It's the day of the school's cross country race. Tom's girlfriend, book editor Vicki Hodge, looks at Allie's work and asks her to skip the race so they can work on the book together. Bolton passes out photocopies of pages from Allie's book, the characters of which seem strangely familiar, and not at all flattering, to its readers. Hurt by Allie's representation of him in her book, Charlie tries to impress his classmates by entering in the advanced race but the race is too much for him and he collapses midway through with an irregular heartbeat. Tom invites a pair of scouts from the Sydney Stilts basketball team to come out and watch Matt run and despite Matt not finishing (he stopped to help Charlie), they offer him a tryout. In all the confusion, Bolton rolls to an easy, if short lived, victory. Matt and Allie break up.
