On the morning of Casey's first day of school, Joan pops in to marvel that this is her last first day of high school before going to college. Thus, she has gone "a little nuts" and made pancakes with white flour.

At school, Casey passes Gen, Nikki, and Tiffany in the hall and they applaud her, but Casey explains that she can't afford to train with them. Gen insists that Casey is lucky to have a life outside of ice skating, until Nikki cries out that all she wants to do is ice skate, because "The Jumping Shrimp is a skating machine!"

Later, Mr. Bast raves about Casey's physics project, saying it is even good enough to sell. Casey is inspired to offer her intellectual services to the other ice princesses. However, while Casey is flirting with Teddy at the rink, Joan interrupts and shares an awkward exchange with Tina as she ushers Casey out the door.

Casey works on her physics project late into the night, as Joan enters her bedroom and stashes Casey's skates in the closet.

Back at the rink, Casey helps Gen, Nikki, and Tiffany improve their skating with physics. After landing her axel, Gen begs her mom to let her attend a party on Saturday night. Tina reluctantly agrees, but asks who she's going with. Gen visits Casey at the concession stand and asks her out on a date, which Casey accepts.

With the gauntlet laid down by Tina in the previous chapter, Casey is faced with the obstacle of money on top of her crucial decision between physics and ice skating. Specifically, Casey must decide whether to invest some hard-earned cash in a lock for her bedroom door, as she groggily awakens to her wild-eyed mother standing over the bed bellowing something about pancakes. Confronted with Joan's increasingly monstrous facial expressions, the viewer cannot help but question whether it is really white flour that has caused her to go "a little nuts," or a different white powder she has not used in a very, very long time.

Things get even more complicated at school, where Casey is greeted with renown from the ice princesses she was once too afraid to speak to. This is naturally confusing for Casey, as much has changed since the days when Gen's mere approach inspired porno music in Casey's head ; Tiffany notes that Casey has impressively "landed a double," which might refer to one of two things:

1. Landing a double axel
2. Getting a brother and sister to fall in love with you at the same time

In either case, it is rather interesting to learn that Tiffany took two years to accomplish this herself.

Nevertheless, Gen has no problem revealing to Casey that she is actually jealous of her boring life, although she makes a point to bring up Casey's freedom to have a boyfriend -- a comment which makes Casey uncomfortable for obvious reasons. Meanwhile, Tiffany is more concerned with Casey's ability to eat "buckets and buckets of bread," making her the second character in as many minutes to push starch on Casey. It does not seem out of the question that this represents an organized attempt to sabotage Casey's ice princess dreams by making her fat, although it does not explain why anyone would serve bread in buckets.

Speaking of bread, this chapter also includes a second appearance by the enthusiastic Mr. Bast; having eaten toast prepared on a dirty Bunsen burner , however, it seems unlikely that Mr. Bast has any idea what is going on right now, and holds not Casey's report in his hand but a copy of the shooting script to reorient himself while the biohazardous chemicals dissolve his brain. On the other hand, Mr. Bast proclaims the document in his hands "good enough to sell," which no one in any state of mind would say about the screenplay for Ice Princess.

In any event, Casey gathers that it would be a good idea to sell her ideas to the other ice princesses (although her salacious offer to help Tiffany "fix [her] spread eagle" leaves us utterly without comment). While this seems like a brilliant idea after Casey used physics to drastically improve her own skating, it raises the question of whether this operation is supposed to cover the laundry list of expenses outlined by Tina in the previous chapter, amounting to thousands of dollars. Indeed, if Tiffany's dad took out a second mortgage to finance her training (as Tina said), it seems awfully silly for him to have done so when he could have just charged Nikki a grand to explain that holding her arms in will make her spin faster.

After Joan walks in on Casey flirting with Teddy, the dramatic tension suddenly escalates, as we know that Joan's heart is set on Casey hooking up with Penelope Goode. In an elegant visual metaphor, Joan even takes Casey's skates and puts them back in the closet, inviting fascinating comparisons between Casey's struggle and the struggle of millions of repressed homosexuals in the world today. And with Joan's disapproval urging her towards a more traditional Sapphic union, Casey could not be more receptive to Gen's coy, hair-twirling invitation to "grab something to eat, maybe catch a movie or something" -- which we are really, really not making up.