Marco's first day of being a Beta had been much like his past life as a Gamma. Nobody saluted him, not even the cashier at his usual grocery store, and most certainly not his parents. What was the point, then, of being a Beta, he asked himself sarcastically—all he had to show for it was a more expansive TigerTalk profile. Perhaps they would use his story in a newsletter to say that it was as they had always said: everyone could pull themselves up by their bootstraps if they truly wanted (minorities included!).

"You've been going out with that Jessica girl a lot lately," Marco's mother observed. "I'm not going to judge or anything, but—"

"We're just friends. It's only because Priya is always out with Kenny and Isaac is always doing stuff at Heller that we go out so much," Marco explained.

"Why don't you have more friends then? Why is it just those three?"

"They're my closest friends."

"Why doesn't Jessica have more friends? She's such a nice girl, surely she could be hanging out with other people too."

"I think she does."

"So why don't you?"

Marco could have said something smarmy like "well, my other friends aren't Alphas," but even if that were true, it missed the point. And it raised another point: he was tied with Isaac now. There were more granular aspects to what made a good person besides one's rank, but in the eyes of the law they were equal. Little things like the law never stopped the club, but it was still a funny thought, that a slacker like him was as good a person as Isaac.

Jessica picked him up at the agreed-upon time, after his mother had asked again why he couldn't at least invite her over for dinner if he was going to make her be his chauffeur.

"Congratulations again on becoming a Beta!" she said from the driver's seat. "I was going to buy you balloons, but I forgot."

"I appreciate the thought."

"I like this neighborhood," Jessica continued. "It's a bit boring. But it's cozy."

"What's prompted all these insights?"

"I don't know, I've been thinking about a lot of things lately. Because of your promotion, because you and Isaac and Priya and all my other friends are doing so much. Have you ever seen any of those teen coming-of-age TV series, where I don't know, they sit around discovering alcohol for the first time and complaining about how nobody else understands them?"

Marco nodded.

"Those are the series I like. I really resonate with them. I like books, and yeah there are good books out there, but it feels more multi-dimensional when you can see people on the screen that look like you. We need more of that in the club."

"You think we need more people living their bildungsroman arcs?"

"What's that mean?" Jessica asked.

"You know, coming-of-age. Ms. Baldwin used that term once. Or maybe it was a club lecture."

"You're so smart! I knew you were a Beta at heart."

"Thanks."

"You're lucky you aren't an Alpha. The newsletters they send out are so boring. There was this really terrible joke in this morning's."

"I bet I can guess it," Marco said. "Why does the Norwegian navy have barcodes on the back of its ships?"

"Woah, they send the Betas the same joke?"

"I told President Haneul that joke yesterday."

"I think it's kind of clever, actually: 'scan-the-navy-in.' Maybe it's the sort of joke you have to tell aloud for it to make sense."

"Could be."

The San Sebastian County Fair was one of the many state-sponsored sources of summer fun available to the citizenry—a literal bread-and-circus affair. They could still hold events in the winter; only under exceptional circumstances did the Bay become cold. But while one could host a fair in the winter, why do that when one could instead ice-skate, nurse hot cocoa, or decorate Christmas trees? A week or two before the event, the caravans of carnies would roll in and thanklessly begin setting up the carousel, the rollercoasters, and the cornucopia of food stalls—nature's bounty, all deep-fried. They kept to themselves within the fairgrounds, and spoke in their own cant. Some from uphill claimed they were a blight on the county. God forbid any of them made their way outside the fences.

By the time Marco and Jessica arrived, everything had been sanitized, and they had nothing to do but find Isaac and Vice President Cynthia. It was a hot evening, and the aroma of sweat radiated from the crowds, undisturbed by the large, slothful electric fans they had installed around the fairgrounds. It would have been more pleasant had they held the fair in winter, but they wouldn't have been able to sell overpriced, syrupy lemonade that way.

"My treat," Jessica declared. The proprietor scowled at them for taking too long to get out of the way.

"How do you think they deep-fry ice cream?" Marco asked, pointing at a stall.

"It doesn't sound very good that way. I think it would be liquid inside," Jessica said. "If the club knew about it, they would ban it."

"Then they'd ban this lemonade, too."

"They've served us lemonade on hot days," Jessica protested. "But you're right: it was artisanal."

"If you're going to sin, do so in style."

"Let's go for a ride. Since we've come this far."

"How about the carousel? I'm not feeling a rollercoaster after dinner," Marco suggested.

They waited in line and boarded two colorfully painted horses, along all the little kids and their guardians, and the music began to signal the beginning of their promenade.

"I like carousels. They're like a metaphor," Jessica explained. "You go on a journey and end up where you began."

"That's just The Catcher in the Rye," Marco said.

"I know, but it's still true. And I think we can learn a lot from Holden. He's a teenager, just like us, dealing with trauma, just like us. That's every good teenage story: a funhouse mirror."

