John did not mind at all that Juliet was now in his Chinese class. She was unfailingly kind and patient with him, particularly the latter: while John considered his mind to be a steel trap, it was really a sieve, and Juliet was always there to help when John forgot simple ideas like what they were supposed to have done as homework or the word for "yesterday." It seemed only fair that someone with natural ability would be rewarded proportionally. It took him a few weeks to doubt this notion. Too many times did Mrs. Huang smile particularly genuinely when Juliet entered the room, and Juliet was often sent on special missions to copy papers or gather supplies during class; Juliet often arrived a few minutes late with a lanyard around her neck and a pile of papers in her hands. Rarely did this special treatment reach the level of favoritism, but when coupled with the fact that Mrs. Huang barely knew his name, he simply had to wonder. A little bit of hypothesizing never did anyone any harm.

"Who really runs the school, do you think?" John asked Ernest during a physics lab; Ernest readjusted their inclined plane and turned to him.

"Is this a thought experiment or just a casual question? Do you expect me to know?"

"I don't think it's either of those things. I think it's a question rooted in very real concerns, ones which we may derive from observing what goes on around us. It's becoming all the more clear, at least to me, that there are some people to whom the rules do not apply, who are free to do as they please and at no great personal cost."

"So you mean the club people like Alan."

"What about him? But anyway, when I see people like Juliet show up to class late because they were running errands across the school, when I certainly was never given the same opportunity to even prove my merit, what am I supposed to think? That life isn't fair? That it should just be accepted fact that a few people are able to control the rest of us on little strings to do whatever they very well please whenever they'd like?"

"That's exactly what we're supposed to believe, John. Life isn't fair. I can't believe it's taken you three years to come to that conclusion. You saw what they did to Jason earlier, although I do admit it's kind of karmic, but there are some people who lie and cheat and swindle simply because it gets their blood pumping. That's no excuse. Let me tell you a secret about your club that Frank would never tell you because nobody would listen to him:"

"Go on?"

"At some point in Mrs. Huang's class, Frank and I were talking about some sort of stupid philosophical dilemma, I can't even remember what it was at this point. But anyway, Frank said something stupid that he thought to be exceedingly clever, I challenged him on it, and he took that as a dare. So he went off to find the first gullible flirt like Juliet who was willing to give him the answers he wanted to hear and wrote some drivel just to convince her that he was a little Mr. Perfect and soothe his raging ego. And so he went off to build his personality cult and arrange everything just so that now he gets to plunder the school and everyone thinks he's right. Do you know why Mrs. Huang's so nice to Juliet? She's her TA. Do you know who else is her TA? Frank. You're absolutely right. It's clear who runs the school: idiots."

In John's mind, Ernest spoke paradoxically. He had to be wrong because he was criticizing the club and the near-mythical recollection of its founding; especially with Juliet on the team, Frank had been more willing to discuss her initial involvement, if only as an inspirational tale. He had neglected to mention her hug or her peculiar fascination with bubble tea and his personal life, instead choosing to discuss the open-hearted mentorship he had delivered and the effusive insights he received in return. But John could not believe that Frank had that killer instinct in him to mess with someone like Juliet just to settle a bet. Frank had been so kind to him freshman year! And wait a second—at the theater that night, Frank must have known what was up with his ticket. He must have romantically planned it out with Regina, all just so she could get her sweetheart. It was straight out of a movie, in a good way. But wait! John wasn't Regina's sweetheart then, or at least he did not know it at the time. All this was leading him somewhere, and it was leading him astray. Ernest was wrong. But Ernest was also right: everywhere John looked, too many favors were exchanged. John considered himself above playing whatever dirty games his classmates played, but that wasn't the mindset that brought success at the end of the day. The rich were robbing the poor, and they were too stupid to know it.

