Luis entrusts Roman with booking a room in one of the academic buildings in the middle of the night. Generally, these rooms are meant for meetings with clubs or large study groups, but no one should notice. Roman books rooms in the library with enough frequency that The Divide likely won't find it odd, if they are checking that sort of thing.

The initiates sneak in over the course of eleven minutes, each member having an exact time of their arrival. Kai, of course, is the first to enter the booked room. He wishes to make sure any discussion is reserved for when all of them arrive. Luis is the last scheduled arrival since he is perpetually late.

They don't talk until Luis is there. He closes the door behind them, made of wood without a window. The rooms in the library have windows, probably to discourage indecent meetings. As these rooms are bookable, they are less prone to impromptu sexual acts between students.

Luis takes the last chair and looks at them all. He called this meeting mostly as a check-in, with a few action items. He's not the kind to create an itinerary, and all his thoughts are jumbled.

"How's everybody?" Luis asks.

Ez crosses his arms over his chest. He's tired, and he has maybe a dozen books to read, so he doesn't have time for small chatter.

"Why are we here?" he asks, leaning forward in his chair.

Luis turns to Briar, "how are you doing?"

Briar shifts in her chair. She is aware that everyone is staring at her, and she brushes her hair out of her eyes. "I'm okay."

"How'd it go at the doctor's office?" Kai asks, trying to play nice. "Was it Rohypnol?"

Ellie can see how uncomfortable Briar is becoming. She squeezes forward in her chair. "The doctor said so. He didn't do any tests, but it's more than likely."

"What kind of doctor doesn't do a blood test for that kind of thing?" Jetta asks.

Felix scrunches his nose, "Poppy's."

Briar doesn't like the attention on her. Normally, she claws her way towards attention. Now, she is trying her most to blend in. It was hard for her to pick out an outfit to come to the meeting wearing. Everything felt too flashy. She looks at Ellie and hopes to diffuse the situation.

"I'm fine. Nothing serious happened," Ellie tells the others.

"You're not going to the police?" Ez asks, shaking his head. He is not shocked but he doubts that Briar has the wherewithal to make a call as important as that.

"I told you, we're in this on our own," Felix says.

Evelyn watches the others talking. She tries to listen and understand, but all of this is a bit much for her. She feels like she is constantly tipping over the edge. She feels like a broken gear in a clock, unable to turn in sync with the rest, making it impossible for time to move forward. She is incredibly, undoubtedly, permanently, stuck.

"Why are we here?" Briar asks. She wants to go back to her dorm and talk to the people she has met and pretend everything is normal. Unlike the initiates, her acquaintances can't read past the crease on her brow.

"We need to figure out what to do with Poppy," Kai says.

"I'm struggling to understand exactly what is Poppy's fault," Jetta points out. "Like, I get it. She's pretty-"

"Selfish."

"Aggressive."

"Evil."

"-abrasive," Jetta finally finds the word that was hidden deep in her mind, "but she did get shot. She got caught in the fire with us. She's in this with us."

"What about the roofies?" Luis points out. "The threats?"

Jetta freezes. Poppy might know she's transgender. It's a thought that slipped her mind which never should have left. Being out isn't safe. Even amongst these people who are her friends, she's not sure how they would react. Jetta thinks back to the words of her father. Any of them could kill her. The initiates treat Roman well enough, but Roman hasn't tricked any of them.

And everyone hates Poppy because they feel like she tricked them.

"She'll throw any of us to the wolves at any point in time," Felix points out.

"She's a narcissist, probably," Ellie adds.

It's wrong to armchair diagnose, Ellie knows, but she cannot help it. She can't tell where this conversation is going, and she can't tell if it's fear, jealousy, confusion, or anger, or some dreaded concoction of all four combined, but she cannot help but despise Poppy at this moment.

Vieira is listening, intensely. She's never even talked to Poppy, These are a lot of opinions for someone she barely knows. Is everyone else wrong? She looks at Tom, who sits next to her, and waits for him to speak.

"She's so full of herself that her body is going to explode from the pressure," Ez agrees.

Tom doesn't want to say anything. If he disagrees with them, they will ostracize him like Poppy. If he agrees with them, he's only adding to the building confrontation. He thinks about the sound of bullets hitting the water. He remembers the burn on his hand from the hot door handle. He aches over the riddle they were once given.

He memorized it like an actor.

"Twelve's a secret that ought not be told," he breathes life into the line. "There was something wrong about it."

"I thought it meant that only a few of us would be selected," Roman says. The conversation they had with Ez was weeks ago, but it remains fresh in Roman's mind. "It's the Magpie poem."

"It might mean that Poppy is the odd one out," Ez adds.

"When we were upstairs, Poppy answered the phone," Kai says. "There's no knowing what The Divide told her. About us. About their plan."

"She's a legacy," Felix points out. "She could be in on everything."

"She was shot, to be fair," Jetta says, swallowing her fear. It lumps in her throat.

Ez shrugs, "she was grazed. They could've hired a marksman."

This is too much for Evelyn. She folds her hands in her lap and closes her eyes, taking in shallow breaths. She can feel herself going insane. Can drugs do that to you? She doesn't even know what she took. She doesn't even know what she was thinking. She thought Poppy had her back. What is obvious now seemed so crazy back then.

