Jeff Winger had a plan. It was a simple plan, and a good plan, and it was proceeding along well enough, so far. Step one, sleep with Annie Edison. Step two, purge distracting thoughts about Annie Edison from his mind. Step three, trundle along through four years of Greendale Community College and graduate with a 2.0 GPA. Step four, go back to being a lawyer. There definitely was no step three point five (sleep with Annie Edison some more) and no step four point five (sleep with Annie Edison all he wanted because he was a lawyer again and it didn't matter, he could do anything). That was why there was a step two.

But steps two through four and a half were immaterial to the matter at hand. Step one, sleep with Annie Edison. That was the plan and it was a good plan. He'd made considerable progress on that front, he told himself. Usually sleeping with a woman was a project that took no more than a couple of hours, and on Annie he'd expended a month already. But he was making progress. He'd kissed her. They'd kissed. They'd kissed some more, and the world hadn't ended. They'd kissed and every time she said they needed to stop it, but she was usually saying that while her hands were sliding up under his shirt. They'd kissed, and each time he'd suggested moving to someplace fully private and off campus, and each time she'd demurred a little more reluctantly.

The first time had been in the aftermath of his semi-disastrous presentation with Pierce, with a weird man in an ugly jacket watching. They'd kissed until Whitman had strode away, to bother someone else, and then Annie had broken it off and laughed and claimed that Jeff had kissed her just to get them passing grades in the accounting class, and he'd better not try it again, buster. Somewhat undercut by the way her hand lingered on his chest, and the way she'd smiled as she said it…

The second time had been a few days later, after the study group had broken up for the evening and they'd lingered, chatting about television shows they remembered from childhood and he'd impressed her by knowing the word toyetic and apparently that had been enough to get her to climb into his lap… though when he suggested they relocate, she'd laughed again, more awkwardly than before, and said she knew his game, buster, and he'd better not, and she wasn't going to fall for his line, which was kind of a mixed message inasmuch as she'd been in his lap when she'd said it.

After that it was more than a week before they were alone together once more. The third time was again after the end of a group study session. The meeting had ended on somewhat of a sour note when the table split almost evenly over the issue of whether Thor was a good movie. As everyone filed out, Annie had pulled Jeff aside to explain that, while in the heat of argument she'd presented herself as a pro-Thor partisan, she actually agreed with his complaints about it and her support was grounded largely in the thesis that the film at least paid lip service to female gaze and the concept of the Bechdel test, giving it a leg up on most action movies. Then they'd started making out because they were alone together, and it might have gone further that time had Jeff not made the strategic misstep of breaking off to again suggest relocating to someone's bed, which gave Annie cold feet for some reason. He might have done better if he'd just started undressing her, but at this point he didn't want to complete step one half-assed and on the floor of the study room. He wanted — needed — wanted to do it right. Doing step one right was absolutely necessary to moving on to step two. So instead he'd suggested they relocate, again, and she'd stammered and called him buster, again, and nothing had come of it. Yet.

But they'd kissed, and she smiled when she saw him, and that was the best part of his day. Which wasn't saying much; the rest of his day was spent being a student at Greendale. And really it only underscored the importance of step two. Once step one was fully cleared, he would easily accomplish step two, Jeff was sure of it.

These and other thoughts were rolling around in his head, as he sauntered onto campus, coffee in hand. He smiled in anticipation as he swung around the corner of Borchert Hall and into the quad, where Annie would be smiling, too —

Where Annie was already smiling, he observed as he slowed and stopped. Smiling at a bare-chested hippie jackass.

Jeff's own smile vanished instantly, replaced by a sullen scowl. Without knowing exactly what he was going to do when he got there he started towards them, his pace quickening. He almost waved, to try to catch Annie's attention, but he stopped himself in time, thank God.

He dropped his coffee when he saw Annie — still oblivious to his approach, still focused on the dirty barefoot hippie — reach out and caress the shirtless idiot's bicep. She was saying something, shaking her head slightly as she spoke, but her eyes were bright and warm and focused entirely on the piece of human garbage that stood between them. Her hand lingered on his arm. Jeff's coffee was lost, completely ruined.

