The next day, America is wondering if Maxon knows about people losing their castes, which still seems really weird to me.  Maybe because we just don’t have enough context to know what that means.  So some people lost their jobs and got new ones, okay?  Maybe they were Fives who sucked at singing but are math geniuses and are now happily embezzling the shit out of their employers.  We already know that there’s no income caps involved in the castes, so moving from one to the other doesn’t actually seem like that big a deal.  The most likely outcome here is that people are moving from one job they have no choice in to another job they have no choice in and are mediocre at both.  Big whoop.

America has also jumped fully onto the Aspen train, as she’s touching a button he gave her for…shits and giggles.  I don’t know why she’s touching it, but she strung it on a string and is wearing it like a bracelet.  Because, yeah, that’s not really obvious or nothing.  I guess you could wear buttons as jewelry if you wanted, but she’s only got the one, so the most obvious answer is “sentimental value,” and these girls get flogged for having sentimental gifts from anyone but the prince.  We just went over this.

The king invites the remaining girls to a little get-together before the news program the next night.  The girls all chit-chat about that for a while America frets.  Apparently she’s worried because of what the king said about low-caste girls in that magazine article.  (That was physically painful to type.)  But, the next day comes a few paragraphs later, so at least we get to minimize her endless paragraphs about being nervous.

I decided to pause before I spoke, really think about my words.

I know “think before you speak” is a common bit of advice, but do you know what happens if you literally do that?  You look like you have nothing to say and then people talk over you.  Bad plan.

I realized I wanted to prove him wrong.  I wanted to prove that reporter wrong, too.  Even if I lost, I didn’t want to go home a loser.  I was surprised by how much this suddenly meant to me.

For fuck’s sake, really?  That is the laziest passage I have ever read in a book.  She literally just changed her motivations in a paragraph and then admitted it was out of character.  She’s changing her character to fit the needs of the plot and the author isn’t even bothering to hide that fact.

Lazy, lazy, lazy.

The king and queen are only talking to one girl each and the others are just wandering aimlessly about the room.  Terrible, terrible hosts.  This is another reason I don’t see the point in making all this about royalty.  America will occasionally spout off lines about how they have to learn manners and poise, but no one else is displaying anything close to Proper Manners, at least not the way you’d think for this level of society. They’re all acting like normal middle-class people.

Ah, seems they’re…spending time talking to each girl individually.  Well then why not invite them to tea one at a time instead of all at once, forcing the remaining girls to sit off to the side and be ignored?

Kriss chit-chats with her about pointless stuff that America thinks is hostile for some reason, and god, I though getting to the tea meant we’d actually get to the tea, but no.  We’re here and still just sitting around pointlessly reading about her pointlessly worrying. 

And then the pointlessness continues as they have to break things up and go to the news show without the king getting to talk to America.  Which, again, is all pointless because it’s not like he can never ever talk to her ever again except in this half hour right here.  But America thinks he did it on purpose to slight her.  Eh, possible, but he’s been so bad at everything ever that I’m not sure I’d take it as a given.  It’s just as likely that he’s just a shitty host.

And then she goes to her room at the end of the night and cries and Maxon doesn’t show up and guys it’s just the most sad thing ever that America isn’t the center of attention in a competition that she doesn’t want to be in.  She wants to stay under the radar, but it’s just SO SAD, you guys, that everyone is ignoring her. 

God, this girl will cry about anything, won’t she?  Too much attention, too little, doesn’t matter, America’s going to cry about it.