CW: Sexual harassment

August 14th:

This has been my worst first day of school ever. Typically my extracurriculars are the stressful part of my day and school is easy, but it's going to be the reverse this year. At least that means I get a break at the end of the day. The issue is that while I was doing useful things like writing for the Insight and trying to get into a good college, all of those club people I tried ignoring for the last two years have been convincing the administration they should be running the school, and guess what, Mr. Kurtz and everyone else listened to them.

I'm going to wear out my pen nib if I write everything that bothers me every day, I can tell, but here I am, showing up to leadership class assuming that I'll be doing something important as class president, and here comes Ms. Foster telling me without any trace of consternation that Frank—why is he making this decision anyway?—has appointed me the official envoy to all school events. All of them where I don't have existing commitments, which is still way too many. My "boundless enthusiasm" made me the perfect fit for the role, Ms. Foster said. I thought she liked me, but clearly I'm just another leadership pawn to her.

So besides taking away my ability to support representative student government, Frank has implemented some sort of caste system where we get Greek letters and that gives us different responsibilities. I'm an Alpha, which means I get really good school lunches and other privileges, but even though I have these things I still feel very controlled. Jason is to blame. My leadership period isn't the same one as the losers in charge of this entire scheme, but there are still a lot of people from the club, and Jason is one of them. He told me that he's my supervisor—I thought Ms. Foster was, but clearly she can't be bothered to do her job. He said this so creepily, too, that he's watching me, and he pointed to my phone and to the security cameras. I don't think he's truly trying to supervise me: I think his job is to make sure I don't rebel.

I'm writing this before my first event, some sort of Alpha meet and greet. Like a cocktail party without the fun. This is going to be such a strange year, I can already tell.

August 15th:

I think Jason's been looking at my phone. I had more unread emails earlier today than I do now. That TigerTalk app they made us all download must be malware, but it's not like I can delete it. I'm getting a new tablet for sheet music anyway, so I think I'll use that for secure communications. I'm writing this on the tennis courts, where I'm mostly out of range of the cameras. They can't see what I'm writing anyway. The cameras, I've noticed, swivel erratically, sometimes like someone is manually controlling them—sometimes it's like they're tracing people's steps. I think that's on purpose so nobody can tell if the cameras are being manually controlled.

This is a gross violation of privacy, Jason looking at my emails, if it's really him. It could be any of the people in charge, or even one of the administrators. I'd go to the police, but they wouldn't believe me, and my parents would think I'm crazy. There's another meeting tomorrow, some sort of parent Q and A with Mr. Kurtz that my dad is going to. Maybe then he'll see what's wrong with all of this.

The Alpha meet and greet was interesting, but it felt very segregated in a creepy way. There were some of us who clearly didn't buy into any of the club stuff in our own corner talking about normal things, some underclassmen I hadn't met before who seemed nice (I never like these sorts of mixers, but they might help keep my sanity), and then the people involved with the club went to their own corner. Some people tried convincing us to join the club, but I saw right through them.

August 16th:

That was an interesting meeting with Mr. Kurtz. He literally stormed out of the room in anger, it was that bad. He clearly doesn't like me much, and I think it's because I was being so sarcastic with him—I guess we can't all be teachers' pets. My hope is that people don't see me as endorsing any of this business just because I attend all the school events. My dad asked me afterward if this was normal, but all I said was that this was going to be the new normal. I don't think I want him to know everything that's going on at Heller, even though he knows there's something very clearly wrong.

I made the mistake earlier of asking Jason if by any chance TigerTalk was monitoring students' emails, and all he said was "don't ask, don't tell," before putting his finger to his lips. So that means it's the truth, right? It has to be the truth. I don't know anymore, but this is past where I draw the line. I need to learn what's going on at Heller. The truth. Until then, I'm taping over my laptop camera. Mr. Ivanov gave me some aluminum foil, and I'm going to keep my phone wrapped in that when I'm not using it. It won't stop Jason from looking whenever I'm actively using my phone, but it should help.

August 21st:

Some funny things happened today. There was some music event going on after school I had to attend, and Frank was playing the piano—I don't know why they didn't ask the literal concert pianist to play instead, since I'm sure they know I play the piano. But Frank was actually really good, like also recital level or just shy of it, and he was playing some hard pieces too to show off. Ones I think might be overdone—Liszt and Chopin etudes—but I'm impressed.