Jeff had never really had much of an opinion about hippies. If pressed, he probably would have declared that they, as a group, seemed happy and certainly harmless. Annie's past association with a hippie-infested pot farm had, if it had done anything, lifted hippies slightly up, in Jeff's estimation. But not this hippie. This hippie stirred a level of bile that part of Jeff — the part that wasn't overwhelmed with hatred and contempt and definitely not threatened jealousy — was surprised to find he was capable of. This hippie was punchable. For the first time in his life, Jeff understood what 'punchable' looked like, and it looked like the back of this piece-of-shit hippie's head. The hippie had ruined his coffee.

It took an effort of will to stop. The non-overwhelmed part of him knew that there were few ways to submarine his chances with Annie Edison more effective than walking up and punching a guy for talking to her, even if that guy was a shirtless stinking potsmoking glibertarian hippie and she was still touching him seconds later. He stopped, and sat down on a bench, and stared intently ahead, trying not to watch them out of the corner of his eye. Calm down, he told himself. There was no reason for him to react like this. Annie could smile at whomever she wanted to smile at, it didn't matter to him, this was the whole point of step two. It was the coffee he was really mad about anyway. Some of it had splashed on his jeans and probably ruined them. That was why he was so annoyed.

"What are you doing?"

Jeff jumped in surprise, and turned to see Abed, sitting on the bench next to him. "Nothing," he said in a strangled voice, and went back to staring.

Abed followed his sight line, more or less, and leaned forward, looking intently himself. "Is somebody hiding and you're trying to spot them?" he guessed.

"Aliens have landed and they're using motion detectors," Jeff snapped. "I have to stay motionless or they'll see me."

"Aliens?" Abed repeated.

"Filthy bare-chested aliens without shoes, reeking of patchouli. Armed with guitars and hacky sacks."

Abed looked around curiously. "You mean the guy Annie's talking to?" he asked, after a moment. "You think he's an alien? He's not an alien, Jeff. It's important to keep fantasy separated from reality."

Jeff growled, but said nothing that qualified as words. He continued to stare straight ahead, while Abed stared past Jeff, watching Annie and the hippie.

"Are they done yet?" Jeff asked after a brief period in which he stewed in his own juices.

"I guess. He's coming this way. I think he saw me looking at him," Abed declared. He waved.

Jeff grabbed Abed's hand and forced it down. "Don't —"

"Hey there, yo, 'sup, guys?" the hippie asked. Jeff didn't need to turn and look to see his genial amble. The hippie sounded as punchable as he looked.

"Just sitting and staring," Abed answered.

"Sittin' and starin', I been there," the hippie said with a chuckle. Jeff had never hated dropped g's as much as he did in that moment.

"Stay cool, guys! Have fun! Good luck." The hippie walked past them both, out of the quad. Jeff couldn't help taking him in, then — up close, he seemed even more shirtless and more barefoot, somehow. Boyish, twenty-five at the outside. Tiny nipples and callused feet. Guitar, sure enough. Ugly purple beaded bracelet…

Jeff had a sudden vision of Annie and the hippie, rolling around naked in the grass together, lying entwined in one another's arms, Annie shyly tying the bracelet around the hippie's wrist, the hippie tying a matching one around hers and declaring that they were married in the eyes of mother nature, or some bullshit like that. He fought off a rising urge to vomit.

"It's time for class," Abed said, rising. "Unless you're skipping because of the alien invasion? In which case I'm willing to skip too."

He wasn't skipping Spanish, just because he'd seen Annie touching a hippie. That would have been ridiculous. Jeff briefly considered skipping Spanish for a totally unrelated reason — his car was just about due for an oil change, and there wouldn't be a line at the quick-lube place on a weekday morning — but no. That would be letting the hippie get to him. It was ridiculous, this unexpected rage and bile. It wasn't part of the cool Jeff Winger persona he'd so carefully cultivated.

