Love the Bird
- Now the entire town of Lily is abuzz with news about the woodpecker, and how the dude from Oregon (John Barling) is staying in Lily to try to track the bird. He's actually staying right next door to Cullen, since he's started a relationship with their neighbor, Shirley Dumas.
- Shirley's son, Fulton Dumas, totally hates the man his mom is shacking up with. He calls him "the most egotistical, maniacal, and power-hungry man he'd ever met" (5.2), and Cullen has to agree with him—and so do Gabriel and Lucas. Yeah… they all hate John Barling.
- As Cullen is working, Lucas comes in and announces that he got Cullen a date with Alma Ember, a girl who graduated a couple years ago, got married, got divorced, and subsequently moved back to Lily. See? The town really does suck you back in.
- Lucas is picking him up at 7:00 PM to go on a double date with Mena and him. Good times.
- That night, they go to a drive-in movie theater and Cullen feels awkward as Alma nibbles on his ear; he's not exactly on board with this date, and keeps imagining her ex-husband popping up to beat him up.
- After the movie, they drop Alma off at her mother's house and Mena and Lucas tell him that he could have totally scored with Alma if he wanted to—she wanted to take him home that night.
- When he gets home, Gabriel isn't in his room. Cullen falls asleep on his brother's floor, but when he wakes up, he's still not there. His dad and mom ask him if he's seen his brother, too, and he says that he hasn't seen Gabriel since yesterday afternoon.
- Hours later, it becomes clear that Gabriel has disappeared and they have to call the police. Cullen is furious and worried, and imagines talking to the Lazarus bird (the supposedly extinct woodpecker) about finding his brother.
- Lucas finds Cullen in the riverbank lying in the mud, and helps him get back home. Cullen keeps saying that Gabriel is dead, and Lucas tells him that he's not and punches Cullen in the face. Tensions are clearly running high.
- The therapist, Dr. Webb, says that sometimes losing a child will destroy a marriage, but that seems to be the opposite for Cullen's parents, and instead they get closer after Gabriel disappears and spend all of their time attached to each other.
- Over the course of the next two weeks, there's a huge manhunt, but Gabriel doesn't show up.
- Cullen doesn't know what else to do with himself, so he goes over to Alma Ember's house and invites her out. They go to the riverbank and immediately start making out and hooking up—but Cullen cuts his back on a rock and has to go get stitches. Oops.
- Afterward, he goes to Alma's house and they sleep together. He wakes up in the morning to Alma's mom vacuuming in the room and realizes that he's naked underneath the sheets. Well, this is awkward.
- Cullen goes home and Lucas hits him up to see if he wants to go to the town meeting and meet John Barling, the woodpecker guy. Cullen gets touchy about it and says that he doesn't want to go because he feels like the news should be talking about his brother, and not some dumb bird.