Olympus

Once upon a time there was a high school. There, in a building near the edge of the campus, far from the rest of the classrooms and buildings, was a lecture hall. It was unique in that it was structured like a college auditorium or an ancient Greek theater with a half circle of seats rising on stairs with a place for a teacher or speaker to give lectures at the bottom. There, nearly every day a group of students held a meeting in secret. There were about 25 of them, all boys, of mixed grades, who walked from their seventh period class to the place known as the N building. Nobody knew what the N stood for.

On this day their president stood at the bottom of the rows of seats with a clear file of papers in his hands. They waited for the last few members to enter the auditorium and take their seats before the president and two young men standing beside him gestured to silence the crowd.

"Thank you gentlemen for coming." Said the president. A few murmurs in the crowd fell silent. "Today we are gathered to discuss our new plan."

"What about the last plan?" One member asked.

"The last plan... it's suspended until further notice, and members involved are advised to lay low for a while. As for the new plan," he continued, rushing to advance the topic. "Allow me to explain the idea broadly before we discuss specifics."

"This better be good." Said a voice from the crowd.

"The stranglehold of Olympus is supported by invisible strings. There are many aspects which cannot be seen by the naked eye, a system that takes every move we make into account. What is most frustrating is how there seems to be no mastermind, no single individual to take out that would cause the whole structure to collapse. Rather, it's like fighting a swarm of insects, or a school of fish where each member simply knows what they must do and follows the rules without having to receive formal orders."

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"However, every system has flaws. There are trade-offs to operating in this way which we are doing our best to take advantage of. We simply have to find a shatterpoint and strike it."

"How do you know Olympus doesn't have a leader?" A young man with glasses and long hair asked. "A hive of bees has a queen, after all. And doesn't there sit a group at the top who is a kind of ruling council?"

"It seems so but," the president continued, "they don't do as much ruling as you think. They almost never give orders, simply throw parties and do anything that they desire that suits their fancy moment to moment. They do things that would degrade our power to zero if we did it, but they have so much power to spare that they can afford to do it almost endlessly."

"I have done research on this." Announced one of the president's assistants. "I call it the Nobleman Effect. It's kind of like money in they have more to spend than we do. Significantly more."

"They could crush us in a second," the president spoke again. "If we ever earned their ire. I worry that will happen inevitably. But the reason you elected me was because you were tired of playing defense. The reason we're all here is the same- chasing after the prize."

"Has your leadership brought us even one step closer to the prize, Pathos?"

"At least we aren't begging for our lives anymore." He answered. "There is only forward. We risk it all for the prize."

"How would Olympus crush us if they have no leader, as you say?"

"Now we are all unnoticed, hopeless. It may only be symbolic at this age but symbols are strong predictors of the future. Reach success now and more success will come." He didn't include what would happen if one should fail now.

"For this plan, we shall use their greatest power, social pressure, against them. I present to you Duster, our most respected member. Olympus knows about our meeting but not who the members are. They can probably guess who I am but Duster is the one person beyond suspect. He only joined us because he realized that he wanted more: tired of getting the short end of the stick. He's truly a good guy. We can use him."

"Go on" said one husky guy with thick arm hair.

"He's such a good guy in fact," Pathos paused for effect. "That nobody would ever guess he's a member of our group. He has what is called 'social credit'. People would feel bad about making fun of him. Unlike the rest of us."

"I propose that we throw him at Jennifer, who everyone knows is in feud with Haley. I sit next to Haley in Chemistry. I'll tell her that Jennifer snapped at Duster and was abusive. And Haley will spread the story around the school, exaggerating it to do the most damage possible."

"What is the point of doing damage to Jennifer?" asked a fat guy. "If I remember correctly, she's the girl you're after."

"It isn't a blow against her specifically. Rather, it makes her rejecting him a big story. We will have manipulated the incentives and given every girl in school cause to think twice about flat out rejecting any of us. Especially a girl on the fence might even change her answer to yes. Then a week later, each of us will ask out the girl we like, synchronized to the same time and day."

The crowd was silent. Then the member with glasses stood up.

"Brilliant" he whispered. "It'll affect the whole school."

"It'll affect neighboring schools." Pathos added. "And we will have taken the initiative- finally gone on the offensive."

"That's some plan" a voice from the back of the room said loudly. A young man with spikey hair sat next to a figure in a hood. "Ever since you ousted me I've been waiting to see what you come up with. But I can do one better. I have brought to you the one thing I promised for ages to provide: a traitor."

The whole room erupted into chatter. Pathos looked to his two assistants, then fixed his gaze on the figure in the hood. Other members craned their necks and stood from their seats to see as well.

The figure stood. One hand rose and removed the hood to reveal long blonde hair that fell past her shoulders.

"A traitor..." the fat member said. "I can't believe it. Ethos finally delivered."

Ethos ignored him. "As you see plainly, we have finally among us a traitor to the girls. President Pathos hopes to find a shatterpoint to break Olympus. With her on our side, we can simply create one anywhere."

"What do do you think of my plan?" Pathos asked her.

"It'll definitely stir up trouble for Jennifer. But I don't think it makes any of you losers datable." She sneered, tilting her head back.

The group began again to whisper. Some faces of outrage and others of fear began to form.

"Would you add anything to it?" He asked.

"The only way to get one of us is to be on the inside. Your friend Duster could make a few moves inward and probably get the girl of his dreams."

Duster responded, "I played that game long enough. There was no path forward for me. No matter what I did. I literally tried everything."

Pathos backed him up. "Most of us have a similar story, or have encountered the same phenomenon. That's why we created this body. We're like researchers."

The traitor scoffed. Pathos's brow wrinkled as he started at her, but he continued speaking.
"We're researching what exactly is the cause of all of us- all of us who are pretty normal guys, nothing too abnormal or weird about us, all fail to reach 'the prize'. There should be enough for everyone, but somehow it's being denied to us."

"Other factors make it puzzling," the guy with glasses interjected. "There are significantly more male retards than there are females. There are also more strictly gay guys than there are strictly lesbians. In fact, there should be a balance of females to males in our favor. But there is some kind of clustering effect. 5 or more girls cluster around one guy, this still leaving us with nothing."

"I guess that's true, in a way" the traitor remarked as she flipped her hair. "I hadn't thought of it before. But that's like human nature. What trick do you think you're going to pull to reverse that?"

"It depends," Ethos said, standing beside her. "On what you're willing to do for us."

"If you pay, I'll do whatever weird social engineering thing you want." She smiled. "Just because I want to see how much trouble it'll cause."

"Why did you agree to work with us? Hurting for cash? Or is there another reason?" Pathos asked her.

"The girls attacked me viciously. They expect me to just sit back and take it. You should hear the cruel things they said about me, when all I did-" she stopped herself. "It doesn't matter, but I'm out for revenge for how they ruined my reputation."

"We appreciate your cooperation, and will reward you commensurate with your efforts." Said the member with glasses. "But apart from this, would you mind if I conducted a few interviews with you over the next couple of days? I'd like to investigate the answers to questions about your kind that I wanted to know for a long time."

"That's gonna cost you too," she said.

"We can pay," Pathos said, nodding at glasses guy. "Anyway, as president, my decisions is that both my plan, Ethos's plan, and Logos's investigation will go into effect immediately. This meeting is dismissed. Down with Olympus."

"We risk it all for the prize." The members said all at once.

Pathos began to walk along the side path of the auditorium as other members stood up. Much attention was focused on the traitor. Ethos smiled, leaning on the wall next to her. Pathos approached her, the crowd moving out the way for him.

"Would you come with me?" He asked, extending one arm to the door. He tipped his chin to mention to Ethos as well. "You too."

They left the room and stepped into the sunlight shining on a small field of green grass between buildings. The school was open air, buildings connected by outdoor walkways with roofs, but no walls.

"We have control of this building after 3pm. The back room of the library is usually available for meetings, and a couple of teachers in the C and K buildings let us use their classrooms. They think we're playing Magic: The Gathering." The three of them began walking. "Logos told me that you have 4th period off. He does too, so you'll meet him in the library during that time tomorrow."

"I don't have 4th period off," she said. "It's P.E. and I always ditch."

"Uh.. ok" Pathos continued. "What's your name, by the way?"

"Kelly. But shouldn't I get a codename like you guys have?"

"Your codename will be 'Kelly'." Pathos said. He and Ethos looked at each other, grinning.

"Whatever, codenames are stupid." Said Kelly. She turned and began walking away. "I'll see you tomorrow. I want $20 for every day you guys need me for anything."

As she left, Pathos and Ethos stood in the grass. Near them was the teacher's parking lot, which had a few old cars parked in it. Kelly turned the corner, entering one of the walkways and going toward the other buildings on the campus. Pathos suddenly arched his neck down, a pained expression coming over his face.

"Ooohh," he groaned. His shoulders shook, and his fingers stretched outward.

"Are you feeling the 'death shivers' again?" Ethos asked him.

"How do you know about that?" Pathos responded, hands trembling as they wrapped around his arms, hugging his own body.

"We talked about it once. Don't you remember? You said you used to get a 'feeling of doom' from time to time. You said it was like being cold but on the inside."

"Yeah, that's it. I don't remember talking about it with you."

"It was recently." Ethos put a hand on his arm. "Feel better soon, man. You going home?"

"No, I'm supposed to meet my friend who goes to another school." He began to stand up straight again, but his body still trembled slightly. "To tell him about our plan."

---

"So that's your plan," another young man said to Pathos. "That's going to change everything."

They stood in a parking lot with grass sticking up from cracks in the asphalt. A dirty pickup truck was parked there, but no other cars.

"Don't tell anyone about it over any digital means of communication. Only face to face." Pathos stepped on one of the little concrete barriers and balanced himself as he walked along it. "Are you going to try it at your school?"

"After I see how things go at yours. I know guys at other schools who will want to know about this as well."

"It could get big, Jude." Pathos stepped off the concrete barrier. "And we have a traitor too. She's going to help us. Although Ethos brought her in, and he seems to have another mission for her to do."

"You still hang out with that maniac?" Jude shook his head. "He's going to expose your group by doing something reckless one of these days."

"He lost his position as president. But the group has huge demands on me..." Pathos paused. "They're unforgiving with mistakes. I messed up once before. I tried having covert members spy on Olympus to observe what makes them so powerful."

"What's Olympus?"

"It's a group of athletes and cheerleaders who have power over everyone in school. They're like the Greek Gods of Mount Olympus. They kind of know about us, but not much."

"That sounds like your problem right there. I bet without them the prize wouldn't be so out of reach."

"My theory is that they aren't as in charge as everybody thinks." Pathos began to walk, and Jude followed him. "But they do have something to do with the prize."

"You let me know what happens. With the traitor too." Jude said. He glanced over. "My bus is here. I'll talk to you later."

---

Duster sat on a bench in one of walkways circling the massive student quad. Logos and Pathos each had a hand placed on his shoulder. The three of them stared ahead at a girl with long brown hair and bangs walking across the quad coming toward them.

