A worker at Video 2C attempts to replace a light bulb as Lydia and Jackson pull up outside. Jackson is explaining the Hoosiers (iTunes) is the best sports movie ever, although Lydia couldn't possibly care less. She refuses to watch it, and Jackson angrily tells her that he's not watching The Notebook (iTunes) again. She just looks at him, and the next thing we see is Jackson in the video store asking for help finding The Notebook. The store is deserted, and a phone continues to ring in the background. As Jackson walks further into the store, he sees feet sticking out the end of one of the aisles. He approaches slowly and falls back in horror when he finds the store clerk with his throat slashed open. Jackson knocks over the ladder holding up the light fixture, which causes the electricity throughout the store to start flickering.

 

Lydia is too busy taking selfies to notice.

 

Jackson hears something in the darkness and turns around to see the red glow of the alpha's eyes. He attempts to hide between some rows of shelves, but the alpha knocks them over like dominoes, and Jackson is caught under one of the displays. He lies perfectly still, gasping, as the alpha draws back the collar of his coat to examine the claw marks that Derek left on him. The marks glow with a purple light, and the alpha quickly leaves him, bursting through the store window and past Lydia's car. 

 

Meanwhile, Stiles and the Sheriff are having takeout from Burger 2 in the Sheriff's cruiser. The Sheriff asks if they forgot his curly fries, and Stiles tells him that he's not supposed to eat those. His father replies that if he wants them, he'll have them. Stiles snarks back at him. A call comes over the radio, and Stiles rushes to answer, but the Sheriff slaps his hand for trying to touch official equipment. The Sheriff answers as Stiles stuffs his mouth with curly fries. There's a report of a possible 187. "A murder?" Stiles asks through his mouth of food.

 

They arrive at the video store, and the Sheriff tells his son to stay in the car. Stiles bounces anxiously and eventually notices that Lydia and Jackson are there. Jackson demands to know why he can't go home. Jackson gets in the Sheriff's face and yells about his right to leave, trying his best to belittle this public servant who doesn't appear to be serving. He calls the Sheriff a minimum wage Rent-a-Cop. Stiles is half out of the car and glaring at Jackson, but he breaks the tension by suddenly pointing out the dead body the EMTs are wheeling out. The Sheriff shoots him a look, and Stiles slinks back into the car.

 

Derek and Scott are standing on the roof of the store, seemingly unnoticed. Scott doesn't understand why the alpha is running around killing people. "This isn't standard practice, right? We don't run around in the middle of the night murdering people, do we?" Derek tells him, "No, we're predators. We don't have to be killers." Scott wants to know why the alpha is a killer, and Derek vows that they will find out.

 

As they walk across the rooftop to leave, a red spiral glows faintly. 

 

They return to the Hale House. Scott argues that he has a life to live and can't just keep following Derek around. "I have homework to do. I have to go to a parent teacher conference tomorrow because I'm failing Chemistry!" "You wanna do homework or you wanna not die?" Derek counters. Derek tells him it's a week until the next full moon, at which point either Scott kills with the alpha or the alpha kills him. Scott thinks these are stupid rules, but Derek tells him it's a rite of passage. The first full moon was 4 days after Scott got bitten. If this is the next full moon after that, 29 days later, then it is anywhere from the 18th to 26th day since 1x01 - Wolf Moon.

 

Scott continues to argue that he doesn't want any part of this, but Derek insists that Scott is the only one with a link to the alpha. Derek can't sniff him out because his scent as a human would be different. Derek offers again to teach Scott how to control his powers. Scott asks if Derek can stop the alpha if he agrees to help find him. Derek tells him he can't do it alone. "We're stronger in numbers. A pack makes the individual more powerful." 

 

Derek begins his Werewolf lessons by asking Scott what the common denominator was between shifting after he got shot and after Chris hit him with a car. When Scott doesn't make the connection, Derek grabs his hand and crushes the bones. Scott falls to the ground in pain, but Derek patiently tells him that it'll heal. Pain is what will keep him human.

