The club meeting that week ended a bit early, and most immediately flocked toward the snacks that were still available in the back of the room. Initially, Frank was opposed to feeding his club members, or really doing anything that would make their experience enjoyable, but one day Alan brought in a bunch of cookies on some spontaneous whim, and from there, as things are wont to do, they escalated. "And those things do best please me, that do befall preposterously," Frank had quipped to Mr. T one day when the display was especially extravagant. Frank thought it a bit hypocritical of Mr. T to think so much of his generosity, but after seeing Mr. T one day quickly hide some of his better food from Alan, he understood, and went as far as to treat that as a lesson.
Beth and Juliet stood in the corner, watching the others warily. Paranoia was a sign of intelligence—they knew that for a fact—and Frank had warned them about potential turncoats in their midst. A good person could find no security, even when with their own people; they never knew, he said, if someone were trying to work up the ranks to dismantle the system from within. Even having a lot of Frank-Bucks wasn't proof of innocence. A few weeks earlier, a club member was excommunicated after it was discovered they had cheated on a test; he had no personal connection to any of the club leaders, and thus could not plead for forgiveness. He groveled, even shed a few tears, but the other members remained stony in their seats. While in reality this was a tidy affair, rumors distorted what had occurred that day into something fantastical: some claimed poor Leo was forced to crawl on his hands and knees out of the classroom; one said he was pelted with trash, and held up an empty water bottle for the sake of analogy; some turned Leo's silent, resigned procession out of Mr. T's classroom and down the hall into a stomping tantrum or maniacal rage—he had tried to choke Frank, but Frank used his karate skills and pinned Leo against the wall! Only those in the room where it happened knew for sure if Leo left a coward or a hero, and the taboo on sharing internal affairs with outsiders ensured that never changed.
"Something wicked this way comes," Beth joked, and they both stopped their laughter by the time Ted had pushed through the crowd to them. Ted had not quite yet mastered the salute or the special walk, but those were both secondary priorities in his mind. Tom's success with Regina gnawed at his mind every day he saw the two together; Ted did not view Regina as a person with her own desires and priorities, but an extension of Tom's wealth, a share of which was rightfully his. Ted had tried a few times before to get a relationship going, but he never got along with "his girls," as he put them. They were nice to him, and since they spoiled him he became contemptuous of them. Inevitably, they would break up over text just as suddenly as they had started, and Ted could then go about his life without a care.
"How are we doing over here, ladies?" Ted asked with a smile, sizing up each of his potential targets. Beth looked severe as always, and Juliet still seemed prone to geniality.
"We're as fine as always, Ted," Beth responded first—a good sign indeed. Ted took out a penny from his pocket and flipped it sharply into the air. Heads, her, tails, Juliet. That seemed just as fair as anything.
"What's the coin for?" Juliet asked, her eyes following the arc it made as it revolved around and around before sitting comfortably in Ted's palm.
"It's a good luck charm. So Beth, would you want to meet up at some point to do the readings?" Ted asked, briefly glancing at his packet to remember what exactly he was supposed to do. Beth, all too eager to help a wayward soul become a better person, responded in the affirmative.
"That's settled then. Library, Monday afternoon?"
"Uh, yeah, sure, Ted," Beth answered, and they walked away and left Juliet alone.
"Hey, Frank, do you think you could help me with something?" Frank turned from watching the snacks carefully to John, whose head was bowed slightly.
"Ask and you shall receive."
"I feel like recently in class, I've been struggling to make connections. All the knowledge comes into my brain, you know, but I can't sort it all out. It's like you have a bunch of boxes in a storage room, all dusty and whatnot, and you need to find something. I can barely recall what I've done on any day without actively trying to memorize things, and everything is just combined into this sort of intuition I can never really work out. Like I'll be taking a history test, but I won't be answering based on what I've learned, but on common sense. It's hard to explain, but I'm sure you get what I mean. That's another thing, too; I've been having such a hard time explaining myself lately. It's like all these thoughts keep popping into my head, but they're in a language only I understand." John had always prided himself on being fiercely independent academically. Asking for help was a sign his own brain had failed him, and he thought that if there was one thing he could rely on, it was that. But maybe even that was inconstant, a manifestation of the same dream-reality that had infiltrated his idle thoughts long ago. John's dreams tended to be long, vivid, and confusing; Bismarck happily rubbed shoulders with Ms. Bracknell.
"I think I understand what you mean, John, and I am here to help. Have you considered booking an appointment with the school psychiatrist?"