So he sauntered into class a couple of minutes late, Abed on his heels, determined to act like nothing had happened, because nothing had happened. Annie could touch whatever hippies she wanted, it was none of his business. And he sat in his usual spot, the one he'd moved to, the one in front next to Annie, because there was no reason for him not to and it was closer to the door than the back of the class anyway.

"Look at the cool guy, sauntering in all late like a cool guy," Annie said to him by way of greeting. He nodded, saying nothing, not because he was upset but because it wasn't a comment that merited a particular response. She gave him a little half-smile — maybe it was more muted than the smile he'd gotten the morning before, but what of it? "Did you see Señor Chang in the hallway, or…?"

Jeff shook his head no, noticing for the first time that their instructor wasn't already in the room. "Has he —"

He broke off suddenly, startling in his seat alongside most of the class, interrupted by tinny hip-hop. Chang was standing in the doorway of the classroom, holding a boombox. Jeff wasn't familiar with the song but the main gist of it seemed to be that the singer was mad at his girlfriend for cheating on him, and the singer's vengeance would be biblical in scope, plagues of locusts and murder of firstborn sons and a rain of blood.

Chang stopped the tape (prompting a double take: yes, it was a cassette tape, something Jeff hadn't seen live and in person in years) as he marched to the front of the classroom. "Children, children, children," he said sadly. "Yesterday I stood here, looking at you, and all I saw was potential. You could be the next president." He pointed at Troy. "Thanks, Obama, am I right?" Chang turned away, and pointed at Pierce. "And you, you could host a radio show about how much you hate him. And so on. But today I look at you and I see animals. Animales!"

"What's that mean, animales?" Troy whispered to Abed. "Is it like tamales?"

"One of you monsters stabbed me in the back and you didn't even have the courtesy to do it to my face! You come here, into my classroom — el guarido del Tigre Chino — and you dare look me in the eye and say 'thank you Señor Chang for being such an excellent teacher,' but…"

"I didn't say that," Annie whispered to Jeff. "Did you say that?"

When Jeff didn't reply she glanced his way, seeing him staring resolutely at Chang and obviously not ignoring her joke like some kind of petulant child, because that would be ridiculous.

"Hey!" Chang snapped his fingers in Annie's face. "Eyes on me! I'm ranting, here!"

As soon as Annie swiveled her head back to face him Chang continued on as though the interruption hadn't happened. "But in secret one of you plotted against me. Plotted against me… with this!" He brandished a small slip of paper.

Everyone in the class leaned forward and squinted, in ragged unison.

"It's a crib sheet!" Chang cried.

"Oh," said basically everyone in class, again in ragged unison. They all leaned back.

"I found this on the floor yesterday, in the aftermath of a very fair and well-written exam that entertained even as it quizzed! Written on it — all the stuff from the end-of-chapter review pages from the textbook! Ay Kay Ay what you were being tested on! One of you is a cheater."

He paused, for dramatic emphasis.

"One of you is a cheater, and you all get zeroes!"

The class erupted in protest. Jeff forced himself to react, as his grade was on the line. He cleared his throat. "Señor Chang, we all respect your authority—"

At the back of the class Britta snorted and giggled, inappropriately.

"But it seems unfair to punish the entire class for the crime of just one person. If a crime was committed at all. Maybe what you found was someone's notes—"

Chang scoffed. "It's labeled Cheat Sheet Top Secret Destroy After Test at the top."

"And maybe that was someone's private joke," Jeff suggested. "But regardless, the whole class, with one possible exception, studied hard and took that test honestly, and we deserve our barely-passing grades."

"Spoken like a cheater trying to weasel out of punishment," Chang said with a sneer.

At the back of the class Britta had her head down on her desk, hands interlaced behind it, as she quaked with silent laughter.

"Please," Jeff said irritably, "if I was going to cheat I wouldn't use a crib sheet. A crib sheet is basically just note-taking and note-taking is basically studying."

