When Mr. T came back from the break room to see an orderly queue of roughly fifty students that hugged the wall and went all the way down the hallway, he knew he had to have a talk with Frank. Many of the newcomers were freshmen, whose initial energy from arriving at a new school had faded into droopy complicity; they mimicked the posture and mannerisms of the veterans around them, and thus looked beaten and worn. Alan, in his ingenuity, had commandeered a desk from another classroom and sat with a clipboard registering new arrivals, who then went against a white wall to have their ID photos taken. Mr. T stood there admiring the spectacle, along with a few other teachers, until Frank came to check in, who seemed just as surprised as they were.

"Isn't it a bit mean to get all these kids' hopes up only to waitlist them? And if you weren't planning on doing so, I think my classroom would be a bit, shall I say, cramped." Mr. T asked, still keeping one eye on the endlessly snaking line, which also included some current sophomores that felt they missed out last year. "Especially if this is going to be an everyday thing. Have you looked into renting the multi-purpose room?"

"They don't let students do that generally, but maybe I can pull some strings."

"Or what about holding the meeting outside? We can bring some tables out, cordon off the area, and with the spectacle you'd be sure to attract some curious glances." Mr. T could tell by Mr. Simon's bemused expression that this suggestion could backfire, but as Mr. T did love to dine alfresco, he saw no reason not to move the festivities out of his cluttered classroom.

"And you're sure that nobody would mind?"

"Oh, I'm sure somebody will complain at the next staff meeting, but how will they stop fifty-odd upstanding school citizens? And if they don't like that, they can always let you use the MPR." This seemingly being a perfect plan, Frank walked down the line to shake hands and greet all his new converts, and Mr. T slid by them to enter his besieged classroom. Mr. Simon and the others held back, and when the bell rang, the throng dispersed. "Don't you remember your first day of high school being like this?" Mr. Simon sarcastically delivered.

For an August morning, the weather was warm, although the meteorologists predicted the weather to turn in the afternoon. Tom rounded the corner into the student parking lot quickly enough that a father with his kid walking to the elementary school startled back; he honked at them as warning, even though he was not close enough to hit them. Driving quickly felt good: the wind whipping through Tom's air invigorated him, even though it was 10 AM, and nobody could mistake his red convertible for anyone else's car, especially with its aggressive shine. His father had stopped him from immediately ordering a custom license plate, thinking it crass; if not for that, he would be driving the Langley-mobile. Tom was disappointed that his car attracted few glances from anyone besides Ted, who accosted him as soon as he started walking up the steps:

"Nice ride. Where'd you get it?"

"One of my dad's clients had a spare car, and he heard I had just received my license and felt generous."

"So a bribe?"

"Well," Tom thought out loud, "this was after the case closed. My dad has rich clients—is it really unbelievable they have a few spare cars?"

"Save the next one for me." Ted had made a resolution before the year began to move past any prior missteps and finally have a normal high school experience; as much as it pained him to think it, maybe the universe had given him a sign. His school, with its weather stains and peeling paint, was not a hunting ground. It was not an utopia or a gilded hall of human virtue like everyone else seemed to think. It was a prison, one which trapped free minds like him and stabbed them in the back when they talked too much—not a prison, perhaps, but an insane asylum. Those poor freshmen who explored the school warily, searching for their new haunts, who would tell them that every step had been traced before, that there was probably still gum stuck under the tables older than them, and that the teachers wouldn't remember their names after a few years? School was a rip-off, plain and simple. Some of Ted's musings were indeed prompted by seeing Tom's new set of wheels, desiring very much to have his own to ride along the highway somewhere, and realizing that even if he had his own convertible, he could not go anywhere because he was at school.

Pranav made a pit stop in the robotics room before school to ensure everything was in order; he was the boss, and all was indeed well. He, Ernest, and Jason had managed to set aside some minor ideological differences and instead cherish their similarities: they all wanted to win robotics tournaments, they all thought the administration was against them because they didn't bring in as much revenue as the football team, and they all secretly thought the others were horrible people. Pranav thought that Jason and Ernest were both too obstinate, which perhaps would be forgivable if their preferences did not constantly disagree. The team was thus simultaneously destined for its best year ever and trapped in a downward spiral toward fiscal ruin. On the other hand, Ernest thought Pranav was snarky and constantly trying his hardest to replicate Frank's success in his own lesser domain; Pranav had over time grown paranoid about inventory not matching up, and when there was nothing to do during meetings, he often scoured drawers and supply closets for missing components. At first, he attributed discrepancies to incompetent freshmen, but over time he grew to suspect sabotage: the parts which Pranav knew to be definitely missing, if combined, could create a 3D printer—or maybe a trebuchet, he wasn't quite sure. In any case, Ernest frequently told Pranav to drop the case, or at the very least blame Jason.

It took remarkably little adjustment to move the club meeting outside; as instructed, Alan ran down to the theater with a few others and breathlessly asked the drama teacher to borrow some supplies, who couldn't have cared less since they promised to bring them back. Rows of chairs were pulled out of a supply closet that Pranav had the key to, and it was a miracle that the arrangement remained untouched until lunch time. Alan was displeased when he realized he'd have to complete this circuit daily, but as it was for a good cause, he relented; besides, it seemed the perfect task for some new recruits who wanted to endear themselves to the management.

