After dinner, Jackie watches from her window as the brothers leave. Cole opens her door and demands she get changed to go to Mary’s party. Jackie thinks about saying no, but the “irresistible” (222) feeling she has around Cole emerges once more, and she goes with him. When they arrive at Mary’s house, Jackie regrets her decision. She decides to stay in the car, but Cole picks her up, throws her over his shoulder, and carries her into the party. Alex sees them and is visibly upset. Cole leans close to Jackie, pretending they are a couple. Jackie tries to explain the situation to Alex, but he does not believe her. As Jackie pleads with Alex, Mary appears on the stairs and asks what Jackie is doing here. Everyone at the party stares at Jackie and she begins to panic before rushing out of the house, calling Katherine to come pick her up.

The next morning, Jackie is surprised to find Nathan in her room when she wakes up, assuming that everyone in the house must hate her now. Nathan tells her that he knows his brothers well enough to know that Jackie did nothing wrong in the situation. Nathan tries to convince Jackie to go running with him, but she declines, opting to stay in her room. Later that morning, Jackie looks out her window and she sees Cole emerging from the fields carrying an unconscious Nathan, yelling for help.

The family goes to the emergency room and waits anxiously until a doctor appears, telling them that Nathan experienced an epileptic seizure but is expected to recover. The doctor informs them that family can now go see Nathan, but when Jackie tries to join, Lee tells her that she will “never be a part of our family” (231). Jackie realizes that she does not fit in with the Walters, and she leaves the hospital.

Jackie goes to Will Walter’s apartment, and Will is surprised to see her. Jackie admits that Nathan is in the hospital. Will is upset and asks Jackie why she is not at the hospital with the family. Jackie breaks down in sobs, and Will comforts her, inviting her to stay while he goes to the hospital to visit Nathan.

That afternoon, Jackie wakes from an unexpected nap and calls out for Will, but Cole responds. Cole explains that Will left for the hospital but called Cole to come over so that Jackie would not be alone. Cole admits that he was worried about her, explaining that he came to apologize for everything that happened at the party and to take her home. Cole admits that he is jealous of Alex, whom he thinks things come naturally to. He also explains that he dumped Mary when he learned that Mary had broken up with Alex and not the other way around. He apologizes for dragging Jackie into his sibling rivalry.

When they get home, Jackie sprints out of the car despite Cole calling after her. Jackie stays in her room until dinnertime, when Alex comes to her door with dinner on a tray. After a moment of awkward silence, Alex apologizes, telling her that Nathan yelled at him and Cole while at the hospital for the way they treated Jackie. She realizes that since their kiss, her feelings for Alex have grown. While her feelings for Alex are not as intense or all-consuming as her feelings for Cole, Alex makes her feel “like [she] was home” (243). Jackie forgives Alex, and he asks Jackie to be his girlfriend. Jackie kisses him in response.

The next morning, Jackie hears fighting downstairs, and when she arrives in the living room George is pulling Cole and Alex apart. Alex exclaims that Cole attached him “out of nowhere” (246). Worried that the fight is somehow her fault, Jackie asks Danny what happened. He explains that the previous night, Alex was telling everyone except Cole about how Jackie was his girlfriend now. When Cole finally heard, he reacted by attacking Alex.

The next day, Alex gives Jackie a long kiss outside of class, but when they break apart, Jackie sees him looking over her shoulder toward Mary. Jackie fields endless questions about her relationship with Alex from Heather and Riley at lunch. That night, Alex comes to Jackie’s room at one in the morning as Jackie lies awake and invites her to come along on the boys’ end-of-year tradition: covering the principal’s house in toilet paper.

Jackie joins the brothers on their excursion, and Cole tells Jackie to put toilet paper on the balcony. Jackie clambers up and wraps toilet paper around the railing, but as she steps back to look at her work, she trips over a toilet paper roll and falls into the balcony door leading to the principal’s bedroom. An alarm begins to sound, and as Jackie tries to jump down from the balcony, her sweatshirt gets caught. Cole helps her remove the sweatshirt, leaving it behind, and the group escapes.

Alex berates Cole for sending Jackie up on the balcony, and only then does Jackie realize that the balcony is not usually an area that the boys vandalize. She turns to Cole, realizing how much of her future she just put at stake and wondering, “What had gotten into me lately?” (255). Cole tries to act nonchalant, telling her to stop acting like “someone died” (255), which immediately changes the atmosphere in the car as the boys react to Cole’s insensitive comment. Alex implores Cole to apologize, and he refuses, so Alex punches him in the nose. Jackie is quiet on the drive, and Alex asks if she is okay until she finally admits that she left her sweater behind and it has her name on it.

The next morning, Jackie gets ready for school, assuming that she is going to be called down to the principal’s office. When she gets back to her room, she is shocked to see her sweater on the bed. She assumes that Alex is the one who went back for it and rushes downstairs to hug him. Alex admits that he is not the one that went back to get her sweater, and neither did Danny, Isaac, or Cole. Katherine asks Isaac to go upstairs to get Lee, the only one who is still asleep.

On the way to school, the boys discuss their plans for their annual end-of-the-school-year party, set to happen that weekend while Katherine and George are out of town. Jackie wonders to herself why Lee would go back to get her jacket when he has always disliked her the most. When they get to school, Jackie asks Lee why he went back for her sweater. He explains that, like Jackie, he is not the Walters’ biological child: His mother left him and Isaac right after Lee was born, and his father, an army officer, left the boys with George and Katherine before going overseas. He apologizes for treating Jackie so poorly, as he realizes now that Jackie has experienced the same pain he has.

Nathan will be home from the hospital that afternoon, and Jackie is anxious about seeing him after she never visited him in the hospital. Jackie pauses outside his room, afraid to go in, but Cole sees her and tells her to go in, the first words he has said to her since Alex punched him. Looking at him, Jackie feels the familiar flutters in her chest, an “invisible force” (264) drawing her to him despite everything he has done.

Jackie enters Nathan’s room, and he opens his eyes. She sits on his bed and Nathan asks Jackie if he did something to warrant her not visiting him during his time in the hospital. Jackie apologizes, assuring Nathan that the only reason she did not come to visit was because the experience triggered difficult emotions about her family. Nathan says that Cole is acting out of character, seemingly disappointed and sad.

Will and Haley arrive ready to babysit everyone for the weekend. Katherine frets over whether she will be able to go away for the weekend with everything left to do before the wedding. Jackie grabs a piece of paper and a pen and asks Katherine to list out every item that she has left to do. Jackie delegates tasks to each of the boys until every action item is accounted for.

Heather and Riley come over to get ready for the party, proclaiming their excitement at being invited to the exclusive VIP party this year because of their friendship with Jackie. The girls explain that the yard gets too packed with people, so every year the boys invite a smaller group to a smaller party at the waterfall on the ranch’s property.