"Olympus can see us. They're right there!" Logos whispered. "Are you sure we should do this here?"

"There won't be another chance. She's with her friends all day every day except right after lunch when she walks to 3rd period." He motioned for Duster to stand up. "We need to spin the story of what happened our way, so there can't be any witnesses."

"What about Kelly?" Logos asked, pointing behind them. Pathos realized that she was sitting on a ledge behind them where a raised concrete platform with some benches dropped off to a little patch of grass behind where Duster say.

"I didn't know she was coming." Pathos mumbled.

"This counts as time you have to pay me for. $20 right now. Or I'll shout and tell her that he's about to ask her out." Kelly pointed a finger with red-painted nail at Duster.

"Fine, here." Pathos opened his wallet and put a 20-dollar bill in her hand. "I'll have to take money from the treasury later."

"Guys, I'm not sure I can do this," Duster spoke at last. His legs were under the bench, feet wrapped tightly around the bench legs. His hands clasped one another.

"It's not for real, and you know she's going to reject you- the plan is for her to reject you. There's no pressure at all. Everyone in our group has been rejected before."

"I haven't," Duster gulped, his voice strained. "I've never asked a girl out before at all."

"They're looking right at us." Logos elbowed Pathos's arm as he pointed at a group of cheerleaders and tall guys wearing varsity jackets. "We should abort the mission."

"I don't want to do it," Duster looked like he was about to start crying. "I feel like I can't talk. I'm trying to stand up but my legs won't move."

"Fine, fine," Pathos began walking away from them. "I'll talk to her myself."

Jennifer entered the walkway to their right, and Pathos approached her. She turned her head to look at him, and the moment her eyes met his, his feet stumbled.

"Jennifer, hey!" he called out. "Do you have a moment?"

"Sure," she smiled, but she didn't turn her body to face him. She stood ready to resume walking.

"My friend wanted to talk to you but... he's not feeling well. Can he meet you after school for just a few minutes?"

"I'm leaving early today," she said. "Maybe tomorrow. What did he want to talk about?"

Pathos gritted his teeth. His fingers spread out, but he hid his hands behind his back. His shoulders grew tense. Jennifer looked at him, head tilted slightly.

"I don't know," he said in a strained voice. "Tomorrow's fine."

"Ok, see you later." She began to walk away. From a pocket of her bag a small grey card fell to the ground as she turned away.

"Your card!" Pathos said. He quickly reached out to catch it before it hit the ground. For a second the card fell into his hand, bouncing on his palm. But it tilted and slipped through his fingers too fast for him to grasp it. It landed on the concrete of the walkway.

Jennifer turned back and looked down. She took a step forward and squatted down for a second to pick it up.

"It's ok." She smiled at him. "Thanks anyway."

Pathos watched as she walked away from him. He looked down at the spot where the card fell. His body shivered, even though it was warm out. His body moved stiffly back to where the others were waiting.

"I forgot how powerful she was," he said to Duster. "I can understand why you didn't want to do it. But bite the bullet and ask her out tomorrow after school. She said she'd meet with you then."

"Ok," Duster whispered. "I'll try my best."

"Take him back to the N building," Pathos ordered Logos. He looked at Kelly. "Would you come with me, please?"

Kelly and Pathos walked slowly down the same path that Jennifer had walked down. Pathos's eyes fixed on the spot where the card had fallen again, his fingers making slow grasping motions as if he were trying to catch the card again.

"Since you're on the clock, so to say, I want you to tell me how I did." He told her.

She made a strange face back at him. "How you did? What do you mean? How you did at talking to her?"

"Yes."

"I can't really say," Jennifer answered. "What were you trying to do, impress her or something?"

"Let me put it this way instead: did I make her like me or dislike me more?"

"Again, I can't say," Jennifer shrugged her shoulders. "I didn't see you do anything that made her angry. You tried to pick up her card for her. But you didn't sweep her off her feet or anything."

"Ok I have another job for you." Pathos looked at the backs of Logos and Duster as they walked away. "One that you have to keep secret from the rest of our group. I want you to judge every interaction I have with Jennifer. Watch from a distance and tell me how I'm doing; did I offend her, did I come off as creepy, did she like what I said or did? And when you have a chance, talk to her one on one, as girls, and tell me what she thinks of me. Without making it look like I'm asking you too, of course. Can you do that?"

"Sure, but a second secret job on top of what I'm already doing," her red lipstick-covered lips curled into a smile "is going to cost you double."

Pathos grimaced, but took his wallet from his back pocket and gave her another $20. She picked it from his hand and put it in the pocket of her jeans next to the other 20 dollar bill.

"Ok, leave it to me." Her hair shook as she turned away from him and walked down the same path as Jennifer.

Pathos turned around and walked toward the large quad area where hundreds of students sat, stood, or walked around the school grounds. Several trees grew from grassy areas, surrounding concrete circles with benches on their rims and concrete paths connecting them. The roof-covered walkways circled around the whole quad. One could avoid excessive rain or sun by staying under the walkway and make it all the way to the other side of the school.

As he passed one of the benches where a group of tall guys wearing varsity jackets sat, one of them stood up and approached Pathos. He waved his hand to stop him. Pathos stopped, letting a group of girls split as they walked around him. The tall guy approached.

"Come with me. Chad wants to speak to you." His voice was deep. The guy's head was a bit thin, giving him a pencil-like figure. But he was almost a whole head taller than Pathos, and muscular for a pencil. Pathos followed him back to the group of athletes.

"Hey Clyde," one of them said. He had blonde hair, a massive chin, and a short, stubbly beard. He was perhaps the only high school student to have a beard. He sat on the bench with his elbows on his thighs, looking up at Pathos. Pencil-guy and one other boy wearing the same jacket stood on either side of him. "You bothering Jennifer?"

"Not at all. Just chatting." Pathos met his eyes. They stared at each other. His shivers went away as he stood completely still.

"If she tells me you're bothering her," Chad cocked his head to the side slowly, continuing to stare, "I'm going to have to do something about it."

"I wasn't bothering her," he insisted.

"I heard something weird, you see." Chad squinted his eyes. "I heard there's some group of guys scheming to get girlfriends. Now if it was just you, I wouldn't care. There isn't too much you can do. But a group? That's gonna scare people."

"What makes you think I'm involved with that?"

"Because you used to talk about getting a girlfriend a lot in junior high school. Other people don't know about that because you and I went do a different junior high than everybody else."

"I was a kid then," Pathos replied.

"Go then," Chad tilted his head back and sat up straight. "But remember what I told you."

---

Ethos waited in the back room of the library. He looked at the large, white analog clock set on the wall. Turning away, he began to walk his fingers along the spines of some books on a bookshelf, head turned to the side as he read their covers.

The door opened and Kelly walked in. Her hair bounced as she walked down a small ramp from the door to the lowered section of the room where Ethos waited for her.

"Wasn't your friend supposed to be here?" she asked him.

"I thought he was with you," Ethos replied.

"Well, either way you're the one who asked me to join this little group. So you're the one who has to pay me." She inserted her thumbs in her pockets and rested her hands on her waist.

"Didn't Pathos already pay you?" Ethos looked at

"Nope," she pushed the two 20 dollar bills down deeper into her pocket. "I always put my money right here." With one hand she reached up to her V-neck top and exposed the lining of her black bra.

Ethos's eyes grew wide. He looked to the door to see if anyone else could see what he was seeing. Then he reached for his wallet, took out $20, and reached out to hand it to her.

"Do you want to..." she smiled at him, "put it in?"

"Yeah," he nodded his head, breathing in quietly. "And I'd better check all your pockets too."

"Nope, too bad." She snatched the money from his hand and stuffed it in the right side of her bra, then covered it back up with her shirt. She laughed quietly to herself. "So your friend wanted to interview me, right?"

"I don't know where he went. I'm going to have to withdraw money from the treasury..." Ethos mumbled to himself. He twisted one of his legs and adjusted his jeans with him hands. "Anyway I had another plan. Something I call 'Operation Shatterpoint'."

Kelly turned around to find a chair to sit in. She rolled her eyes at the name of his plan. "Sounds cool. What do you want me to do?"

"You told me when we met that there were some girls who disgraced you." Ethos explained.

"Disgraced?" She interrupted him, scoffing. "What century are you from? Who speaks like that?"

"Ok, some girls talked a bunch of trash about you." He corrected himself. He noticed Kelly looking at the bulge in his pants as she sat down, then looked up at him, amused. He paid it no mind and continued to explain. "I want you to tell me who they are."

"Carol, Ashley, Maria, Stacy," she counted on her fingers, looking up and off to the side. "Lee-Ann, that asian girl whose name I forget who hangs out with her, Danica."

"I know them. That sounds like the whole yearbook club."

"And the Student Council, and some girls in my P.E. class." She leaned back in the chair, glaring at him as if she was glaring at the girls she spoke of. "If you have any plan that would get them to fight each other or something, I'd love to hear it."

"Let me ask you straight then: do you think the guys in our group are losers?"

Kelly didn't answer right away. Instead she looked at him, thinking about what to say. Finally, she answered ."Yes."

Ethos didn't react. "Then how would having them all start dating loser guys sound as revenge? Including having the ones with boyfriends break up?"

"Oooh," she replied. "How do you intend to do that?"

"The plan is not fully developed," he admitted, looking away from her. "Rather, I envisioned a few steps later down the line. I need you to help me fill in the blanks. See, I used to be president of our little group. But I couldn't make my plans complete- everyone complained that I was missing steps. They'd ask me 'what comes between the first and third stage?' I know it's my weak point."

"But basically what I see is you and I, two other guys, and two of the girls you mentioned going on a kind of group date at the bowling alley. Or at the movie theater with that ice cream place next door. Or at the shopping mall downtown. And we'll do it week after week until they get used to hanging out with us. As you told Duster, once we 'get in the inner circle' it will be a giant step forward."

"Just because girls hang out with a guy doesn't mean they're dating," Kelly shook her head. "And there are other flaws in your plan too. Not all girls are like this, but some of them are going to want to go to someone's house to drink beers and smoke weed. That's what I would want anyway. Can you provide that?"

"I'll work something out. There's a couple of guys in our group with those connections."

"And how do you plan to get this all going in the first place?"

"That's where you come in," Ethos pointed at her with his open hand facing sideways. "I know they dis- I know they made you angry. But instead of acting mad, I want you to pretend to be their friends. Pretend to apologize as if you did something wrong. Actually, I don't know what you did-"

She cut him off. "Trust me, it's their fault. I didn't do anything wrong."

"Ok, ok," he held his hands up, taking a step to the side. He began to pace the room slowly as he talked. "Just create a rumor that their boyfriends are cheating on them. Or that their boyfriends or the guys in Olympus called them sluts or something. Anything that will make them angry and disgusted."

"I can do that..." she said. She looked at Ethos expectantly. "When will you know the next stage of this plan?"