"I don't know, isn't this a bit much?" One of them whispered to the other while Alan escorted back from the theater.

"This is like the army. If you're a coward, you can quit any time, or you can prove that you're capable of serving your school and by extension your country," Alan interjected, somehow overhearing them. The two freshmen shrugged and kept going. Frank had already begun his lecture by the time they all came back, but he did not seem to care. The meeting was largely a reprise from the previous year, with some added exhortations for veterans to mentor new members, and by the end of it another batch of new recruits was ready to tackle the rest of the day with a newfound vigor. The drama teacher, who had come up from his lair by the end of the lunch period to see what exactly the teachers were emailing each other about, went up to Alan and generously bequeathed the equipment to him until it was needed elsewhere. The only way one could tell there had been a club meeting on the grassy green was by observing the peculiar absence of discarded napkins and wrappers. As nobody had stopped them, although it was unclear to the officers if their good fortune was due to bureaucratic delay, they resolved to repeat the same ritual henceforth.

After school, Juliet made what she believed was her first visit to her academic counselor, who initially recognized her from the football games and then from the boisterous club meeting that had earlier occurred right outside his window. After reminding him of her name, Juliet began explaining passionately why she wished, or even deserved, to transfer out of her Spanish class into the equivalent Chinese class. This would necessitate a reshuffling of her schedule, certainly, a new free period before lunch that the counselors would have to fill for her somehow and a tearful goodbye to her new classmates, but this was really so she could learn more and become a better Tiger. Juliet did not know why she had taken Spanish originally: perhaps it was because she considered her Chinese adequate to not disappoint her parents and Japanese the language of anime obsessives, or maybe it was because it was simply the most popular choice and by extension a social obligation. But in any case, after two years of somehow passing with straight As, Juliet could barely introduce herself or order at a restaurant. Why do that, she argued, when she could instead become even more adept with the language of Confucius, Sunzi, and Xi Jinping? It pained Juliet to know that while she knew all of the dishes on her menu like the back of her hand, recently she had forgotten the word for subway station.

"But wouldn't it be cool to be trilingual?" The counselor asked, impressed by Juliet's motivation and sense of entitlement.

"Which language did you learn in school, if I may ask?"

"Russian, as back in that day, we were still unsure if the Soviets were going to invade."

"Do you still speak any Russian?"

"No."

"I think I would rather leave high school speaking two languages fluently than three poorly. If my schedule takes a few days to sort itself out, well, everything in life tends to sort itself out eventually. Please?"

The counselor sighed and stamped Juliet's schedule. "As I believe you say in your language, or at least according to Mrs. Huang, add oil." This change in Juliet's schedule took her outside Mrs. Huang's classroom the following morning; Mrs. Huang was excited that someone had seen the light and amazed the counselors had been of help, and granted Juliet an undeserving seniority—as a clearly mature student, she was to wait outside and make sure nobody got lost when trying to find her classroom. Juliet took the time before class to wander a little, thinking she had never seen this side of the school before. Below her were the doors to the boys' locker room, and by instinct she avoided stepping near. Her wandering took her as far as the teacher parking lot, which was lined with wild grasses and looked almost condemned.

As she was about to turn around, out of the corner of her eye she spotted a box camouflaged in the shade, nestled among the ivy in the hopes nobody would notice it. "Box #3," the top said, and Juliet lightly dug through the greenery in case the first two were there too. Juliet knew it was wrong to look through a stranger's belongings, but it wasn't like anyone was watching; if Mrs. Huang were to look outside, maybe she'd think she was excavating a buried freshman. Inside were rows of neatly-arranged green vials, all labeled with a milliliter volume. A piece of paper with a skull and crossbones was placed on top, which while clearly drawn in pencil still made Juliet immediately return the box where she found it and go to wash her hands.

By the time Juliet returned, John had also found his way to Mrs. Huang's door, and assumed that Juliet was lost, or maybe even looking for him for some strange reason.

"I'm in your class now," she explained, choosing to save her tales of intrigue for another time.

"You speak Chinese?" John asked.

"Not as well as I should," she responded, not wishing to ask John why else she would be in his class. Mrs. Huang seated them and Beth at the same table along with a bleary-eyed freshman who clearly was intimidated by them; despite this, John insisted on including him in their warm-up drills, not letting his poor pronunciation and grammar get in the way of anything. After a few minutes and private consultation with Beth, Juliet decided that there was no point in bursting his bubble, and so let him become the unofficial table leader.

Alan on the other end of the school was already encountering difficulties with his physics teacher. Mr. Ivanov was a mythical figure in underclassmen's eyes and an omnipresent reality in the upperclassmen's: only the most under-achieving did not take physics, and thus everyone passed through his doors at some point; even if they had Mr. T, they still used his classroom as lab space. Perceiving a constant lack of critical thinking skills in his students, Mr. Ivanov always devoted the first week to a broad overview of the scientific method and all its associated pitfalls: today, Tom and Alan were attempting to put a series of pictures in chronological order that Tom believed depicted Little Red Riding Hood bravely escaping the big bad wolf and Alan a drug bust gone horrendously wrong.

