Behrooz knew something was wrong when Tom didn't invite him to his birthday party. Tom paid well—this was a lot of money he was missing out on, and Behrooz certainly wasn't a recipient of the slush fund Alan still spent hours every night cultivating. He had sent a DM on Snapchat just to make sure; Tom opened it, but Behrooz received no response. Perhaps that was some sort of glitch in the software; he tried again through Instagram, with the same result. He even went as far as to send an email, still with nothing.

"Is Tom ghosting you too?" Alan asked knowingly. "He blocked me as well. What a loser."

"Don't call him a loser, I'm sure he's just working through some hard feelings. All of them are."

"All of them?"

"The longer this goes on, the more all my friends hate me. Maybe they weren't ever truly my friends. They say nasty things behind my back and get angry when I don't sympathize with them. Now I know how you feel."

"Hey! I have friends. They're just busy. Or forgetful. Who needs friends when you have a mission like this? It's enough to put some fire in your belly. Everyone needs to make sacrifices."

"You're in denial, Alan. We're all losers here. Frank and Juliet are robbing us blind and making out like bandits, while all we do is clean up their messes. It's not fair."

"I wouldn't go as far as to call it robbery: the fault lies with us for not being sufficiently disciplined studies at the club. No wonder why they don't trust us."

"Call me anti-intellectual, but I don't see why anyone would go to the club if they weren't jockeying to replace Frank once he graduates. But I suppose I can see some positives in this. Are you going on the charity walk tomorrow?" Behrooz rarely volunteered before he joined the student council, but he was starting to like the feeling. It felt good to use his position to help others in ways that did not require a manifesto to understand—it was certainly cliché, he thought, but he knew that one must be the change they wish to see in the world. If anything, when his parents asked him what he did in school that day, he could tell them something they'd be proud of.

Louis had asked him at a party once after Behrooz expressed his distaste for Alan's actions if he was part of the resistance, working to dismantle the club from within. At the very first meeting with Ms. Foster, that night Behrooz had assumed that would be his role. But as it became very clear that nobody else would be afflicted with any pangs of conscience, and that most in the school were happy to live their lives as they always had, fighting would be pointless. Ms. Foster had already told him not to be a sore loser the other day when he was the sole person to argue that maybe it was kind of mean to make Epsilons serve as custodial staff late at night. So at this point, once again, Behrooz had no choice. He did not think it was the right thing to idly stand by as the triumvirate did its thing. But it was also not the right thing to stonewall three people who, to varying degrees, had their own definition of the right thing. It was senior year anyway. Life would go on. He was supposed to relax, chill, and enjoy his time as ruler of the roost.

"What charity walk?" Alan was not told about this—was this proof that Behrooz didn't lie, that he was really being stabbed in the back? "We have plenty of money of our own, why don't we spend that instead?"

"Legal something something, or maybe that's another of Frank's lies. We're raising money for funding underprivileged elementary schools. They need glue and pencils and all the things we take for granted now; I'm sure they don't get French toast for brunch. We hope even the most cold-hearted of people can be persuaded to save the children."

"Nah, I'm not spending my Saturday doing that. Who else is going?"

"John and Beth. They've been surprisingly good friends, at least as far as I can tell, and you know how both of them are a bit strange. I guess this beats a candlelit dinner or something involving sun. We have clouds projected, clouds everywhere. What a great day for my morning constitutional, right?"

"John's cool. I respect him. Have fun."

The three of them assembled by Behrooz's house a few hours after the sun had crested the horizon, through the clouds shading everything in light gray.

"You have a nice house, Behrooz. Is that a Ferrari?" John asked with curiosity, leaning over to feel the car in case it proved to be a mirage.

"It's nothing much, and I certainly can't drive it. You have no idea how many hours of work my dad put into fixing that thing up. It was destined for the dump, and look at it now."