"What did you think of that book that was on President Frank's suggested summer reading list, what what was it called again, What We Make Today? It was listed alphabetically last, so I started with it. I'm about halfway through," Marco asked.

"I don't recall it, but I like the title: 'the future is only what we make today.' What's it about?"

"It' a coming-of-age story, I think you'd like it, this sort of non-chronological tale about some high schooler's search for meaning. A bit like The Catcher in the Rye, a bit like The Great Gatsby, a bit like Groundhog Day—that must have been where they got that question for Hobbes, now that I think about it—and in some ways, it's a bit like our own lives. Uncannily so."

"I'll Google it when we get off the carousel," Jessica said.

"It's well-written, certainly, but I think it hits a bit too close to home to be interesting. It's why I don't get the appeal of Pale Embers either: when I read, I want to read about gunfights, or dragons, or magic. Nothing so tender."

"That's such a masculine thing to say," Jessica laughed.

"Sometimes I think I need to read more because books teach me how to maintain a steady train of thought. I feel like I jump too quickly from topic to topic. Must be social media."

The carousel came to a stop, and Jessica pulled out her phone once she regained her footing.

"The author sounds familiar of this... Bill Carey? Wasn't he in President Frank's grade?"

"I don't remember him," Marco said. "Let me search him up... it sounds like this is a pseudonym. 'The enigmatic and reclusive Bill Carey is a breakout star of the literary world...' there isn't even a picture. I don't think he went to Heller. But maybe he did."

"There's another book you might like from that reading list," Jessica said. "It might be too realistic for you, but there's some sci-fi in it. It's about AI, called The Mechanical Muse. It asks a lot of tough questions. Reminds me a lot of our world."

"Every book you read reminds you of our world."

"Every good book," Jessica corrected.

They kept walking, not as much to find Isaac and Vice President Cynthia, though they were certainly out there somewhere, but to find new objects to spark conversation. The crowds moved around them—occasionally they'd spot a familiar face, from Heller or elsewhere, who would disappear as quickly as they had appeared. The fair, like the mall, was meant to separate fools from their money: the games were rigged for all but the little ones who elicited sympathy from the carnies, and nobody truly thought lemonade was worth $5. Everyone talked too quickly, and any coherent chains of thought were interrupted by new sources of stimulation. The sticky shine of a candy apple, wisps of cotton candy on fairgoers' lips, dusk-hued barbecued chicken that resisted all attempts at being eaten civilly.

Eventually they found Isaac, who was carrying an oversized cloud of cotton candy and Vice President Cynthia's handbag, by the restrooms (the real ones, not the Porta-Potties).

"Nice to see you! What are the chances you found us here? I tried looking for you two, but it's so crowded I had no hope," Isaac said.

"Where's Vice President Cynthia?" Jessica asked.

"She's freshening up."

"Oh, that's her bag—you are such a gentleman!"

Vice President Cynthia emerged from the restroom and did not flinch at the onlookers. She had traded her áo dài for shorts and a cream-colored button-down shirt, while Isaac dressed the same as he always had. It felt unfair of Marco to only linger on what certain people wore, but those people were the ones who dressed deliberately. She took her handbag back, and then took an impish pinch of Isaac's cotton candy.

"It's nice to see you," Marco said to Vice President Cynthia. Jessica waved demurely.

"The pleasure is all mine. Congratulations on your promotion—I knew you had it in you."

"We're all very proud of him," Jessica said sympathetically. "I'm sure he won't let it get to his head."

"So what shall we do together? How about a rollercoaster?"

"I think my stomach's settled enough," Marco said. "But let's ride an easy one. No loops."

Isaac and Vice President Cynthia led the way, walking just close enough that any pundit in the club would assume Isaac was trying to infringe on her personal space in a most unseemingly way, the club officers' innocence to be preserved at all costs unless it could be lost charmingly (for it was always the club officers who were morally chaste and to be guarded from outsiders). In one of Jessica's favored TV shows, the county fair would be the best place for meaning to be made, but Marco remembered instead some of his father's advice (that to think of it, coincided with when he thought Marco was spending too much time with female friends): never take anyone on a first date somewhere thrilling. A relationship that began with adrenaline would grow dependent on it, and one would discover that without adrenaline, there was no bond.

Jessica studied them closely, but said nothing; she was too focused on reading something in their silence, or how their steps were in sync. Perhaps Jessica was right that their lives were best lived vicariously through others—but even if someone like Nick from The Great Gatsby (an overdone example, but now that he was a Beta he was expected to treat the book like a manual to life) considered himself secondary, he was ultimately important enough to still have a novel written about him. If he were unimportant, he would not have appeared at all: he would have been a wallflower at the party, maybe one like Owl-Eyes who earned an epithet. The point of all those books, and those TV shows that let Jessica fawn over hot child actors, was that they shone light on perspectives that nobody older than them would pay any heed to. When one had bills to pay, one wasn't inclined to think much of the affairs of teenagers—except if they thought longingly about an innocence they would never reclaim.

