Julia and Sarah are sitting next to each other in what looks like homeroom while some teacher goes on about all the stuff they have to do their senior year. "Turn around," Sarah tells Julia. She does, and sees Justin standing by the door. He waves. Julia turns back around and says with a grin, "He looks good." Sarah asks if that's good or bad and Julia says she doesn't know. After class he comes up and she asks him how England was (wow, two summers in England in a row, nice). His mother had the baby (Ben). They decide not to do the whole "avoiding thing." Julia says it's funny that after all this time, they still think alike.
Kirsten is called into Dr. Kass's office. Apparently he's her advisor for her doctorate. Kirsten is bouncing off the walls telling him about her new job. Unfortunately he has some bad news. Dr. Cass shared Kirsten's doctoral thesis with a colleague of his who has written a book. He found a whole chunk of Kirsten's thesis that was taken straight from his book without any credit given.
Bailey is standing in line waiting to register for classes. Some guy pretends to know him so that he can cut in line. Bai plays along. The guy, Cooper than proceeds to give him advice on all the classes he should take (like Rocks for Jocks) to get easy As.
Justin and Julia are curious to see what each other's letter of recommendation looks like, so they swap. They both got pretty good letters and they're happy until Sarah walks up with a big smile on her face. She got a glowing recommendation so they're both disgusted with her.
Bailey and Coop are in the cafeteria. As they approach the cash register, Bai makes a comment about how steep the prices are (he didn't get a meal plan). Coop hands him his meal card and tells him to hang back. He goes up to the register and makes a stink about how someone must have stolen his. The lady gives him a form to fill out so he'll get a new one. Then Bailey uses his card.
Claudia and Charlie are talking in the kitchen. She tells him she has Miss Levin for social studies. "Miss Levin. Boy, I haven't thought about her in years...She always liked me," Charlie says. "Yeah? 'Cause when I told her I was your sister, she kinda had to grab hold of the desk and her face got all pale," Claudia replies. Kirsten walks in (from her meeting) in a complete daze. Charlie follows her out of the room and she tells him what happens. He thinks it must be a mistake but she says she did it in a confused sort of way.
Bai and Sarah are in the Jeep driving along. She's kind of surprised at the classes he signed up for because they weren't the ones he picked out. He told her about Coop's advice and explains that he just wants to have a good first semester and even rack up some A's.
Julia has her counselor's appointment and is mad because he ragged on her about extracurricular activities during her junior year. Apparently she was spending all her time with Justin (didn't they do that suicide hotline thing?). She and Justin are panicked because it's too late to get into a club as an officer. So Julia gets the brilliant idea of starting their own club and making themselves the officers. Sarah manages to explain that she had time to date Bailey and still do costumes for the school play, etc. Their one chance to get something good on their resume and get into a good college is the Garber Essay contest. The essays are due at the end of the week.
Charlie is in the storage room looking through all of the boxes of Kirsten's stuff. He thinks maybe she made some notecards but then lost them. He's just grasping for something to explain the plagarism. While he's looking through the boxes Claudia comes down with laundry. She kind of knows what's up. On her way out of the house she find Kirsten on the front porch staring blankly. Claudia tries to make her feel better with some lame story about a song she thought she wrote that she had actually heard. Kirsten freaks out and says "I can't do this with you" and leaves. Meanwhile, while going through Kirsten's stuff, Charlie finds a prescription slip.
The club idea didn't go over too well with the counselor. Julia doesn't feel too bad because she still has alumni connections (her mom went to Stanford.) This really wigs Justin out who panics. The Graber award is his last chance and he doesn't have anything to write about. He asks Sarah what she's going to write about and she says meeting her birth mother. Julia is going to write about her parents. He says they're both shoe-ins and he has nothing. "Paper or plastic," he goes away muttering.
Sarah joins Bailey and Cooper at a welcome freshman party. While talking about the Computer Competency test, Cooper tells Bailey that his older brother is going to take the test for him, and he could take it for Bai too. Sarah doesn't say anything and Bai says he'll just take the test himself.
Kirsten returns home and Charlie confronts her with the prescription. He called the doctor to see what it was forŠan antidepressant. He asks her if she's taking them and she says, "No." Then she explains that after he called off the wedding and the pressure of getting her thesis done was overwhelming she began having problems and so she went to a therapist and her prescribed them for her. "What did you expect?" she asks Charlie. She doesn't remember typing those paragraphs on her thesis. Charlie suggests that she go to her advisory committee and tell them about her depression. He'll volunteers to go with her. She reluctantly agrees.
Bailey is studying fo his test while Julia helps Owen with his homework (glueing stuff). They're talking about Kirsten's thesis and how they can't believe she would do that. Claudia doesn't see how any of her students could trust her. As she leaves the kitchen she sees Charlie sitting on the steps. Charlie tells her not to be mad at Kirsten. If she wants to blame someone she can blame him. Of course Claudia doesn't understand because she doesn't know about the whole depression thing.
Justin apologizes to Julia for wigging out the other day. They're sitting on the grass talking when a girl walks by and says, "Hi, Justin." Justin says, "She's just a friend." Julia replies, "So am I, a friend who's seen you naked." Julia lets Justin read her essay. She asks to see his but he says he's still working on it.
Bailey is at the computer lab working on his computer programming test. The computer keeps beeping at him. He calls the computer monitor over and asks to invalidate his test.
Julia goes to turn in her Garber Award essay. She sees Justin's on the pile and pulls it out to read a portion of it. He's written about the whole pregnancy, miscarriage thing that happened last Spring (like we didn't know).
Sarah and Bai are up in the attic talking. She asks him about the test and he tells her he couldn't pass it. He tells her he's thinking about having Coop's brother take the test. She's mad and says that even if it's just once, who's to stop him the next time something is hard.
Charlie is waiting outside as Kristen meets with her doctoral advisory committee. She comes out looking completely stunned. They took away her doctorate. Kirsten just keeps mumbling about how it's her fault and she deserves it. She didn't even tell them about the depression because it wouldn't have made any difference. Charlie is about to go after them and tell them but she says she just wants to go home, so they do.
Bai asks Cooper if the offer stills stands and he says it does.
Julia confronts Justin about the essay and he says he's sorry. "Sorry you wrote it or sorry I found out?" she asks. "Sorry you found out," he replies. She totally rips into him about how she can't believe he would do that to hurt her. She still sees the whole thing as something that happened to her and belongs to her like she's got a monopoly on pain.
Kirsten is in the family room starring blankly at the television, changing channels. The school fired her because "under the circumstances..." She has to get her things from the apartment. Charlie volunteers to go but she says she has to go. He tries to help but she says, "Please stop. I know you mean well, but stop." She says she doesn't want it to get better. She continues to rock back and forth on the couch pattlin on. (In other words, she's really wigging out.)
Bailey is in a meeting with his advisor. He asks about the computer competency and Bailey says he took it. Then the counselor finds it and is surprised. Bailey (or Coop's brother rather) scored in the top 10%. The advisor recommends that he consider a major in engineering. Bailey says, "Sure, I'll think about it."
Charlie and Kirsten pull into the driveway, the truck loaded down with all of her stuff from the apartment. Charlie tells her to go on into the house and he'll get the stuff. She says, she just wants to sit there for a while. He gets out, and starts taking boxes in while she sits in the cab gazing out the window.