Julia McDonald was beginning to sense some tension between her roommate's parents, so she made an excuse to leave the room and give them some privacy. She intercepted her parents, who were carrying a load of bedding upstairs.

"Hey, why don't we hang out here for a minute?"

"Is something wrong?" her Mom asked.

"It's just, I think Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence need a minute."

"What a surprise," Mr. McDonald remarked, "the proprietor of the Fairy Unicorn bookstore needs…."

"Jonathan…" Mrs. McDonald hissed.

To pass the time, Mr. and Mrs. McDonald regaled Julia with the stories about their own undergraduate experience that she'd heard approximately 100 times since getting her acceptance letter. They were interrupted, much to Julia's relief, by a pair of boys.

"Excuse me," the one with dark curly hair asked, "is room 424 this way?"

"Oh, that's my room," Julia replied, "are you friends of Topanga?"

"I'm her boyfriend, actually" he pointed to his friend, who had a more fashionable haircut and a leather jacket, "and this is Shawn."

Shawn shook her hand. Julia was glad that he wasn't the one dating Topanga.

"Nice to meet you guys," Julia said, "umm…I think Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence are having a conversation in there."

"Well, we might as well knock," Mrs. McDonald said, "after all, we don't want to stand out here all day."

"I haven't shown you my old freshman dormitory, yet." Mr. McDonald reminded Julia.

They were about to knock on the door when Topanga opened it, and practically shoved her parents outside. "You guys had better get going; I'll just finish getting my stuff set up." She noticed Cory and Shawn. "Oh, look. Cory can help me!"

Topanga turned to Mr. and Mrs. McDonald, and smiled brightly. "My parents want to get back to Pittsburgh tonight."

"Oh, you're from Pittsburgh."

"Actually," Mrs. Lawrence explained, smiling just as brightly as her daughter, "we're from Cedar Heights. We moved to Pittsburgh a couple of years ago for Jed's work, and Topanga stayed with my sister Prudence so she could finish high school. So nice to meet you."

When both Topanga and her parents were safely out of earshot, Mr. McDonald muttered "Why the hell do you need to move to Pittsburgh to open a hippie bookstore?"

"Mr. Lawrence also makes guitars," Cory explained, "Hey Shawn, remember that time he came in for career day in seventh grade?"

Shawn glared at Cory. "Yeah, I remember all right."

Cory laughed nervously. "Oh, right. I forgot about the other part."