"I need more time to think about it," Ethos walked away from her. "Maybe I should open the black box."

"I was wondering though. Are you going to ask me to mess up your friend Pathos's plan?"

He turned his head suddenly to look back at her. "Why would I ask you to do that?"

"Because... don't you want to be president again?"

Ethos fell silent. He broke eye contact with her and looked around the room, thinking. His mouth opened, but a moment passed before he spoke again.

"I want to see if his crazy idea actually works. In what way exactly would I mess up his plan?"

"I could start a rumor about Jennifer. Then when she rejects your friend, everyone will already have the impression that she's a huge bitch. There's no way the story will affect the whole school."

"Don't do that. Our group needs every chance it can get to compete with Olympus."

"Up to you," she said in a singsong voice.

---

Pathos and Jude rode bicycles toward the same parking lot as before. As they arrived, they saw almost a dozen other bikes parked in various places. A group of boys their age stood, leaned on the wall, squatted, or sat with legs crossed on the ground.

"These are the guys from the other schools I told you about," Jude talked as he swung his leg off the bike and dismounted. "They came to hear the results of your experiment."

"Oh, I didn't know anyone was coming," Pathos kicked the bike stand down. "The truth is that the plan stalled- it's postponed until tomorrow. The guy I chose as the point man got scared."

"You can tell us in a few days then," Jude went on, nodding at the guys.

"Is it true that your school has a girl who betrayed the other girls and is working with the boys?" Asked a guy with long, straight hair that covered his face.

"Yes, we'll have her support our plan," Pathos explained.

"Do you think she can come to our schools?" one asked.

"If she betrayed the girls who's to say she won't betray the boys too?" another remarked.

"Either way, wait until I can test her to see if she's trustworthy," Pathos stood in the center of their group with his hands in his pockets. "She's costing me a lot of money."

"We'll all start saving," the long-haired boy said. All the others nodded. "Aside from money, we'll support you any way we can."

"Have you thought about how your plan could go wrong?" cane a whisper from the edge of the crowd. The boys parted to reveal one of them crouched on the ground, his back against the wall, wearing a black hoodie. "Have you considered the worst case scenario if this backfires?"

Pathos stared at him. The crowd was split between looking at he and the crouching boy.

"I would be blown out forever," he answered in a low voice. "I'd have to try to change schools. I'd have to apply to a college on the other side of the country. Olympus- the rulers at my school, would hunt my lineage to extinction. Even after I graduated, they would maintain a curse on my name. If I applied to a job in this town, I'd be rejected because somebody from high school would recognize me. If I managed to have children, it would be with the lowest quality women, and their sons would bully my son."

"It wouldn't only be you," Jude interjected. "The others in your group would suffer the same fate. And if the rulers don't know exactly in your group, everyone in the 'lower caste' at your school would be presumed guilty."

"Are you really willing to risk all that?" asked the crouching boy.

The wind began to blow, shaking their bikes and lifting the edges of their clothes. The boys squinted to keep dust from flying into their eyes. Pathos stayed perfectly still.

"How is that fate any different from the one we're assigned to already, except slightly in magnitude?." He looked at every member of the crowd as he raised his voice to speak more loudly than the wind. "The decision was made for me on the day I was born. I risk it all for the prize."

"You really do," the crouching boy responded.

The boys disbanded. One by one they got back on their bikes and rode off in different directions. Only Jude and Pathos remained in the parking lot.

"I have to tell you something," Jude said as he got on his bike. "I got a girlfriend."

"You did?" Pathos started to smile.

"Without any tricks, I just asked her and she said yes." He looked away. "I haven't told my group. I don't want to deceive them any longer than necessary... I want to wait until we know if your method can help them too."

"Sometimes you have no choice but to deceive people," Pathos responded.

---

A group of girls sat in chairs inside of a cafe, watching people walk and cars drive past on a busy shopping street through the glass walls. They laughed and talked, phones in their hands. Behind them the door of the cafe opened and Kelly walked in, a red leather purse hanging from her shoulder.

"Jennifer!" she called out, waving at the same Jennifer from before. She walked past the counter without ordering anything and approached their table. "Can I sit with you?"

"Hey Kelly. Go ahead" she smiled back at her, pulling a chair from a nearby table closer. The other two girls looked at Jennifer, the smiles dropping from their faces when they saw Kelly. But they said nothing.

"Do you mind? I was just stopping by. And you two are," she pointed with her finger, "Carol and Stacy from Yearbook Club, right?"

"Yeah," Stacy answered. She added nothing more, eyeing Kelly as she moved in.

"You wouldn't believe what I heard some guys at school talking about. Guys can say some pretty nasty things sometimes."

"What?" Jennifer's ears perked up. Carol and Stacy looked at each other.

"I hear Bruce, the one on the baseball team, talking about trying to get some girl in his car. He said he was gonna drive her up to the observatory in the hills."

"Wait a minute," Stacy asked. "Bruce is my boyfriend. Are you sure it was him who said that?"

"I saw him sitting on the bench outside the boy's locker room with his friends. They were loud." Kelly raised an eyebrow. "I didn't know you were dating."

"I'm gonna call him," Stacy began breathing faster as she unlocked her phone and began clicking through.

"Uh oh..." Carol whispered. She leaned over to look at the screen of Stacy's phone.

"Jenn, I just realized I don't have any money," Kelly lied. "They won't let me sit here unless I buy something."

"It's no problem," Jennifer said as she stood up. She took one more look at Stacy before walking away toward the counter with Kelly.

"I'll pay you back later," Kelly lied again. She began to look up at the menu. "You know, your friends don't really like me."

"Why not?"

"Because of some gossip. It's stupid. You know how it happens like that sometimes. People just hear something about you," she stared at Jennifer, a smile beginning to form on her face, "because somebody started a rumor to hurt you. You just ended up in someone's sights without really doing anything."

"That sounds awful," Jennifer touched Kelly's shoulder. "I can talk to my friends for you."

Jennifer bought Kelly a coffee from the counter and they sat down together. Stacy and Carol were silent.

"Stacy, don't worry. I'll tell you if I hear anything else about Bruce."

"Thanks," Stacy breathed in deeply as Carol rubbed her shoulder in support."

"You can count on me. By the way Jenny, I saw you talking to that guy Clyde," Kelly continued, looking at Jennifer. She raised one eyebrow and tilted her head to the side. "Are you and him... anything?"

"No, no," Jennifer chuckled as she shook her head. "I don't even remember what he said to me, but it was only for a second."

"I think I have a class with him," Carol added.

"I had chemistry with him last year. We were lab partners once, and he was ok. Kind of nervous, a little goofy. He tried to make me laugh a lot." Jennifer explained. "But definitely not my type. I would never date him."

"Never?" Kelly repeated.

"Never."

---

Pathos stood before the audience in the auditorium of the N building. Logos stood a few paces to the side, and Ethos sat with Kelly in the front row. The rest of the seats were full with guys waiting in silence to hear what Pathos would say.

"We are on the eve of our victory. Long-awaited and well-deserved, you and I are soon to enter a new age, one where we are no longer cast aside. The extras, the unwanted ones, the people for whom the lifeboats on the Titanic had no room. We are holding the scissors, ready to cut the strings that support the power of Olympus. All that's left to do is carry out my plan. It has been pushed forward a day, and I will use this extra day to further solidify the steps we will take."

"First, Duster will crash his ship against the shores, so to speak, by asking out Jennifer with the intention of being rejected. I will relate the story to the gossipy Haley, making Jennifer seem to be cruel. Kelly will further assist in spreading the rumor, and will tell us when the story has reached peak the peak of its effect."

"Then, all of us will choose the girl we've each been pining after and ask them out all for a date at the same time, before any has the chance to tell the others. This is the one opportunity when girls will be most likely to at least give us a chance for one date, so as not to end up like Jennifer."

"In the final stage of the plan, all the guys who were accepted will use the funds from our group's treasury to pay for dates at the bowling alley, movie theater, restaurants, etc. As soon as possible they will ask their girlfriend to bring their friends along and arrange double, triple, and group dates with the remaining members."

"There are questions regarding your plan, President," Logos began. "First, how will Olympus react to us attempting to take girls from them?"

"All the girls on the list we've made are ones assumed to be single," he answered. "We aren't trying to break up any couples."

Kelly and Ethos shot looks at each other, but remained quiet.

"But surely those single girls are in Olympus's sphere of influence," Logos went on. "How will you prevent Chad from organizing an attack on us of one kind or another? He and the athletes are essentially a uniformed army."

"The fact of the girls will prevent them from doing anything in public," Pathos waved his hand. "Much for the same reason that so few of us ever asked out the girls we liked until now. Once you've made yourself look bad, you've ruined your social life permanently. Olympus will get used to the situation- they will learn to share power."

"What about Jennifer?" An overweight guy asked from his seat. "She's innocent, yet suffering a terrible fate for the sake of our success. Are you really willing to do that to her?"

"Yes," Pathos looked at Kelly. "Besides, if all goes well, we will tell the real story and reverse her disgrace."

"That's not how gossip works," Kelly spoke up. "People remember stories the way they originally heard them, even if the story changes later. Those first impressions are hard to change once they've stuck, especially if a bunch of girls use that story as a reason to do make a decision like go on a date with a guy they normally wouldn't."

Pathos stood in silence looking at Kelly, then turned his gaze out to the crowd. He finally looked to the ceiling of the room.

"So be it," he said firmly.

"I had a plan too, if you remember," Ethos stood up. As he walked to the center area, Logos took his seat and switched places with him. "The plan that I wanted to do for a long time, but never had the traitor to the girls that I needed to make it work. That is, until after you replaced me as president. I would like to propose that I be allowed to carry out my plan alongside yours."

"But we still haven't heard the full details of your plan," Pathos commented.

"Well, I can explain here-" Ethos was suddenly cut off.

"A bunch of athletes are gathered outside our building!" A boy from the back of the room shouted. "There's a ton of them!"

Everyone in the room stood up. They rushed to the top of the stairs to the only window, a set of blinds covering the glass. The boy who shouted just barely held open two of the blinds with his fingers. One by one, members of the group looked out.

"We're doomed!" several voices from the crowd began to panic and cry out. "They've got us trapped!"

"Be quiet!" Pathos shouted. "Keep your face away from the window! Don't let them see who you are! Keep the door locked!"

"Somebody betrayed us!" Duster shout-whispered. "They told Olympus what building we'd be in at what time!"

"How are we going to get out of here?" Logos came close to Pathos and Ethos. "There's only one door."

"It's the traitor!" the overweight boy pointed at Kelly. "She's a double agent! She was only pretending to help us to betray our location!"

"No, I promise I didn't!" Kelly protested.

"I'm going to get us out of here," Pathos stepped in. He looked around the room. There really was only one door. "How many of them are there?"

The boy at the window looked out again. "At least a dozen."

"There are two dozen of us," Ethos counted. "But they're all bigger, stronger, and faster than we are."

