The unbearable heaviness of being that plagued Marco was a weighted blanket to Isaac. There were no world-weary walks along the water for him, watching the leaves brown and crumble—there was only chance. Luck had always been on his side: friends' fortunes were fickle, but the dice never lied. Marco had told him once that "luck was a lady, but business was a bitch"; Isaac scolded him peremptorily for that, more so for using club-inappropriate language than any meaning behind his words, and he certainly didn't let Marco's saturnine temperament subdue his good cheer.

Isaac was happy—and happiness was a sign of weakness, unless it were the Puritan sort of happiness one grew by plowing the fields. His cheeks were unseasonably rosy and his voice was hurried, and Marco didn't think it was just because he was asking him about Vice President Cynthia:

"She wants you to come to dinner with her parents? What's next, a wedding ring?" Marco asked incredulously as they walked down a boulevard in the San Sebastian Mall. A cool breeze of AC blew through the mall, and if not for the Wetzel's Pretzels Marco could imagine they were somewhere a lot fancier.

"It's dinner, it's a polite courtesy. People used to invite each other over for dinner all the time, before we lost all social customs. I don't know if you've watched WandaVision, but like in the first episode how the boss is invited over for dinner back in the 50s—what I mean to say is that it's an old custom, and something adults do," Isaac explained.

"So an outdated social custom. Got it."

"You've been so crabby this week, Marco. Did something happen over the weekend? What did you even do?"

"Aunt came to visit. Nothing much."

"And that ruffled you? What did she do?"

"She's great, just a bit stuck-up."

"You need to smile more. And stand up straight—look at me, I'm standing as firm as a redwood."

"Wanna get a snack?"

"I need to save room for tonight," Isaac said without a second thought, ignoring Marco's skeptical glance. "I haven't decided what to wear. Maybe I'll pick something at random—that would be splendid, best not to overthink it. That's never a good way to make a good first impression, overthinking it..."

"And you're overthinking it now. We think too much. That's our problem."

"You haven't thought until you've taken one of Mr. Ivanov's physics exams. What would you do, in my shoes?"

"I'm just a humble Beta, I don't know what I would do. I know what President Timon would do, though."

"You're so smart: President Timon's been chasing after Vice President Cynthia for so long, he'd definitely know how to make a good impression."

"Mhm."

"So what would he do?" Isaac asked.

"He would have his concierge bring him Vietnamese traditional dress, learn an obscure folk dance her family had never seen before, and grandiosely mispronounce the word for 'hello'. That's what he would do," Marco said brightly. "I really could use a snack."

"Pretzel?"

Marco went to buy a pretzel, and looked over his shoulder to see Isaac pacing back and forth, fidgeting with his dice.

"Want a piece?" Marco asked.

"Nah, I told you, I'm saving room for tonight. You think President Timon's ever been invited to meet her parents?"

"No, but I'm sure they'd love to see his house. When I told my parents about the party, all they wanted to know was how big everything was, or what sort of wood they had for the furniture. They wanted to compare to see who had the better house."

"That's what my parents did too!"

"Yeah, but I don't think President Timon furnished his humble abode at IKEA."

"They do have some good meatballs..."

Marco, Jessica, and Priya (everyone who mattered, except the man of the hour) hadn't yet decided what the "thing" was that was transpiring between Isaac and Vice President Cynthia, the "thing" that had to be referred to euphemistically in case the rumors were true and it was unraveling their society like a bad YA dystopian romance. It couldn't be an elaborate mating ritual—Vice President Cynthia was far too ambitious to treat her ambitions delicately, and she didn't have the excuse of being a foreigner like President Haneul to do things in a socially improper way. What was socially proper was to gossip about it, with Isaac right there at Marco's side.

"Is he dressed fancy?" Jessica texted while Isaac was badly explaining a funny Instagram reel he had seen.

"Usual Isaac," Marco texted back, narrowly avoiding crashing into another mall-goer.

"If Vice President Cynthia kidnaps him, I'm not going to rescue him. I think she'd beat me in a fight," Priya texted.

"That's not nice," Jessica texted.

"But it's true."

"It is true," Jessica texted, following up with a laughing emoji.

"And so I was telling my parents about tonight, and they suggested I bring flowers, but I said no, flowers are too romantic. Besides, I don't know her favorite type! And then they suggested wine, but I said that we were too young to drink..." Isaac continued, either ignoring or not caring about Marco's disinterest.

"The wine's for the parents."

"I know, but it's supposed to be for her, and I don't know what she would like for the flowers..."

"Daisies?"

"You know she wouldn't like daisies. I'm starting to think you're not setting me up for success, Marco."

"This pretzel hits the spot. I'm wishing you the best, Isaac, I'm just being a tease about it."