"The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist," John said suddenly. "You're right: call him Satan, Baal, Lucifer, whatever, he exists. He's out there, lurking behind every shadowy corner with a knife in his hand, ready to plant seeds of darkness and twist the threads of fate whenever he thinks it will lead to human destruction. He pits us against each other, and all those people above us serve him. Some willingly, I bet, but many don't know that what they're doing is wrong. It's all very interesting, Ernest, thank you for enlightening me!"

"Now, I wouldn't take it that far, but I think you're getting the idea, at least in a way that makes sense to you. I can already tell we disagree on many finer points of this philosophy, so I'll leave it at this: to thine own self be true. Let's finish this lab, shall we?"

Tom was starting to discover just how much adjustment to his daily routine he could tolerate. At the beginning Frank insisted on the elite members adopting business casual dress, something he personally had adopted earlier to an extreme degree and thought would rub off onto the other members. He even led a weekend field trip to a few different thrift stores to begin accumulating a treasure trove of spare outfits, helped by a few teachers who saw this as an opportunity to clear out their wardrobes. Tom, of course, already owned the clothing required, and as soon as Regina called his outfit sexy, he went along with it. The daily meetings were more of an inconvenience, although at least now they were air-conditioned. Daily meetings required daily reading and preparation; Frank relied on his team to give second opinions on the curriculum, and thus Tom forced himself to read and take notes. For a few weeks, this was certainly acceptable, but Tom began to find editorials and essays boring. Frank frequently targeted his elite members during meetings, hoping that they would start discussions off on a bright note, and Tom found this stressful, especially as his rambling outbursts were now no longer rewarded. The cherry on top was that he had to do everything with a smile, as he worried that part of his appeal to Regina was his deep intellect. For once in his life, Tom had to work hard.

The meetings becoming air-conditioned, finally being hosted inside the MPR, was the coincidental result of a multi-pronged effort spurred by nobody in particular. The juniors were reading The Scarlet Letter in English, and Frank thought he could tap into some of that puritanical zeal with his meetings; he was succeeding admirably, so much so that Ms. Foster began to realize that her new class secretary was in charge of a radically different operation than she had assumed originally. As always occurred when they quarreled over principles in which they believed passionately, the club members would end up gasping furiously for air and blinking back bitter tears of conviction. There were many principles in which they believed passionately. They were crazy. Just crazy enough, in fact, that Ms. Foster suggested they move into the suddenly available MPR, where they could enjoy sitting in real seats and everyone else eating lunch did not feel like they were part of a non-consensual improv troupe. Frank was not willing to concede his ground immediately; that waited until the rainy season began early that year. Frank could tolerate the rain himself, and he most certainly could make others do the same, but it would be a colossal waste of money, and for that reason he moved inside. The meetings continued their fanatical fervor, much to the amusement of onlookers, who pressed their faces against the glass as if they beheld zoo animals.

"It's an interesting sight, isn't it?" Ms. Liu remarked to Mrs. Huang, who had decided not to take her TAs' descriptions on faith alone and instead come watch from a safe distance.

"Excellent leadership," she responded, and Ms. Liu agreed. From inside, Frank pointed out the many passersby in various outfits, all scurrying like ants, all engaged in conversations that were muted from inside their glass box:

"Look at how everyone comes and goes through the courtyard. My, what strange people they are! All of them—all of them have their faults somewhere, and it's our job to find them. You may think we're killing time here, snacking, gossiping, watching, but from every detail we can infer something about the whole. Now, look at that girl who seems to want to speak to us. She's turning around, she's hesitating. Will she step in? Will she run away?"

"We must go and help her!" Alan dryly remarked.

"And for what, as a curiosity to be examined on stage, berated for her messy hair and dirty face? We can do that without her in the room, certainly! Suppose she were to come in, the door's unlocked. I promise each of you we shall treat her with every due respect. Ask her if she needs help, why she chose to finally step up and confront us—she's already had weeks, but I certainly haven't seen her before—promise her temptation and enlightenment. But she won't. She's too weak. I can see it etched in her slouched figure and wary eyes. Let's resume our pastime and watch the folks go by."

