Holling's dad is an architect who's in competition with Meryl Lee Kowalski's dad to design a new junior high school building. When Holling sees his dad's plans for the new school, he's mightily impressed. So too is Meryl Lee. In fact, the two lovebirds are so impressed with the design that they even talk about it on their Valentine's date.

Meryl Lee takes the design home to show her dad and doesn't think anything more of it. But the sneaky Mr. Kowalski shamelessly copies Holling's dad's design and passes it off as his own. He submits the stolen plans to the school board for their approval, and, as expected, they love the radically innovative design.

When word gets out about this unfortunate incident, a lot of people are very angry, as we might expect. Holling's furious that his old man's ideas have been ripped off; his dad is hopping mad for the exact same reason; and Meryl Lee is angry at her dad, not just for plagiarizing someone else's ideas, but for complicating her budding relationship with Holling. Initially, Holling blames Meryl Lee—as well as himself—for the whole incident but thankfully comes to realize that it really wasn't her fault after all.