John followed a reliable schedule every morning during school days: he would wake up to his alarm clock, which he kept on the default tone; look out his bedroom window to decide what sort of weather it was that day; put on clothes without much regard for fashion or style, only instinct; stumble to the kitchen and make himself a bowl of cereal with a glass of orange juice; brush his teeth, by now used to the unpleasant taste of the toothpaste; wave goodbye to his parents if they were awake; and walk a few blocks to the bus stop. John's bus stop was located across the street from a grocery store and bakery; some of the other students would have pastries and coffee while they waited, and some would have Doritos and Gatorade. He had sometimes considered grabbing a croissant or something, but it didn't feel right. He would grab a newspaper and start reading it while he waited for the bus, which was dependable enough to always show up right when he was starting to become absorbed in whatever he was reading that day. Still barely awake, he would get on the bus and find a seat that was to his liking; often, this would be a seat across from Beth.

Beth wondered what it was about the newspaper that John found constantly fascinating every day. Once she had picked up a copy at her bus stop, expecting something vaguely political or economic, but she only found updates about board meetings and a new chain of salad bars. John seemed like the type who would attend board meetings as a recreational activity, but until she suddenly developed an interest in the banalities of suburban life, no more newspapers for her. That left her on her phone most days unless she had homework to do. One morning, when she was in the mood for conversation, she asked John how he was enjoying his newspaper; the answer, she assumed, would be the same as on any other day, but if she were lucky it would start a conversation. John looked up, surprised as usual, and dropped the classifieds page in his astonishment. Beth, not knowing if John held a particular interest in antiques or plumbing services, bent down to return the page to him, carefully avoiding crumpling the paper. Still in a generous mood, and worrying that he did not in fact need the classifieds page, she saw that his right shoe was untied; John had never quite mastered the double knot. As she was already bent down anyway, she then took the initiative to tie John's shoe for him, all while maintaining a casual smile that conveyed this was normal etiquette and just what friends did.

"How are you on this fine morning, Beth?"

"I'm fantastic, how are you, John?" Their conversations had grown more frequent due to the club, which encouraged small talk between fellow good people as a means of boosting camaraderie. Beth and John were both reserved enough to generally avoid this whenever possible, but after the newspaper, the ice was broken and it would have been weirder, they thought, not to continue acknowledging each other.

"I'm hanging in there, I'm hanging in there. How are your friends?"

"What a funny coincidence, John, I have some exciting news about one of your best friends, but I don't know if she told you already."

"Do tell. My interest is piqued."

"Regina and Tom are officially a couple now." John dropped his newspaper again, this time picking it up before Beth could. Tom and Regina's courtship was brief, so brief that Beth had no knowledge until she saw Tom and Regina holding hands in the hallway after school and forced her to explain what happened.

When Tom asked Regina the first time if she'd like to study with him, she was so happy to finally be the recipient of the inquiry that she said yes immediately. The same logic applied a week later when Tom proposed a more romantic trip to the mall. Regina had discovered through trial and error that while John was not opposed to eating lunch with her occasionally at school, shopping was a no-go. She even left the opportunity open for other, more John-suitable social events, but John found movie theaters smelly, and he didn't seem like enough of a foodie for lunch out on the town (more precisely, as he seemed content with a sandwich or some variation thereof daily, would he really want a manicured salad? Or even more precisely, would he look happy and Instagrammable while eating one?). Unlike that self-absorbed, cynical, holier-than-thou John, Tom was able to make the first move, and that combined with his smile and desire to treat her to lunch (at nice restaurants, too) was a winning combination. Her prince had come.

"So Regina, I saw your Snapchat story. Tell me everything," Juliet said eagerly before school one day. Juliet had a nagging suspicion for a few weeks then that Regina took more away from her lake trip than she had previously said.

"Well, at first he asked me to help him study for a chemistry test, and we just hit it off after that, you know?"

"You certainly have chemistry with him. I cannot think of anyone who would have been more eligible than he; he's truly a man of good fortune. What is he like?"

"Strong, witty, assertive, sweet... he's just so many things. I don't know. He's great."

"Are you a couple yet, or just good friends?"

"A couple of good friends." Regina winked, and both of them laughed.