"My car feels inadequate now. Let's go—these pledges don't sign themselves." Behrooz lived in a neighborhood that made Heller's look like a dump. They walked up and down ridges and hills, grotesque gardens with topiaries and faux Tuscan facades, looming modern monstrosities with sharp angles and glass walls revealing fireplaces and curved plastic furniture. One house at a time, they navigated past garden gates past fountains to doors with smart doorbells and brass, leonine doorknobs; a few knocks, someone in slippers turned up at the door, complimented their outfits, and pledged a few hundred. John had never seen peacocks walking on lawns silvered with dew or butterflies flying in cages before outside of zoos, and only a lingering instinct of self-preservation enabled him to dodge nimbly when one of those aforementioned peacocks tried pecking at his leg.

There were normal houses too, without gaudy topiaries or sculptures or fountains, normal houses with yards John recognized as being like his own; the three of them were astonished to knock on one of these houses' doors and see Mr. T behind the threshold, his wife visible in the kitchen.

"This must be the charity drive Ms. Foster was mentioning earlier. Care to come in? Breakfast is almost ready and the scones won't eat themselves. It's cold out there, charity can wait."

"Thank you," John said with a thin smile, and they made their way to the dining room.

"Welcome to my Xanadu," Mr. T announced as he sat down and offered them coffee. "This is the first time I can think we've had such a coordinated fundraising effort. It's impressive what a bit of elbow grease can do."

"I think it's all smoke and mirrors, if I say so myself. I'm the only student council member here, but I can say with certainty we've been robbed and cheated. Each and everyone of us cannot think that just because we may be raising money for a good cause, that we do not all share in a moral burden. It's an absolute travesty," Behrooz explained.

"I don't remember you sounding this academic," Beth teased. "I think it's tempting to say 'how did we let this happen?', and I'm just speaking for myself here, but this has been pretty nice for me. I've been able to maintain my friendships without any great sacrifices, I've even started logging some volunteer hours with the Epsilons entirely of my own volition. I think it's humbling to do community service; it's one thing to tell others to do it, but it's one thing to lower yourself and serve others with pure benevolence."

"You've always been like this, Beth, for as long as I've known you. Your personality matches this far better than mine. I've been forced to change, to pretend to be someone I'm not—apathetic, shallow, calculating, emotionless. That really takes a toll on you, you know, when you wake up every morning dreading the punishments you'll have to inflict on others who don't deserve it at all. I'd rather be myself. Myself and nasty. Not somebody else, however jolly."

"How come every conversation needs to circle back to the club?" John asked. "We have lives, you know. I hope all of us have lives outside of school, private passions and hobbies, relationships not defined by who's appropriate given our social credit score. I think it's all very childish to keep running around in circles about something we're in no position to change. We're making a difference, none of the people involved are monsters, that's the end of it."

"That's not true at all," Behrooz insisted. "I care about my classmates. We're all in this together, and all that jazz. When Frank reminds us all privately to 'be careful' about which lower-class people we message, like they're going to infect us with some disease, I'm just supposed to shrug my shoulders and accept it?"

Mr. T looked up from his coffee mug and decided to join in: "You give him credit for too much cleverness. Everyone loves talking about Frank—it's hard not to. What Frank said in his speech, what Frank didn't say in his speech, yada yada yada. But I'd like to think of Frank as the product of an abusive system, an inevitable product. He's no monster. He's just a smart kid who leans a bit capitalist. He didn't have to be this charitable, but things are working out nicely."

"Exactly. You weren't there, Behrooz, but Beth and I were at the lake with him. He cooked every single meal. If I only knew him from that, I would think he's one of the nicest people I've ever met. So when I see what the school is like now, and his club meetings, and everything else, I only see charity. I see the person who had Pranav tutor me when I was struggling, who worked with me on math homework one time before school, who did all these other great things. How could anyone hate him? People have too much free time to think about others instead of themselves."

"I think this proves the importance of separating the deeds from the person. I'll spare you the origin story of How To Be A Good Person, or how I remember it, but he came to me one day asking for help in taking full advantage of his surprising new popularity. He expected everything to blow over in a few periods, but somehow the idea struck him that maybe, by some statistical fluke, he had struck gold. Now, his normal altruistic, kind, prankster self would not suffice. He needed to be a leader, charismatic in a loud way, boisterous and domineering and everything a good person is and Frank is not. So he invented just the sort of Franklin Barnes that a fourteen year old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end," Mr. T mused. "Does that make sense? So if you're trying to look back at what's happened and tell everyone else what they need to know, it isn't enough to tell what a man did. You've got to tell them who he is."