I thought he was all talk and no action, but now this raises more questions, because somehow he's at about my level (like I know I'm good, but I'm no better than any other strong high school student if I'm being honest) and has never thought to do anything good with his skills except showing off. That's the one thing I would say about his playing: technical perfection, but it didn't feel like there was heart in it. Sometimes people play with more mistakes, but feel more authentic, and sometimes people play with great expression but nevertheless feel affected, and he was the latter. I complimented him afterward and he was very humble about it too, which surprised me. He knew it meant a lot coming from me.

We've started having meetings for the Insight, and the vibe feels very different than before. Mr. Simon is a lot more careful what he says now, and he talks about free speech as if it's a right generously granted to us and not our entitlement. He saw my phone was wrapped in aluminum foil, and made a point of discreetly asking me about it afterward as we were leaving, when we were out of range of Heller. So I told him everything about how I thought Jason was spying on us through TigerTalk—he was still looking through my phone, I think, even if he hadn't made any sign of it (I've tried my hardest to not piss him off). He was horrified, but I don't think he was surprised, and all he told me was to not tell anyone else about it. Even telling him, he said, could be dangerous: he had TigerTalk on his phone, he said, but hadn't noticed anything suspicious. It's clear that not all is well at Heller.

Jason spends most of the period elsewhere, it seems, but I'm sure he's still monitoring us. I heard one of the club people mention that Jason has an office in the robotics room, and people are often entering and leaving the classroom there. I should try sneaking in there sometime. I also know Jason is a TA for Mr. Ivanov, but the only thing I've heard Mr. Ivanov say is that Jason gets through his assigned tasks very quickly so he can focus on his other work. I could tell he wanted to tell me something else.

The only member of ASB leadership I've had any substantive interactions with is Behrooz. It's very clear to me that he is not a believer in what the rest of them are doing, but I don't think he wants to tell me anything about it. His issue is that he's dating Beth still, and she's definitely more into the club stuff—at the mixer she was hanging out with those kids—so if he were to say anything I'm sure she would break up with him. I can read it in his eyes, though, he wants to say something.

August 29th:

Most of these events they're making me go to aren't that exciting. There are some events that are more political, but they make it easier for me to get out of those; I think they're really using me to go to events the head honchos aren't already going to, which is inefficient, but it does mean I'm stuck with the dregs. There was this Hispanic parents' meeting I went to, except it was all in Spanish, and I don't speak Spanish. What was the point of that?

I got boba (a sin, I know) with Allison and Diana, just to catch up on gossip and destress a little. It's rare I have a free afternoon these days. Allison is on the cheer team, and she told us some very interesting things. They've noticed that the security cameras follow them when they're changing: at first they thought they were simply drifting lazily around, except they changed behavior when they looked at them. They also reported odd stuff with their phones, things with their camera roll and whatnot. There seem to be two lines of behavior we've noticed: clearly Jason's a pervert, or whoever's manning the security cameras (could be Alan too, I wouldn't put it past him, or even Frank), and is looking for anything indecent. But they've also noticed photos being favorited and unfavorited, and often these are random ones not even of people, or if they are, they aren't anything indecent: selfies, we've noticed, and photos showing valuable objects and international travel. Airports, in particular. It's like they're building criminal profiles on us, or planning on breaking into our houses. We went to Draeger's afterward and bought aluminum foil.

I'm sure they're able to track that I'm being a bit subversive, and that suddenly after I met with these other people at a boba joint they're becoming subversive too, but it's not like they can do anything about it without tipping their hand. I also honestly think they could be perfectly stealthy, at least with looking through our phones, if they wanted, but this is just psychological intimidation. They want us to know we're under their thumbs.

While we're still talking about that, Allison says that things are just kind of weird on the team now. The coach is apparently a huge supporter of the club, and promoted Beth and Juliet to the heads of the team because of it, and she's also mean to the lower ranks. All of my friends are still Alphas, which is honestly surprising given how Jason knows I'm a bit of a traitor, but it's not like we've done anything to really ruin things.

September 2nd:

Whose idea was it to have Alpha-Beta teambuilding on Labor Day? It's a holiday. I thought they couldn't do that, but the club doesn't have to play by the rules, clearly.

Allison gave me some more gossip about Juliet. Apparently she and Frank have been hanging out a lot more than before, going out to dinner and that sort of thing. Juliet was very coy about it, but phrased it like she was at least hoping it would lead somewhere, romantically I mean, but that Frank hadn't said the same. Juliet was optimistic, but apparently got really mad when someone joked he was her sugar daddy. I think there's something ironic about how someone who at least to me always acts so stuck-up about being a good person clearly has other priorities.