"What first attracted you to him? I mean, yeah, we both know he's awesome, but was it his strength or wit?" Juliet thought it a bit tactless to say it outright, but she suspected that Regina was infatuated with Tom for more reasons than just the physical. Tom tried his hardest not to flaunt his wealth—and it was really hard for him, because he often wanted to badly—but everyone could see from his clothes and the Ubers he took to leave school that he had more than he let on. He had learned from a young age some classic paternal wisdom that he thought applied to his new friendship with Regina: "Everyone has their price, Tom. You can get anyone to do anything you want if you find what they want and give it to them." He knew Regina's family was closer in financial stature to him than the poverty line, of course, but Regina was so happy to be in the presence of wealth that he couldn't help himself.

"His voice is full of money," Regina said suddenly.

John was going through a similar set of mental gymnastics to process all of Beth's new information; his jaw slowly dropped and he sputtered slightly, fragments of words falling out. It hurt to know that Regina was so fickle; even if he did not reciprocate her affections, he appreciated the idea of someone having affections for him. In fact, that idea was almost better than the real thing. It comforted him slightly to dismiss this new romance as the result of bribery. John considered himself principled, and most importantly, frugal: he saw no reason to spend the money he earned from his grandparents or his weekly allowance on trivialities. There were times for generosity, but spending money as a means of gaining someone's affections was effectively enabling prostitution.

Prostitution was thus added to one of John's many moral fears. He had an active imagination already, and every Friday, as he heard his fellow club members blow the whistle on kids smoking marijuana in the restrooms, discreetly fornicating in class, and playing poker in the band room after school, he became all the more certain it was his responsibility to fight back. John volunteered every week in the "morality patrol," who would go around the school during lunch, pick up trash, and chastise those who were considered to be human trash. He didn't care much about the socialization, or the respect and wary looks their special new uniforms offered them. What mattered most was that he was doing his part to make Heller a better place.

"Today, I want to talk about willpower. It takes a special mind, a cultivated mind, to do what we believe is right in the face of overwhelming odds. All around us, people encourage us to sin: our morality patrols have seen lizard-like temptresses lounging behind the school, smoking and hollering and encouraging our people to join them. But nevertheless, we resist. Would any of us here care to share some personal anecdotes about how they have displayed willpower? Go on, tell us in your own words." Mr. Cathcart had suggested once to Frank that he join the improv team; why would he when this was so much fun? Frank got an outlet for his creativity, the school was a bit cleaner, it at least looked like his classmates were along for the ride, what more could he ask for?

John found it immensely gratifying to identify temptations in his life and ignore them. He sometimes wondered if the elementary school drug training was accurate and that hooded men would emerge from the bushes and offer him cocaine; he had rehearsed his courteous denial many times, mumbling to himself exactly what his teacher had told him then. He talked about some of these experiences at the club meeting when prompted, explaining how he ignored the lecherous glares of his depraved classmates. It did not occur to him that Beth and Regina would realize they were the subject of some of these anecdotes. Frank, having no knowledge of the newspaper from that morning and misremembering the Regina incident as hopelessly romantic, was proud of John for showing some spine. The fellow club members' polite applause, enforced as to encourage members to grow comfortable with the environment, emboldened John. He knew that he was doing the right thing, and he prayed fervently that the others would follow suit. He had heard Beth once talk about how the Lord was her shepherd while at the lake, on some occasion when he needed a Biblical reference explained to him, and he hoped Frank could shepherd him and other wayward souls toward a brighter future.

"Alan, were we supposed to add the salt first before we shook the vial? If so, I forgot." Alan let out an exasperated sigh, then flipped through his disheveled lab notebook and slid it across the lab bench to Behrooz, the instructions open. Behrooz read the instructions again, then looked at his own copy just to make sure. Behrooz gave Alan an apologetic look.

"Argh, do you realize how much effort it will be to redo those last three steps? I thought you were the science guy." While Behrooz was initially excited to be in the same lab group as Alan and John again, his excitement rapidly faded once they started doing labs. Biology was a safe science, as they knew it: the samples of vegetables they placed under the microscope were at no risk of spontaneously combusting or spraying acid. Chemistry was a different sort of beast: an inventive modification to procedure was not met with "Write that down, I want sixth period to try this" but instead "I don't know what chemical you just made, but to be safe, everyone exit the classroom immediately!" There was nothing improvisational about chemistry, and Ms. Denham made sure that Behrooz understood that after class when the above incident happened.