Chang glared at Jeff. "Maybe you're just fervently covering up your own crime. Maybe the guilt is getting to you. Eating away at you. Ruining your marriage." His voice was low and menacing. "Your wife says you aren't the man she fell in love with any more, and you have nothing to say to her. You shudder through each day, the lies weighing you down. Just getting out of bed feels like a major accomplishment, your only accomplishment of the day. Nothing tastes good any more. Your wife tries to help you and the only way you can respond is by pushing her away, hurting her, and you hate yourself for that. Liquor dulls the pain but doesn't kill it. You can't sleep. You take it out on your students and you feel a little better, but it's fleeting. The pain comes back, worse than before. Your wife leaves you and you're glad she's gone, it's better for her this way, but that doesn't stop you from slashing her tires. Then it's four in the morning and you realize you're playing golf in your front yard, just sending balls woosh up the street with a six iron…"

"What?" Jeff asked, perplexed.

"I'm fingering Winger," Chang announced, pointing at him.

At the back of the class Britta guffawed, despite the half-dozen people sitting near her all trying to shush her. ("Quit being high!" Pierce hissed at her from one seat over. "Or at least share! It's very rude!")

"What?" Annie sat up straight in her seat. "You must be joking."

"Oh, are you saying you were colluding with him?" Chang asked her. "That's what it sounds like you're saying!"

"If Jeff was going to cheat he'd just copy off of me," she protested. "Not that I'd let him! But, come on…" She gestured towards Jeff, who was glaring at her and Chang and the world in general. "He is way more likely to try to peek at my test paper and claim he was looking down my shirt than he is to write out a crib sheet."

"I'm wounded," Jeff muttered. "I'd peek at your test paper and look down your shirt, you know that."

"Well, we've got our cheaters," Chang said, clapping his hands at a job completed. "Winger and Edison. You two get zeroes, everyone else's grade stands."

"This is absurd. You have nothing remotely like proof!" Annie glanced at Jeff, who hadn't moved, and shot him a do something already look, which he steadfastly ignored. With a huff she turned back to Chang. "I'll go to the dean," she said, her jaw set. "You think I won't?"

At the back of the class Britta was slapping her desk now, letting out barks of laughter between sobs. "I did it!" she shouted. "It was me!"

Annie caught with Jeff just after class. "Hey, what's up?" she asked, because of course she didn't see any conflict between smiling at a hippie and being Jeff's friend. And of course she'd noticed the change in his attitude towards her immediately, because either she was attuned to him or (and this was more likely) he wasn't as subtle as he liked to think. And of course of course she would just come right out and ask him, because of course she was…

"Annie!" someone called from across the quad. Jeff didn't need to look to know it was the hippie.

She stiffened, because she didn't need to look, either. "Hold that thought," she told him, as if he'd said something, as if he hadn't just been standing there scowling and berating himself for caring that she'd been talking to the hippie.

"Let me just say unequivocally that it's fine," Jeff began.

"Hold that thought, I said!" Annie snapped, a little defensively, and spun on her heel. "Whatever you think, it's not that!" she called over her shoulder as she hurried off towards the hippie, who was waving at her. At both of them.

Jeff turned away, because there was no way he was going to stand there and watch the hippie slobber all over her, and almost walked into Britta.

"Jeff!"

"What?" He looked up to see Britta, wide-eyed, staring intensely at him.

"Jeff!" she cried, for at least the second time.

"What?"

Britta grabbed at where his lapels would have been, if he'd been wearing a suit. Realizing her error, she quickly pulled her hands back from his chest. "I need lawyer advice. You're a lawyer, right? I need lawyer advice."

"It's called legal advice." Jeff scowled. "And I'm not currently a lawyer, technically, but I can refer you to someone who, unlike me, is allowed to bill your parents —"

"Ugh! C'mon!" Britta scowled petulantly. "Chang wants to give me a zero for the test I cheated on. There's got to be some way I can get out of that!"

He sighed. "Well, my first thought is that you should stop referring to it as the test you cheated on, because there's no evidence you cheated."

"I did, though. Chang found my cheat sheet, weren't you paying attention?"

