America rhapsodizes about her breakfast of orange juice, pancakes, eggs, and bacon.  Has this author never been to a fancy breakfast place?  I mean, come on.  If you want to show off how awesome palace food is, then why not have them serve items that take skill or expensive ingredients?  Then at least she’d have something to talk about, instead of just repeating that her very average breakfast is perfect without telling us what’s actually so damned special about it.

Hell, you don’t even have to get that fancy with it.  I’ll try it: hot tea/coffee, a variety of juices (hey, having a choice at all should be impressive enough to America) including fruit blends, poached eggs served with artichokes and mushrooms and a Bechamel sauce (eggs comtesse), apple-and-turkey sausage (not links, just the sausage), crab quiche, and melons.  Nothing in that menu is actually all that special and I’ve made all of it in my own kitchen, but at least it sounds like someone trying to be fancier than eggs and bacon.

Oh, great, and now the strawberry tart is the best thing ever, but all she says is that it’s ‘sweet.’  Yeah, strawberries will do that.  Why not mention that it’s got complimentary fruit flavors in the pastry cream, or that it’s been spiced, or anything other than just fucking ‘sweet’ since all strawberry tarts are sweet.  (The best pastry creams include brandy or a creamy liquor, which I’m sure America wasn’t using when she baked sweets at home.  You can also make them chocolate flavored, or coffee flavored, or fuck-it-any-flavored.)

America notes that she’s the only Five left, since there were only two others and they got dismissed before breakfast.  Since we don’t know if there’s any Sixes or Sevens, that doesn’t have as much punch as the author seems to think.  Also…so what?  The Fours and Threes aren’t going to know any more about being a queen than a Five would, so it’s not like she’s at some disadvantage.

See, this is why it’s important to tell us more about the caste system other than just ‘do certain jobs’ and ‘sucks in some undefined way.’  We can’t feel bad for America and her Five-ness if we don’t know what that means.  So far she’s not been materially different from anyone else in the book, and she’s adapted to being rich pretty well (it helps that apparently ‘rich’ is also ‘middle class’), therefore it’s hard for me to get nervous along with her about being the only Five left.

Maxon suddenly comes by and asks how she likes her food, drawing the ire of all the girls around her.  America says that the tarts are so good that May would cry if she had one.  Then they make a bet on whether or not May will really cry.

Okay, look, when someone says they’ll cry over how good food is, that’s an expression.  Do you know who actually cries over food?  People who don’t get enough of it.  People who are desperate for a thing will cry after they get it, because their feelings of relief are so great.  No one who is well-fed and stable will cry over food, no matter how good it is, unless they’ve got some other issue going on, too.  So, with that in mind, the fact that they’re betting on May crying over food is really, disgustingly callous. 

It’s even worse because America is the one betting in favor of crying.

Maxon orders a parcel of tarts to be sent to her family, and America writes a gushing letter about how she’s just so happy to be at the palace and everything’s just so awesome and everyone’s just so nice.  Because America disapproves of the Selection and that’s…why she’s acting at every turn like she approves of it?  Fuck it, I don’t know either.

She didn’t cry, miss. She said they were so good she could have—as you suggested—but she did not actually cry.

Yeah, because normally people don’t cry over food, they just say that they will.

Since America lost her bet, she has to go on a walk around the gardens with Maxon.  And, as we all remember, the gardens is where rebels occasionally get in and blow shit up.  I feel like pointing this out, since the book has clearly forgotten.

Along with the news that May didn’t cry, America also got letters from all her family members.

If only there was a way I could get letters every day. I supposed it could be done, but it would have to be so expensive.

…Do they not have a postal service?  Seriously, even if there’s a lag time, it shouldn’t be that hard to get letters every day.  The family just has to send them every day.

Oh, god, I just hurt my head trying to figure out where shit is in this book.  She lives in Carolina, which I assume is the same place as the states by the same name.  The capitol is Angeles, which I assumed was Los Angeles.  But those two things are not a two-hour plane ride away from each other.  Where the fuck is all this happening?  And, even at two hours away…did Maxon have the tarts flown to her house?  They got delivered and she got a reply in the same day.

So is America thinking that letters would be expensive because she’s assuming someone would have to fly back and forth to deliver them?  Because that would hint that there’s no postal service.  Or does she think that’s expensive because stamps can’t be spared?  I mean, we’re up to 45 cents a pop now, so I can see a poor family not wanting to spend that.  Even if they all sent letters in one envelope, that’s $3.50 a week.  That can get you two meals if you spend it right.

He (Dad) went on to say that Aspen had been at the house helping with paperwork

Or, no, they have plenty of money and can even afford to hire Aspen to do clerical work.  So I guess we’re back to there being no postal service.

And what kind of paperwork does America’s family have that they need to hire someone to help with it?

Aspen took some of the tarts home.

I just imagined him sharing some with his new girlfriend. Someone he could spoil.

Why is he able to spoil this new girl when he couldn’t spoil America?  This whole thing makes no sense.  Giving someone tarts once, tarts that you didn’t even buy, doesn’t really count as spoiling.  And it’s not the girl he’s with that makes the difference, but rather with what’s coming in.  If he’d gotten free tarts while dating America, he would have given them to her.