"You're a leader now, Behrooz. You can't let these things happen under your watch, or even worse, do them yourself." Behrooz apologized copiously. But this wasn't really all his fault, he thought while watching Alan and John squabble about which color their solution was on the pH strip. John was a natural butterfingers whose hands were rarely steady unless he was holding a pencil; Behrooz tried coaching him on this once during lunch, with no noticeable improvement, and had even gone to Ms. Denham, who unhelpfully suggested John wear bicycle gloves. Alan was assertive, and took great pleasure in being right and far less in being wrong. He insisted on precision, wasting far too much time making sure the meniscus in every test tube was right where it should be; at least his hands were steady enough to pour precisely. Whenever Behrooz encouraged Alan to speed up and skip these needless steps, as soon as another error was evident in the results, it was clearly due to a missing milligram of copper sulfate pentahydrate and not because Alan read a 1 as a 7. Behrooz thought he was the only person capable of taking the middle path and steering their sinking ship, and this stress gnawed at him; his test scores were not always up to par, one field where John and Alan had zero issues, and a few times Ms. Denham had asked him with genuine worry if he was suffering from anxiety.

These worries came to a head one day after a long weekend, when the three of them were working on yet another lab; this time, by some miracle, they had seemingly managed to do everything correctly. While they waited for their gelatin to denature, Behrooz reached into his backpack and brought out a bag of Iranian pistachios. The highest quality in the world, he promised—did any of them want any? John said yes without any question, and Alan sniffed his warily before doing the same; they didn't quite resemble the pistachio ice cream he was used to. They stood there, cracking shells and chatting away, Behrooz glad this icebreaker worked, until he looked up to see Ms. Denham looming over them furiously.

"What do you think you're doing?"

"I'm being efficient, ma'am, fueling my brain while we wait—healthy food leads to a healthy mind. It's what being a good person is all about," Alan explained in a tone he sincerely meant to be instructional but really sounded condescending to Ms. Denham.

"You really take that document seriously? But no, you cannot eat those in class; do you realize how expensive it would be to fix a machine that has a little piece of pistachio wedged in it somewhere? Or if one of your classmates is allergic to nuts, inhales some dust, and goes into a fit of anaphylactic shock?"

"We're sorry, Ms. Denham. I do not think this is the time to question my moral principles, as we are doing science." Alan had inadvertently become the spokesperson for their group, and he was doing an awful job at it; once again, Behrooz regretted not taking charge.

"Don't be sorry, just do better," she said with a sigh, muttering under her breath something about the deficiencies of the high school English curriculum.

"Oh, by the way: do you want a pistachio?" Behrooz asked, undeterred by her negativity.

"Well, I don't see any harm," she said, and Behrooz put a few into her waiting hand.

Pranav found Frank after a club meeting one day, who was excited to see a sane person with whom he could have a normal conversation.

"What's up, Pranav?"

"I understand you're busy these days, but could you spare an hour to look through my English essay?"

"Certainly. What are you reading? Still The Scarlet Letter?"

"Yeah." Pranav's enthusiasm for English sagged as the class delved into The Scarlet Letter; he viewed the overstated symbolism and the unremarkable plot as relics of a bygone era. He understood what he was reading, as much as there was a lady and her creepy devil child, and this level of understanding combined with well-chosen literary analysis was sufficient for class if not his enjoyment. Frank found this fascinating, or enough to spend hours editing his essay. His feedback was meticulous, insisting on a far higher standard than Pranav's usual; Frank did not believe it was sufficient to only draw conclusions from the text, but also explain how those conclusions bolstered the thesis. After a rigorous editing session, they created a finished product that Frank was happy with and Pranav was too tired to reject. When asked if he wanted to borrow the book, he said he'd get his chance next year. Their collective efforts were rewarded, so much so that Pranav's English teacher, Ms. Liu, was flummoxed:

"And you said a sophomore helped you?"

"Yeah, Frank. He's the guy who's running the How To Be A Good Person Club. You know, the one with the morality patrols based on his manifesto."

Ms. Liu laughed loudly. "I have a meeting in a few minutes, but I'm going to need you to tell me all about this later. Just how you said that, so deadpan, means there's something interesting going on. This is Mr. T's club, right?"

"It's his, but he doesn't do much. He sits in the back and grades papers."

"He and I need to have a little chat." Someone knocked on the door, and Pranav took the opportunity to exit.

Mr. Simon's classroom was positioned awkwardly at the corner of one of the buildings, with massive windows in the back to let in enough light that even when he had the lights turned off, the room appeared in chiaroscuro. When the lights were turned on, the light was blinding: it reflected off every table and every wall, and his students developed headaches at a rate above the school average. They were watching the same documentary about the Third Wave that Mr. T had loaned Frank previously, and were taking notes furiously. At times Mr. Simon would stop the documentary and ask for questions.