Jeff's eyes narrowed and he forced himself to focus on the idiot girl in front of him and not Annie and the hippie. "I was paying attention. I remember Chang finding someone's study sheet with someone's private joke at the top of it," he said. "I remember Chang leaping to bizarre conclusions. I remember you joining in the madcap spirit of the moment and claiming you were responsible for the cheating that no one actually proved happened. Clearly you were not serious."

"Wow," Britta said, impressed. "I should write that down and say that at the trial."

It took an effort of will for Jeff not to wrench his eyes off of Britta and back towards the quad. "Trial?" he asked, through gritted teeth. This was good, this was distracting. "There's a trial?"

"It's this whole thing." Britta shrugged. "Chang says, anyway. I don't know. The dean and other people, this afternoon in Borchert Hall, at three o'clock, and I don't know." She threw up her hands. "I don't know!"

"Perfect!" This was ideal as a distraction from the whole hippie thing that wasn't even a thing. "Where is it? And what time? I'll act as your lawyer."

"Oh, uh, didn't I just say? Borchert Hall, at three?"

Jeff nodded, as he kept his eyes on Britta and not on the slow-motion car crash that he could just barely see out of the corner of his eye. Kissing? Was Annie kissing the hippie? Why would she do that? It was difficult to not turn his head and confirm that what he'd perceived hadn't been kissing at all, but Jeff gritted his teeth and powered through.

"Jeff?"

He blinked. "Hm?"

Britta looked askance. "I don't know if that's allowed. And anyway, I mean, I'd appreciate the help, but… would you be expecting… anything…? Like, is this a gas-ass-or-grass situation?"

"What?" Jeff's line of thought was fully derailed.

"I mean," she said anxiously, "I can't get you any weed, not right now."

"That's fine," he assured her. "I don't want any. Why are we talking about this?"

Britta wrinkled her nose in a way that might have been cute if someone else had done it. On her it just looked childish. "And no offense, but you're… how old are you? Like forty-five, fifty?"

Jeff stared at her for a second.

"Oh, God," she said, embarrassed. "I was way off, wasn't I?"

"Little bit."

"Yeah, okay." Britta nodded. "Which part, though? I mean, was I wrong about you being in your fifties or about you wanting to bang me? Or both?" She cringed. "It was both, wasn't it?"

"Yeah."

"That makes sense." Britta bit her lip. "Can we just forget this conversation ever happened?"

"I'd prefer that," Jeff told her.

"Speaking of wanting to bang you…" Britta grinned, and might have winked.

Jeff raised an eyebrow, and might have responded with confusion, had Annie not suddenly stepped into his field of vision. "Hold that thought, I said…" She glanced back and forth between Jeff and Britta. "What?"

"Nothing!" Britta cried gaily. "Jeff is going to be my lawyer at my trial this afternoon, is all."

"Oh." Annie sounded nonplussed. "Good?"

"Not her lawyer, Colorado law requires that I not present myself as…" Jeff sighed. "Fine, lawyer, it doesn't matter."

"And I'm not banging him," Britta assured Annie.

"Oh." Annie sounded even more nonplussed. "Good to know?"

As Britta walked away Jeff turned to Annie and shrugged. "The case against her is basically garbage. I mean, it's a piece of wastepaper."

"Except she confessed."

"Which we can get thrown out," Jeff said confidently. It was good to have something to focus on; he hadn't thought about Annie and the hippie once in… dammit, he'd just thought about them again.

"Listen, I don't want you to get the wrong idea," Annie said, her voice low and urgent. She glanced around, as if concerned about someone overhearing. "Yes, Vaughn's my ex, but I've made it very clear that it's over. We're just friends. Barely friends."

"The hippie's name is Vaughn?" Jeff snorted. "I would have expected Sunflower or Periwinkle or Moondancer or something."

"I didn't even know he was coming here, but apparently me leaving was a wake-up call, and… he just needed some advice on his courseload." Annie frowned. "I know how that sounds, but trust me…"

"You don't need to explain anything to me," Jeff told her. "We're friends, right?"