Mr. Ivanov was taking advantage of the time to do some work on his computer, which Alan extrapolated from his intermittent groans was not going according to plan. Alan was startled when Mr. Ivanov muttered "F— this" under his breath when his CD drive jammed. This wasn't something teachers were supposed to do, he thought. They were supposed to plaster a little grin on their face, a furrowed frown if feeling gutsy, and let out a few tsks to relieve the tension. Profanity was a sign of a tumultuous and fragile mind, an instinct conquered through the Bosnia-Herzegovinas and the butterflies. Alan was about to suggest one of these easy-as-pie substitutes, but he held his tongue. He could handle it. More importantly, where was the physics in physics class? Alan had always heard the phrase "this isn't rocket science," and hoped that this class would finally be rocket science; unless the big bad wolf had graduated from Caltech with a degree in mechanical engineering, there really was no discernible link so far. Tom chose to look on the bright side of things: maybe AP classes weren't really that big of a deal after all. What were fairytales anyway, kindergarten?

Ms. Liu marked the beginning of the first day of class, while the students were still squinting to read the sticky notes labeling their seats, with a few thunderous rings of a cowbell. One, two, and three rings, and when some did not seem suitably alert, one final ring, this one reverberating through the now-silent room. Ms. Liu was not one to waste precious class time. Frank considered that start to class auspicious, especially accentuated by the fact she already knew his name and seemed to act under the incorrect assumption he already knew everything and thus could act as an unofficial TA. Being an official TA was already exciting enough: Mrs. Huang had all but insisted the previous year he work during her free period the present year to grade papers, clean the classroom, record said grades in her gradebook, write emails, take phone calls, complete her annual sexual harassment training, and do everything but teach. He had spent that period going through Mrs. Huang's rosters for every class, writing down their emails for her mailing lists and their addresses "so if they misbehave so I can come find them at their house and make them do their homework." He was surprised to see Juliet's name on the roster, but chose not to ask Mrs. Huang about her new student as to not show special preference; of course, he made a private note of her information, thinking it good person behavior to keep tabs on potential rivals.

Tom and John sat together and were immediately blindsided by Ms. Liu's frenetic energy; Tom thought it weird and John thought nothing, as those days he tended to do with more frequency. John had relapsed into old habits over the summer, and approached school and most tasks with the mindset of "if it isn't broken, don't fix it": if he was used to functioning on 5 hours of sleep and coffee, why stop? John's hand moved furiously to copy down flowcharts and notes about rhetorical devices, which Ms. Liu likened to Frank's speech the previous year (Pranav had provided her a transcript at some point, which he forgot about and would later deny). Frank did not like the extra attention, especially in a class where every comment and every idea received attention; it did not occur to him that holding a massive lecture in the central courtyard with marching drills would put himself on the forefront of everyone's mind. Still, English was one of his favorite subjects, and it was rather unlikely Ms. Liu would ruin it.

Jason immediately went to Frank after class solely to confirm that they had just experienced the same thing.

"What do you think? Weird or sane?"

"She is just like any other teacher, only more so," Frank joked, and Jason criticized his lack of originality. "You know, we live in the 21st century. I think we ought to be beyond these sorts of labels. They only stereotype and homogenize."

"And this is coming from the kid who describes others as drooling simpletons, gutless ghouls, and enemies of the people on a daily basis?"

"You know, that's exactly the sort of thing an enemy of the people would say. Your dearest comrade Stalin would send you to the gulag for such an absurd claim." Jason sensed that their conversation was going nowhere and that Frank had already given him the best answer he cared to give, and waved a quick goodbye. Frank continued walking past the flowerbeds, which had been refurbished over the summer and now bloomed in different colors, and stopped to consider a sweetly fragrant rosebush that sprouted out of some patch of dirt near the parking lot, one that he must have passed by hundreds of times but never gave any notice before. It was impressive that something so beautiful could grow out of such infertile soil, and that no teenage vandal had hacked at it with a pocket-knife or uprooted it just for kicks. No stems appeared plucked by teenage flirts who wished to assemble hasty bouquets for their star-crossed lovers, even. What a strange thing to find near the figurative gateway to the school for so many, an inauspicious portal; Frank took his discovery to symbolize a sweet moral blossom, laden with the beauty found in all ordinary things, or when he saw a cluster of aphids at its base, a tragic reminder of human frailty and sorrow.

Discussion Questions:

How has Juliet's attitude changed from the beginning of the book? Do any interactions reveal a lack of sincerity?

What callbacks do we see to the first few chapters? In particular, you might want to observe we finally meet Mr. Ivanov, and how much emphasis is placed on new classes starting.

This chapter ends with another direct reference to The Scarlet Letter, the same passage referenced earlier, and you might observe the title is also a quote. What function does this direct reference serve?