"Shopping for school supplies, party." Lorelai was in the middle of her two daughters, an arm hook with each of theirs.

"Nobody demanded that you come. Anna and I would have been fine." Rory told her.

"Are you kidding? How often do you do things like this? While we're going crazy, we should get toilet paper and a plunger." Lorelai jokes as they walk into the store.

"I'll do this later." Rory didn't want to deal with her mother's mocking as she picked more boring things than what she suggested.

"No, I'm teasing. Get that list of yours." Lorelai unhooks herself from her daughters to grab a basket. Anna grabs her own basket, so she and Rory could see what stuff was whose. The last time they shared a basket for school supply, they left with not enough folders because they both thought the one in the basket was for them.

Rory took the paper out of her pocket. "I need legal pads, tons of pens, some number 2 pencils, three highlighters, an eraser, a staple remover, and a folder."

"You need three highlighters?" Lorelai scoffs at the weird number.

"Yes." Rory nods looking at the items on the shelves.

"That's a very random number." She told her.

"It is not random." She turns to tell her mother.

"How did you get to the number three?" Lorelai was curious as to how she would get to that number.

"One dries up, one gets lost, I have one left," Rory explains

"You've really thought this out." She was amazed and a little freak out by how much thought she put into it. Rory nods her head.

"Just get a whole packet of them." Anna drops a packet of highlighter into the basket that had animal faces on them and number two lead for the mechanical pencils.

"What came first, the chicken or the egg?" Lorelai put her two hands out like she had one in each hand.

"Can we get back to the list?" Rory guides them to the next aisle.

"Alright, hey legal pads," Her mom grabs the most colorful one she saw.

"No. Those are purple." Rory grabs them from her hand to put them back. Anna grabs it for herself.

"Yes. Purple is festive." She points out.

"I can't have purple." Rory shook her head.

"You can. They're on sale." Lorelai saw even more reason to get them.

"I'm going to a serious school. I need serious paper." Rory told her.

"Rory, notepad is for our notes. They can be any color you want. The regular paper is for turning stuff in." She grabs the college ruled filler paper to put in her basket.

"Paper is paper," Lorelai adds on to her point.

"Not at Chilton." Rory stood her ground.

"All right, fine. Here's your serious paper." She grabs the regular yellow notepad.

"Thank you." Rory put it into the basket.

"And here are your somber highlighters, your maudlin pencils, your manic-depressive pens." Lorelai moves down the aisle to point out the school supplies.

"Mom," She warns her to stop.

"These erasers are on lithium. So they seem cheerful but we caught them trying to shove themselves in the pencil sharpener." She picks up a pack of bright colored erasers. Anna snatches from her hands to get.

"I'm going home." Rory walks to the next aisle.

"No, wait. We're going to stage an intervention with the neon Post-its and make them give up their wacky, crazy ways." She grabs a post-it packet and runs after Rory. Anna laughs as she continues shopping.


Rory and Anna ran off the bus to get to school, only to have to run back on twice to grab their lunch bags and then their backpacks. In Rory's case, she had a duffle bag too. Once they were sure they had everything, they walked to school. "I'm telling you, you don't have to bring all the books. Only the one you're using right now?" Anna looks at the heavy bags her sister was carrying.

"I don't want to be surprised if they bring it up unexpectedly." Rory seems to be getting more stressed as the weeks pass at Chilton while Anna is feeling better with each week.

"We don't have the same biology or English class, so we could share those books at school and leave the others at home. You should start leaving the one you didn't need for homework in your locker. You're going to end up breaking your back." For once Anna was the one lecturing Rory.

"I just want to be prepared." She snaps at her.

They stop in front of the English class. "Sorry, I brought it up. I'll see you later." She walked to the biology classroom.

Anna waited outside the English class since that was her next class. Tristan came out and kissed her. "What you get on your paper?" She nods to the paper in his hand.

"An A," He waves it in her face.

"That's great. I hope I get a good grade too." She bites her bottom lip.

"Hey you will, I look it over and it's better than mine." Tristan wrapped his arms around her waist and gave her another kiss.

A throat clearing made them pull apart. "What wrong, Rory?" Anna asked when she saw her sad face. She held up her paper. "A D, you never got a D before. I don't think you got anything lower than a B." She grabs the paper from her sister in surprise.

"Well, the headmaster did say this would be a lot harder than Stars Hollow." She looked down at her shoes.