 

Allison gets ready for school. Kate comes in to apologize about accusing Scott of stealing the other night^†. Allison tells her it's okay, but Kate wants her to at least be a little angry. "I was being a protective horrid bitch." And then she gives Allison her birthday present early. Kate gives her the Argent pendant, a family heirloom. Kate points out the symbol in the middle of the pendant and tells Allison that if she ever wants to learn more about her family she should look it up. 

 

When Allison opens her locker at school, balloons pour out. She tries to shove them back inside, looking embarrassed. Scott comes up to her asking if it's her birthday. She asks him not to tell anyone because she's embarrassed that she's 17. This is a surprise to Scott, but he understands that she probably had to repeat a year because of all the moving around. Allison is thrilled that he made the correct assumption and kisses him. People normally ask her if she got held back or had a baby. Scott is distressed to hear that these are the kinds of things she deals with on her birthday and suggests that they ditch school instead. She's never skipped class before, which Scott says will make them go easy on her. He'd rather not imagine what they'll do to him, though.

 

In Chemistry, Mr. Adrian Harris reminds everyone that if they have below a C they are required to come to the parent-teacher conferences. He stops in front of Stiles and asks if anyone has seen Scott. Stiles looks up with a highlighter cap in his mouth because he's clearly supposed to answer, but they both get distracted by Jackson coming into class. Mr. Harris goes over to him and tells Jackson that if he needs to leave he's allowed. He tells the class to start reading Chapter 9 and then admonishes Stiles for highlighting too much. "It's Chemistry, not a coloring book." Danny laughs a little at that. Stiles is annoyed and spits the highlighter cap up into the ceiling, catching in on the way down.

 

Stiles leans toward Danny and tries to ask him a question. Danny doesn't much want to answer but does anyway when Stiles asks if Lydia showed up in his homeroom. She didn't. Stiles then asks if anyone knows what happened to her and Jackson last night. Danny admits that Jackson wouldn't tell him. Stiles asks a third question. "Do you find me attractive?" Stiles leans forward so far waiting for an answer that he falls off his seat. Danny looks unsure of how to reply.

 

Scott and Allison run out to her car and leave, in full view of the parking lot patrol.

 

In the boys' locker room, Jackson checks on the claw wounds on his neck, which are still red and raw. He starts getting ready but then sees two glowing red eyes in the cloud of steam in the shower. He starts to panic and falls back in fear, only to discover that the dots were from a set of headphones. He lets out a breath and then turns to see Derek. Jackson stumbles back against a locker and stutters out that he doesn't know where Scott is. "I'm not here for Scott, I'm here for you." Jackson is terrified and continues to stutter. Derek asks him what he saw, and Jackson insists that he didn't see anything. "I swear, I'm not lying." "Then calm down and say it again," Derek says as he closes in on him.

 

Jackson repeats that he didn't see anything while Derek listens closely to his heartbeat. Then Derek checks the back of his neck and advises that he have a doctor look at the wounds. Jackson is too afraid of him to do or say anything about being manhandled. 

 

Stiles calls Scott because he isn't answering his texts. He asks Scott if he knows what's going on because Lydia is MIA and Jackson looks like he has a time bomb in his face and another random guy is dead. Stiles tells Scott he has to do something about it. Scott tells him he'll deal with it later and then quickly instructs Allison to pull off the road into the woods. She whips out an arm to protect him as she pulls a sharp turn.

 

They start walking through the woods, but Allison can't help but check her phone. Scott is amused at how not okay with skipping she is. She claims she needs an alibi. Scott offers to take the blame if they get caught, but Allison says she's as much at fault as he is. He then jokes that he'll just blame her for everything then! They flirt and kiss. 