"I feel butterflies in my stomach and I don't know why. It's like I'm walking on air, like at once the world will burst into song."

"Tell me, Isaac: do you like her?"

"Kinda, yeah."

"Did you always like her? Or do you only like her because you know President Timon likes her, and that means you're part of a cheeky little love triangle with the two most important people in the school?"

"You sound so misanthropic today, Marco," Isaac said, perhaps for once genuinely wounded. "Jealous?" he added sharply, impishly—perhaps not. Isaac rejected hurt, sadness, and other worldly ills; if the term did not ring a bit too close to a description President Timon would use, Isaac was Buddha-esque.

"I'm not going to interfere, as long as you spill all the tea. Don't spill the tea during dinner, though—now that would be a bad first impression."

If asked, and Marco did not ask, Isaac would have said that his impending dinner with Vice President Cynthia was the most interesting thing to happen to him in a long while—and what were the odds that he would have been sucked into this to begin with? It wasn't the first "thing" he'd had, though typically his things were fashioned out of scrap materials in his garage or scavenged metal from the engineering classroom. He was predictably inoffensive: if he were in a sitcom, he would walk in a minute late to every scene with a new tale to tell. If the Novel-Tea crew had known about the old days, when a certain Ted Cohen tended bar and did his best impression of Sam Malone, they would have been even more certain in their opinions of Isaac.

While Isaac had had many "things," most of them had been destructive, stormy affairs—loud, screaming, buzzing affairs, sometimes explosive affairs—and it was a relief, then, that this time it was only some girl. Isaac took Marco window-shopping past every storefront, seemingly still convinced that a petty trinket would make the proper first impression on Vice President Cynthia's parents.

"I could get her a teddy bear," Isaac suggested, pointing to a Build-A-Bear Workshop. "Maybe one of them with a very serious, business-like face."

"Nah, the club ruined teddy bears."

"Or maybe a pair of earrings—does she wear earrings?"

"I've never gotten close enough to find out."

"I should have taken Jessica or Priya with me," Isaac said. "They'd know better what she'd want."

"What's the saying again, 'diamonds are a girl's best friend?'"

"I can't afford diamonds."

"President Timon can."

"But I'm not President Timon. I want to buy something meaningful. He'd just bring some useless tchotchke he'd pawn off as a family heirloom."

"The only reason guys like us would spend this much time shopping," Marco observed, "is if we're doing it to impress a girl. Maybe a guy too."

"Oh, how about a doll? Let's go in," Isaac said, and Marco followed him into the American Girl store.

"Guys and dolls, what a natural combo," Marco said, watching Isaac comb the shelves with unhealthy interest.

"That's a musical, Guys and Dolls. You could say they pair 'nicely, nicely' with each other."

"Is that a reference to something I don't get?"

"Didn't we put it on during President Haneul's year? You know, when they were still figuring out how to insert club propaganda into the performances?"

"I didn't go."

"But there's this titular song—literally called "Guys and Dolls"—that's just this character, Nicely Johnson, singing about how whenever you see a guy going out to dress himself up, or blow his money on mink and matcha lattes, he's bound to be doing it for some girl."

"The club has a thing with promoting media that has unhealthy depictions of gender roles, doesn't it?"

"That's beside the point. I think Vice President Cynthia might be too old for this stuff."

"Nobody's too old for dolls, though," Marco retorted.

"You think I should buy one?"

"I'm being sarcastic. No. How about you Google 'traditional gifts Vietnamese culture' or something?"

"OK, let's see... 'eggs, bananas, or even a whole chicken.' You think Costco chicken breasts would do?"

"Costco's too cheap. It would have to be from Whole Foods, organic, non-GMO, the whole shebang."

"You're giving me bad advice again, aren't you?"

"If I be waspish, best beware my sting," Marco said. "Let's hurry out of here. The best gift you can give her is chewing with your mouth closed at the dinner table and not telling any of your usual weird stories."

The afternoon passed slowly without Isaac—their shopping trip ended quickly after an emergency phone call to Jessica revealed that a perfectly ripe cantaloupe from his backyard, overstuffed with summer's dew, would suffice to impress—and Marco found himself looking forward to a dinner he wouldn't attend. Until summer's end, there was little to do but wait for others' amusements to become his own. He poured himself a glass of iced tea, added a squeeze of lemon, and sat in his favorite chair on the front porch. It felt very old-school, like he could shout back indoors, "Ma, there's a storm a-comin'!" But his mother wasn't home, and the neighbors would notice.