Anna nods her head. She knew that herself when Tristan looked over her first draft of the essay. She wanted to kill him for all his criticism. That's when a thought pops into her head. "You should come with me and Tristan to his house after school sometimes." The man's house in question gave her a comical look of panic, not that either of the girls was paying him any attention.

"Don't all you two do is fool around?" She tilts her head.

"We do homework in between. Tristan is a big help. Essays are his specialty. He has never gotten anything lower than an A- on an essay since middle school. He knows what these teachers want better than us." She reaches back to pat him on the chest.

"I don't know." Rory didn't want to feel like the third wheel.

"You can decide later, maybe when you see what grade I get, which I'll have to find out for myself first." She gave Rory her paper and gave Tristan one last kiss before going into the classroom.

"I'll look over your essays without you coming to my house that way you don't have to be a third wheel." Tristan offers Rory as they walk to their next class which is Biology.

"You must really like making out with my sister." Rory looks up at him, for him to make that offer meant he didn't want his time interrupted with Anna.

"And other things," He snickers when he sees Rory's cheeks go pink.


"You know you don't have to come with me. You could have gone to Tristan's. I'm fine." Rory insisted as they walked into the kitchen where Michel said their mom was.

"What are you talking about? I've been spending all my time with him lately. I got to take a day off every once in a while. It'll make him miss me." Anna denies that she didn't want to leave Rory when she was in such a depressed state.

They walk in the kitchen. "Behold, in theaters now, The Thing That Reads A Lot." Lorelai looks at all the bags her elders had.

"Chocolate?" She drops all her bags on the floor.

"Glass measuring cup," Sookie points to it. Anna and Rory went to dip a pretzel into the melted chocolate.

"Jeez, who's naked?" Rory asks when she saw Sookie and Lorelai hovering over a magazine.

"Lucien Mills, food critic." Lorelai answers.

"Yeah? How's his butt?" Anna peaks over Sookie's shoulder.

"He was supposed to review the restaurant. Here it is." Lorelai shows the article to Sookie.

"Is it good? Is he mean? Should I cry?" Sookie covered her face, too nervous to look at it.

"Here we go. The words divine, delectable, and delirious don't begin to describe the delicious experience of dining at the Independence Inn." Lorelai read.

"I smell a rave." Anna grabs some fruit to dip in the chocolate from the fridge. Rory and she dipped away.

"Really?" Sookie uncovered her face.

"Only Chef Sookie St. James could make a simple salad of hothouse tomatoes and assorted fresh herbs seem like a religious experience. Her lobster bisque is worth every sinful, cream-filled, rich sip." She read on.

"See, I don't use that much cream. I just use a very concentrated lobster stock and it makes it." She explains like she was in an interview.

"Sookie, he's not here." Her best friend reminds her.

"Okay, go on." She waves her hand.

"The entrees are as heavenly as the starters. Though the much-lauded risotto was perfectly fine it was the handkerchief pasta with brown sage in a butter sauce that sent me through the roof." She read some more. "This is unbelievable! I'm going to have this framed for the dining room!" Lorelai closes the magazine and holds it close to her chest.

"Yeah, that'd be swell. Can I see that again?" Sookie took the magazine from her. She was upset that her risotto was called just fine.

"So we should celebrate tonight, huh? Girls on the town?" Lorelai did a weird strut over to her daughters.

"I can't. I have to study." Rory looks down at the chocolate.

"We got a Shakespeare exam coming up." Anna got an A on the paper, but the teacher made it known that the exam was what would be deciding if they pass or fail the class. Anna was annoyed, why even have any other assignments if the exam was the be-all and end-all.

"I should get started on the shopping list." Sookie stared down at the article.

"What is going on here? We are young and fiery women. Studying? Shopping lists? Where's to hell with it all? Where's throwing caution to the wind? Where… shoot the linen delivery." In the middle of her in a powerful speech, she remembers she had to work. She ran out of the kitchen to meet with the delivery man.

"You go, girl," Rory said with a mouthful of strawberry and chocolate.


Anna and Rory sat on the kitchen table, studying for their test. "News is on!" Lorelai yells at them from the living room.

"One sec," Rory yells back to her, even though she had no plan to get up from the table.

"Hey, let's get ice cream. I'm bored." Lorelai turns off the TV and goes into the kitchen.

"Hello? Mom, I'm studying." Anna pointed down at her book that told of foreshadowing and Macbeth.

"But I'm talking about ice cream. Can't you take a break?" She opens the fridge to look for something to eat.

"I can't take a break right now." Rory glared at her mother for interpreting them.

"Okay, when?" She closes the fridge and turns to them.