"I've never trusted psychiatrists. They always want to find something wrong with you, and I don't think there's anything wrong with me."
"But John, did you not just say there was something wrong?"
"There is something wrong with my exterior self, in how I interact with others. There is nothing wrong with my inner self, or my mind, whatever you want to call it."
"So are there any particular classes where you struggle the most?"
"I think Chinese is one of them. I don't understand how to get my mind under control to express myself in other languages—I can barely do that in English."
"Delusions of grandeur?"
"That's a bit racist, Frank, speaking nonsense just to mock my own difficulties." John was about to launch into a grossly exaggerated, pseudo-Spanish rant before Mr. T said from his desk that Frank was speaking Chinese. Instead of apologizing, John looked at Frank with a new understanding:
"How did you learn to do that?"
"Like anyone else would: study and a bit of elbow grease. If you want someone to help you with your Chinese, I am afraid of accidentally teaching you bad habits; you could ask Regina, or maybe Juliet. Even Mr. T could assist you if somehow Mrs. Huang is unavailable. I'm sure all of them would love to help you out. And as for expressing yourself, well, that seems like something that would be exceedingly hard to tutor. But if anyone could do it, it would be Pranav."
"The consultant?" John asked. Frank was briefly confused before he recalled that he had introduced Pranav that way once; he was surprised John remembered.
"He proved a great help to me freshman year when I knew little. I still know little, but I now know just how little I know. Did you know that 'sophomore' literally means 'wise fool' in Greek? The first step to self-improvement is accepting your current low status."
John did not know yet if he wanted help. John was struggling, even if he did not show it: while his grades indicated no decline, they came at the expense of more and more free time and study sessions without breaks that left him all the less certain if he really knew anything. Or if he really could know anything—was he not a pawn of the universe, an errant bunch of star-stuff that one day coalesced into a person? If not knowing was inevitable, it wasn't like he could do anything to change it. If the universe truly wanted to humble John, he would know it.
"You want me to tutor him?" Pranav asked in astonishment.
"I want you to be your best self. I merely suggested to him that you have a chance of solving his problems. He may be too stubborn to accept that, though; he rejected talking to the school psychiatrist."
"Well, that's obvious, you can never trust psychiatrists," Pranav declared with certainty. "But if he does talk to me, what should I do?"
"Walk him through his schoolwork and try to understand how he thinks. See if you can identify the source of whatever disease ails him. Curing it may be harder, or maybe he will come to a sudden epiphany and save you all that work."
"It really is nice that despite our hopes, we are helping people. I feel like when my parents ask me what I'm doing in school these days, I can give them honest answers."
"You know what they say, Pranav, honesty is always the best policy." Frank went to talk to someone else, and Pranav took a glance at John, who seemed to be quite happy vigorously discussing some finer point of policy with another club member. He certainly seemed well-adjusted, but if there really were something wrong, there was nothing Pranav could do but try his best.
In English class, Mr. T's class was reading Macbeth, and it brought John no shortage of amusement to address Beth as such; she was Lady Macbeth then, and the others unanimously voted to make John Macbeth proper. It was almost a relief, he thought, to be virtually betrothed to someone not terribly repulsive, and who wasn't presently trying to woo him.
"Your face, my thane, is as a book where men may read strange matters. To beguile the time, look like the time; bear welcome in your eye, your hand, your tongue: look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under't," Beth read solemnly, spitting out the awkward contractions. "What does that mean, John?"
John took a moment to rescue his mind from the grim halls of Inverness and bring it back to the present moment. "Could you repeat the question please?"
"Beth was asking what that passage meant, or that entire speech. For the worksheet," Regina clarified, looking at John expectantly under the rational assumption this would remind him. John began reading out loud with sonorous intonation: "O, never shall sun that morrow see! Your face, my thane, is as a book—"
"Beth just read that, John. Are you feeling all right? You look a bit tired," Juliet asked, and John was reminded then that while not terribly fluffy, his book would do well as a pillow, from which he could learn via osmosis.
"He's always like that," Beth explained, and once again they waited for John to give an answer—why were they asking him anyway? John thought himself no more qualified than any of them. He looked down at his paper and saw that he had been absent-mindedly writing some sort of notes, with no conscious will, the entire time; scribbles spanned the entire paper, picking words from the passage seemingly at random interspersed with question marks and arrows. Clearly they had mistaken his ramblings for insight, an error which he frequently made himself.
"Well, when he mentions the book, it's like the book that we are reading right now. So maybe this scene takes place in a library? And this could be like the Library of Alexandria, which was burned and sacked by the Romans I think—but I don't know if Macbeth is a Roman name for the sake of the allusion, I would have to do more research—do any of you know?" John offered, and their muteness conveyed to him that he had not given the right answer.