"Get those rags used for cleaning. Everybody wrap them around your head to hide your faces." Pathos pointed. He drew his phone from his pocket and began to type a message. One by one the guys in the room began to cover up. He walked up the stairs to the top end of the room, looking out the window again himself. Then he started to dial on his phone.

BANG! BANG! BANG! The thuds against the door rang out. Members of the crowd shuddered and fell back from the door.

"This is the end. I can't believe I joined this group." said one of the panicking members. Many others huddled around him, breathing hard and whispering to each other as they looked around the room. "I should have just been happy not to be bullied so much."

"Hey mom, I need you to pick up some of my friends from school." Pathos spoke in a loud voice. "Yeah, me and 6 friends. Bring the van. Meet me outside that building you picked me up at last time. Thanks, bye."

He raised his voice and spoke again to the whole crowd. "Anyone who can call someone who drives a car that fits at least 5 people, do it now."

"How are you going to get them the athletes to let us leave?" Logos demanded, walking up behind him. "They'll see us as we're going out."

BANG! BANG! BANG! The thuds continued, even louder now. BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!

"Open the door!" a voice called out.

Pathos could see the fear in everyone's eyes, even with the rags covering their faces. His phone buzzed and he looked down at it anxiously.

"Yes! Here comes the cavalry!" he said in a loud whisper. He and Logos looked out through the window again.

Outside they could see Chad and his two lackeys from before. In a half circle around the building stood a line of tall, muscular guys wearing varsity jackets. A third guy ran up to them from behind. Pathos could just barely hear them through the window's glass.

"Something's going on near the locker room!" the guy shouted to Chad. "There are 10 guys on bikes getting close! They might go after our stuff!"

"What?!" Chad shouted back. "Did you recognize any of them? Was Clyde with them?"

"No, they all covered their faces with sunglasses and bandanas."

"Everybody fall back. I guess they weren't in that building after all." Chad turned away from the N building, and his whole group sprinted back off toward the other side of campus.

"They've left!" the spotter announced. The boys all breathed sighs of the relief. Some of them were crying and shaking. They removed the rags and used them to wipe sweat and tears from their faces.

"Make an orderly retreat," Pathos commanded. "The moment each car shows up, 6 people go out. I can see my ride already. From now on we'll have our meetings at my house after school, until things cool down for us."

They opened the door and sunlight poured in. Pathos, Logos, Ethos, Kelly, Duster, and two others rushed outside and jogged to the car.

"Hello everyone," Pathos's mother said as they opened the door. "I didn't know Clyde had so many friends. Is this your girlfriend?" She pointed at Kelly, who sat the middle of the second row.

"Uhh..." he didn't respond, only looked at Kelly for a second. Then turned back facing forward.

---

"$140, $160, $180, $200," Pathos counted out money as he put $20 dollar bills into Jude's hand. Behind Jude stood the boys on bicycles who had met earlier. Most of them looked at the money. The boy with long hair looked at him.

"Sorry to charge you so much," the boy with long hair said. "But our groups need cash too."

"That's almost everything in my group's treasury," Pathos admitted. "We're not going to be able to pay for the dates in phase 3 of my plan now."

"This seriously makes me doubt carrying out your plan in our schools, even with this money," Jude told him. "I didn't realize that the ruling powers would react so harshly."

"I don't understand," Pathos said softly. "We're not taking anything from them. We haven't even done anything yet except talk about it. How did they know?"

"Maybe it was your traitor," said the long-haired boy. "Have you given her any missions to disrupt the relationships between athletes and their girlfriends?"

"I haven't," Pathos said, shaking his head and taking a few steps. He thought in silence for a moment. Suddenly, his eye grew wide and he stopped walking. "But another member in my group said he had a second plan."

"Even if she really hasn't done anything," Jude chimed in, "the response from your 'Olympus' terrifies me. We can escape on our bikes from your school. But we can't escape from our own schools if the same thing happens."

Pathos said nothing. He breathed in deeply and held his eyes closed.

"It's not too late for you to call off your plan," Jude told him. "If you back down now, your group can lay low for a while. Just live normal lives. Maybe even... just wait until college. You can try to get girlfriends then."

"I have an older brother in college," one of the others said, leaning on his bike. "He said it gets even worse in college."

"I've come too far to stop now," Pathos opened his eyes. "Tomorrow I'll try to make a deal with Olympus. But even if I can't, the plan will go into action."

---

Ethos and Kelly walked along the streets of town. They passed convenience stores, cafes, nail salons, and restaurants. When they reached a crosswalk, they saw Logos standing on the other side waiting for them.

"I've gotta know, did you betray us?" Ethos asked her. "How much did they pay you?"

"I didn't betray you!" Kelly said loudly. Adults in the parking lots nearby looked at them. "Those guys and their girlfriends all hate me too. They think I tried to start drama among them."

"Well, you did." Ethos pressed the button to cross the street. "You tried to break up a bunch of couples."

"That's because you told me to!" She turned her head violently to look at him, her hair whipping to the side. "I'm going to charge you extra for all the trouble your missions are causing me."

"Kelly, what exactly are you going to do with the money?" Ethos asked.

"I'm going to buy designer bags, shoes, lipstick, makeup, clothes," she listed off, "and some jewelry and perfume too."

"Some of that sounds like things I though guys are supposed to give to girls as gifts," Ethos reasoned.

"Yeah, so the guys at school will know the minimum they need to spend on me, and so I can used the top tier of beauty products to look as good as possible for the best possible guys."

"All of that stuff to increase your beauty so you can attract guys," he continued. "But even if you get Chad to be your boyfriend because he finds you so beautiful, is that going to stop all the girls from hating you?"

"Of course not," Kelly explained. The light turned green and they began to walk toward Logos on the other side of the street. "But all the girls hate the girlfriend of the leader. Just like you guys can't reveal certain things in front of us girls, we girls also can't say or do things in front of you guys. It's all a big game of reputations."

Logos was close enough to have heard that part of the conversation. He joined the conversation as well. "You make it sounds like we're all a bunch of chess pieces, each with a limited set of moves."

"Well, here's hoping that a mere pawn can reach the opposite end of the board," Ethos said as he stepped up on to the curb. The three of them walked toward a nearby park with benches. "You never got to do that interview with Kelly you wanted to do. This sounds like the kind of questions you wanted to ask her."

"This conversation is close to something I was going to ask you," Logos said. "When a girl does get the top guy, does she gain access to his power and use it to subjugate the other girls?"

"It's something like that," Kelly admitted.

"So do you like Pathos, because he's our president?" Ethos continued. "Or would you want to date one of us if we replaced him?"

"No girl wants to date the king of the losers. By the way, you guys owe me $40 now for today," she demanded. "All your creepy, weird questions reminded me that you have to pay me to spend time with you."

"We're going to have to use own own money," Ethos said as he reached for his wallet. "The treasury is almost completely empty after Pathos used it to get us out of that mess."

"How do you know Pathos didn't get us into that mess?" Logos strained his voice and squinted his eyes. He took $20 out of his wallet together, and the two of them passed the money to Kelly.

"I don't think he did," Ethos said as he and Kelly looked at each other again.

"We don't know that," Logos walked past the sand of a children's swing set that wasn't in use. "And one more question I didn't ask at the meeting: what happens if all the guys are rejected when they ask the girls they like out? The next day, won't the whole school be talking about the fact that over 20 guys asked girls out at once?"

"I think his plan was," Kelly butted in, "that all the girls would keep it to themselves because they'd want to completely distance themselves from the stories about Jennifer."

"My plan was to move at a much slower pace than him. Go back to gathering intel and figure out the right time to make a move for each case separately, rather than everyone advancing at once." Ethos paused for a second. He looked up at the sky, then back at Ethos. "Do you remember the black box?"

"Yeah, the one we put all those gadgets you used to use, cheap little spy microphones and tiny cameras that connect to computers. And it had flash drives with software that let us read people's email and messages sent on phones. We said we'd stop using that stuff because it was too dangerous."

"No, Pathos banned that stuff and put them all in the black box when he took over," Ethos said. "But it looks like his plan is falling apart. We need to take drastic measures to save our group from disaster now."

As Ethos and Logos talked, Kelly lagged behind them and stuffed the $40 in the pocket of her pants.

---

In the middle of the school quad area, hundreds of students gathered to sit, walk, and talk to each other. They pushed each other for access to the limited shade in the few big trees that hung over the concrete benches. One such area sat atop a little hill with a bench on top under a tree, where cheerleaders in uniform sat in the grass and on the benches as they ate their lunch. Surrounding them were over a dozen athletes who stood in the sun, except one who sat in the shade, taking a spot between two cheerleaders. His hand rested on one of their legs.

From across the open quad walked Pathos. He wore normal clothes, one of the only students on the hill to do so, as he approached the center. All eyes were on him; everybody in the whole school watched as he climbed Mount Olympus to approach the gods. Students far away pointed at him, whispering excitedly to their friends. The boys, the same ones who he recognized as the ones who surrounded the N building, looked at him, and parted ways for him to walk through, only to close back in to form a tight circle behind him. He could not escape now.
Pathos and Chad stared at each other. The cheerleaders all turned their heads and their chatter fell silent.

"I've come to talk to you," Pathos said.

"You come to admit something to me?" Chad asked. The two cheerleaders at his side looked at Pathos and giggled quietly.

"I'm not trying to take anything away from you," he explained loudly, in the voice he always used to deliver speeches. "I'm not trying to force anyone into anything. All I want is an opportunity. You're the big man at this school, Chad. If I had 1% of what you have, I'd be happy. And I think a lot of little guys want the same thing."

"We all know what you want," Chad said back, rubbing his hand on the cheerleader's leg. She looked up at him as he approached the frills of her skirt, the blonde locks of her hair falling on the shoulders of her red uniform. "But you're the only one who's ever made this much trouble."

"What trouble?" he asked.

"My friend Bruce got into a big fight with his girl Stacy because of some rumor about him. We haven't traced it to its source, but I have a feeling it's you trying to stir up drama on purpose."

"I have nothing to do with that," Pathos insisted, shaking his head. "I hadn't even heard about that before now. Maybe that's just a coincidence."

"Maybe I'll ask around. Who knows," Chad leaned back, taking his hands off the girl and putting them on the edge of the concrete bench. "Maybe I misjudged you. You seem like a clever guy. And I think it takes courage to confront me when you know my boys and I can kick your ass in front of the whole school and nobody will stop us."

Pathos looked at him with suspicion. He didn't respond, but looked to both sides to see the rows of varsity jackets lined up around him.

"You know how I got what I have?" Chad asked him. "My older brother told me exactly what I needed to do to become captain of the football team, because he had that role before me. And my older cousin who taught him had it before him. And before him it was my dad and my uncle, who all went to this high school. My family passed this role down to me. It's like an inherited position. So if you want to start something, know one thing: I'm king."

