- On Monday, back in school, Torey plans to spend one of his canceled classes hanging out in the cafeteria with Leandra and Alex. Mrs. Creed is hanging posters in the hall and Torey is noticing how hard she presses the tape down when an old friend says hi.
- Ali McDermott used to be better friends with his group, but she began drifting away and hanging with other kids; Torey heard she had started sleeping around.
- They chat a little bit but she doesn't want to talk about Chris. Torey defends himself, saying he doesn't want to gossip about him, he just wants to understand what happened.
- Then Ali admits she's tired of the gossip and people who don't like her asking all sorts of stupid questions. Torey is shocked that she thinks people don't like her.
- Ali lets it fly that she doesn't have a perfect life anymore like he does, so he won't understand. This ticks him off, so he lets her know that she's being mighty judgmental and hypocritical, and then he takes off for the cafeteria.
- Ali catches up, apologizes, and pulls him aside into a fire escape stairwell to talk alone about Mrs. Creed.
- As she puffs a cigarette, Ali tells him that she talked to Chris once or twice, one time dumping a bunch of feelings on him from her life, at which point he got all creepy on her and called her his "long-lost brother from another life." Weird.
- Then she tells Torey that she can see into the Creed's house perfectly because of the way her house is situated next door. She says that Chris was anal, perfectly neat, and had no privacy at all.
- His mom used to walk into his room when he was naked and getting dressed and he had to let her. Also, he always had to go places with his parents instead of having any independence.
- Eek on a number of levels.
- So Ali says she hates Mrs. Creed, and thinks maybe she did something even worse to Chris, which Ali hopes to find out.
- Torey doesn't understand what she is hinting at, but knows it's really gross.
- Thinking back about Mrs. Creed in church, pleading for someone to tell her why her son ran away, Torey is confused and mad about how this woman could say that stuff and not feel at least a little responsible, especially since she must have seen the note Chris wrote, which said his parents were too strict.
- Ali jabs him again with the "perfect life" bit and it really ticks Torey off, but she can't tell him what is going on with her, not yet, so she invites him over to spy on the Creeds. He accepts, even though it will look bad for him being that she's a girl and has a bad reputation. He does still have a girlfriend, after all.
- Ali helps by telling him her boyfriend will be there, too, so not to worry.
- Torey takes off for Leandra in the cafeteria.