"Are you four?" Anna looks up to glare at her mother also.

"No, I'm hungry." She pouts.

"Have some more pizza." Rory points to the box on the counter.

"It's cold." She whines.

"Heat it up." Anna scoffs.

"It's not the same." She insisted.

"Lorelai, go to your room!" Rory slams her pencil down and points to her room.

"Wow, smart girls are mean." Lorelai crossed her arms over her chest.

"If you let us study now, we'll play with you this weekend." Rory tried to negotiate.

Lorelai looks over at Anna. "That sounds good to me." She nods to her mother.

"Promise?" She looks back at Rory.

"Yes. We can do anything you want." Rory told her.

"Will you go to the shoe sale with me?" She looks skeptical, knowing Rory hated shoe shopping with her because she took forever. Rory nods her head. "Will you let me try on anything I want?" She looks over at Anna, who hates to bother the workers to check in the back for the right size. She nods her head. "Will you help push people away if they go for my size?" She was only half-joking.

"We'll even run interference for you." Rory gave her a small smile.

"All right, you've got a deal." She got up to leave them alone.

"Good." Anna looks back at her book.

"So, I'm sorry. Where did we land on the whole ice cream issue?" She walks back into the kitchen.

Rory closes her book and looks at her sister. "We'll study in my locked room." Anna nods and helps gather up the books they need to study. They walk away from their mom.

"What?" Lorelai yells at their backs.


"Damn, babe you're so tense." Tristan massages her shoulders. Anna was sitting at his desk. He rolled his chair behind her.

"I can't help it, this exam is stressing me out." She rubs her temples.

"There's been something I wanted to ask you, why are you going to Chilton?" He asks. She turns around in her chair to look at him. "I mean, don't get me wrong I'm glad you did. But, you want to be chief, you don't need Chilton for that." He put his hands in the air to show he meant no offense.

"It's fine, I had the same line of thinking too. My mom and Rory wanted me to go. I can't imagine school without Rory. So, I applied. Although I was ready to say fuck it when Rory made me do six drafts of the entrance essay." She was ready to decapitate Rory when she said her fifth draft was almost perfect.

"Are you and Rory like fraternal twins?" Tristan wanted to know more about her.

"We're ten months part." She told him.

"Really," He tilts his head. Everyone at school was so sure they were twins with how they stuck together.

"My mom got pregnant with me when Rory was one month old." She told him.

"That's crazy." He shook his head.

"My mom said when the strip turns pink for her the second time she knew that life was meant to be good, but not easy." She smiles as she thinks of her mother. She never made them feel guilty for making her life different then what she dreamed it would be.

"What does Fortinbras want from Claudius?" He asks.

"Lands that belong to Norway," She answers with no hesitation then screams. "Oh my god, that was the question I couldn't answer before. I couldn't remember who the hell Fortinbras was or what book he was from. It's Hamlet, damn it." She bounces in happiness.

"I told you it all in here." He pokes her forehead. "You're just pressuring yourself out."

"You're right I need to relax." She shook out her arms.

"I'm more than happy to help out with that." He picks her up and puts her down on the bed.

Before their lips touched, the door opened and an older version of Tristan walked in. "Oh, is this the girl that you have been seeing? Your mother says she's been here every day this month."

"She wasn't here yesterday." Tristan stood up. Anna sat up and straightened out her clothes.

"She can come down and have early dinner with us." He said before walking out.

They follow him to the dining room. Anna sat down at the dining table and Tristan sat across from her. His parents were at either end of the table. A salad was in front of each of them. "What's your name?" Mr. Dugray turns to her.

"Susanna Gilmore." She told him.

"Any relation to Richard and Emily Gilmore," He took a sip from the red wine in front of him.

"Yes, they're my grandparents." She nods.

"You do look a lot like Emily." Mrs. Dugray perks up. She has been wondering why she looks familiar. She could never tear herself away from her social activities to ask.

"So, what is Lorelai doing now?" He asks her.

"She's running an Inn. It's got an amazing review by Lucien Mills, a food critic." She told them.

"She owns an Inn now?" He raises an eyebrow in surprise.

"No, but she runs it." She said in a little voice. He made an unimpressed noise. An awkward silence fell over the table as they ate their salads. The maid came out to take their plates and pass out one that had a filet mignon with roasted potatoes and carrots.

"Anna has a 4.0 GPA. She organized a bakes sale at her old school. She won an entrepreneur award for it." Tristan told his parents.

"Is that what you want to do?" Mrs. Dugray asks.