Her face lit up. "Yes! Exactly!"

"Just like you and the hippie are friends."

Her face darkened again. "No, no."

"It's fine, you can do what you want. Obviously." Jeff took a step back. "Why even care what I think?"

"Jeff, ugh, you're being ridiculous!" Annie took a step towards him. "You know full well —"

Panicking, Jeff sought an out. "I know full well?" he repeated incredulously. "I know?"

"Now you're doing that thing where you pretend you're offended so you can storm off —"

"Oh, am I?" Jeff scoffed, then checked the time on his phone. "I'd love to stay and explain to you why you're wrong, but I have a class to get to."

As he strode away, Annie called to him that he didn't have a class and she knew his schedule, but she didn't chase after him.

Good. Dammit.

Dammit. No, good. Fine. Whatever. Let Jeff think whatever he wanted! It didn't matter to Annie what he thought, after all.

Dammit. Stupid Vaughn.

Annie was tempted to run after Jeff and explain that no Vaughn was not the same kind of friend that he was. Jeff was the kind of friend that you looked forward to seeing and you liked the way he made you smile and you liked making him smile, too. Vaughn was the kind of friend where you sort of vaguely wished them the best but you never thought about them and you didn't have any desire to see them or spend time with them and when they ambushed you on the quad before Spanish class you had to smile and pretend to be happy to see them even though you were mostly just annoyed because they presented a possible delay in seeing your friend — friends — of the kind that you liked. The kind that, when they moved in for a hug unexpectedly, you had to keep at bay by grabbing their arm and holding them back, smiling like an idiot the whole time because of stupid social convention that made it so that women in public had to be smiling and putting men at ease all the time and Annie had internalized those lessons so well that her first instincts were still to abase herself by smiling and she usually ignored those instincts but not always and this was all her mother's fault, really.

Stupid Vaughn.

Jeff spent the next few hours trying to figure out how to avoid apologizing. Maybe they could just let the matter drop, and get back to their very slow dance towards the bedroom — he figured they were on track to sleep together sometime in 2016, at their current rate. But more likely he was going to have to bite the bullet and admit that seeing Annie smiling at the hippie had hit him harder than he had any right to be hit. He stood staring moodily out over the parking lot, mulling. Was he upset because Annie had smiled, or because she'd been keeping him at arm's length and this hippie seemed to have insinuated himself closer to her? Was there a way he could rationalize being jealous without sounding like an idiot?

He lost track of time so badly he nearly missed Britta's trial.

At quarter past three Britta stood, alone, in the natatorium where a tribunal of professors and administrators had convened to judge her cheating. She'd been standing there for twenty minutes, and was beginning to regret her dramatic refusal to sit down in the face of injustice.

"Can't we get this over with?" asked the English professor who kept leering at her. His accent made him sound smart, but that was about all he had going for him. And he wasn't an English professor even though he was an English professor, which was weird and probably done on purpose just to trip her up. "I've got a very important appointment with a very large bottle of very cheap Scotch, which I pronounce with a capital S, because I'm not a barbarian."

"I agree!" Chang slammed his fist down on the judges' table. "I wouldn't have agreed to this stupid court procedure thing if I had known it was going to take this long. Let's just do it already!"

"Listen, he's coming," Britta lied. "I just need, like, five more minutes. I've texted Jeff, and he says he's on his way!" This was completely untrue and Britta liked to think of herself as honest, but this was important and the chances of her being caught were slim. She hoped.

"When did you text Jeffrey Winger?" The reedy dean, sitting between the English professor and Chang, pointed at her with a pencil. "Because I've been watching you for the last ten minutes."

"She probably has one of those implants," Chang muttered darkly. "They have them in Japan — you just think the text, and it happens, and you get a bill from Ma Bell."

The dean frowned. "Ma Bell in Japan?"

"Uh. They texted for me!" Britta pointed to the bleachers at the edge of the natatorium, where Troy and Abed were sitting. Abed held a handmade BRITTA IS OKAY sign, Troy a printed and somewhat weathered WE SUPPORT THE TROOPS sign, with AND BRITTA hastily scrawled along the bottom. Britta cupped her hands and called to them. "Jeff is coming, right guys?"