A fly buzzed by Marco's cheek. Too close for comfort—one swat and it was flicked against the wall, its guts dripping down the wall like rain on a window. They had read a poem about a fly, once: "Little fly, thy summer's play my thoughtless hand has brushed away," something something, and like all good poems it was about death. Summer was a lousy time to think about death. But summer was the most fragrant of all seasons, and death had its own stench, and Marco had brought death upon a fly for no reason besides that its noise bugged him. It would have been nice if he could travel somewhere for the summer. Jessica had told him once about how President Frank and his friends would take an annual trip to Lake Tahoe, presumably to nap in pine-scented shade and plot how to oppress the unprivileged. She had seemingly told him this just to prove she knew something others didn't—Jason was apparently never invited.

Isaac was undoubtedly pacing his bedroom and emptying his dressers. Hopefully he didn't try gift-wrapping the cantaloupe. Marco was thinking too much for what was supposed to be a quiet moment; his thoughts were coming quickly, not helped by the caffeine. His mother's garden was doing well, and it needed no tending. There was great natural bounty, but nothing good for a snack. Only chilis that his grandmother would sometimes harvest and make into mole, and avocados—far too many avocados. Those were for football Sundays, the most important Sunday ritual. At least Isaac had something to do—and Marco realized that was the most irrational sort of envy, wishing he had a dinner date with someone who had actively chosen to victimize a third of the student population. That would make for some lovely dinner-table conversation

An hour and a refill of iced tea later, Marco had had enough of his own thoughts. Heller, and all its people, was a fixation, his wandering thoughts an unhealthy coping mechanism. He had become drunk on his own conceit, and there was nothing more despicable than drinking alone. He had to share.

"So Isaac has big plans tonight," Marco texted. "Kinda envious TBH."

This was enough to prompt a FaceTime call from her, a few minutes later.

"Hey, what's up?" Marco asked, reclining in his throne.

"You know what's up, you're just leading me on. You have gossip and you want to tell me. So spill."

"Isaac said dinner was at 6, and it's almost 5:30, so he might be on his way as we speak. Where does Vice President Cynthia live again?"

"You want her address or just the approximate region?"

"I know you could get me either. And knowing your brother, you could tell me what color her sheets were too."

"That's creepy."

"But it's true."

"It is true... I think she lives more on the southwest side. Opposite side of the inlet from you, but down a bit, like if you walked straight down Suffolk from your neighborhood until the strip mall and made a left over the water, then somewhere thereabouts in one of those cookie-cutter houses. Was that too specific?"

"I appreciate the detail."

"It's definitely within walking distance. A bit far, but you could do it."

"Want me to wait across the street and try peering in with binoculars?"

"That's also creepy. But I am curious... you think he's having fun?"

"We're talking about him like we're worried about our own flesh and blood," Marco laughed.

"He is the baby of our group."

"What makes him the baby?"

"Just look at him."

"What have you been up to lately then, Jessica?"

Jessica turned her camera around to show her bedroom, much tidier than his own.

"It's so hot today, why are you inside?"

"There's really good WiFi here. I worry I'd lose signal outside."

"I'm sure your brother has the entire neighborhood wired, it will be fine. Go outside."

"I'll go outside," she groaned, and Marco followed her down the hallway, past her brother's closed door, and down the stairs into the backyard.

"It's so nice out—look, there's a bumblebee!" she said.

"How far is it from your place to Vice President Cynthia's?"

"Probably closer than it is for you."

"Care to go for a drive? I'll grab my binoculars."

"You know it. I'll change and be at your place in ten, and then we'll go for a bit of a spy trip."

"I love how this is the second time we've gone out of our way to spy on them."

"We're looking out for him," she said sweetly. "Because we care."

"See you soon," Marco said, and he hung up.

Marco brought his glass inside and dumped out the ice in the sink. There wasn't long before Jessica would arrive, and it was only fair that as soon as anything good happened to someone else, all of them had to share or it wasn't fair. Something was missing in all of this, and he knew immediately: the fly. He tore off a paper towel and went outside to retrieve the fly, and found a spot among his mother's flowers to bury it. There was no good eulogy to give a fly. The world as the fly saw it, its compound eyes splitting the world into a thousand pictures, was a rich world. It teemed with life, and it was a worldview shattered with an errant swat. That sounded angsty. Too angsty.

The overarching point was that the fly could mind its own fly business for as long as it wanted, and then one swat from an uncaring god—he was a god to that fly!—and it was all over. Who was to say that the club couldn't do the same? The best he could do was keep being a fly on the wall.

Jessica pulled up a few minutes later, and gestured for him to quickly get in.

"Is that dirt on your hands?" Jessica asked.

"I buried a fly."

"That's sweet."

"I killed it. And then I felt bad and buried it."

"That's less sweet."

"You don't need to drive so quickly, Jessica."

"We can't miss this."

"Do you ever think all of us are unfairly fixating on Isaac's 'thing'? We're living our own lives vicariously through him and all the other club people."

"We're looking out for him," she said again, and Marco decided to shut up and enjoy the ride.