"Sir! What about those teachers? Are they to be watched too?" A newer member asked.

"Who watches the watchers? A very good question, and one that deserves an equally good answer. It's entirely unnecessary, actually; it is a statistical fact that we agree with our teachers more than we agree with our fellow students. Any scheme we devise is likely, nay guaranteed, to have their mark of approval! They are busy folks, they have no time to step inside, and even if they would, they would have the common courtesy to remain silent. So what difference does it make? Let them watch us while we watch our classmates."

Every brunch, Alan would make his rounds through the shadier hallways of the school, where his customers would give him a few bills, and in exchange he'd give them a few vials of a murky green liquid. He knew all their names by heart, reinforced by cross-referencing their pictures in the yearbook, and he kept a meticulous list of who bought how much. Sometimes he'd find empty vials in the bathroom stalls, dropped there by sloppy students; he'd pick them up, give them a quick wash in the sink, and save them for later. Other sales were made after school near the science wing, where Ms. Norris would walk past and pretend not to see anything (sometimes Alan would top up his supply from a bottle he kept in one of her fridges, which she allowed under the condition that she'd drink whatever supply remained at the end of the week). This scheme certainly was profitable: the supplies cost practically nothing, and Alan charged different customers different amounts based on how much they were willing to pay and how many others they recruited, and he and Frank were astonished to discover that they had made a few hundred dollars in only a few days. When told of these profits, the principal surprised both of them by simply saying "I'm sure you need no reward for your efforts, but since I can't exactly pay you, consider it all yours. If you need any additional help, I'll see what I can do." Alan felt no guilt about any of this, as this would teach the citizens of the school to become better people.

He had reached that moral conclusion in a fairly roundabout way, one explained to him by Frank before school even started as he showed him the hidden locations of the celery juice stashes. A concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Anyone who bought celery juice, which for the sake of plausible deniability was code-named "juice," did so not knowing exactly what it was; they relied solely on rumor and some lingering faith they had in Alan to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. This was irrational—what sort of idiot would buy drugs at school?—and the cure for irrationality was education. Education through experience, the most profitable sort of education. Until their marks began to show concern, they were effectively consenting to be victims of their gambit. Alan felt no shame at all, not even when Ms. Denham caught him in the act once and was about to give him the tongue lashing of his life until Ms. Norris nonchalantly reached over, grabbed a vial, and drank it in one gulp. "Have you considered adding a bit of lemon juice? I have some in my room," she suggested, adding it would brighten the liquid; Ms. Denham was thus forced to apologize to Alan and try a vial herself. This specific hallway interaction was seen by one legitimate user, who immediately told his friends that "juice" was OK—even the teachers did it!

Alan tried his hardest to be discreet, and had grown quite adept at peddling his magical elixir without being spotted by unsympathetic peers. Unfortunately, Alan's best effort was inadequate to satisfy Beth, who saw him make a transaction and began connecting the dots. There was only one thing Alan could possibly be selling, and that was "juice"; but Alan was a club officer, and no club officer of good, honest moral character would sell drugs. And if they did, they certainly would be more subtle about it. That left another possibility, that this was club-endorsed, and Beth thought back to her offhand conversation with Frank about vaping last year: was this the "better" plan he had in mind? She gasped in horror—could he be poisoning all his classmates? No, definitely not, not if the picture she saw on Snapchat of Ms. Norris drinking "juice" by the bottle was real. Ms. Norris did not strike her as the stoner type, so that led her to another conclusion, using the same observational skills Frank had taught her: whatever this was, it was no drug, and knowing his sense of humor it probably was juice of some sort. Beth did not know if she ought to be horrified or amazed at how much Frank cared, in his own unique way, but she restrained herself. Some of her friends were ensnared in whatever trap Alan had planted, and she needed to do more than baselessly speculate.