"How about this one?" Isaac asked, pointing at one labeled "The Flight of the Bumblebee," featuring a pugnacious-looking bumblebee mascot that told fairgoers one needed to be at least four feet tall to ride.

"Sure!" Vice President Cynthia said, and nobody could say fairer than that. They were shepherded into the same car, Marco and Jessica sitting in the back, and at once Rimsky-Korsakov's most famous work began playing from unseen speakers as the ride began. Those who didn't know the piece solely from cartoons would ascribe it some magic significance—none of the riders knew anything of Prince Gvidon's journey or The Tale of Tsar Saltan—but alas, sometimes a bumblebee was just a bumblebee. All except Vice President Cynthia raised their arms and screamed on the sudden downhill sections, which were synchronized with the music.

"That was fun," Jessica declared when they disembarked. "I'm not sure what else there is to do here. The other rides might be too scary for me."

"We could go see if the carnies can guess our weights," Isaac suggested.

"You never ask a girl how much she weighs!" Jessica admonished him.

"Then we can have them draw caricatures of us."

"That's even worse!"

"I don't think we'll find anyone here who can do stately portraits like those at Heller. I sat for my portrait the other day. I'm very hopeful," Vice President Cynthia said.

"What vibes were you going for?" Jessica asked.

Vice President Cynthia shot her a look. "Disciplined. Like I'm to be taken seriously, like Madeline Albright, or Margaret Thatcher, or someone like that. We have to present ourselves a certain way if we are to be taken seriously," she explained.

"You give great advice, it's no wonder you're such a good mentor," Isaac observed.

"We can go get caricatures drawn, though. They are satire, and satire is important to a functioning society," Vice President Cynthia said.

She led them to a booth where a carny was drawing caricatures, for $5 each, and gave him a $20.

"A double date?" he asked.

"Not a double date," Jessica said with mock indignation. "Everyone keeps thinking that," she whispered to Marco.

"I can hear you. You, the mopey-looking one in the button-down, first," he said brusquely. He sketched dutifully, and a minute later he gave Vice President Cynthia a stern sketch that bore a passing resemblance to Picasso's Weeping Woman.

"It looks respectable," Jessica observed before sitting for hers.

"I should hang it somewhere."

Marco was last to have his caricature drawn, and afterward had an idea:

"Could you sign this?" he asked, and the others handed theirs back. The carny signed with much pomp and circumstance in the corners.

"Nobody ever asks me to sign their drawings," he observed, and then the moment ended when he called over the next batch.

The crowds began to wane, and evening turned to night. This was not a place people stayed late at night, not because there was cleaning to be done, but because it was a place for families: if people wanted late-night entertainment, they could go to the Asian night market down south, or find a pool hall somewhere. On another night (and if he had a car to go anywhere fun), Marco would have laid out a blanket on a hill somewhere that overlooked the twinkle of the city below, and thought how elusive similar moments would be when he was in college, or even worse, an adult. Youth was not to be wasted—to be forever young was a curse, but the fair would lose its luster when every dollar spent was a dollar earned.

"I'm getting kinda tired, and it's dark. I feel like I'll get robbed if I wander down the wrong alley. Shall we go?" Jessica asked.

"Let's go," Vice President Cynthia said. "This was fun. I enjoyed all of your company."

"Likewise," Marco said politely. They parted ways outside the fair's front gate and walked into the night.

"Isaac and Vice President Cynthia would be so cute together, if I didn't dislike her so much," Jessica declared. "That's always how couples work: if you like the two of them individually, they're a good match, else they're terrible."

"Do you think Priya and Kenny are a good match?"

"God no. Kenny sounds so annoying. I haven't met him, but Priya talks about him like he's the worst guy alive."

"What interesting lives all of them live," Marco observed.

Jessica dropped him off, and Marco knocked politely before unlocking the front door. His parents were watching one of their shows that he wasn't at all interested in, so he returned to his room. He could finish another chapter or two before bed. He would never be an avid reader, a bookworm, or worst of all, a nerd, but it was something to do when he was bored. Stories weren't something to read into heavily, like Jessica claimed: one couldn't unironically say the literature curriculum came alive at Heller. Nevertheless, there were still some ways in which life imitated art and art imitated life.

There was one interesting quote that ended his nightly reading, from an ambitious character who ended up becoming an ASUC senator at Cal, and who Marco realized could pass for a Vice President Juliet from another universe: "Self-improvement needs internal drive, not someone else making the decisions for you." Taken out-of-context, it could critique their entire club and the entire good-person ethos: in-context, it was an unusually defensive response to why one would want to pursue student government and "be a tryhard." There was an argument to be made, then, that every real-life person was actually a literary archetype: if one could say someone were quixotic, or that they had made a Faustian bargain, was it too much to take things a step further?

These thoughts came to him, but did not feel authentic, and Marco decided he would never be that sort of voracious reader who could discuss a pretty paragraph until the end of his days. He put the book back on his nightstand, brushed his teeth, and went to bed.