"A more plausible interpretation," Regina interjected, "is that Lady Macbeth is convincing Macbeth to be deceitful when hosting Duncan, to project a welcoming appearance while secretly scheming for murder. This is all to consolidate their power, of course. The serpent could reference the Garden of Eden if we are to resort to allusion, as then snakes are traditionally viewed as conniving..." While Regina continued explaining, John scrambled to compose his thoughts into something more serviceable; perhaps there were some fragmentary analyses in his notes that his subconscious had dredged to the surface that could help. "Macbeth, Macbeth, Beth, Beth, death, death, death, lies, lies, lies, lies..." John read to himself quietly, thinking that maybe there were some connections between all of those and his present state, or maybe that somehow it all related to Macbeth's psyche, and he was about to write down a thesis statement before asking himself if he should really be focusing on Lady Macbeth, who in that moment seemed far more complex of a character. What exactly did it mean to "unsex" somebody, and how could he learn to do it? By now, Regina had taken charge of the sane individuals at the table, and John turned in his messy worksheet exactly at the bell, to the amusement of Mr. T.
"Is there something wrong, John?" Mr. T asked with a furrowed brow after quickly scanning his worksheet, if it could be considered work; there were certainly answers to the questions, articulated with sufficient clarity and depth right where they should be on the paper, but the cloud of jumbled thoughts surrounding them was more interesting.
"I'm just a bit tired, that's all. But aren't we all?"
"Not like this," Mr. T thought to himself as he quickly graded the worksheet: good enough, clearly effort was put in, 10/10. Mr. T never claimed to grade different students with different standards, even if one person's average was another person's excellent. He did give disappointed looks to people who did not continuously seek improvement; most did not want to disappoint him, and his habit of giving extra credit for general good deeds, clever insights, or spectacular improvements proved another motivation to excel. He considered himself an adept at bringing out the best out of his students, and he hoped his students enjoyed challenging, but fair classes.
"Ernest, are you ready for the presentation on Thursday?" Frank asked casually before class. Ernest sneered at him before realizing Frank was asking a reasonable question, and then chose to reveal emotion.
"Not at all. This is ridiculous. She expects us to go to the library to find a book, and then translate a summary to Chinese? I don't know half of these words." Ernest could barely stomach military intrigues in English, and he was not primed to appreciate the strategic brilliance of using straw soldiers to bait out arrows in another language; the anecdote being fictional only incensed him more.
"I believe aeons ago, a wise scholar invented the dictionary exactly for that purpose. But I do agree: I would love more time to do research and ensure this presentation is actually usable for others."
"People already asked. She said no."
"We can do better," Frank declared, and he stood up to go to Mrs. Huang's desk; Ernest followed begrudgingly.
"Ernest! My favorite student!" Mrs. Huang proclaimed, and sat back in her chair as Frank explained that it would really be a great favor—nothing necessary, but just a convenience—if she were to entreat the class by giving them until Monday to finish their presentations, perhaps as a compromise by adding how they could apply the historical principles mentioned to the modern day. Mrs. Huang could have said no to Frank. But if he thought an extension was needed, and if Ernest thought the same, it was a sign. She trusted the two smartest people in the class to represent the will of the others, who undoubtedly were struggling if the top two were. She considered herself an exceedingly fair person. Ernest and Frank returned to their seats and sighed with relief.
"I doubt you need the extra time, Frank," Ernest wryly commented. This was the first time he'd seen Frank give any indication that his academic success came with struggle; Ernest made a point of always displaying his own suffering, lest others think him intelligent.
"I doubt so too, but I don't see why I can't be fair or reasonable on occasion."
"That's not a very good person thing to do, although I think you know that. If you're going to be an ideologue, why not be a consistent one?"
"Apparently you think of me only as the leader of a cause. Well, I'm also a human being." Frank was happy that aside from a few contrarians like Ernest, most did not care to analyze or critique Frank's morality. The attention the club's unique initiatives at the beginning of the year received faded as more clubs launched their own publicity stunts, and most did not regard the morality patrols as any worse than the tango dancing class held weekly or the Bible study group that disguised its religion under a zeal for literary analysis. Frank was still perceived as charitable, and indeed he considered himself charitable: did he not identify that John was in grave need of help and dispatch someone to solve the problem? Juliet related that one train-wreck of an English class to him one day after school, as befitting her club duty to report on others' failures, and agreed with Frank that John needed to change. She suggested she task herself with curing John, but Frank thought this potentially harmful for a few reasons.