"And you're like... the leader of a group of rebels," Chad smiled. "I studied history. You might think jocks are dumb, but the leader can't be dumb. In history, sometimes the king would make an offer to the leader of rebels. Make your forces stand down, and I grant you a role in the kingdom."

"Look at me," Pathos spread his arms out. "I'm too small to be an athlete."

"No, you could do well on the wrestling team," Chad explained. "Wrestling favors small guys: low centers of gravity. I can pull some strings, make your tryouts easy. Do well this year and you could be captain of the wrestling team next year. You'd get to wear a jacket just like mine."

He eyed Chad's jacket as the two cheerleaders put their hands in its pockets. They lowered their heads to rest them on his shoulders, their blonde hair spilling forward down his chest.

"Let's say I take your offer," Pathos narrowed his eyes. "What do you do about the next guy? Or if the so-called, 'rebel forces' refuse to stand down?"

"There won't be a next guy," Chad smiled. "You're the first guy, Clyde. From all the stories I heard from my family, I never heard anything like this. It's a waste not to have you on my side. You give me a list of names and tell me what I need to know to make a judgement call on each of them. Then I'll talk to the wrestling coach... I'll get you working on doing some people's homework for them, since you're smart, and soon you'll find yourself getting invited to parties."

"Or maybe you don't care about parties. Maybe there's just one girl you like. I'll bet it's Jennifer." Chad chuckled. He wrapped his hands around the waists of the cheerleaders. "My two queens here can talk to her for you and almost guarantee it works out. They'll give you great reviews."

Pathos held his breath. His shoulders began to quiver, and his fingers curled with stiff, pained movements before slowly spreading out straight down. He kept his eyes focus on Chad, but all the athletes and cheerleaders saw him feeling the death shivers. Confused looks came over their faces as they watched him try to keep his composure.

Far on the other side of the quad, Logos, Ethos, and Kelly sat on a bench under the shade of the covered walkways. In Ethos's hands he held a small listening device with the directional microphone aimed at Pathos and Clyde. Hooked into it was a headphone jack splitter which all three of them used to plug in headphones to listen. Ethos tried to hold it steady to catch as much of the conversation as possible.

"I'll think about it," they heard Pathos say. The three of them looked at each other in fear.

---

Duster sat in his history class a few seats away from Jennifer. He pretended to watch he teacher drone on while writing something on the whiteboard. Every few minutes he looked over to see the purple sweater that Jennifer was wearing out of the corner of his eye. Once, the girl next to him caught him looking. After that he kept his gaze pointed directly ahead as long as he could.

The next class, the last of the day was English. Duster walked along the covered walkways with his friends, pretending to converse with them. Jennifer walked far ahead of him, the purple sweater visible amid groups of students walking between him and her. His heart was racing. When he entered the classroom, she was already sitting down. She looked right at him, making eye contact as he walked in. He broke her gaze and kept his head down as he sat at his desk.

The whole class he barely wrote anything. The teacher gave Duster some strange looks, but paid him no mind, continuing with the lecture. Duster couldn't hear anything over the sound of his own heart beating. At one point, he felt a buzzing in his pocket. Pathos had sent him a message, but he didn't read it.

The school bell rang and all the students got up. He was supposed to go to where Pathos was waiting for him, but he did not. Instead, he sat motionless at his desk. He tried to will himself to get up, but couldn't. Jennifer stood up and started to leave the room. She didn't look at him. Finally, slowly, he started to stand. He put his books in his backpack and walked out of the classroom.

At the end of the walkway, he saw Jennifer waving goodbye to her friends as they split ways. She walked toward the place that he knew she would wait for her father to pick her up from school. Duster walked toward her, every step dragging against the ground. His chest was tense. It felt like gravity was pulling him back instead of down. He felt as if he was walking underwater. Some part of his brain screamed at him to retreat, but he slowly advanced.

"I risk it all for the prize," he whispered.

Duster approached Jennifer. She stood waiting at the end of one of the school buildings near a large wall by a parking lot. There was nobody else around. She noticed him, and turned around. The moment their eyes met, he felt a bubbling feeling in his stomach.

"Hi Jennifer," his words were strained. He tried not to breathe too hard. "How are you?"

"Ok. What's up?" she smiled back.

Duster opened his mouth but no words would come out. His body seized up as he forced his voice to come out.

"I wanted to ask you... if you'd like to go to the bowling alley with me sometime," he squinted his eyes and seemed to brace his body, like something was about to hit him.

"Oh... well I," she paused. She stared into his eyes. Suddenly a look of pity came over her face. "I'm pretty busy after school most days. And I'm usually with my family on the weekends. So I probably can't."

"That's fine," Duster closed his eyes for a second. "I just thought I'd ask because... because I..."

"I've got to go soon," she interrupted him.

"I'm sorry," he whispered. He looked like he was going to cry.

"It's ok," she told him, her lips slightly parted as her eyebrows furrowed into a look of worry.

"I just... wish," Duster turned his head and looked away from her. "That I didn't have to see that look on your face."

Jennifer stared at him, turned her head to try to see his expression. He didn't say anything for a moment. Tears started to come to his eyes.

"I'm so sorry to do this to you," his gravelly voice echoed slightly in the empty area they were in. "To show you this part of me. I hate that I have a desire in me that can only be satisfied by another person, which means that I have to put the burden of my feelings on someone else. It feels like I'm dumping the toxic waste of my heart on you."

"I want to know that I'm worth being loved by somebody. I want to know that at least one girl in the whole world thinks I'm a man worth giving a chance to. Because if I'm not now, then it might be a sign that the rest of my life is just going to be different versions of what happens to me in high school. It might be a hint that I'm going to be the first loser in my family line to disappoint his parents by failing to attain a girl and failing to have children."

"I don't want to want this," he continued. "I don't want to be driven to pursue this. You don't deserve to be the target of my weakness." Duster struggled to keep tears from leaving his eyes. "I should leave."

"Wait," Jennifer stepped forward. "I can take you to the school counselor."

"No, please don't be nice to me." Duster turned his back to her and walked away quickly. Jennifer was left standing in the parking lot, watching him as he made his exit. Her father's car pulled up, but she kept her eyes on him until he disappeared from sight.

---

"We can stage a coup," Ethos said as he, Logos, and Kelly walked across the school. Students were still pouring out of their classrooms. "The group would vote to restore me to power if they knew the truth about what's going on."

"He said, 'I'll think about it'. He didn't say yes. He didn't reveal any information about our group," Logos argued. "And he was surrounded. What else was he going to say? He couldn't tell them no right to his face. They wouldn't have let him walk away."

"Then how are we going to make a decision about this?!" Ethos shouted. "Are we going to just wait around until he decides to betray us?"

"There's one thing that will give us a hint about his intentions," Logos pointed upwards with one finger. "If he calls off his plan, then we'll know he's given up on our group. Then we'll launch a coup against him."

"Won't it be too late?" Kelly argued. "Chad asked him for a list of names. How are we going to stop him from providing that list?"

"Why do you care?" Ethos asked, annoyed at her.

"Because my name will be on that list too," she explained.

"We can get him suspended or expelled from school. We'll put a knife in his bag," Logos gestured slipping something into his hand, "then we'll report him to the teachers. They'll search his bag and call the police."

Ethos looked at him, narrowing his eyes. "I really don't want to have to resort to that."

"Let's wait until we hear what he says at today's meeting." Logos concluded. He looked at Kelly, then slowly turned his gaze to Ethos. "And a coup's success will rely on the truth being revealed. If there's any additional truth that he can reveal about you to undermine our plot... our group's organization will fall apart, and there's no telling what chaos will occur."

---

Pathos waited on a bench near the N building as Duster rounded the corner. He stood up and came forward to stand at his side.

"Did you read my message?"

"No," Duster said with his eyes closed.

"So... you already talked to Jennifer?"

"Yeah."

"What did she say?" Pathos's eyes were wide.

"Of course she said no," he answered. "Nothing else special. Except I made an absolute fool of myself."

Pathos looked around, first back the way Duster came, then down the path ahead of them on the other side of the building. He put his hand on the small railing next to some stairs nearby.

"I want to die," Duster whispered.

"About the next stage of the plan, to spread the rumor-" he cut himself off as other members of the group began to appear for their meeting.

Ethos, Kelly, and Logos made their entrance as well. Pathos opened the door to the N building and they all made their way inside. The group members began to take their seats. Pathos stood at the front of the room and waited for the rest of them to sit down. Ethos stared at him, leaning on the table. One hand gripped the other tightly. Logos leaned back in his chair with his arms crossed.

"It seems that this building is safe for us to meet in again," Pathos announced. "At least for the moment. But I want someone keeping watch out of the window. And everyone keep your phones out to call for an evacuation if it become necessary."

He took a breath in as he watched all the members at their tables in the ascending rows above him take out their phones. His eyes met those of Ethos and Logos, who stared at him.

"I had a dream once," he began, raising his voice to reach the back of the room. "In this dream I was climbing a mountain. Vastly large, endlessly high, I hiked over boulders until my legs hurt. I reached a sheer slope and climbed," Pathos reached his hands up, his fingers grasping imaginary stones. "With every new handhold I reached for, I felt my life was at risk. But I also felt like I had no choice but to climb. So I reached on. My arms were burning. I didn't dare look back at the depths below me."

"But I looked across the mountain and saw hundreds of other climbers. Some of them had given up and stopped climbing. Some of them were just barely hanging on for dear life. Some had let go and were sliding back down the slope. I saw the looks of despair in their faces. They had the looks of men who had given up everything." His voice choked up as he spoke. He breathed in and continued, his words wavering. "So many people with broken hopes tumbling back down toward-" he closed his eyes tightly, "the death of life that I was climbing to escape."

"And when I looked up to the sky," Pathos raised his head, his gaze reaching to the ceiling, "all I saw was a canopy of clouds. I moved toward it, one hand in front of the other. The whole time I repeated to myself, 'if only one of us makes it, there's hope for all the rest'. The clouds grew closer and closer. I felt like I was about to reach the summit."

"But when I passed the clouds I realized that I was," he paused, choking up once again. Tears began to well up in his eyes. His chest moved up and down as he breathed, trying to force himself to finish the story. "I was not even halfway up the mountain. I could see above me and ahead of me that there was still so much further to go, and yet another layer of clouds beyond which I could still not see the summit."

"My fingers grew weak on my handhold," he gestured his hands gripped around a rock. The audience were all leaning forward, enraptured with his speech. Some of them were crying silently. Some of them shook their heads as his fingers began to let go. "I felt that the summit of the mountain was unreachable. I wanted to let go."

"That's when I woke up," he said, opening his eyes. He looked out at the audience and finally allowed tears to roll down his cheeks. "Imagine going to school after a dream like that. Imagine having to even keep living after that. I wanted to die," Pathos made eye contact with Duster in the crowd.