 

Lydia is at home and medicated. Her mother lets Stiles in to see her, but Lydia doesn't know what a Stiles is. He tells her that he's there to see if she's okay. She wants to know why and invites him to sit next to her on the bed. He was worried and asks her how she's feeling. She touches his arm and leans in close. "I feel...fantastic." Stiles notices her meds and takes a look at the bottle. He's impressed by the prescription and asks her to say "I saw Susie sitting in a shoe shine shop." She tries but slurs. However the phrase "I saw" gets her attention. She starts remembering, and Stiles asks her what she saw. She repeats a mountain lion, but Stiles asks her if that's just what the police said. He tests her by asking her what her stuffed giraffe is. She calls that a mountain lion, too, and then passes out, dropping her head onto his thigh. Stiles nearly has a heart attack.

 

Scott and Allison climb through the woods. Allison was going to text Lydia a thank you, but Scott stops her. If his cell phone is off, hers has to be, too.

 

Stiles decides to leave Lydia alone, but as he's walking out, she tells him to stay. He's immediately back in her room and sitting on her bed. She touches his face and says, "Please, Jackson." Stiles is insulted, and Lydia passes out. Her phone beeps, and Stiles gets it. By accident, he starts playing a video she recorded of the alpha.

 

Kate and two Red Shirts hunters approach the Hale House. Chris has told them that they're not allowed to kill Derek, but Kate claims they can still say hello.

 

Derek is inside doing pullups. He drops to the ground and starts doing pushups, then single-handed pushups.  He stops suddenly, having heard the hunters. They kick in the front door and look around. The red shirts don't think he's there. One even makes a crack about Derek burying a bone in the backyard, which even Kate thinks is stupid. She starts with her own insults. "Too bad your sister bit it before she had her first litter. Too bad she howled like a bitch when we cut her in half!"

 

Derek growls and throws one of the red shirts across the house. He hops from wall to banister and knocks the second over with two feet to the chest. Kate takes out an electrified baton and zaps Derek with it as he comes flying at her. He writhes on the floor while she admires his shirtless body. "Wow, this one grew up in all the right places. I don't know whether to kill it or lick it." 

 

Stiles calls Scott again and leaves him another message about the video he found. He tells Scott he's going to kill him and growls at the phone as he tosses it on his bed in distress. His father knocks on the door just then, and Stiles jumps. The Sheriff asks if he's going to hear good news at the parent-teacher conference. Stiles tells him he may have to rethink his definition of "good news".

 

While Stiles stresses over what to do with the video, Scott and Allison frolick. 

 

Stiles eventually decides to delete the video. He's more settled for having made a decision but not sure that destroying evidence was the right choice. 

 

Kate paces after Derek as he crawls along the floor trying to get away from her. He pulls himself up onto a couch enough to get leverage to throw himself in her direction. She just laughs and zaps him again, sending him flying. Her baton has 900,000 volts. She starts talking, telling him that his sister was cut up and used as bait, but that the Argents didn't do it. He sits up enough to look at her, and she asks if he thinks she's lying. "Wouldn't be the first time," he manages to say over the convulsions. Kate comes in very close and leans in toward his ear, repeating that they didn't kill Laura. Derek listens to her heartbeat. 

 

Kate backs off and reminds him that there were bite marks on Laura's body. If he just tells them who the alpha is, the Argents will take care of it and everybody gets what they want. Derek doesn't look at her, and Kate guesses that he doesn't know who it is either. That makes him totally useless to her, and she turns around with a gun in her hand and starts shooting. Derek makes a break for the woods. 

 

Alan Deaton calls Scott because he's an hour late for work. The Sheriff then comes in and shows Deaton some frames from a security camera in a parking lot near the video store. He lays down three photos, one of something coming through the window, one of something on all fours, and a final of a man. "I've never seen a mountain lion do that," the Sheriff says. Deaton tries to deflect him, telling him that he needs an expert opinion, and then goes to treat a sick dog. 

