"If it looks like there's a twenty dollar bill on the ground it's actually a mal, yada yada - though really excellent affinities do happen sometimes...."

"The way he explained it seemed plausible - his affinity is stuff that works on himself, he takes them himself all the time, they work less well on other people but still some - but it's definitely going on my list of dumb things I did on account of being fourteen."

"I don't know, I think you could make a case for it. Well, I could, maybe not you, you're an enclaver, but for us a lot of successful strategies are going to be high variance." 

"I dunno, I'm kind of just planning to keep my head down."

"There are literally two of us in the school right now and I'm not entitled to offer a guaranteed spot, I think I have to consider more mainline strategies."

Julian does actually manage to stop himself from saying that the mainline indie strategy is getting eaten by a mal on graduation day. 

"My parents told me 'keep your head down for two years and then impress everyone for two years' but I don't know if all the murder changes that - plausibly it's worth trying harder to secure safety in numbers now??"

"Probably depends on how things shake out over the next few weeks. If we're assuming the murderer is a freshman they're probably not going to be enormously subtle, you know?" 

"Well unless any of you are secretly maleficers we've got the start of 'safety in numbers' going."

"Maleficing goes against my religious precepts."

"You have a lot of those?"

"I've got one, which is that dying is bad."

An older boy sits down at the table next to Bella without so much as a 'May I?'

"Well, that's good to hear!"

"- hello, have we met?"

Oh god that looks like a senior and it's talking to them. 

Oh god what now.

"Not yet! I'm James, you?"

...

(Is that creeping? How do you tell?)

"...I'm Bella, New Orleans enclave. If you're looking for Suze, she's already gone to the reading room with Atlanta."

"Are you buying or selling and what are you buying or selling."

"No, no, I'm actually just checking in on all the new students, making sure everyone's settling in OK and had a good first day of classes. Have you?"

...?

"The teacher to student ratio seems pretty lousy and I get the sense the guidance counselors aren't really doing their jobs."

Is it wise to crack jokes at the weird upperclassman? Probably not.