"Now I'm back in reality with all of you. And every day we continue to climb on. We continue to struggle as the leftover boys that no girl will touch. I look back to every bad thing I've ever done, and my memory fails to explain to me what unforgivable sin that I've committed to earn an unforgivable life like this."

"So if you're ready to let go of your last grip on the mountain, like I was," he stretched his hands out to motion at the audience. "Then hear one more dream of mine before you give up. This one didn't come to me while I was sleeping. This one is a vision created with purpose, the dream I want to believe in for the future."

"Do you all know what a pachinko machine is?" The members of the group nodded their heads. "I want you to imagine a single silver ball," he pretended to grip two fingers around a ball and made a dropping motion with his fingers, gesturing the ball bouncing against the machine's pins, "dropping into the machine, being bounced around, thrown in different directions without any control of where it's going. Finally ending up," he made a swirling movement "far from the winning hole."

"But now I want you to imagine," Pathos's voice grew loud again, filling up the room. All the members began to sit up straight, breathless and motionless. "Not a single ball but more, more than dozens, more than hundreds, but thousands! Tens of thousands of silver balls, all dropping into the machine at once! More than the machine can handle, clogging up the mechanisms, bouncing each other into the winning path through the pins. Finally reaching the tray with the winning hole."

"Finally, they circle around the goal, getting closer and closer," the members in the audience stood up from their seats to lean closer to the center of the room. "Until the winning tray is so crowded with silver balls that finally,"

"One of them,"

"Makes its way in," he gestured with his finger the ball dropping straight down. All his fingers then followed in a waterfall-like motion. "And then another, and another, and another, every single one reaching the pachinko machine's jackpot. Money spills out of the machine, sprays out uncontrollably. The floor is covered with bills until there is more than enough for everyone."

"That's what I want you to imagine for me-" he corrected himself. "For us. That's the vision for the future that I want to share with all of you. I hope you can envision it as clearly as I can."

The voice of another young man rung out in the room as he began to sob, crying out and coughing. One of the others handed him a tissue, but there wasn't a dry eye in the room. Even Kelly's cheeks were trembling slightly as she tried not to mess up her makeup with tears.

"The main reason I wanted to speak before you today is because the treasury has run empty because of the emergency situation we faced, and I need to ask all members to give any money you've been holding onto to replenish our funds." He looked at Ethos and Logos. "And I want to confirm that the first stage of our plan has proceeded successfully. We will now proceed to stage 2."

"I knew we could count on you," Logos called out, wiping his face with his sleeve. He stood up and began to clap his hands. The others behind him clapped wildly too. Ethos rose from his seat and stepped forward to the center of auditorium.

"I trust you," Ethos reached out to shake Pathos's hand. The two of them embraced each other as the audience roared with applause.

---

At the front desk of the school office, an elderly lady sat with a phone pressed between her ear and her shoulder. She pressed the hold button on the phone and turned to see Jennifer standing at the desk.

"Do you need something, honey?" she asked.

"I'd like to see the school counselor," Jennifer said.

The office lady pointed with her finger at the door on the other end of the room. Jennifer nodded and walked past her, approaching a door that said COUNSELOR in capital letters. She knocked and soon a man in his 40's with a bald head and a beard opened the door.

"Hello, did you come to talk to me?" he asked with a smile. The counselor stepped back and motioned for her to enter the room.

"Yes, although it's not for me. It's about a friend," she explained.

"This friend isn't pregnant is she?" The counselor asked as he closed the door behind her and gestured toward a chair. She sat across from him on the opposite side of his desk.

"No, actually this friend is a boy." Her eyes drifted away from his and up to the corner of the room. "Actually he's not really a friend. I don't know him very well."

"Did he do something to you?" The counselor opened his eyes wider and leaned forward. "Something aggressive? Did he hurt you?"

"Not exactly," Jennifer paused and looked back at the door before coming back to make eye contact with him. "He asked me to meet him after school- politely- and when I said no he acted very upset."

"Was he yelling?"

"More like.. he looked like he was about to cry," Jennifer broke eye contact again to look down at the floor. She crossed her arms and rested them on her lap. "He said a bunch of stuff about how he wanted a girl to like him, to prove that he was worth being loved. It was something sad like that. It made me... pretty sad to hear someone say that."

She was staring at the legs of the desk. The counselor tilted his head to the side to better see her face.

"Jennifer, that's a trick that some boys use to make girls feel guilty. They want to..." the counselor rethought the words he would use. "They want you to go out with them, and they're willing to say anything to make you say 'yes' to them. It''s not very gentlemanly if you ask me."

"I wonder if you could talk to him," Jennifer said, "I want to make sure everything is going to be ok."

"Ok, I'll have him brought in here and make sure he knows that what he did to you was wrong."

"No, no," Jennifer's hair bounced as she shook her head and furrowed her eyebrows. "I want you to ask him if he's ok. He seemed really emotional. I've never seen anyone like that."

"You shouldn't feel bad for him. That's a common technique predators use to trick their victims. You're still young, and you don't understand."

"I don't want you to blame him." She demanded, finally looking back up. "I came to you because I thought he needed help. Promise me that you'll make sure he isn't going to... kill himself or anything because of me."

"Ok, I promise," the counselor brought his hands together and rested his chin on his hands, elbows pushed against the desk. "What his name?"

---

The loud sounds of a video arcade full of blaring noises echoed out into the street in the early evening. The large open door of the arcade was on the second floor of an outdoor strip mall, right at the top a staircase that rose from the parking lot outside. High school students, mostly boys walked around the shops and rode their bicycles amid the parked cars.

Pathos walked up the staircase with his hands in his pockets and entered the arcade. Right at the entrance sat Jude at the console of a fighting game, a quarter in his hand as he was about to insert it into the machine. He stopped when he saw Pathos at the doorway.

"Don't tell me you're going to ask me for money," Jude said, spreading his hand to the 3 or 4 dollars in quarters on the table. "This is all I have."

"I'm fine," Pathos smiled and drew his hand from his pocket and revealed a wad of bills, mostly fives and tens. "We collected contributions today. I'll be ok."

"The others couldn't make it," Jude explained, turning in the rotating seat to face him. "But I heard from one of them that he's already begun to carry out your plan in his school."

"What happened?" Pathos asked, his eyebrows raised up. He walked forward and sat at the machine next to him.

"He actually began right after you explained the plan to us, and didn't mention it since. But apparently," Jude smiled as well, "5 of the 17 guys in his group successfully went on dates with the girls they asked out."

Pathos's mouth was wide open. He laughed as he spoke, "I can't believe it worked."

"It was your plan," Jude reminded him.

"But I didn't really think..." he trailed off. "And even at other schools."

"Have you considered the possibility that regardless of any plan at all," Jude said, one of his hands gestured outward, "that by simply encouraging guys to ask out the girls they like that some percentage of them would be accepted? The real effect of a plan like this is getting guys to overcome their shyness."

"Yeah it's possible," Pathos looked at the screen of the machine, where characters fought in a pre-recorded movie. "I thought the actual good part of the plan was having the guys who were successful introduce their girlfriend's friends and set up group dates. That's what we're collecting money for, to help funds the dates of those of us who are successful."

"Then it's too bad about the girl who gets her reputation ruined because of that initial stage," Jude said, resting his hand on the table. Someone walked past them and they stopped their conversation for a moment, picking it up when they left the area. "Nobody likes the part where we spread nasty rumors."

"Maybe that's why the gods in ancient times demanded the sacrifice of a virgin," Pathos wondered. "I read about that in some history books about the Greeks. If you see that guy again, ask him to do whatever he can to salvage the girl at his school's reputation and help her recover. That's the one thing I find it hard to forgive us for doing."

---

Kelly waited on a square concrete bench around a dirt square with a tree in the center near the school office. She saw the door open, and Jennifer walk out. Kelly picked up her backpack and stood, waving at her. They walked toward each other.

"What's going on?" Kelly asked. "Did you get in trouble or something?"

"I talked to the school counselor," Jennifer explained.

Kelly's jaw slowly began to drop. Her body froze, but she pretended not to react and forced herself to speak. "Did... something happen to you?"

"Not to me," Jennifer stepped closer to her and lowered her voice, trying to keep the news a secret. "This boy asked me out, and when I told him no, he took it really hard. I recommended the school counselor talk to him."

Kelly pause for a moment before speaking. "You're a good person Jennifer,"

"You would have done the same thing," she replied.

"No, I wouldn't have. I've made people cry before, and I've never once done a single thing to help them." Kelly stopped as she realized what she was saying. But the words kept coming out. "I wish I were a good person too. But every time I had a chance to do something good for people, I just kept finding myself making the wrong choice instead. Again and again until the possibility of being a good person disappeared."

Jennifer met her eyes. Kelly was holding her breath as they looked at one another. Students walked all around them, paying no mind to their conversation.

"Maybe you should see the school counselor too," Jennifer told her.

---

"I don't know what Ethos did exactly," Pathos told Logos as they sat in the auditorium rows of the N building, only the two of them. "But he was having Kelly spread rumors about the girlfriends of Olympus members to try to get them to break up. It almost ruined everything. I had to get Chad to at least believe that we weren't at war with them"

"That's what Chad told you?" Logos asked him.

"You know what Chad told me," Pathos crossed his legs in the chair. "I knew you were listening."

"You knew we opened the black box?"

"Of course. And I knew about your plan to stage a coup against me too," Pathos reached into his backpack and revealed a listening device similar to the one Logos had used before. "I'm the one who had the black box in the first place."

"I guess we're all guilty of a little deception," Logos admitted.

"Sometimes you have no choice but to deceive people," Pathos said as he looked away from him. "Is the plan in motion?"

"Yes, I'm blemishing my perfect attendance record by cutting class to oversee it with you," said Logos as he stood up. He picked up a pencil and began to draw on a small map of the school. The pencil marked locations outside of classrooms near every school building. "20 members are all asking out the girls they like today precisely at the same time, as everyone is leaving their last class."

"If 5 out of 17 students in that other school were successful-" Logo started.

"No, don't expect that same percentage," Pathos warned him. "We'll be lucky enough to get even one success. You can flip a coin 20 times and it could be tails every single time. Their school isn't our school."

"What happens if every single one of them fails?" Logos's voice fell to a whisper.

"Then there's still the two of us," Pathos said, tapping him on the shoulder with his hand. "Did you hear what Kelly told us? Duster got called into the school counselor's office. The news is spreading across the entire school about what Jennifer did to him."

"Except what she actually did to him," Logos began to draw a dot in the center of the school, isolated from all the other dots. "Is that she was the one who told the counselor to call him. But despite that being the truth, now nobody in the school wants to talk to her. She's as much of a pariah as we are now. And we don't actually know if that will have any effect at all on girl's decisions to reject suitors or not."

Pathos stared at the dot on the center of the map. Suddenly the door to the N building swung open, and one of the group members stood at the door.

"I failed," he said. "But at least after all this time of being scared, I tried."

"Sit down and rest," Pathos told him. Then he turned to Logos again. "Put a check next to his name on the list."