"I think we've talked enough about Frank. So, Mr. T. Who are you then? What's led you to this point in your life?" Beth looked at Mr. T with expectant eyes, and the others followed.

Mr. T cleared his throat and took another sip of coffee. "I went to a small private university in Boston that some of you may have heard of—'pahk the cah in Hahvahd Yahd' and all that. That took me into finance and doing a bit of globetrotting. I ended up in Hong Kong, then Beijing, then Moscow, then Zurich, and so on, picking up a little of everything along the way, and eventually I ended up in New York. Things were going great; I met my lovely wife, I worked hard daily, but there was something missing at the end of the day. That human touch. I felt like I was the only sane man in a group of mobsters. So I came back to where I grew up, here in California, got my teaching credential, and I realized this is where I belonged. This is my second career—working for McKinsey paid the bills, it's not like I needed to do this to retire quite comfortably—but that's not all life is. You can't live every day just looking to pay the bills, because that's not life, that's drudgery."

"Do you believe power corrupts, Mr. T? When I imagine New York, I imagine people on Wall Street, looking just like we do but a bit older, all going through the motions and plotting how to stiff the common man. Were they always that heartless, or is it something you learned on the job?"

"You sound like a communist," John joked.

"Forgive me for bringing the discussion back to the school, but I think the comparison is quite close, and none of you were ever on Wall Street and I'd honestly prefer not to dwell too much on the past. I really don't think power corrupts. It just reveals what was inside all along; every man is as Heaven made him, and sometimes a great deal worse. Could you pass the butter? But anyway," Mr. T said as he lathered his scone with butter and blueberry jam, "the fact that you came to my doorstep canvassing for a charity event, run by this very same student council that implemented a dress code and finally put ad-blockers on the Chromebooks, should answer your question. We are trained to view the world through the lens of good and evil, but in between exist many shades of gray. I hope I've taught some people that lesson in English class."

"You said this was your second career. Do you plan on retiring? I can't imagine the things you've seen, you ought to write a novel," John remarked.

"Sometime, that will come to pass. I haven't thought about how I'm planning on leaving Heller. It certainly won't be a hastily written resignation letter and a middle finger walking out the door. Something simple, I think. 'Rosebud.' Yeah, that seems like a fitting end to all this. Have you seen that rosebush by the robotics room, the one that finally started blooming a few years ago? I planted that with my AP Environmental Science kids, one of the first years I was at Heller. In a way, we all leave our legacies. I wonder what mine will be."

Despite Frank's penchant for delegation and optimization, as fitting Ms. Foster's original warning, the drama department functioned largely the same as before, thus he served his usual duty as "head usher" along with a new cast of unfamiliar faces for Heller's first production of The Producers.

"If your goal over the last few years was just to make this happen, you've succeeded," Mr. Cathcart had joked a few months prior when rehearsals began. "I'd personally have gone to see the show in San Francisco instead of creating a cult of personality, but I suppose this works too. Do you want a role in the show?"

"I think I already have a role: quell any rioting in the theater. You should get one of the parents to storm out complaining about bad taste. Like the movie, you know. Or actually, I'm a poor singer, but I can lip-sync; Mel Brooks would be honored for me to use his voice—'Don't be stupid, be a smartie; come and join the Nazi party!' Hilarious, I know, right?"

"Sounds like a plan." Frank stood in his usual post, escorting people to their seats and directing any bemused inquiries to Mr. Cathcart. It felt good not to be his own boss, and less good to have to report to Mr. Liebkind, who couldn't stop gushing about how nice it was that Adrian was getting his place in the spotlight at last—this was apparently the perfect show for him, and as expected Mr. Liebkind didn't credit Frank one bit.

John and Beth had decided to see the show as a pair, if only to test out the idea of being a couple that wasn't just a couple of good friends. They had tried lunch that afternoon, with mixed results: the restaurant they wanted to go to was closed due to a burst water pipe, which forced them to go to the Japanese supermarket and walk downtown, sitting at the bench Beth recognized as where she always went with her friends. She immediately amended that statement—John was her friend, too.