Allison introduced me and Diana to some of the other cheer people, making a point to avoid Beth and Juliet, and there's this girl named Daisy who's a freshman, but that Allison said was being mentored by Juliet or something like that? What I could gather, and naturally this is being distorted as it's told to me second-hand, is that Juliet's been trying to set her up with this other freshman in the club. Apparently the club does a lot of matchmaking—there are these two other kids whose initials are both GP, like "good person," that the club's made an effort to connect. To me, this was horrifying, but it's not out-of-character at all.

Daisy was perfectly cordial to us, but when she saw we weren't carrying those little red books—I kid you not, they make all the club people carry little red books—she froze a bit. The fact that we're Alphas who aren't in the club confounded her, and with how volatile this system seems to be, I wonder if we have some secret sponsor in the administration who's keeping us as Alphas. I certainly don't think I've been a model human being. If Daisy's a Beta, and she's fully involved, I wonder what we're doing she's not.

September 11th:

The club organized a big 9/11 memorial thing for the community, which I guess is nice, but seems weird to do at a high school. I don't know. Ms. Foster tasked me with helping set it up, and I only learned at the end it wasn't her idea to begin with. In general, there have been more and more events that the club and the school itself has been organizing; the impression I get is that the lower-ranking club members earn their keep by doing what I do, attending extracurricular activities, and planning these sorts of community endeavors. The other impression I get is that our budget is far higher than I remember, which has become increasingly apparent to me. It wasn't clear to me why until I overheard Jason and Alan discussing cryptocurrency during passing period—I can't prove there's a connection, but somehow it's in-character for Alan to be squandering the school's money on the crypto market. If they're to be believed, and this is supported by evidence, they're doing well. Well enough to finance whatever it is the club is doing, unless they're embezzling from the school. That's a possibility too.

Things have been a bit tense with our first issue of the Insight. There was a political cartoon we did of Ms. Foster that got Mr. Simon in a tiny bit of trouble, and I also had this big argument with him about censorship. It's clear that we're being kept on a very tight leash regarding what we say about the club, and the pressure isn't just from them: Mr. Kurtz and the others clearly don't want any negative press that might leak into the community. It's already remarkable that nobody's asking questions about what's going on at Heller, and I think that's credit to how much surveillance everyone is doing. I feel like I'm putting together the pieces of a puzzle beyond my understanding. Most of my daily entries are just "I think the cameras are following me again" and I'm not writing anything much, but sometimes I feel inspired.

Speaking of that, the cameras are definitely following me again. It's made me a bit more careful about what outfits I wear, not like I was wearing anything too revealing before. People in the club were already wearing formal outfits or solid business casual for the most part, and it's been made clear both explicitly and implicitly that we Alphas, or at least the Alphas in leadership positions, should do the same. I was an early adopter of this, and I've heard some rumblings they're going to implement it for the entire school once they can get the logistics sorted out—from what Ms. Foster said, they're aiming for sometime before the homecoming rally. A "strong visual effect," she said, although I imagine if real-life conditions could keep pace with their wild ambitions they'd have done it day one. As for why they waited, it's also that they don't want anyone to be left out because they don't own appropriate dress, which I think is remarkably charitable in its own way. I asked Behrooz about this, and he agreed, although with that tone that implied he'd spent many long conversations discussing this that he didn't want to be a part of. I guess it works out that way.

September 14th:

Allison is coming in hard with the cheer gossip again. I remember writing that people noticed someone was looking through their camera roll for very specific photos, and apparently one of Allison's friends caught some other intrusion in action during a break in practice. Someone used her friend's number as confirmation for a Google Voice number—she got the confirmation text—before right away someone deleted the text. It was good timing she was looking at her phone screen then. Later that period, that friend also texted some number we didn't recognize, area code in Juneau, some pictures from her vacation to Mexico. Pictures of landmarks and the airport again for whatever reason. Then, in a flash, the message was deleted. There is something sinister going on that's even worse than the peeping Tom business Jason is clearly doing. We've been quietly spreading the word for people to delete any pictures off their phones that are at all intimate, but the thought also occurred to me that they can look through our phone cameras or microphones whenever they feel like it. All we can do is hope that there are so many of us and so few of them that they have better things to do than maintain live surveillance.

I also mention this thing with them stealing photos and phone numbers because I got another clue today, and this actually came from Mr. Ivanov. I had the fortune of running into him at Trader Joe's, and took the opportunity to conspire with him a bit—as usual, our phones were covered with aluminum foil. What he said was that last year, he and a few other teachers had helped Frank, Pranav, Juliet, and Alan with doing Internet scamming stuff. He called it scambaiting, where you trick the scammers. Now, Mr. Ivanov had personally stopped doing this around AP season—he either got too busy or it lost its novelty—but he said that Frank and their group, or at least Frank and Pranav, showed no signs of stopping. And when I mentioned Google Voice numbers, this gave him an epiphany: he said that they used Google Voice numbers for anonymity, but that for every Google Voice number you needed a real number that corresponded to it to register. He was horrified at this revelation (at this point I honestly wasn't surprised), but the narrative lined up. I didn't ask him about the pictures, and there's still no solid evidence I could stick them with, but I could already imagine what help it would give a fake identity to say "hey, I'm at the airport right now" and send a picture.