Mom was bossy. Even in print I could hear her tone, smugly congratulating me on already earning the prince’s affections

Even in print, Mom is still evil, while Dad the Saint is the one to send the heartwarming letter.  Jeeze, book, why can’t Magda just be happy that good things are happening for her family?

Besides, these letters would be fun to hold on to. Proof I’d really been here when this whole place would be a memory.

But the fact you’ll be a Three after this, that’s not enough proof.  I mean, moving up two classes just happens all the time, am I right?  …fuck if I know if I’m right, since this book hasn’t addressed that.

Skip to the next day, when Maxon picks her up for their walk.  I guess she just sat in her room emo-ing in the interim.  He asks her to tell him about her family.

“For one, no one wears their tiaras to breakfast.”

…Excuse me while I go check something.

Oh, good, the text doesn’t say anything about what the queen actually looked like at breakfast.  I’m going to hang onto my sanity and believe that she was not wearing a tiara and that America is just making a joke here.  Because, much like staffs for guards, tiaras and crowns are highly ceremonial and worn only at certain functions, not to fucking breakfast.

America gives a quick rundown of her siblings, all of which tells us nothing we didn’t already know.  Oh, yeah, and we get confirmation that painting, crafting, and music are all that’s considered ‘art’ in this world.  I guess America’s fancy dresses were made by someone without artistic skills.  No wonder she keeps going on about looking plain in them.

They go out into the garden, where there’s a camera crew waiting.  Maxon dismisses them handily.  Um…that really shouldn’t be allowed.  I mean, the whole point (though sloppily made) is to have the Average Joe get to see the process so they’ll feel invested in the future royal couple.  There should be traditions and rules in place for when Maxon can get rid of them or not.  Instead this whole thing seems to be running on “whatever the fuck I feel like right now.”

So, Maxon gets her alone, off in the shadows and away from guards and cameras, then gets really close to her.  America freaks out and knees him, because she thinks he’s going to rape her.  Well…yeah.  She had that assistant plant the idea in her head, and Maxon is now doing all the obvious things to get her in a compromising position.  He got her on this walk by way of a bet and he intentionally isolated her from any witnesses and then he got all up in her personal space.  Of course she freaked out and hit him.

Good on her!

And then Maxon gets all offended she would think he’d do that.  Which, I’ll grant you, no one wants to be called a rapist. However, you can’t make a girl feel that threatened and then claim innocence.  Even if you have no intention of raping someone, the actions that go into making them feel scared are still wrong.  The fact that Maxon doesn’t recognize this is realistic, yes, but assholes exist in real life, too, so that’s not much of an excuse. 

America then compounds the problem by actually feeling bad for her actions and failing to point out that, hey, he was actually acting pretty threatening there.  So all the good done by having her defend herself gets swept under the rug.

This…this is creepy.  This is really, really, REALLY FUCKING CREEPY.  It’s like it’s trying to tell girls that they shouldn’t defend themselves unless they know for sure that they’re going to be raped.  Like, wait until he’s trying to tear your dress off or something.  Because if you defend your personal space and sense of safety, that makes you wrong. 

Well fuck that.  Look, I don’t care if a boy isn’t a rapist.  I don’t care if you know he’s not a rapist.  YOU HAVE A RIGHT TO FEEL SAFE.  IF SOMEONE IS INVADING YOUR SAFETY, YOU CAN PROTECT YOURSELF.  It doesn’t have to escalate to rape before you tell someone to back the fuck off.  Rape is not the only bad thing that can happen to you.  If all a boy is doing is isolating you and making you nervous, you can defend yourself from isolation and feeling nervous.  They are in and of themselves bad things.

I didn’t know how to explain I had been prepped to expect a dog, that the darkness and privacy made me feel strange

That.  You say exactly that.  There’s nothing stopping you from telling the prince that being isolated makes you nervous and that an official said to expect coerced sex.  I don’t understand why you think you can’t say what you’re thinking.  Do you think it’s actually going to be worse than saying nothing?

Maxon sends her to her room, because hey, we’ve been treating women like misbehaving children this whole time.  Why stop now?  I guess you could argue that she did assault a royal, and naturally the rules are going to skewed when it comes to that.  But in context…yeah, it doesn’t come off as being any different from what they’ve done so far.  Plus, America thinks that the worst to come will be getting kicked out of the competition.

She goes back to her room where there’s a big box that the maids are itching to open.  It got dropped off right after she left, so before the assault.  Inside are three pairs of pants and a note from Maxon asking her to only wear them on Saturdays.  (Pants are what she wanted in the May-crying bet.) 

Say…why can’t she wear pants?  The Queen of England, who is fairly conservative in her clothes, wears pants.  She just doesn’t do it while out doing PR stuff.  There’s really no reason to think that women can’t wear pants while in the comfort of their down-time and relaxation around the palace.  In fact, sort of like saying grace and sex being bad, this whole dress wearing thing just gets assumed.  Like, “oh, everyone knows that rich women don’t wear pants.  They have to be dressed to the nines 24/7.”

Because fuck logic, that’s why.