"Yeah, I plan to go to culinary school and get a business degree. I want to open up a restaurant." She told them. From their blank faces, she couldn't tell if they were fine with that or not.

"Looking to get Michelin stars?" Mr. Dugray didn't even eat at a restaurant that didn't have at last one.

"Finger cross." She crosses her fingers.

"How is Chilton doing for you? It must be a challenge compared to your old public school." She asks.

"Yeah, the notes for Shakespeare alone are more than all the notes I had last year for all my classes." Anna nods.

"You're not overwhelmed I hope." His father said in a way that made Tristan almost think that he cared.

"A little in the beginning, but I got used to it quicker than I thought I would. Tristan's a big help." She smiles at him.

"Happy, he's a help to someone." His father took another sip of his wine.


"How was your night?" Lorelai asks Anna, who all by jumps in her car when she pulls up.

"I had dinner with his parents." She told her.

"Oh, how was it?" She turns down the radio to hear this.

"Tristan said his dad said not banning me from the house is a good sign. His mom wants to taste my brownies." She explains.

"Told the story about selling the last piece for 20 dollars again?" It was her daughter's go-to story. At last year's bake sale, she had a group of people fighting for the last piece of brownie, so she decided to auction it off.

"Had to fill the silence somehow," She felt like she was suffocating in the tense silence at that dining table.

"They were that bad?" She looks over at her with sympathy.

"His dad is an ass. His mom is alright. It's weird that she made like she wanted to know me when she's at the house half the time when I'm over. She's never even given me a second glance before tonight." She thought it was weird that she would wait until now to ask her all those questions.

"Wait, she's only been there half the time. I was under the impression that there was always someone home." Lorelai glares at her.

She grimaces when realizing her mistake. "There's always staff there." The way her mother kept giving her mean glances made her nervous. "We haven't had sex."

"Good, still putting you on birth control." She put her focus back on the road. Anna didn't say anything, not wanting to get in any more trouble. "So, I met Mr. Medina tonight. He's cute. It's always nice to have an eye-candy teacher." She told her.

"Oh, yeah he's cute. He's the only teacher in the school that appreciates my jokes." Anna nods.

"He's said that you're doing great. He likes your outspoken opinions even when he doesn't agree with them." She told her the great review she got.

"He must be talking about the time I said that Romeo and Juliet weren't in love. They were two desperate people looking for a way out of the lives they hated." Anna causes a big debate in class that day.

"Did you know Rory got a D?" Lorelai asks.

"Yeah, but if she gets an A on the exam she'll be fine. It makes up more of the grade than the essay." She explains. She took a deep sigh as she looked down at her lap. "I feel guilty."

"Why?" She glances at her.

"I'm adjusting better than Rory is. I think it's because I'm making friends and they're helping me out. Rory reads at lunch or anytime we have free time." She tried to get Rory to join her at Henry or Tristan's table, but she always refused.

"You don't have to feel guilty about doing well. Rory will make a friend. It just takes her a little longer." She pats her on the knee. "Since you had dinner already I'll drop you off at home. I feel like this talk with Rory should be one on one." She told her.

"I hope you have better luck then I did." Anna leans back in her chair.


Anna was sitting with Tristan on a bench in the courtyard. When she saw Paris approach Rory who was sitting on the other side of the yard, she went to get up but Tristan pulled her back down. "Didn't Rory ask you to let her handle Paris?"

"But..." She thought of a reason she should go over there.

"She made you pinky swear." He reminds her.

When Paris walked away, she ran over to sit next to her sister. He sighs and follows after her. "What did the beast say?" She asks Rory.

"The same thing, that's I'm going down. It's kind of getting old." She rolls her eyes. Paris was getting more annoying than threatening.

"And so not true, we're going to cram tonight with mom and ace that exam tomorrow." She put an arm around her shoulders. "Tristan, you went to school with the psycho your whole life, tell us something we can use against her." She looks up at the boy she was dating.

"Stick to the plan for acing the exam to get back at her." He nods to the Shakespeare book in Rory's hand.

"Boo, you're no fun." She stuck her tongue out at him.

"You know how much fun I am, so stick that tongue back in your mouth or put it to use." He gave her a fake stern look.

"Ew," Rory took her book and left. He chuckled and took her seat.


Anna, Rory, and Lorelai were sleeping on their kitchen table. They fell asleep studying last night. Rory woke up first and looked at the clock. "Oh no!"

Anna pulls her head off the table being woken from her yelling. She jumped out of her seat when she saw what time it was. "I'm late!" She ran into her room. She threw on her uniform as fast as she could and ran back out.

