A/N: Thanks for your reviews and especially the criticism. I'll say it again, though- the first few chapters aren't nearly as good as they will be when the story gets more in-depth...I'm working on the build-up, but it'll get more interesting.

Disclaimer: Everything except for the plot of this storyoriginated in the mind of Amy Sherman-Palladino.

As they passionately kissed, their bodies tossed on the bed in a horizontal position, those thoughts were gone, at least for the moment. This priceless moment.

But he knew the moment wouldn't last long. She knew it was too good to be true. A sound erupted in the room and both heads shot up. The knock on the door was followed by a voice horribly familiar to Rory.

"Rory? Why are you home so late?" The doorknob twisted a little to the right, then to the left. Rory had locked the door.

"Rory! Open this door immediately, young lady!"

Jess gave Rory a worried look. She returned it.

"I knew we should've used the pillow!" Jess whispered

"Hide!" Rory whispered, louder. "One second, Grandma! I'm changing!"

"What?" Jess asked, panicked.

"You have to hide somewhere. Um, climb out the window, maybe."

"Sorry...no!"

"The closet!"

"That thing's smaller than the closet was at Luke's place before he expanded it!"

"Well, I never saw the closet before he expanded it...or after, so I don't have anything to compare it to. Now, get in!"

He shook his head, rolled his eyes, and let Rory shove him into the miniscule closet.

"What's that voice? I heard a voice." Emily was getting louder and louder and angrier and angrier.

"It's me, Grandma."

"Why are you talking to yourself?"

"I wasn't. I was singing with the radio."

"I didn't hear singing, I heard talking, and I didn't hear music, I heard a man's voice!"

"You might want to get that checked out. Okay, all changed."

She walked toward the door to open it, but the doorknob twisted all the way before she even got there. Rory stared at Emily holding a wrench and set of keys.

"Grandma, what-"

"There are the keys to the room and the wrench was in case I had to take the door down myself. I learned how to do that livign with your mother for 16 years. Now step aside."

Emily pushed Rory to the side and made her way to the window.

"What are you doing?"

"You're not hiding someone in here, are you?" Emily reached her head out the window. She lookedto both the right and the left.

"Of course not", Rory responded.

Emily closed the window and walked toward the closet. Rory's heart pounded. She couldn't think of anything that might distract her grandmother, but someone must've been watching over her, because just then, loud footsteps boomed though the hallway. They belonged to Richard.

"Emily, what's all the commotion?"

Richard appeared at the door and Emily broke her path to the closet. Rory let out a huge deep breath filled with relief.

"What are you doing up?" Emily asked.

"I heard a noise", replied Richard.

"Go back to sleep, Richard."

"Excuse me?"

"I'll go, too. Come on." She eyed Rory and led Richard back to their bedroom. Rory ran to the closet. When she opened the door, Jess was nowhere in sight.

Shocked, she sleeted down the staircase and to the front door. Jess's car was still in the driveway. So were Emily, Richard, 2 cops, and a police car. Rory inched closer.

"I just don't understand how there's someone in the house that you can't find. You can only look so many places", one of the officers said.

"Yeah, but it's a big house, Cal", the other cop replied.

Emily was clearly annoyed. "Just get in there and look!"

"Don't forget to look in the gardens, too, boys", Richard said.

The cops walked through the front entrance, forcing Rory to move to the side. This way, Emily and Richard noticed Rory's presence.

Emily smiled an evil smile. "Hello, Rory!"

"What's going on?"

"There seems to be a late night prowler who decided to sneek around the house."

"Grandma-"

"Don't worry, though! Calvin and Raymond are the top cops in the union. They just happened to be patroling the neighborhood when we noticed this car here and we stopped them. Funny coincidence, huh?"

"Funny, right."

"We'll have the guy arrested and everything will be fine."

"That's...great."

"We have the name of the person, too. JessMariano. The idiot left his driver's liscense on his windshield."

"Excuse me, please."

Rory ran back up the staircase and into her room. She was gasping for a breath of air by the time she opened the closet. She sighed and got down on her knees. She'd remembered the way out of the house Lorelai had told her years and years ago. There was a shelf in the closet, the lowest one, that could be removed. There, there was a small crawl space that led to a huge maze of passageways. If you took a left at the first turn anda right at the second, you'd land behind the wall of the living room, where there was loose paneling - Lorelai had loosened it herself.

She reached for the shelf, which Jess had put back quite carelessly.

When Rory reached the loose paneling, her jeans were covered in something brown and disgusting. Her hair was aloof and she was sweating insanely. What had Lorelai been thinking? Was life here really that bad? Rory thought back to the past few months. Yeah, it was really that bad.

Probably a weird place to stop, but what the heck. The next chapter is pretty drama-filled. Please review!