"If the Sacramento seniors were going around gathering support to execute us - well, there's nothing we could've done about it. You've got to focus on the ways things could be where you can do something. Which - you've probably heard before, you don't need me to tell you, sorry."

"Apparently shouldn't count on anyone knowing anything, here. But yes, I got that lecture. Live in the worlds where you might live. Where the Sacramento seniors are actually going around about some appalling stupid thing you don't know about and will never need to and Marcy's just itching to gossip about - what was Marcy talking about. What Toronto was thinking?"

" - Oh, one of the Sacramento kids went and brought the news to Toronto and they said, basically, 'we knew she was planning to off herself, knew it was going to be tonight when she gave back all her enclave stuff' which I would have assumed meant everything if we didn't know better. It looked like you - were maybe not paying attention to that conversation. We were wondering what the enclave was thinking sending her in the first place."

" - a good question! Even if it would've been really embarrassing to leave her behind, can't get much more embarrassing than this - I guess maybe little enough of the story will make it out that it really was more convenient for someone, to lose her on the inside -"

"Yeah that's the likeliest story so far."

There's the sounds of footsteps and some other students start trickling towards the Mal Studies room.

"OK, let's head in? We can talk through this more in work period."

"Yes." She wants to say thank you, but she's not acknowledging a favor owed, not exactly - "You handled everything well." 

"Thanks." Annisa handled it - better than almost anyone else in their year would've, apparently, but not as well as she or Malak would have hoped, so saying 'you did too' wouldn't be appropriate. "Let's not do it again anytime soon, if every breakfast is like this I won't last the month."

"Yeah." And they should still be a moment early to class, early enough to get good seats. 

Annisa's textbook is in Javanese, to her annoyance; she's going to raise her children speaking English first, it'll make it easier to share their textbooks.