touches all the other facts of life.)

Dorota can't believe B's still not talking to Queen S, but B's staunch. "Not a word in a week. Though I can't seem to escape her. Ever since my mother's show, Manhattan has turned into Serena-ville." A fact of life that touches all other facts of life: even Dorota's impressed by the media blitz. "I heard Marc Jacobs named a purse after her!" She laughs and B stares until her smile falls. "Well. I simply don't understand the fascination. Fortunately, Yale is out of her reach," she snots, tossing the paper to the floor.

I think I'm drowning
Asphyxiated
I want to break this spell that you've created

"It's okay, Serena," says Lily. "You don't have to hide the photo. I've seen it." In the foreground is Serena, with a lovely lovely woman laughing behind her in profile, nearly unrecognizable unless you -- like the rest of us -- spend an inordinate amount of time staring at Kelly Rutherford's gorgeous face. "I'm sorry they called you my unidentified friend," Serena moans, and Lily laughs. "Well, I guess it's better than mother."