"Do you remember how freshman year, we all sat together to watch the musical that was playing then? We planned that out on this very bench. No, it wasn't coincidence."

"What was the point of doing that? I never quite understood."

"Well, Regina was trying to work up the courage to ask you out, so she wanted to test the waters in a safer way. I'm surprised she never told you about that—you really thought you happened to get a free ticket that put you with us?"

"I don't believe in coincidences. Things happen for a reason, like that restaurant being closed; it brought us here, retracing the same steps you made. That had to have had a reason behind it. I remember asking Frank about my ticket, I thought there must have been some sort of mistake! All he said to me was 'today's your lucky day.' Luck, that's all there was to it, and that's what I thought all this time."

"I knew he was a romantic!" Beth shouted with glee. That experience brought them back to the show, where John was consumed in guffaws of laughter rather than pilgrimages to the Spanish countryside. If John and Beth weren't staring at the stage slack-jawed at the girl dressed as a pretzel sashaying down the steps, they'd have noticed Frank standing in the back mouthing along to the lyrics before he disappeared to the side; they barely noticed when Frank showed up on stage, delivered his one line, and only a minute later returned to the back like nothing had ever happened. John and Beth walked out of the theater and back to their cars holding hands.

Over winter break, an email from one of the school counselors gave John the idea to write a letter to the editor of the local newspaper. Many other students had done it from other schools, writing passionately about the need for community service or career education or social justice or any of a myriad of things that did not interest John in the slightest. Nowhere in any of those asinine epistles did anyone represent him! That was a problem easily solved, with an obvious solution.

A few weeks prior, after Tom had read the local theater critic's positive review of The Producers, he realized that some negativity was needed. How could he write about the accurate casting choices or set design but not mention the dictatorship that had spawned the entire endeavor? Why was he writing about fake Nazis instead of the real ones around them? Tom sent a long, rambling email to one of the editors, including excerpts from official announcements, pictures, and even quotes from Heller's own newspaper with the singular goal of tarring and feathering his own beloved school. Surely the oil well of community outrage Tom was tapping into would burst, spreading foul ichor all over the land. Tom waited a few weeks with no response other than a perfunctory "Thank you." His father barged into his room one night commanding him to read the newspaper—they had dedicated four whole pages to Heller! They had interviewed the principal, teachers, Frank, and even the superintendent, all of whom had nothing but positive things to say about the system. Mr. Langley couldn't care about them in the slightest, but they had reached out to interview him; Mr. Langley didn't really know much of what was going on at the school besides that his son was punished for being a spoiled brat. Any other parent would demand an apology for the indignity, but to him this seemed like the sort of discipline that built character, so Mr. Langley too had said only nice things.

John had read that report because they had spent a club meeting discussing it, but he found it lacking in the sort of emotional, visceral reaction that to John made good reading. In those four pages, where did it say anything but that "Heller was destined for success" and "In this troubled age, might does indeed make right"? He spent a cold winter's morning wrapped up in a blanket and drinking hot peppermint-flavored coffee (a concession to the season), trying to anticipate all possible critiques to what one semester of tyranny had promised:

Dear Editors,

Not too long ago, I had the pleasure of reading your detailed report on my beloved school. Tears welled up in my eyes, and I felt a hitherto-unknown pride in my own school. I've walked its hallways for nearly four years at this point, and I never realized that everyone felt the same way as I did. To any member of the community reading this thinking "why isn't my child's school like Heller? This isn't fair," I offer you some words of warning.

If your child believes that their clothes define them, that memories are woven in their fabric, it is best for them to abandon that idea. I did not know how to tie a tie before I had to every day—your child should practice now. I barely knew the words to our own national anthem, and I only thought of it as something people sang at the Super Bowl. I hope your child is more of a patriot than I am, and if they are not, they may have some nasty words to say about school. If your child cusses like a sailor, peppering their speech incessantly with profanities, they will need to speak softly and choose their words with candor. We live in a world where words persuade; they hold magic, draw breath—they live! Most of all, that is what I must warn them: they will have a voice, and every action they make, any utterance no matter how profane, will grow to define them.

