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He liked sugar and caffeine, which was probably part of the reason why his hands shook. Dan wasn't into being healthy. He liked to live on the edge. While he ate, Dan was studying Vanessa Abrams's script for her short film, the film he was supposed to star in. He kept reading the same line, over and over, like a mantra: Life is fragile and absurd.“Tell me you don't care about Serena van der Woodsen being back,” Jenny challenged Dan. She put a piece of grapefruit in her mouth and sucked on it. Then she stuck her fingers in her mouth, pulled out the white pulpy skin stuff, and put it on her plate. “You should see her,” she went on. “She looks so completely cool. It's like she has this whole new look. I don't mean her clothes; it's her face. She looks older, but it's not like wrinkles or anything. It's like she's Kate Moss or some model who's like, been everywhere and seen everything and come out on the other side. She looks like she's totally, like, experienced.” Jenny waited for her brother to respond, but he was just staring into his coffee cup. Life is fragile and absurd. “Don't you even want to see her?” Jenny asked. Dan thought about what he'd heard Chuck Bass say about Serena. He hadn't wanted to believe any of it, but if Serena looked as experienced as Jenny said, maybe what Chuck said was true. Maybe Serena really was the sluttiest, druggiest, most venereally diseased girl in New York. Dan shrugged his shoulders and pointed at the pile of grapefruit carcasses on Jenny's plate. “That is so foul,” he said. “Can't you just eat a Pop-Tart or something, like a normal person?” “What's wrong with grapefruit?” Jenny said. “It's refreshing.” “Watching you eat it like that isn't. It's disgusting,” Dan said. He stuffed the rest of his donut in his mouth and licked the chocolate off his fingers, being careful not to smudge any on his script. “Don't look, then,” said Jenny. “Anyway, you didn't answer my question.” Dan looked up. “What question?” Jenny put her elbows on the table and leaned forward. “About Serena,” she said. “I know you want to see her.” Dan looked back down at his script and shrugged. “Whatever,” he said. “Yeah, whatever,” said Jenny, rolling her eyes. “Look, there's this party the Friday after next. It's some big fancy benefit thing to save the peregrine falcons that live in Central Park. Did you know there were falcons in Central Park? I didn't. Anyway, Blair Waldorf is organizing it, and you know she and Serena are best friends, so of course Serena will be there.” Dan kept reading his script, completely ignoring his sister. And Jenny went on, ignoring the fact that Dan was ignoring her. “Anyway, all we have to do is find a way to get into that party,” Jenny said. She grabbed a paper napkin off the table, scrunched it into a ball, and threw it at her brother's head. “Dan, please,” she said pleadingly. “We have to go!” Dan tossed the script aside and looked at his sister, his brown eyes serious and sad. “Jenny,” he said. “I don't want to go to that party. Next Friday night I'm probably going over to Deke's house to use his PlayStation, and then I'll probably head over to Brooklyn to hang out with Vanessa and her sister and their friends. Just like I do every Friday night.” Jenny kicked at the legs of her chair like a little girl. “But why, Dan? Why won't you go to the party?” Dan shook his head, smiling bitterly. “Because we weren't invited? Because we're not going to be invited? Give it up, Jen. I'm sorry, but that's just the way it is. We're different from them, you know that. We don't live in the same world as Serena van der Woodsen or Blair Waldorf or any of those people.” “Oh, you're such a wimp! You drive me crazy,” Jen said, rolling her eyes. She stood up and dumped her dishes in the sink, scrubbing at them furiously with a Brillo pad. Then she whirled around and put her hands on her hips. She was wearing a pink flannel nightshirt and her curly brown hair was sticking out all over because she had gone to sleep with it wet. She looked like a mini disgruntled housewife with boobs that were ten times too big for her body. “I don't care what you say. I'm going to that party!” she insisted. “What party?” their father asked, appearing in the doorway to the kitchen. If there were an award for the most embarrassing dad in the universe, Rufus Humphrey would have won it. He was wearing a sweat-stained white wife-beater and red checked boxer shorts, and was scratching at his crotch. He hadn't shaved in a few days, and his gray beard seemed to be growing at different intervals. Some of it was thick and long, but in between were bald patches and patches of five o'clock shadow. His curly gray hair was matted and his brown eyes bleary. There was a cigarette tucked behind each of his ears. Jenny and Dan looked at their father for a moment in silence. Then Jenny sighed and turned back to the dishes. “Never mind,” she said. Dan smirked and leaned back in his chair. Their father hated the Upper East Side and all its pretensions. He only sent Jenny to Constance because it was a very good school and because he used to date one of the English teachers there. But he hated the idea that Jenny might be influenced by her classmates, or “those debutantes,” as he called them. Dan knew their dad was going to love this. “Jenny wants to go to some fancy benefit next week,” he said. Mr. Humphrey pulled one of the cigarettes from behind his ear and stuck it in his mouth, playing with it between his lips. “A benefit for what?” he demanded. Dan rocked his chair back and forth, a smug look on his face. Jenny turned off the faucet and glared at him, daring him to go on. “Get this,” Dan said. “It's a party to raise money for those peregrine falcons that live in Central Park. They're probably going to build like, birdhouse mansions for them or something. Like there aren't thousands of homeless people that could use the money.” “Oh, shut up,” Jenny said, furious. “You think you know everything. It's just a stupid party. I never said it was a great cause.” “You call that a cause?” her father bellowed. “Shame on you. Those people only want those birds around because they're pretty. Because it makes them feel like they're in the pretty countryside, like they're at their houses in Connecticut or Maine. They're decorative. Leave it to the leisure class to come up with some charity that does absolutely no one any good at all!” Jenny leaned back against the kitchen counter, stared up at the ceiling, and tuned her father out. She'd heard this same tirade before. It didn't change anything. She still wanted to go to that party. “I just want to have some fun,” she said stubbornly. “Why does it have to be such a big deal?” “It's a big deal because you're going to get used to this silly debutante nonsense, and you're going to wind up a big fake like your mother, who hangs around rich people all the time because she's too scared to think for herself,” her father shouted, his unshaven face turning dark red. “Dammit, Jenny. You remind me more and more of your mother every day.” Dan suddenly felt bad. Their mother had run off to Prague with some count or prince or something, and she was basically a kept woman, letting the count or prince or whatever he was dress her and put her up in hotels all over Europe. All she did all day was shop, eat, drink, and paint pictures of flowers. She wrote them letters a few times a year, and sent them the odd present. Last Christmas she'd sent Jenny a peasant dress from Germany. It was about ten sizes too small. It wasn't a nice thing for their father to say that Jenny reminded him of their mother. It wasn't nice at all. Jenny looked like she was about to cry. “Lay off, Dad,” Dan said. “We weren't invited to the party anyway. So neither of us could go even if we wanted to.” “See what I mean!” Mr. Humphrey said triumphantly. “Why would you want to hang out with those snobs anyway?” Jenny stared glassy-eyed at the dirty kitchen floor. Dan stood up. “Hurry up and get dressed, Jen,” he said gently. “I'll walk you to your bus stop.” n gets an e-vitation In the six-minute interval between the bell signaling the end of Latin and the bell signaling the beginning of Gym, Nate slipped into the computer lab at the St. Jude's School for Boys. Every Wednesday, he and Blair had grown accustomed to e-mailing each other a quick love note (okay, it was Blair's idea), to help them get over the hump of the boring school week. Only two more days until the weekend, when they could spend as much time together as they wanted. But today Nate wasn't even thinking of Blair. He wanted to see how Serena was doing.