If they're taking our phone numbers, what's not to say they're using our credit cards too? I pay in cash nowadays. The club says paranoia is a sign of intelligence, and I'm tempted to agree. My dad thinks I'm going a bit crazy, wrapping my phone in aluminum foil, but it's a price I'm willing to pay. My piano teacher always thought I was a bit weird, so that's fine.

September 23rd:

I know my diary is starting to sound like the ravings of a madwoman, but it's approaching the truth. For the last few days I've been digging around online, trying to follow this new scambaiting angle. For one, I refuse to believe that they'd be doing something so criminal just to play pranks on other criminals. I found this scambaiting forum that seems pretty active and made an account to snoop around, one Mr. Ivanov said was the most reputable one, and found some threads from last year that looked like they might be Frank's work. He never posted any live transcripts—certainly nothing that would link to his real-life identity—but he made a passing reference to sending multiple people to Casablanca, and Mr. Ivanov confirmed that this is something Frank did. That account wasn't too active, but it was still being used, so clearly Frank's still been scambaiting.

I did some deep-diving, browsing the forum whenever I was waiting in line for something or at a particularly boring meeting (still using my tablet, although maybe they're checking the school WiFi too), and while I couldn't find evidence anyone besides Frank had ever posted there, the forum had a page of ethical guidelines for scambaiting. I agreed with them, but there was nothing about "steal your classmates' personal information to craft online identities," and there was also a rule about never getting money from scammers. The logic of that was clear: it made the scambaiters no better than the scammers. But it also made me wonder: supposing someone weren't doing that, how hard could it be to actually get money from the scammers, if people could get them to travel to foreign countries and record themselves doing stripteases? Where was the club getting its money from?

This definitely makes me sound like a madwoman, but I'm making one of those boards in my room with the strings connecting different pieces of evidence. I'm really onto something here. I'm writing great college essays, for one, and this is also going to be a great reveal for the Insight if we can expose all that the club is doing in one fell swoop.

September 27th:

Mr. Ivanov has this irritating habit of dispensing gossip piecemeal, which makes it hard for me to formulate my theories. One thing he was able to tell me is that the club was behind the celery juice thing last year, which I feel like I could have guessed beforehand, if not for the fact that all the new information about the present makes the past feel increasingly irrelevant. What took me more by surprise was that Mr. Kurtz was apparently in charge of supervising this extracurricular project, in particular the money involved: he apparently turned a blind eye to how the club was keeping all the profits. As much as the project was effective in stopping people from vaping on campus, there were clearly ulterior motives at hand. And Alan had blabbed once to Ms. Liu about how much profit they were making. I had thought the celery juice scheme was a way for Frank to get rid of his political rivals, but I suppose it makes sense that there was more method in the madness.

I also heard from Allison that Daisy and the other club guy are definitely a couple now. It wouldn't interest me, the love affairs of freshmen, if not for that this was another offshoot of the club activities. Allison is a lot more careful about what she says around Daisy now, as it's clear that she'd gladly snitch if she could. She had tried, once, to get Daisy to put aluminum foil around her phone, saying that as much as they disagreed politically they all could agree their bodies and photos were their own business. Daisy refused, saying that the club was looking out for her best interest, but what best interest involves them looking at her phone? I wonder if Daisy's the sort of person who'd send Jason pictures to get slightly closer to becoming an Alpha.

October 2nd:

I had the weirdest conversation with Ms. Foster earlier today. She asked me if I, at any of the Alpha events I had attended, ever seen anyone acting "seditiously," I kid you not. I'm surprised Jason didn't ask that question, but it's not like he'd have reason to: he could check our text messages himself. When I said, obviously lying, I had seen no seditious behavior, she seemed disappointed. Maybe she was bored and wanted someone to punish, I don't know.

My journalism skills are coming in handy, as I've had to investigate a lot of leads recently. Everyone I talk to gives me a new perspective, and it's my job to synthesize what I find. Mr. Ivanov said that while he wasn't involved in the scambaiting stuff anymore, Ms. Liu seemed to be more involved, so naturally I went to ask her. I claimed we were considering writing an article about it, and that Mr. Ivanov had pointed me in her direction. This was clearly the wrong move to begin with: she seemed fearful, like I had just caught her doing something illicit. I guess I did. But the impression she gave me was that Frank occasionally stopped by to "consult" her on ideas, even in the present. She knew nothing about their using stolen photos or phone numbers, or if any money was involved, but seemed to think everything was on the up-and-up, and seemed not to believe that Frank would ever act otherwise.

