While the club tried to remain as conservative as any club founded by Silicon Valley high school students could be, rejecting modern comforts for affected austerity, it became clear when the club expanded to college that some concessions would need to be made. Frank and the other elite club members once had a meeting to, like a religious council, decide what in this brave new world was kosher: alcohol was out, under an interpretation that said it (like smoking, gambling, or bubble tea) was an impairment a good person primarily concerned with mental acuity would avoid, and so were late nights partying. A good person's greatest fear was a lack of control, they believed, and anything resulting in cognitive impairment (and thus mental weakness) was to be avoided. Other customs like the celery juice then became baked into club doctrine, its origin as a placebo now used as a symbol of successful good personhood—by drinking something so vegetal, so bitter, good people reaffirmed their stance as master manipulators.

Juliet had a hard time selling Emily, her roommate, on why exactly it was their party Friday ended at 10 and that it was "an indulgence" that business casual was allowed, or how this made it more fun. Emily was not a hardcore partier by any means—she had too much homework—but when she did party, she wanted to do it properly. Authentically. And as much as she respected Juliet as a friend, there were some insurmountable lifestyle differences.

"So let me get this straight, Juliet: you're throwing a party with no alcohol—instead a host of delightful mocktails incorporating celery juice and Kool-Aid—and you expect people to show up?" Emily asked incredulously, this not being the first time she'd had discussions of this vein with Juliet.

"We have our club RSVP list, obviously, but this is a mixer—a social event. It's not just networking. We expect people to show up, you know, and have some fun. It's meant to feel inviting so we can welcome people into our big happy family," Juliet explained as if it should have been obvious after all the discussions they'd had.

"You know I hate that phrase, 'big happy family.'"

"So are you coming Friday?"

"I'll think about it."

This cycle had repeated itself many times over the quarter, as Juliet discovered just how hard it could be to make people see the light. The club did not lack for members—it was an inevitability that a school as large as UCLA would have some people who could be swayed to see Juliet's side of things—but they occupied a noticeably tiny proportion of UCLA's campus: while before they could exert peer pressure by sheer numbers, here they had to be more tactical if they wished to be more than an esoteric religious sect. Sometimes it wasn't the ban on alcohol—it was the fact that Frank and Juliet had portraits of themselves all over the nation, or that the club's existence was inherently a red flag. Worst of all were the people who bluntly told Juliet they had no interest in being good: they would list off all the evil things they'd done, staying up all night playing poker or cheating on exams, as if to say there was nothing the club could offer to tempt them away from sin.

Juliet did not consider Emily one of these evil people—Emily, in her own way, was also a believer in temperance, as much as her natural skepticism prevented her from joining any group that relied on blind faith. Emily was better than Amanda, their other roommate—Amanda tried hiding vodka in their trash can before Juliet threw it out the window and threatened to call the RAs. Amanda was a bad person, while Emily was just a mediocre one. In the parlance of the club, she was "unaligned," neither friend nor foe. Unaligned people could be occasional business partners, but never fully earned the club's trust—there was always the chance they'd speak out if the club were to do anything truly heinous, and another of the club's greatest fears was people developing a good conscience.

At their next club meeting, the afternoon of the mixer, Juliet talked about what it meant to be "unaligned" like Emily, whether it was a justifiable stance to hold. If this discussion were at Heller, Frank or his successor would have pounded the podium a few times to justify their points that these people were weak for their moral ambiguity, and told a parable or two about people whose moral neutrality damned them to hell; Juliet took a mild-mannered approach with her speeches, both because last time she went full fire and brimstone the neighbors complained and because her audience needed less coaxing to agree with her points. The consensus was made that people like Emily were neither good nor bad, and that club members had better things to do than pay them any heed.

The mixer was well-attended that night, and even if it were mostly club members, there were some new faces. Emily did not attend, but others had been recruited by club members or simply learned about it from the flyers around campus; out of these people, a few expressed interest in becoming club members, but some merely wandered around the tables, sampled mocktails, and disappeared into the night. Emily was still awake when Juliet returned, and asked her about the mixer:

"How many people showed up?"

"I'd say thirty or forty. We had more at Heller who came to these things, but I'm happy—it could have been worse."

"That's still a lot of people, Juliet. And here I was thinking that nobody would want to go to a boring party. Maybe I should have gone."

"I understand you think that all we do is chant How To Be A Good Person and make offerings toward my portrait, but we can be normal too when we feel like it. We're college students: sometimes all we want to do is chat with our friends a bit and not think about school or work. Many things we do may not be ordinary, but at the end of the day we're all human. Good night, Emily."

"Night, Juliet."

Discussion Questions:

Based on this story and the previous one, how has the club changed as it's expanded beyond Heller?

Do you think Juliet's annoyance at her classmates is justified?

Which characters can be said to be "unaligned"?