The girls who wanted to go home during the attack changed their minds, so no one ends up leaving.  Part of the attack got caught by cameras and aired live, which pisses off the king.

The attack was so inconsequential, according to the king, that it barely warranted notice.

Look, I know it was just dudes throwing bricks at a building, but the fact that they got inside the walls and then your guards just stood there and let them throw bricks for an hour is indicative of some pretty consequential failings on your part.

Huh, no wonder he doesn’t want the rest of the country to know about it.

The day after the attack, America stays in her room to play cards and gossip with her maids.  Dude, don’t those girls have work to do?  I mean, yeah, that seems like some actual inroads at a friendship going on there.  However, timing is important.  I wouldn’t take kindly to someone who came up to me while I was at work and demanded I pay attention to them instead.  Plus, as we just learned, messing up gets you demoted.  These poor maids are probably torn between the pressure to keep America happy and all the chores they have to do, since failing on either one will mean it’s off to the laundry room with you.

Then America does the exact same thing the next day.

Anne made a comment about how this was all inappropriate—me sitting with them, playing games with the doors open—but let it drop almost immediately. She was quickly getting over trying to make me the lady it seemed I ought to be.

It is inappropriate.  Not because they’re maids and you’re…whatever you are.  It’s inappropriate because you have now taken them away from their job two days in a row!

Does this author think that maids just have fuck-all to do in a day?

On top of that, she’s a guest in the palace and hiding in her room for two days.  That’s just plain old rude.

Maxon shows up suddenly, and the maids get all twitterpaited at meeting him.  Um, yeah, no.  They’re maids at a palace.  Even if they don’t interact on a daily basis with the royal family, they should be trained on how to act in the event of a run-in.  Seeing as they all fucking live there, and passing in halls or random rooms should not be unheard of.  The ‘best of the best’ generally aren’t people who will lose their shit in front of an important person, grin like goofballs, and stutter their way through excuses that they don’t have to give before leaving a room.  Granted, doing all that doesn’t make you a bad person, but it also doesn’t make you a well-trained palace maid.

So, Maxon has come to propose they have a secret code.  No, I’m serious.  He says that because they aren’t pursuing the traditional Selection Girl/Prince relationship, they shouldn’t have to rely on notes passed through maids and formal invitations, but instead should have a secret code. 

…Dude, he’s in her room right now, all uninvited.  Clearly they’re already not relying on maid-passed notes.  And on top of that, why not just continue on with the normal methods of communication?  It’s not like it’ll be suspicious if they do what everyone expects them to do, but it sure as hell will be suspicious if she stays in the competition despite never ‘officially’ meeting with the prince.

What is the point of all this?  Why do they even bother?  It’s just so fucking random and ridiculous.

So, Friday comes.  All the girls have to be on the Super Special Once A Week news show, so America’s maids get her all super-dressed up for it.

I looked in the mirror. I still looked like me. It was the prettiest version of myself I’d seen so far, but I knew that face.

What the fuck is up with this line?  I’m getting really sick of reading it.  So first she only looks like herself if she doesn’t get too prettied up, and all the other girls are fakie-fakers if they do.  But now she’s all dressed up, but she still looks like herself, unlike all those other girls who did the same thing, because….reasons?

Really, all I’m getting from this is that America can do no wrong.  If she does exactly the same thing she condemned someone else for, as soon as she does it, it’s good again.  Because America is just a reality-bending Mary Sue.

She goes down to the room where they do the filming and it’s all a flurry of last-minute activity.  There’s a set of risers for the girls to sit on, so she takes a seat in the back row instead of the front row.  Marlee comes to sit next to her.  This section is basically just a whole lot of padding as the girls fret about how they look.  Oh, and also as America passes judgment on the appearance of everyone around her.  Except for Marlee, who gets to share in her Mary Sue powers.

Then Maxon and America trade their new super secret code: tugging on one ear.  Um…yay?  This means he’ll come to see her later that night.  Good thing they had that code, because it’s not like can’t just come to her room anyway- oh, wait, yes he can.

King Clarkson was at the podium speaking about the brief and unsuccessful attack on the palace. I wouldn’t have called it unsuccessful.

Well, I guess that all depends on the goal of the attack.  America thinks it was successful because it scared everyone, but unless “really pathetic scare tactic” was the goal…yeah, they didn’t do shit-all else.

So, tonight on the news, the King blames a lot of shit on the rebels.  America thinks this is fishy and that not everything going wrong in Illea can be blamed on rebels.  Since she has supernatural Knowing Things Powers, I’m going to assume she’s right, but that’s stupid.  Well, stupid on the part of the king.  You don’t attribute stuff to rebels that they didn’t do.  That makes them seem more powerful than they are, more likely to succeed in their ultimate goal, which means more people are going to join them.  No one wants to join a cause that they see as being ineffective, but one that’s clearly scoring so many hits?  That’s clearly the safe bet!  What’s worse, it makes the government seem like they can’t control the situation, which means even loyalists are going to lose faith in them.  Certainly foreign investors and such are going to pull out.

But enough of that bullshit, we have more reality TV!  Gavril comes out to start talking about the Selection, because that’s really what we should spend our one news report a week on.  I mean, it’s not like there’s any other time slot they could dedicate to Selection-specific programming.

Gavril interviews Maxon, who tells the story of how America ‘scolded’ him when they first met, although he leaves out the name.  Then he says he plans to keep that girl around for a long time.