One by one more group members came back to the auditorium. Soon there were three failures, then five, then nine. Logos checked their names on the list, one by one. Pathos stared at the paper, his heart beating so hard that his hands shook.

"I had so many plans for dates," said one of the members with his head in his hands. "I had so many dreams about her."

"It's not your last chance. Once we get the leverage of at least one guy, we'll have an exponential access to friends of friends," Logos told him, speaking loudly enough for everyone in the room to hear.

"Were they at least reluctant to reject you?" Pathos asked crowd.

"She wasn't cruel," one member told him.

"She didn't laugh at me like I was afraid she would," another member explained.

"She pause for a long time before answering," said the first guy who had come to the room earlier. "Like she was thinking about it hard. I thought she might say yes for a second."

"How do we know if the plan was effective?" Logos turned to Pathos and whispered.

"The real plan was effective," he whispered back. "It gave this many guys the courage to ask."

Ethos entered the room. Everyone in the room stared at him, waiting. Finally he shook his head. Pathos sighed as he stepped forward to put his arm around him in comfort. Before he could say anything, Ethos spoke over him.

"I know, hope is not lost," he said. "But I still feel like I made a huge mistake that she's not going to forget."

Another voice rang out through the room as the door swung open again and light from outside poured in. "I did it!" shouted one member.

Everyone in the room stood rose from their seats and rushed to gather around him. Dozens of arms reached out to pat his shoulders. "Congratulations!" some voices said. "At least one of us-" said another.

Then another member entered the room and announced his success. Pathos, Ethos, and Logos all smiled at each other breathlessly.

"Does this mean the plan is working?" Ethos asked Pathos. "Does this mean we'll move to the next stage?"

"I think it does," Pathos answered. "Only one climber needs to reach the top of the mountain. Only one pachinko ball needs to make it into the hole for all of us to win."

"Guys," Logos said he looked around the room. "I just realized that Kelly isn't her with us."

---

Kelly sat in her biology class, half-listening to the teacher discuss the behavior of animals in nature and half rubbing her finger against the corner of her desk. Suddenly a folded piece of paper brushed past her shoulder and landed on her desk in front of her. She looked behind her, but didn't see anyone who seemed to have just thrown or passed it. Nothing was written on the outside of the paper. Made sure the teacher wasn't looking, then leaned over her desk to hide it and quietly unfolded it.

TALK TO STACY, written in red marker.

Kelly's breath began to quicken. She felt her arms tremble as her heartbeat grew stronger and faster. Once again she looked around the room, but nobody met her gaze. The minutes crept by slowly and painfully as she wondered what was going to happen to her after class.

The bell rang and everybody stood up, packing their folders and books into their backpacks. Kelly walked slowly to the door of the classroom. The moment she stepped outside, she was met with the sight of two football players standing close to the entrance, allowing all the other students to pass by them. Between them stood Stacy. The moment she saw Kelly, her eyes narrowed and a smile crept across her face.

"I want to ask you some questions," Stacy said.

The two athletes stood on either side of Kelly close enough that their shoulders were bumping hers as they walked, following Stacy to a small room at the end of the row of classrooms. They entered what appeared to be a storage room for sports equipment where two more athletes waited. One of them closed the door behind them, and other pulled a chair to the center of the room. Kelly slowly walked forward and sat down in the chair as they surrounded her.

"Do you remember what you told me about Bruce at that coffee shop?" Stacy asked her. "That he was saying he was talking about getting some girl in his car and driving somewhere with her? Well we talked about it. He said he never said that. But he's forgetful sometimes. I want to know the truth."

"I told you what I knew," Kelly shook her head as she spoke, clutching her small backpack to her chest.

"So you didn't make it up? Then what was the girl's name?" Stacy asked.

The door opened and another athlete stuck his head in, leaning in from outside. "Chad and Bruce are on their way."

"Ok, everyone out," Stacy ordered. She looked at Kelly. "Except for you. I'm going to give you two minutes to think about it. Because I'm so nice."

Kelly watched them as they all left the room. She squeezed her knees together, and held her backpack even tighter. As the last of the athletes stepped out, Kelly's lips began to move. Slowly, a sound escaped from her mouth.

"Jennifer," she whispered. "It was Jennifer. I didn't say her name because she was there that day."

The room was silent except for Kelly talking to herself. She turned in the chair and looked at the door. Then she took her phone from her pocket and started to write a message. When she reached the message recipient field, the first name that came up was Pathos. Her fingers paused, hovering over the phone's display. She looked up again at the door.

---

"My body was screaming at me to stop," one member of the group described. "It told me to walk in the other direction, to look away, or to just walk past her. I was so scared that I felt like my insides were frozen solid."

"It was the same for me," said another, laughing as he spoke. "I felt like I was shaking and I something was holding me back from taking another step forward. I've never felt so anxious in my whole life."

"Eight," said Pathos, looking at the eight members in the front of the room standing before the others who were in the auditorium seats. "I can't believe that eight of us succeeded."

"We succeeded because of your plan," said another one. "You created the perfect circumstances for us to make this happen."

"No, it was your bravery and dedication to the plan, and to this group that won the day," he insisted. He looked to Ethos, Logos, and the others who were sitting. "The rest of us might have gotten a strike, but we haven't struck out by any means. The next stage of the plan will progress: paying for these eight to go on dates until they can bring in more girls for the rest of us to have a chance."

"If they give us a chance," said one boy sat next to Pathos at a nearby desk, his head in his hands. "I'm happy for the guys who succeeded, but I fear that for the rest of us, even asking a girl out is so unforgivable... " he paused. "Olympus won't be merciful enough to let us try again."

"All of us will return to doing surveillance missions to hear what they're saying, and assess the damage," Pathos commanded.

"I don't want to hear the girl I like laugh with her friends about how much of a loser I am," the same guy said, covering his head with his hands. "It's so unfair. Why do they deny our existence like this?"

"No, never blame the girls," Pathos responded. Everyone in the room fell silent. Their eyes focused on him, especially the guys who had been rejected. "We can't put the blame for our failure on anyone but ourselves. If we had spent our whole lives up until now training our muscles and learning how to be social successfully, we would be sitting where Olympus does at lunch and they would be meeting here in secret. Even mistakes that our parents made are ours; your mother could have married a taller man, or your father could have saved more money and made you rich. People like Chad and even Kelly have made the cost of even trying to talk to girls so high for guys like us that we shrink with fear from any attempt at all. But although the 'fault' is someone else's, the responsibility to make up for it is yours."

"Never blame the girl," he repeated. Several guys in the audience nodded in agreement.

"What about you?" Logos asked him. "Were you going to ask out the girl you like?"

"I could ask you the same question," he replied.

"I'm happy to see everyone succeed. I don't mind going last after everyone else," Logos looked down and smiled, laughing to himself and holding his eyes closed for a moment. "Maybe it's because to see evidence that it's possible for me too. You know how reluctant I was at the beginning to even join a group like this with you guys."

"I hope this proved it to you," Ethos told him. "When I had the idea to start this group, I knew if we put enough brains together, one of us would have an idea that would lead us all to victory."

"Whatever happened to your plan?" Pathos asked. Logos looked at him, then looked at Ethos.

"Don't worry about it," he shook his head slightly. "It was a dud. You should worry about asking out the girl you had your eye on before you lose your nerve. Who was it again?"

Pathos breathed in deeply before answering, "Jennifer."

---

"Jennifer" Kelly said as Chad stood over her with his arms crossed, surrounded by athletes all wearing the varsity jacket. Stacy leaned against the table behind him.

"Jennifer was the girl Bruce was talking about?" Chad asked her. "Or Jennifer was the one who started the rumor about him?"

"Jennifer..." Kelly repeated. She paused, staring straight ahead. Stacy and the other athletes turned to look at the wall she was staring at before shifting their attention back to Kelly. Only Chad remained focused on her.

Slowly she blinked, her mouth hanging open. Her lips moved to form some shape, but the next word wouldn't come out. All she could do was breathe. Everybody in the room waited motionlessly for her answer. Finally, she looked up at Chad.

"There was a conspiracy against Jennifer," she finally admitted. "Clyde paid me to spread rumors about her, and a few of your friends as well like Bruce. But Jennifer was the main target."

"So that's why everyone thinks she was abusive toward that guy Peter. But I heard he even went to the school counselor," said Stacy.

"The story is exaggerated to make her look bad. In fact she was the one who had Peter called into the counselor's office."

"Why her?" asked Stacy, but she stopped and looked at Chad as he raised his hand and motioned her to remain silent.

"Was it only Clyde? There wasn't anyone else involved?" he asked. Kelly didn't answer him at first. Chad uncrossed his arms and smiled at her. "You're not in trouble, Kelly. Come on, you can tell me."

"It was only him," she finally said. "...I didn't know that you knew my name."

"Of course I do," he said in a deep voice. "We had a class together last year."

"Right," Kelly laughed nervously. "I didn't think you even noticed me then."

"I need to know this, so listen carefully," Chad ordered her. "Did he say why he was doing all this?"

"He didn't tell me everything," she broke eye contact with him as she looked around, trying to form a convincing enough lie in her head. "But I guess he wanted revenge on you. Maybe he thought you guys had a monopoly on all the girls in the school, and he wasn't getting any because of that."

"He couldn't understand that it was because he's a loser," Stacy said from the corner. "That's the most pathetic thing I've ever heard."

"And about Jennifer," as she spoke, Kelly started to realize that her lie might be closer to reality than she had realized. "Maybe his plan was the make everyone hate her; to knock her down a peg so she'd finally agree to date him."

"Thanks Kelly," Chad looked directly into her eyes and made a faint smile. His voice grew even deeper and he spoke more slowly and smoothly than before. "You've told me what I needed to know."

Kelly breathed in quietly and smelled the scent of his body, her shoulders rising and her face beginning to blush. Chad felt closer to her than he had been before. When he turned away from her, and she unconsciously leaned forward as if to follow him.

"How much did Clyde pay you?" he said without looking at her as the athletes began to shuffle toward the door.

"I keep it all in here," she patted her bra. "You can check if you want."

Chad turned back to see Kelly leaning forward in the chair with her hand rested on her bosom.

"He must not have paid you that much," he said as he looked down at her chest.

---

Pathos watched Jennifer sitting in class tapping a pencil against the page of a math test. He had already finished, but she was still staring at the page. Her hair was a lot less neat than it had been when he had seen her a few days ago. Her clothes weren't as smart; she looked like she didn't have it all together so well.

The teacher announced the end of the test and began collecting the students' test pages. Jennifer was huffing and puffing in her seat quietly as other students stood up and began to talk to each other.

"That test killed me!" Another girl with dark brown hair said as she put her hand on her forehead.

"I didn't think it was that hard," said a very short blonde girl as she slung her backpack over her shoulder.

"Then you're gonna have to tutor me," said the first girl.

"Me too!" Said a chubby girl sitting on seat to the right. "Want to study at the library on Monday?"

