"Yeah." An empty classroom's probably safe enough on the first day but they'd (briefly) feel like such idiots if it wasn't. 

At least the hallway is empty now.

"OK, new theory: Every single enclave is insane and dysfunctional and we just haven't seen Boston fall apart yet because we still haven't even started classes yet."

- nervous giggle. "If all of the enclaves are insane and dysfunctional then they wouldn't have good graduation rates, and that's verifiable - I guess they could be fudging them somehow????"

"I know, I know, but Toronto as far as I can tell not doing anything about one of their freshman planning to commit suicide, Sacramento doing way too much to prevent one of their sophomores from committing suicide as soon as he hears about a new cool way to do it, whatever is going on with Shanghai..."

"What I'm saying is, school is not as I expected it to be at all. Enclavers are supposed to be - like Marcy or like Julia - "

Fervent nod. "It's supposed to be hard to prove to them that you're good enough to deserve to be on their team. If they're like this you could do it with 'I prefer being alive to being dead, I do my own homework, and I got a lecture on operational security once'."

"OK. Well. Seems good that we've maybe got an early in with Boston which - does seem pretty functional so far at least. And Toronto knows it was a suicide, apparently. Do you know what that Sacramento freshman was thinking at all? I couldn't figure him out."

Headshake. "No, and I don't like it. - my next door neighbor is Shannon, an indie from Canada who carried in twenty kilos for Sacramento, and he was flirting with her, last night, helping her set up her shelves for free, and I'd told Shannon I'd keep an eye out but he didn't pay me any mind at the time."

"And now he wants to... tell us what he finds out about why his enclavemate is so eager to jump into the void. Not because we have any particular reason or need to know."

"It's like he thinks we're with Boston already or something, only I have no idea how he'd have concluded that? Maybe Sacramento's recruiting really hard since they're, uh, dumping all the resources into voidwannabe kid, but that wasn't even a pitch for helping out with voidwannabe kid!"

" - maybe he thinks we are Boston, did we say anything to contradict that when he was there? So if Sacramento is trying to have generally good relations with Boston and he knows that... and he seems to be out of the loop on all the actual details of what Sacramento is doing or why..."

" - shit. Yes, that'd explain - 'I'll let you know what's up as soon as I know' - so we're all allies in being confused what our seniors are doing, and 'I'll see you at lunch' like, of course -"

"And then... OK this isn't so bad, we're not going to be invited back to Boston for lunch so probably he'll go there looking for us and someone will tell him we're indies and - that sounds like it would be awkward for him so he's going to want to act like it never happened and probably won't come see us and that's the end of that."

"Which is - fine, it's a bridge burned with Sacramento maybe but I don't want Sacramento, dunno about you. I can just...hide, if he keeps visiting Shannon, and I'll have more of a read on him in a couple months, she's planning to take him up on it."

"I wouldn't have minded an in with Sacramento before today, but I wasn't planning to try to get one. And now I'm not sure I want one. And if I did - maybe they have other freshmen, or maybe 'pretend it never happened' doesn't mean actively shunning us. It could've gone a lot worse."

At that Annisa shivers violently. 

"It didn't though, that's what matters this time. But, uh, if another enclaver tells you they're planning to go meet God and you can have their stuff, maybe don't take them up on that."

"Not until at least junior year. I evidently can't handle it yet." There, that's acknowledging that she needs to do better on the freezing up in panic front without making her sound too pathetic or like she's not even going to be able to learn. 

" - I guess it's not really feasible to practice more while we're in here."

"...it doesn't really seem like you can practice it at all, thinking that a bunch of seniors are running around between tables deciding whether to kill you! I've fought mals for real but that's different, and there were entrance exams which are sort of life or death but - I knew I'd make it, really -"

"I mean, yeah, I didn't practice this exact thing but I practiced being in danger and needing to talk someone who hated me into getting me out of it and some of the skills transfer."

"Huh, how -"

" - The usual way one would practice doing things in dangerous situations? For us it was a room full of snakes - not venemous but I didn't know that at the time - and then I would have to talk the person into unlocking the door for me."

- maybe if you had a circle, practically an enclave, people who weren't family and might credibly let you die. She shrugs. "My parents were too soft on my older brothers. I thought they'd grown out of it but maybe not all the way, I wouldn't've believed them if they'd tried that."

" - Oh, that makes sense. Probably most independents don't have as many mind spells as Mother does. I mean, I would've believed her the first time either way, but if I could've remembered every previous time when I was in the room I would've known it wasn't really dangerous."

"Oh. Yes, I don't think my parents had a way to do that. Anyway, I think what happened was, I was trying to track the Sacramento seniors and which tables they were stopping by, who was allied with who and whose approval they thought they needed and who looked angriest and who looked most inconvenienced and - it was too many things, I should've just picked one."

"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.