"Mr. Simon, sir! Psychologically, why do people go along with these movements? I always think of it as a natural human instinct to seek freedom, democracy, and equality, but this seems to be everything but that. I can't believe it happened so close to us," Beth asked smoothly, no longer stumbling over her now-standard salutation. A few students in the class snickered, and Mr. Simon was about to deliver a rambling segue about how Beth was answering her own question in a remarkably astute way until he realized she saw no irony in this.

"Well, that's a very good question, I must admit. Does anyone in the class want to take a stab at answering it?"

"Well, Beth, as much as I appreciate your optimism, I don't think it really holds true in most cases. Society is founded on discipline, everywhere we go, and standard power structures. Mr. Simon lectures to us, and we stay silent in our seats because it's how we've been trained. There is no physical force restraining me from standing up, as I am now, and walking toward him, but I can see that all of you are looking at me with horror because I'm violating the social order. I think it is a natural human instinct to respect people in power, even if they are authoritarian, because those in power tend to come with solutions to problems. In the documentary, they talk about academic performance improving, and as I look around this classroom, I can tell that a few certain someones have tidied up Mr. Simon's room for him. Imagine you're a poor farmer somewhere, with nothing to live for besides raising pigs and eating potatoes—someone comes over and says that he can make you rich and cure the blight affecting your crops, and all you have to do is to wear a swastika on your arm, you're going to take that offer without question. It doesn't matter if you value freedom or not, he's the one in charge and you have to respect him," Ted gleefully answered. Typically he would not be this verbose in class, especially without Tom to egg him on, but his approach had been doing wonders for his grades. The less he studied, the better he did, and Mr. Simon appreciated his habit of giving accurate answers in class. Ted even went as far as to tutor some of his classmates, offering his own unique perspectives on the subject matter covered. One area he still struggled with was coherency, often stringing together chains of related thoughts to such a degree that by the end, nobody knew where he started, but Ted was a flawless imitator and merely spoke as Mr. Simon did.

"Ted, how can you constantly provide such astute and timely perspectives? Are you a time-traveler sent from the 1960s?" Mr. Simon asked him after class, when Ted and Beth both lingered.

"I don't think there's anything special to it. All I try to do is put myself in the shoes of those historical figures and think: if I were them, what would I have done?"

"That's not as easy as you make it sound. But anyway, I'm glad to see that you're helping people like Beth out when they need it," Mr. Simon said meditatively.

"I appreciate it very much, Mr. Simon. Ted has helped me a lot; I don't think I would be doing nearly as well as I am in your class right now without his help," Beth contributed. "I do need to leave for cheer practice now, but thank you once again, sir." She left in a hurry, and Mr. Simon turned to Ted once again.

"You know, I don't really mind all the 'Mr. Simon, sir!' stuff. I appreciate the respect, and I do think the classroom is the right place for that. But I'm a bit out of touch with what's hip these days, Ted, so you'll have to help me out here: is there some new teenage trend that's driving all this, you know, strangeness?" Ted nodded.

"Well, it's that How To Be A Good Person Club, they're teaching people to do all of this."

"Obviously I know about that, Ted, it's barely fifty feet away from me. But no, it's more than that: I've been teaching at Heller for longer than you may think, but I don't quite remember this level of idiocy and blind zealotry. If it wasn't the club, they'd be bottle-flipping or something instead, and I'd be asking you what primal instinct drives people to throw their garbage on the roof." Ted shook his head as if to say that he did not consider himself one of those blind zealots.

"I don't want to take up too much of your time, Ted, but I don't know how I can change my curriculum to foster the same sort of healthy academic curiosity that people like you possess. It's like all of my students, no matter if they address me as sir or not, were hit on the head by a hammer when they were little. I'm fighting a losing battle here."

Ted considered himself many things, but "academic" was not one of them, and he was starting to feel contempt for Mr. Simon. He was just another teacher who was stuck in some byzantine labyrinth of bookshelves and didn't know anything about who they taught. Ted was regretting doing so well in his class now—if anyone else heard about this, he no longer would be the cool kid. Ted thanked Mr. Simon generously for his time and left, and Mr. Simon went back to his desk and started grading yet another batch of worksheets devoid of insight or creativity.

Discussion Questions:

Are Tom and Regina a good couple in your mind? What makes them a good/not good pairing?

Is the comparison of the club to The Third Wave appropriate? Is Frank crossing a line with this?

What makes John and Alan similar? Both seem to have issues fitting in at Heller, but how do they take different approaches to solving this problem?