After school one day, Beth followed Alan, pressing herself against walls and once even crawling beneath a bench in order to not be seen; he was vigilant, which surprised her. Alan took a roundabout route through the school, and just as Beth was growing bored, Alan led her to Mr. Galantine's classroom, which was unlocked but empty. She waited a safe distance away and pretended to call somebody; Alan left soon after, now not carrying the box that had attracted her attention originally. Beth waited a minute or so after Alan left Mr. Galantine's classroom, then nonchalantly walked toward the open door; she was surprised to see Pranav doing the same thing, and they sized each other up trying to decide if their cover was blown.

"Hey, uh, do you know what's up with the boxes?" Beth asked, already worried that she had said too much.

"I wasn't told the exact details for security, although he said he'll tell me the details later."

"So this is one of Frank's projects?"

"It's club business, that's all I know, and I think I know what it is." Beth thought for a moment, looking around the classroom for any clue.

"So if you know what it is, why are you clearly following Alan around?"

"Because I'm bored. If I were really curious and wanted to help out with whatever this mystery project is, he'd let me, but I feel like a secret agent now. It's just a bit of escapism, and he'll have a good chuckle if I tell him about this later." Pranav, assuming this answer would be satisfactory, started walking around the classroom hoping to find the box under a bookshelf or some papers. Beth stayed a minute, but decided that even if he didn't have anything better to do than play Sherlock Holmes, she certainly did, and she wished Pranav good luck and left. Pranav sighed in relief—his cover was not blown. Frank had really told him to follow Alan to make sure he was not pocketing any profits, and Pranav was curious to see if his missing robotics inventory would be explained too, and thus he thought his story plausible. It would have been completely unbelievable for Pranav to claim ignorance, but it was easier for him to give a contradictory enough narrative that Beth would simply not care.

Pranav did not concern himself with how exactly Alan executed his orders. He had thought the elaborate system of boxes cartoonish at first, but Frank believed them an effective use of reverse psychology: details like the skulls and crossbones and the boxes only being labeled with prime numbers did indeed make the scheme childish, and nobody would suspect children of selling placebos to their classmates. Originally, they were to split the profits four ways, one quarter going directly into the club funds, but Alan insisted that his recent success in the cryptocurrency market could be replicated, a conclusion the others accepted when Alan tripled his own share in less than a week. From there, it was like money showered from the heavens, and the reason Frank was so concerned about missing profits was that he did not want them to lose out on even more potential reward. Pranav had an uncle who dealt in precious metals, and so they bought a few gold bars and kept them in Mr. T's safe (the nice one with the retinal scanner, not the insecure one he used to keep his scantrons). They were told the stock market was lucrative, and so Alan set up an account using what he said was a technicality in Romanian law to trade there; Mr. T helped by translating the relevant documents for them.

"No, no, I can't possibly take anything," he said after Frank offered him a tin of caviar they had bought on a whim.

"But everyone has a share," Frank insisted.

"If you insist," Mr. T conceded, and they split caviar on blini.

They bought commodities too, pork bellies and bananas and wheat and cotton Frank joked they could dip in chocolate and feed to their members as a nutritious superfood. They were having the times of their lives, and nobody could stop them, and the longer they went on the more clear it became only the four of them could know everything. Mr. Kurtz and Ms. Wolfe knew enough too, but assumed that more students were involved; it was implausible, fantastical even, to conclude that some of the most altruistic people on campus would choose to act in their own best interests. Exactly a month into the scheme, they all celebrated together with chocolate cake Frank promised did not have any cotton in it, and they clinked glasses and wished each other luck in making Heller the best school it could possibly be.

Discussion Questions:

Ernest explains to John where How To Be A Good Person originated, but we've already received a few different versions of this story. What makes these retellings different? Who is telling the truth?

Why do you think the "juice" scheme is so successful? What is its raging success satirizing?

Do you feel any sympathy for Frank?