Before my school underwent its beautiful metamorphosis, my existence bordered on the tragic. I was always timid, I never took a chance. I was like a butterfly flitting about, never knowing if I were in a waking dream or cruel reality. Then, as I felt the swell of change deep in my heart, it began to dance. Frank (our leader), and Heller as a whole, filled up my empty life, they filled it to the brim. There will never, ever, be anything or anyone else like him.

Someday you may be called to vote on whether you want your school to be like Heller. Perhaps we are the black sheep of our community, as some naysayers claim. I think differently: I believe we are the vanguards of a brighter future, one which releases students to the world capable of thinking about others and capable of thinking about themselves. Students who do not shy away from discipline, and who meet the pressures of society with something equal coming from within! Students, who like myself, are able to spend hours in self-reflection, putting words together in long meaningless strings until eventually, they have meaning.

Sincerely,

John Zakarian

"Your last name is Zakarian? Like Geoffrey Zakarian?" Frank asked in disbelief, pointing to John's typed signature on the paper, which Frank had even circled as if to verify that it wasn't a trick of the eye.

"How do you know my uncle?"

"When we watched Chopped at the lake, you never thought to mention that the guy on TV was family? Cooking's in your blood, John, no wonder why you're so good at it! Do you think he could take over the catering for winter formal?"

"It's winter formal already? Ugh, it's only been three months. I suppose I'll have to ask Beth again and whatever. Such a hassle."

"It's obligation, John. Someday you'll look back on all of this and think 'Where did I go right?' You won't be thinking of the hassle of driving over to Beth's house, picking her up, taking pictures somewhere scenic before sunset, dancing the night away. You'll be thinking of the good parts, whatever those may be for you."

"I haven't even been to her house yet. Or, I haven't driven there myself; it's always been in the van with the others. I wonder what it's like."

"While you do that, I'm going to be booking the catering and doing exactly what I did those long, weary three months ago. Have fun."

Ms. Foster had vetoed Jason's theme suggestion of "A Night In Siberia" despite his promises of ice sculptures, caviar, vodka, and communism. A committee was hastily formed, consisting of everyone who happened to be in the room, and they settled upon the unoriginal, if consistently crowd-pleasing "A Night In Paris."

"Paris is romantic, I promise," Ms. Foster assured Jason. "I went on my honeymoon there. Far better than eating, I don't know, smoked trout on pumpernickel or whatever it was you suggested."

"Why did Jason even get a vote?" Alan protested. "He's not even in leadership."

"We live in a democracy, Alan; everyone gets a vote, everyone has a share," Ms. Foster reassured him. "I'll tell Frank about this later, but he's agreeable enough. He won't mind."

John sat down on a barstool watching the TV play recorded webcam footage from the Champs-Elysées, delicately prying mussels open with a fork and swallowing each in a few bites.

"The food's good, don't you agree? It's been so long since I've had good seafood," Beth asked him, leaning over to steal a French fry.

"I don't even know if I've had mussels before. I like the broth though, and what was the name of this again? Moules frites?"

"Yeah, that's right," Frank interrupted, giving an approving nod when he saw John was eating everything. "This is actually a Belgian dish, but it seemed close enough. Believe it or not, this is your uncle's recipe, straight from the Food Network website. He suggested the French fry recipe too when I sent him a message on Instagram; he knows what high school you're attending, and read your letter to the editor, but you didn't even mention anything at all before? That still boggles the mind. I guess while I'm here, I've been asking everyone this: where are you hoping you'll go to college?"

"I haven't really thought about it much," John admitted. "Wherever I'll go, I'll find something to be happy about."

"Really, anywhere you could go?"

"Well, if I could pick the perfect college: I would want to live on an island isolated from society. Society's too depressing, it dampens the mind. All of us would be philosophers, who spend all their time reading and debating."

"Sounds like the club," Beth laughed.