"I can help you with biology," Jennifer said. All the girls turned to look at her. A moment of silence passed as she looked back at them, one by one. None of them responded. The only looked at each other. Pathos wondered if they were exchanging messages through a psychic channel that he had no access too. Jennifer apparently didn't have access either.

"...if you need help," her voice fell to a whisper.

"We're all good at biology," said the blonde girl. They began to walk away from her quietly. As soon as they left the classroom, Pathos could hear them burst into laughter and mean comments about Jennifer.

"Hey," he reached out a hand to tap her desk. She looked up at him, her eyes wide and her head bowed. "I can tutor you. I'm good at math." The truth was he was hoping to do as well as a C grade on that test.

"I didn't even understand what the test was about," she admitted to him. She bit her lips and looked down at her math textbook. But he stood up, stepped over his chair, and stood next to her desk.

"The test was about asymptotes," he picked up her pencil and flipped it around. The eraser made light marks on the desk as he drew a little graph. "Horizontal and vertical asymptotes."

"What's an asymptote?" Jennifer looked up at him.

"It's a line that approaches another line," he rotated his body until he was standing right next to her. His arm drew closer to hers. The centimeters between them shrunk to millimeters. He could feel her breath softly brush against his hand. "It gets infinitely closer and closer... but it never quite touches."

"To tell you the truth," her mouth smiled but her eyelids drooped, betraying that her true emotions didn't match her expression, "I haven't paid attention at all in my classes recently. This week has been pretty hard for me."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Pathos looked straight ahead at the whiteboard, averting her gaze for a moment. "But I'll tell you what I did. When you have something important- something that really matters, you can't give up no matter what. You just do what you have to do no matter how hard it is. Even if it's painful."

Jennifer looked up at him. His gaze returned to her and he smiled.

"I mean math of course. Perhaps we could meet after school and I can tutor you," he offered.

"Yeah, we can do that," she said back.

"Maybe we can meet every day this week, make it a regular thing."

"Sure, we can do that." Jennifer answered.

"And maybe we can have lunch tomorrow," Pathos narrowed his eyes and gambled one more step forward. "Without any studying."

"Sounds like fun," she smiled back at him.

---

"When she said that, I could hear a choir singing in my heart," Pathos explained. "I felt like electricity was being run through my body and I was burning up. My stomach felt like it was a balloon filling up with helium. I couldn't believe that after all this time, my dream is coming true."

"You deserve it," Jude told him, leaning on his bike. The dozen other boys listened to his story as they held onto the handlebars, or squatted on the concrete of the parking lot. "It only makes sense for you to reap the harvest of all your plans. We certainly did."

"How many did you guys say?" he asked as he looked at the other boys.

"5 at my school, 11 at his, 4 at his with a few that seem undecided. But the prospects are good," answered the boy with long hair and the sweater. "And part 4 of this plan, setting up dates, looks like it has even more potential for success than the previous part. Jude's right: you deserve it."

"Deserve is a strange word," Pathos said as he swung his chin to the side. "Jennifer and the girls who took the hit at your schools didn't deserve to have their reputations ruined. And now she's agreed to start meeting me for lunch and after school, even though I'm the one who caused her so much stress and angst."

"You'll make her twice as happy in the future as you've made her sad now," said one of the boys. "And there's one more thing. We'd like to return the money we took from you."

Each of them held out ten or twenty dollars to him. He looked back in shock at the money, then turned to Jude. Jude nodded, and one by one he collected the bills in his hand.

"You don't have to return that to your group's treasury," said the boy who had offered him the money first. "You should fund your own dates too."

---

In the school library, at the far back table nearest the wall where books sat arranged on the shelves in a rainbow of faded spines and covers, Jennifer and Pathos were huddled side by side in two chairs with notes spread across the table. Jennifer's head gently moved from side to side as she watched him write, a look of concentration in her eyes. But Pathos couldn't hide the smile on his face that reappeared every time he looked at her.

"So you can see how the Magna Carta influenced the French Charter of 1814, and a lot of other similar documents," he explained.

"I'm so bad at history," she said with a quiet laugh. "Thanks for teaching me this too."

"Well you can teach science. I know that's your strong subject," Pathos replied.

"I still don't get the French Revolution at all," she sighed. "And the test is coming up."

"Well I guess it's mostly the fault of the king. This guy," he turned the book back a page and tapped a picture of Louis XVI. "In the case of Louis here, he didn't do the most important things that kings have to do at the very worst moment possible. He lost what Chinese Emperors called the 'Mandate of Heaven'. He lost his head too when the mob came for him with the guillotine."

"What kind of things are kings supposed to do?" Jennifer leaned her elbow on the desk and rested her head on her hand as she looked down at the picture. Her hair fell across the table in front of her.

"You won't find this in a history book because its just my opinion," he continued. Her gaze looked up to meet him. "But I think a king is sort of our psychological figure of God on earth. God is supposed to know everything and punish people's sins. The king should be that kind of idealized, perfect figure. People aren't so religious these days, but there are definitely things we worship. And when someone embodies our ideals in that way, we make them a king."

The door to the library opened and Pathos looked. Chad walked in alone. In fact, there was nobody else in the library beside the three of them. But Jennifer didn't notice. Pathos spoke as Chad began to approach them.

"And the king has to prevent great injustices, sins, and crimes just the way God would. Or if preventing them is impossible, he can't let them go unpunished." His eyes fixed on Chad as he approached them. When he came to a stop in front their table, Jennifer finally turned her head to look up at him.

"Both of you, come with me," he ordered. Jennifer looked to Pathos, who simply looked back at her. He removed his finger from the picture of Louis XVI and closed the history book.

They both stood up and followed Chad toward the door of the empty library. Chad stood at the closed door, his hand on the long bar that opened and closed it when pressed. When the two of them stood directly behind him, he spoke without looking back at them.

"Anything to say to me, Clyde?" he asked Pathos.

"Just do what you have to do," he replied. Jennifer stared at him with her eyes wide open.

Chad breathed in deeply and opened the door. Light nearly blinded them as the colors from the outside world slowly came into focus. They stepped out of the library and stood atop a wheelchair ramp leading to the library door. On the left and right were small raised concrete platforms sporting benches where dozens of athletes wearing the varsity jacket sat and stood waiting. At the bottom of the ramp, crowded in the covered walkway and in the grassy quad area beyond, were hundreds of students staring at the library door. Almost everyone in the whole school was there, waiting in silence.

The library door closed behind them with a clunking sound. Chad stepped to the raised platform on the left. His hands gripped the metal guard rail at the edge of the platform. Most of the crowd looked to him for a second, then back to Clyde and Jennifer. Two of his athletes walked to stand on either side of him.

"Most of you," his booming voice reached to the very edge of the massive group of students listening, "have heard the rumors surrounding Jennifer, and wondered about the truth behind them. Although athletes generally don't get involved in girl's business, I have decided to get to the bottom of it."

He motioned to the football players sitting behind him, and two of them brought Duster forward, standing on either side as they held his arms. He was shaking, his chest moving rapidly up and down as he breathed in a panic. For a second he met Pathos's eyes, then looked to the floor.

"This is the boy who Jennifer was said to have rejected so harshly and cruelly that he went to the school counselor. He himself has denied this rumor. The truth is," Chad turned and pointed a finger at Pathos. Everyone in attendance looked directly at him. "This little rat built a conspiracy against Jennifer by making mountains out of molehills from this story. All to isolate Jennifer so he could have her all to himself."

"Every normal person would hear that story," Chad thundered as he turned back to the crowd, spotting Logos and Ethos in the front row, "and feel worry for the safety of every girl in school. They would even wonder if other people were involved in this plot."

"It was only me!" Pathos shouted. Jennifer took a step away from him as she stared, mouth open, shaking her head from side to side. As she backed up, a hand reached out and rested on her shoulder. She looked behind her to see Kelly standing in the crowd.

"What about these two?" Chad looked down at Logos and Ethos.

"I barely know that guy," Logos answered. "We don't even have any classes together."

"I would never be friends with such a disgusting loser," Ethos followed up, tears forming in his eyes.

"And you?" Chad and the crowd turned their heads to Duster, who still stared at the floor.

"He tricked me into asking her out when he knew she'd say 'no'. It's exactly as you explained," Duster replied in a much quieter voice than Chad's.

Pathos looked out into the crowd. Hundreds of faces stared back at him. They began whispering to each other, pointing their fingers at him, and narrowing their eyes. But most of them just stood in total silence, waiting to see what would happen to him.

"Do you deny it?" Chad asked.

"No, I did it." Pathos admitted.

"I did it... for love." He looked at Jennifer, who looked back at him with disgust.

"For lust." He looked at a group of cheerleaders in the crowd, who reacted to his words with sneers and wincing faces. "For the pride of being one of the guys who had a girlfriend. Out of a desire to impress people. Or perhaps out of desperation. Out of a desire to prove that I wasn't at the bottom of everyone's list."

"And if you want to know the painful, disgusting truth," he said loudly, so as many people as possible could hear him. "I wanted to know whether I would be allowed to pass my genes onto the next generation, or whether I would be blocked, determined to be of too low quality to be allowed to breed. And I guess I have my answer now," he looked among the crowd, and back at Jennifer.

"And why Jennifer?" he asked. "Because she was the girl I wanted most, and she rejected me without me even having to ask. Whatever anyone believed, the real goal of my plan was to give me a chance at getting her. I studied the society everyone lives in, and it was clear to me that we were worlds apart. But if my goal could not succeed, as I worried it might not..." he paused. Logos and Ethos looked at him with mouths open wide in shock.

"I wanted to hurt her," he finally said. "I wanted her to feel the despair I felt every single day. The ultimate loneliness, the slings and arrows of everyone around you for what seems to be no reason at all. I always told myself and others 'never blame the girl for your own faults'. But even though that statement makes perfect sense to me... I could never force myself to be convinced by it. Something inside me that isn't moved by reason purposely made revenge my plan B."

"I can say I'm sorry, but it won't change anything" he said, "This is Nuremburg. This is the guillotine in the public square."

"No," Chad interrupted. "If this were your trial, you wouldn't deserve death. I'd sentence you to life. Here, with us, now that everyone knows what you really are."

Chad pointed straight into the crowd and looked at Pathos. He began to walk forward down the handicapped ramp, taking one last look at Jennifer. She refused to meet his gaze, instead burying her face in Kelly's shoulder. He walked forward and brushed shoulders with Logos as he entered the mass of people, all of whom had their eyes on him. He felt Logos and Ethos reach out and touch his arm, down where people couldn't see.

"We risk it all for the prize," Logos whispered to him as he passed.

As Pathos made his way through the crowd, most stared at him walking past. A few people pushed forward and made him stumble. Nobody tried to help him up. Nobody cleared a path for him to walk. But as he regained his balance he could feel hands brush against him and a few voices murmuring out to speak to him.

"We risk it all for the prize."
The end.