 

It's night when Scott and Allison return to their car. She tells him that it was the perfect birthday. He knows she's telling the truth because she has a tell. She touches her eyebrow when she's lying. She says she wishes her parents weren't coming home from the conferences because she wants to spend the rest of the night with him. Scott realizes that he's late for the conferences.

 

Mr. Harris and Jackson's parents discuss how driven he is because he's adopted. They think that he's trying to prove himself to the biological parents that he's never met, and recently this drive has moved several notches higher. While they're talking, Jackson is out in a field trying to throw a lacrosse ball into a can. He gets more and more frustrated and eventually throws his beer bottle at the tree in tears. 

 

At Lydia's conference, her parents assume that there's something wrong with her. Her father assumes it's her grades. Her mother defends Lydia by saying that she didn't tell her she had to choose who to live with. The father asks the teacher to tell them what the problem is. "I wasn't aware there was a problem." Lydia's GPA is over 5.0 because of her AP classes, and she's a leader. 

 

Sheriff Stilinski is in a conference with Coach Bobby Finstock, who admits that he thought "Stiles" was Stiles's last name. The Sheriff gives him a look of disbelief. "His last name is Stilinski." "You named your kid Stiles Stilinski?" "No, that's just what he likes to be called." Finstock mutters that he likes to be called Cupcake. Finstock asks what Stiles's first name is, and the Sheriff taps on the file folder with Stiles's records. Finstock can't even pronounce it, and the Sheriff tells him it was his mother's father's name. Finstock cracks a joke that shows he doesn't know that Claudia is dead, and then Sheriff says, "What do you say we get to the conference part of this conference, Cupcake?" 

 

As Finstock says Stiles has zero ability to focus, we see Stiles looking through the police reports on the Hale House fire. The report says that eight people died in the fire. Derek told Scott that it was eleven. The report says the fire was at 7:14, though it does not specify am or pm. Finstock says Stiles never takes advantage of his talents. For his Econ midterm, Stiles detailed the history of male circumcision. 

 

Melissa McCall leaves a voicemail for Scott as she starts her conference with Mr. Harris. He tells her that Scott's mind has been elsewhere and he's often not in class. He thinks there's something wrong with Scott's home situation. She gets defensive and asks what's wrong with his home situation. "Specifically, the lack of an authority figure." He means a male authority figure, and she decidedly takes offense. In her opinion, she and Scott are better off without Scott's father in the picture.

 

The Argents are told that Allison is an incredibly sweet girl. The teacher warns them that all the moving around may make Allison rebellious, which Chris is already aware of. The Argents claim an open and honest relationship with their daughter. The teacher says she hopes Allison is feeling better, and it's news to Chris that she wasn't in class. "Oh, she wasn't in school. I checked with the office." This to prove to them that they don't have as open and honest a relationship with their daughter as they thought. 

 

Allison pulls into the school parking lot. As they park, Melissa comes out of the school, leaving Scott another voicemail. He slinks down in his seat. Chris leaves a voicemail on Allison's phone telling her that answering her phone will make the terms of her grounding much easier. Melissa approaches the Argents and lets them know that Scott isn't answering his phone, either. Chris tells Melissa that Scott kidnapped his daughter, and she wants to know how they're sure it wasn't Allison's idea. 

 

Scott and Allison get out of the car. Their parents come up and start yelling at them, but there's screaming from the other side of the parking lot. Parents are running everywhere and getting into their cars. Scott starts looking around for what's wrong. There's an animal running among the cars and crowd. Chris gets a gun, while Allison starts wandering through the parking lot, also looking for the source of the problem. Allison almost gets run over by a car, but Scott lifts her out of the way.

 

The Sheriff steps in and starts trying to track the animal. A car runs into him as it's pulling out of a spot, knocking him over. 

 

Chris Argent fires two shots and bags himself an actual mountain lion. Everyone looks distressed at his having killed it.