"Go, Rory is driving you guys there." Her mom told her. She ran out of the door. "Good luck." She screams at them.

She jumped into the jeep and Rory took off. Anna brushes her hair and then her sister's, so they look presentable. Rory was having Anna quiz her while she was looking through her bag for something. "I can't find some of my notes." She pulls the jeep over. "I'm going to call Lane to see if she has it. I need to check something and I can't find my notes." Rory pulls out their shared cell phone.

"Rory, if you don't know it by now, you never will. Now go." She points down the road but Rory already dials the number. Anna was too irritated to even pay attention to what she was saying. "Can we at least switch seats so I can drive?" She asks. Rory put her hands up as Lane was looking around for the notes. Anna let out a scream when something slammed into the passenger's car door. It shakes the whole car. She looks through the windshield to see a deer running across the road.

"Oh my god… I just got hit by a deer!" Rory screams into the phone. Anna got out, worried that the deer was hurt. Her sister follows her out.

"I don't see him." Rory looked around with her. "Where am I going to get salt?" She said into the phone.

"How is salt going to help us?" Anna asks.

"Apparently, deer love salt." She told her sister Lane's theory. "I don't see him anywhere. What if he's hurt?" Rory echoes her sister's concerns. "What time is it?" She asks Lane. She ran back to the car screaming no. Anna was quick to follow her, in Rory's panic state she might leave her there. They made it to school and ran to their classes that were in opposite directions.


She jumps up and down as she comes out of her English class. "I was able to answer every question with confidence." She grabs onto Henry's arm.

"I had a few stumbles, but I think I did well too." He laughs at her excitement.

"If I did well, then it must have been a breeze for Rory." She felt on top of the world.

Giggles made her turn to Paris, Madeline, and Louise. "I wouldn't be so sure about that." Paris gave her a large smile.

"Why, what happened?" She narrows her eyebrows.

"She flips out screaming about a deer hitting her," Louise smiles.

"She went psycho on me before Mr. Medina had to drag her out." She looks like Anna felt before she came over.

Arms wrap her waist and a pair of lips gave her peck on the cheek. "Are you okay? Did you really get hit by a deer?" Tristan spins her around to look her over.

"Did Rory really get pulled out of class?" She looks up at him.

"She also yelled that her name is Rory in my face. It was kind of funny to see considering how perfectly proper she normally is." He told her.

"I told you to stop calling her Mary. It's not funny." She points a finger in his face.

"It's friendly teasing." He defended.

"Where is she?" She looks around for Rory. She was almost late to English class herself because she had to explain to her biology teacher why she was late.

"I don't know. She wasn't in biology class either." He shrugs. Anna pulls away from him to make her way to the office. "Where are you going?" He ran after her. Paris huffs as she storms away in the other direction with her two friends following her. Henry went to find his other friends, happy to not be in the middle of any drama.

"I'm going to the office to see what happened to Rory," She walks out of the building to make her way to the admission office.

"You're not going to do something crazy like yell at the headmaster are you?" He grabbed her wrist to stop her.

"I might if he's there." She shrugs.

"Rory wouldn't want you getting in trouble too." He kept his grip on her wrist.

While she didn't like him using Rory against her, she knew he was right. "Why did she get pulled out of class?"

"She was late." He told her.

Anna let out a bitter laugh. "That's such a stupid rule. Why can't she take the test? Her getting less time should be her punishment, not failing the whole test!" She glares up at him.

"Don't look at me like that. I didn't make the rules." He took a lot of crap from her, more than he would from anyone else. But, screaming at him for something he didn't do wouldn't be something he put up with.

"I'm sorry, you're right. I still want to know what happened to Rory though." She sighs, wishing she had the cell phone right now instead of Rory.

"How about you sit over there and cool down and I'll find out?" He nodded to a bench.

She nodded and sat down. She had to wait a while before he came back out. "Well?" She jumps up to run over to him.

"She went home with your mom. Your mom went crazy on the headmaster, called him all kinds of names, II Duce being one of them." He told her.

"That sounds like her. The office lady told you all that." She asks. The lady didn't seem like a gossip, too uptight to gossip.

"No, the student clerk told me." He shrugs. Everyone knows that student clerks had all the dirty details of happening at the school.

"Oh, she did. What did you have to do to get that information? Did you bat your eyelashes and flirt?" She mockingly bats her eyelashes.

"Are you jealous?" He smiles down at her.

The bell rang in the tower. "I have to get to class." She turns around to go back into the building.