"Not quite. In this paradise, we wouldn't be continuously plotting how to overthrow the patriarchy or whoever else happened to be in charge. We'd be beyond such trivial things as that. Everyone would know their place, and we'd know happiness without anything else."

"In Xanadu did Kubla Khan / A stately pleasure-dome decree: / Where Alph, the sacred river, ran / Through caverns measureless to man / Down to a sunless sea," Frank said spontaneously. "Legend has it that the words to that poem came up in a dream, describing a place so lovely that no mortal mind could imagine it with conscious thought; when he woke, he wrote and wrote until someone interrupted him, and in an instant, what else remained of the poem disappeared. We'll never know exactly what Coleridge imagined his Xanadu to look like."

"So how does that relate to this?"

"I think your island is just as mythical as this Xanadu. I don't mean to distract you or anything. Those mussels won't eat themselves. Oh, what about you, Beth?"

"Any college sounds good to me, Frank. I'll find my way."

Juliet found Frank about an hour later, after the webcam footage had already cycled through a few times, also eating a bowl of mussels.

"Who did you use for the catering? These look expensive," Juliet commented, doing as Beth did and stealing a French fry, although less covertly.

"The culinary arts teacher wanted her students to get some real-world experience, so we're using them instead. You can go look in the kitchen if you want; you'll see her in chef's whites teaching her students how to take orders and not drink the wine when she isn't looking. Have you eaten yet? I heard the scallops are good."

"Haven't you thought about how strange it is that a high school could end up this functional? You're right—these scallops are delicious! It's all thanks to you, and that leads me to another question. I overheard Ms. Liu the other day discussing with the other English teachers how she was going to add How To Be A Good Person to her class curriculum, and at first I was like, 'Wow, that's great!' But then I kept listening, and she said something about teaching students to identify satire and analyze it critically."

"Yeah, she cleared that with me, don't worry. I helped her with the lesson plan—I think it's great, actually, that we'll be educating the next generation of leaders."

"So you're missing my point here, How To Be A Good Person was a work of satire? We've been misled the entire time?"

"Well, I wouldn't say 'we' here. There's a value to using humor to blunt messages, that's what court jesters did all the time! A Modest Proposal carries a message, and we can recognize that Jonathan Swift wasn't telling us to eat babies. Look beyond the text of How To Be A Good Person and think instead about all the philosophy we've read; do you think we'd be able to get people to think critically about themselves and others, dare I say even be nice to them, without disguising the message a little? A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down. Let's use another example, the caste system: sure, at first, everyone was being a bit sarcastic and biting and haggling over exactly who was boss, but look at us now. People judge each other for the quality of their ideas now, not the color of their skin, and if someone of ill renown truly desires to become a better person, he is able to do that and is rewarded without judgment. I would like to think we are moving toward a functional society, slowly but surely. I couldn't exactly say everything outright without undermining the purpose of the entire thing. I'm sorry, Juliet, if I misled you into thinking I was ever ill-intentioned."

"I believe you, as always. Maybe this makes me the bad person here, but I don't mind being a little evil. Everything we're doing is quite palatable, with or without a guiding purpose. In fact, I think you're more fun when you're evil. I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy." Juliet looked straight into Frank's eyes, showing all indications of being honest, and Frank did not know if he was supposed to lie again. Even he couldn't keep track of exactly whether he was supposed to be good or evil.

"Everything in life is relative, good and evil too. Our scheme here has transcended morality, anyway, and all I can say for sure is that if we were bad people, we wouldn't be rewarded with fine music and divine food. I think the universe is telling us that everything's all right just the way it is."

"To evil!" Juliet exclaimed, raising her glass. Frank clinked it and gulped down his ice water.

"To evil," he sighed, and went back to eating mussels.

Discussion Questions:

How is the plot of The Producers connected to the rise of the club? Which character can be described as closest to Leo Bloom? Consider John's letter to the editor.

Why does John describe his ideal college as an allusion to Brave New World, and why does Frank quote Coleridge in response?

Is Juliet a bad person? Was she always? What thematic relevance does her fall from grace (if you believe she has had one) possess? Consider Juliet's behavior and its relation to the contents of How To Be A Good Person.