Even Jetta is beginning to understand the others' perceptions of Poppy. The languages major has been nowhere on campus since the fire. Maybe she had a warning and got expelled. Maybe she flew home to her rich parents for a week. Maybe she's just more clever than Jetta had imagined.

She refused to call the hospital for the roofies. Maybe it was for Briar. Maybe it was for some other nefarious reason.

"We've got to do something," Luis says, looking at Kai. He remembers their discussion.

The others look to Kai for an answer.

When Kai doesn't speak, Luis cannot help but feel like he is supposed to take charge. The words feel awkward coming out of his mouth. They are foreign, an unwanted visitor he needs to expel.

"We need to frame her for causing the fire," Luis says.

Felix bursts out laughing. Loudly, obnoxiously. He mocks wiping a tear out of his eye, "yeah sure. We might as well walk up to the President of Hawkwood and ask him to expel us."

"The Divide already has a fall guy that they've paid off," Ez points out. "We'll look crazy."

Vieira is still looking at Tom. She can't believe what the others are saying. Poppy wouldn't just be expelled. She'd have to go to jail.

"Besides, we'd have to explain why we were there," Felix adds. He's glad Ez is on his side. Finally, maybe he will have made a friend by the end of the evening. The thought puts a smile on his face.

Briar pictures herself half-conscious, with some sleazy guy leaning carrying her towards a set of stairs. Is Poppy even partially responsible? All the anger in her dorm room comes bubbling to the surface. She has to pretend to be okay every day, after someone shot at her, after finding a dead body, after being threatened and drugged. Poppy just gets to go on happy? That makes the bubble of anger pop.

"I don't fucking care what it takes, she's going to regret ever stepping foot at Hawkwood," Briar's chest is rising and falling, each movement feels like the crack of thunder. Shocking and tremendous.

Ellie sighs, "there's not much we can do. No one believes us."

She thinks about her secrets. If they get out, she could be arrested. Her life is more than over. Her parents will never look up to her. Never mind her sexual preferences, which would get her disowned as well. Ellie has a lot to lose.

"We should try to get her busted for plagiarism," Roman offers, trying to meet in the middle of everyone. Some philosophers would say that they are making the right call. Others might disagree. They try to think more about Hobbes and less about Kant.

Vieira looks around. This is happening. It's snowballing out of control. She doesn't know how to stop it.

Evelyn looks up, trying to get her bearings.

"Poppy will take us all down if we try to get her busted for plagiarism," Luis says. It's not quick enough. Not serious enough. They need Poppy off-campus.

"A plagiarism case takes a few months to go through," Ellie adds. At this point, she doesn't even know what she's saying and why. She's so lost in herself.

"Do you think she can really get us kicked out?" Tom says. He thinks about the rising debt.

"If she even knew this meeting was happening, we'd be goners," Kai shakes his head. He knew what he wanted to propose going into the meeting. It was a bit more extreme than what he had suggested to Luis. If everyone is already on board for getting rid of Poppy, the next move is only one step closer.

No one wants to leave Hawkwood. Luis, obviously, does a little bit. However, he can't imagine leaving behind all the people he has met.

"I want Poppy gone!" Felix's voice is only short of shouting. Roman hopes no one is walking by in the hallway.

"We all want Poppy gone," Ez agrees. He waits for someone to challenge him.

Jetta isn't sure what she wants, and Tom can't tell either. Evelyn can't tell left from right. Vieira doesn't want to be the only voice that speaks up.

Even Ellie, who went to Poppy's dorm when she was shot, wants her out of the picture. She thinks Poppy knows something more about the roofies. She thinks Poppy knows more about everything than she is even letting on now.

Roman is unsettled. They're extremely moral. All they do is think about being moral. Poppy threatened to take away all of their work. What is one bad deed to achieve so much good? Is it even bad to do something if the outcome will be positive?

"Well we have to do something," Felix says. "What if Luis hadn't been there to protect Briar? What if Ellie hadn't gone to the hospital with her? What if it was one of us at the end of that gun? She would've left any of us to die."

"We should do the same," Ez says because he thinks everyone's thinking it.

Finally, the door is open for Kai. "Do we know if that professor's home is abandoned?"

"Should be," Ellie runs by it every day. She's never seen activity in it. "Why?"

"I can get my hands on absinthe," Kai continues. "Say Poppy, who infamously loves the substance, drinks a bit too much. Say it wasn't diluted properly."

"Are you suggesting..." Jetta looks around the room, her eyebrows raised. There are two beasts inside her. One that thinks Poppy is beautiful, and clever, and someone to be admired. The other thinks she is more responsible for what happened to Briar than Kai, and she was furious at Kai. It leaves her in a state so confusing she cannot finish her sentence.

"It's a simple inference, really," Ez shakes his head. "We kill Poppy Prevost."

~~~~~~

It's a simple inference, really. I think it's my favourite sentence in the book thus far. I have very little to add. I'm sure you all see where this is going. It's exciting. If you have anything you'd like me to rework, I'd be happy to fix it up. There is a caveat, that will become clear next chapter.

Urgh I'm so nervous. Let's just see how it goes. I'm overthinking.