"Jeff's coming after all? Great!" Troy called back. "I thought he wasn't going to show!"

The dean sighed. "Goodness knows I'm willing to wait for Jeff Winger, but this is beginning to seem excessive. And the obvious dishonesty on display here?" He gestured to the space between Britta and Troy. "Not doing much to make me feel very benefit-of-the-doubt-y."

"It was all a funny joke!" Britta cried desperately.

"What was?" the English professor asked. It came out wot wuz and she might have laughed at that under different circumstances.

"The whole thing!" Britta tried to remember how Jeff had phrased it — he'd made it sound so plausible. "I was being madcap!"

"Madcap when you cheated or madcap when you confessed?" asked the dean.

"Both!"

"So you admit you cheated?"

"But only in a madcap way!"

"Cheating during a manic episode is still cheating," the dean told her sadly. "Believe me, a lot of Greendale's students suffer from various depressive disorders, and we've got very clear guidelines in place."

"All right, so, the blonde girl is guilty, she gets a zero, done!" The English professor clapped his hands together. "Now let's all go get shedded, yes?" He looked Britta's way. "Are you twenty-one, perchance? Before you answer, let me just say I happen to have a bottle of Scotch and a sofa in my office, both of which I'd be willing to share—"

"Ian!" snapped the dean, as Britta gasped in horror.

"What?" the English professor asked huffily. "She's not my student and I waited until this trial thing was over—"

"Be that as it may, there's no excuse for —"

"Objection!"

Jeff Winger stood in the open doorway of the natatorium, his arms spread like Moses. Everyone else fell silent, as he commanded the room's attention.

"Objection," he repeated firmly as he strode to Britta's side. "My client has been denied proper counsel."

Britta allowed herself a small triumphant fist-pump.

The dean's eyes narrowed. "Are you her lawyer?" he asked, indicating Britta with a pencil.

"To the same extent that you're her judge," Jeff said, "yes I am."

"Oh, come on," protested Chang. "He's late! Ian clapped his hands!"

"I did, yeah," the English professor agreed. "Sorry, Jeff."

"Now, now," the dean said sharply. "I'm sure we can spare a few moments for Mister Winger to hose us down with the warm foam of his rhetoric, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I missed lunch today and my blood sugar is just all over the place."

Chang groaned. "Stupid sexy Winger," he grumbled.

Jeff nodded the decisive nod of a man who'd just decided there was no point to asking what he'd missed. "Gentlemen of the judge's table," he began, with practiced verve. "Britta Perry is not a great student. She isn't even a good student."

Britta, stung by his harsh words, let out a meep of indignation.

"I'm going somewhere with this," he told her in an aside, then cleared his throat and resumed the oratory. "But just because she made the choices that led her to Greendale…"

He trailed off, suddenly. The dean, Chang, and the English professor all leaned forward a little, confused. Maybe it was all part of the presentation, Britta thought hopefully, but her heart sank when she followed Jeff's sight-line and saw what he'd seen: Annie and the dishy bare-chested guy from the quad, ducking into the back of the natatorium. Britta tried to decide whether Annie was there to support her, like Troy and Abed, or if she and the shirtless dude had come in thinking the pool area would be empty and they could make out.

Jeff had plainly gone through the same thought process and settled on the latter option. Which Britta wasn't sure she disagreed with, considering the way Annie had reddened and dashed back out as soon as she'd seen Jeff, with the dishy guy still following her (what was so hot about Annie that all these guys were into her?).

"Britta… Britta…" Jeff stammered. "She's… what's she been accused of, really?" It sounded less like a rhetorical question and more like he'd genuinely forgotten.

Britta hoped for some kind of turnaround, but Jeff's mind was plainly elsewhere. Finally the dean cleared his throat. "All right, well, I appreciate the attempt, Jeffrey, but we've eaten into the next period too much already. The zero stands."