Frank knew that last time John was in a depressive funk, it seemed to be because of either Beth or Regina—he could never really tell which, and he thought it crass to ask them to clarify. In both those cases, romance was the issue: John had the peculiar teenage tendency of assigning romantic roles to anyone in proximity who seemed open to him. It was a bad habit learned from Regina, and for a moment Frank regretted playing along with Regina's light-hearted prank then. So then, under the scientific principle of past performance being an indicator of future events, what horrific things could happen if John were thrust into a private setting with someone of the opposite sex possessing warm spirit, a figure fitting statistical trends, and an inclination toward physical contact? Frank tried his hardest during club meetings to disavow everyone present of the habit that had clearly caused John so much harm, no matter where their inclinations lay; he had seen Regina and Beth once ogle a particularly studly junior, and had thought about how best to discuss the serious matter without calling them harlots. Clearly he had not succeeded in creating a professional setting completely free of the profane, and this cycled around back to John and Juliet. He hoped Juliet would not give an encore of her performance back in Ms. Bracknell's classroom, although there was the chance John would goad her. Maybe there was something John had done back in freshman year to earn those covetous glances initially, a latent willpower disguised under his awkwardness. In other words, John perhaps was dreamy in multiple senses of the word. Frank could not possibly slander John, or imply he believed neither of them capable of acting rationally under their own willpower, and so he told Juliet that Pranav, the consultant, would be on the case.
"I hope John knows we care about him. I do, and all of us do. We want him to get the help he needs." Juliet occasionally had dreams of becoming a psychiatrist, and thought her abilities would be suited to assisting John, who had seemingly never before projected weakness to her.
"I do as well, but I cannot force a psychological revelation on him. John possesses a keen intellect and his heart is as true as steel. I trust John out of all people to fight the natural shocks of life alone. Or, with help, and in that case our esteemed consultant can unweave what fabric John is made of."
"If I have any ideas, I'll be sure to text you," Juliet said with a wave, and doubled back before Frank could question the necessity of her personal involvement: "Oh, also: do you still want the survey done by Friday?"
"Friday would be lovely. Keep working hard. I appreciate your devotion to the cause." This survey was an inventive stratagem meant to see if the club was actually teaching anything, and to test the limits of the club devotees' patience. Five hundred Frank-Bucks were on the line, which meant everyone knew this was important.
Regina rapidly began to question whether that really was a good trade-off for her time after she started working. When Frank told everyone to complete the optional survey, she was expecting a quick feedback form, not a midterm. Tom claimed he was doing it, and expressed reservations about Regina's commitment to the cause. She couldn't really say no to that, she thought, so she pulled out the dregs of her coffee from the fridge, sat down at her desk, and started typing away. Why did he insist on coming to the club every week and participating in discussion? Why did John and Juliet? John was always a bit of an intellectual, she thought, but Juliet never expressed an interest in philosophical discussion or Machiavelli until she started coming to the club meetings. In a span of six or seven months, she had become a different person. Someone with the brains, the beauty, and the brawn; a generous person as always, but something more as well. Regina hadn't. Sure, now she could quote phrases like "I think, therefore I am" or paraphrase Socrates, but her fundamental outlook on the world had not changed. Where were these benefits of being a good person that everyone else claimed to be developing? Tom, for instance, claimed to be a better person, and made a frequent point of being one whenever Regina had expressed doubts in the past, yet wouldn't a good person show up on time to dates? She needed to talk with him more, but only after she finished the survey.
"Easy, wasn't it?" Tom asked with a grin, not wishing to admit he had cheated and used Sparknotes.
"The readings are so dense. Too much old-timey language."
"I beseech thee, complain not about thy suffering," Tom admonished Regina, and both of them laughed.
"Prithee, have mercy on my mortal soul!" she responded in turn. She thought the previously-assigned readings from the year magically were translated in front of her eyes, from approachable, if irritating language to paragraphs upon paragraphs chock-full of jargon and confusing metaphors. She did not know if she had written coherently, but she was writing in quantity and following MLA format, and so she was satisfied. Her last thoughts before turning in her responses, as she gave them a final scan, were that they reminded her of John.
Discussion Questions:
In the lens of what the club teaches, is Ted a "good person"? Who else qualifies as such?
How do different characters react to John's struggles? Is this at odds with the attitude of Heller as a whole?
Why do you think Frank is so wary of Juliet? How does this fit into not only club philosophy, but his personal beliefs?