Maybe I was wrong then. Or it could also be that as soon as Frank decided he wanted to do something unethical, he took the opportunity to sideline Ms. Liu from the daily operations. It makes sense: he's the sort of guy to preserve his good reputation at all costs, and there's no way he'd want a teacher seeing crimes being committed. Ms. Liu also took the opportunity to tell me about Harry, since I had expressed that I knew him as Daisy's boyfriend. He was apparently a bit of an introvert, generally uncertain of himself and his status in the world, stronger than her other academic support students but still not great, and (as I knew) a club member. He apparently had a bit of an affinity for John, but a dislike of Regina, and Ms. Liu suspected that the club had soured him on her. She used the phrase "easily impressionable," and also said that from what she knew of Daisy, she was a more avid devotee of the club than he was. All this information tracked, and was another part of the puzzle. Daisy's relationship had more significance than I thought, and both her and Harry were puppets of the club. That also tracked.

October 7th:

As much as I'm starting to get tired of Jason's hassling, I've been able to learn from his frequent comparisons of me to Alan that Alan is a bit incompetent for a senior club member, and that he's kept around more as a lapdog than anything else. Behrooz has his purpose, despite his skepticism: he acts as a liaison with Ms. Foster and the more official school events, but nobody can figure out what Alan does or why he's kept around. That's the flipside of Jason's affable evil: he's more willing to tell me these things, like he's letting me in on a big secret. He offhandedly confirmed too that he has access to the security cameras and spends a lot of time checking them, but I didn't follow up on this, not like I wanted to. As he left, he saw my aluminum-encased phone in my pocket and smiled, saying nothing more.

New information about the club and its schemes is hard to come by these days, and sometimes I question how much time I spend thinking about it. There's no smoking gun that ties anything to them. I had a techie friend try looking at TigerTalk's code, but it was all encrypted in a way he couldn't read—but that's still interesting: he said there's no reason an app for a school would need that level of encryption. We can't prove they're doing anything illicit, but it's clear that they are. Jason did say he coded TigerTalk, and that it was Frank's suggestion to "help out the school community."

The last thought which comes to mind on that front is that I never see Jason attending any club meetings, yet he's clearly conspiring with everyone else. I don't know if he's being excluded from the meetings, or if his role is higher up the food chain, but there's more to him than meets the eye. I have no reason to believe Frank isn't in charge of this entire thing, but I suspect more of my problems would be solved if Jason were out of the equation. Some of that is because Frank acts like I don't exist, although the conversations I do have with him are interesting. Once he complimented me on my phone case, except my phone was in my pocket, and I only realized afterward he somehow knew that I had covered my phone with aluminum foil.

October 18th:

My diary is running out of space, so this will be the last entry in this book. I suppose that's what happens when you write long daily entries.

Two exciting things have happened recently, the dress code and the homecoming rally. I get the impression the club people consider the dress code a major symbolic accomplishment, and it's been made clear to us at the Insight that we were expected to write a glowing article about this. I can only imagine how much money it cost, but nobody in leadership has been willing to tell me more. They say it's above my pay grade, but I'm literally class president. I can't say that the dress code is something I care much about. People expect me to care, but when one of your classmates is a pervert and one of them is a high-functioning psychopath, you have bigger priorities.

This feeds into the rally, where all of us out there dressed in our new outfits got to watch Tom and Regina launch an unsuccessful protest against the dress code. I don't know why they bothered, honestly. Nothing good ever comes out of making change at Heller. That's why I keep my head down and do my investigations in private. They're going to drive me mad by the end of the school year, the club people.

Maybe another day I'll have more thoughts on all of this. But I'll end the last page of this school year's diary by saying that I hope Frank, Juliet, Alan, Jason, and anyone else involved in this mess die long, horrible deaths. Damn, that felt good.

Discussion Questions:

From what we've learned about Madeline, someone who barely got any screen time in the first book, why does she have an important enough perspective to get her own long chapter? Also keep an eye out for Harry and Daisy—if you've been peeking ahead at the chapter titles you know they come back.

How are Frank and Jason portrayed differently in chapters like this where they have a secondary, antagonistic role versus ones where they're the main characters?

Do you think Madeline's resigned attitude is justified, or do you think she should be doing more to oppose the club?