“Closest I’ve come so far,” Newt was saying, “to hangin’ it all up. Shuck it all and kiss a Griever goodnight. Supplies cut, bloody gray skies, walls not closing.

You still have electricity and stocked supplies and it’s been less than 24 hours.  If this really is enough to make you roll over and die before even trying to deal with it…well, that’s very telling.

Nothing has even happened yet!

Newt, Minho, and Thomas all suggest staying out in the maze for a few days at a time, which sends Alby into a panic because it’s a sure death sentence, and I’m just not buying any of this.  In large part because I’m not scared of the maze.  It hasn’t been adequately set up, and in large part that’s due to all the “because reasons” flying around.  Instead of being shown that it’s scary, people say it’s scary, and that makes my brain jump into “well have you tried this?” mode. The only time we’ve seen the maze at night, Thomas was able to avoid the monsters with video game science, and that doesn’t really lend credence to the idea that we should be scared.

Alby more or less realizes that he’s being unreasonable and says he’ll do whatever the other boys tell him to do.  Starting right now.  He says he’s going to go study the maps, and then he doesn’t listen when everyone says “no, you idiot, in the morning.”  In the space of a page he went “I’m not doing this!  I’ll do whatever you say.  I do what I want.”  Because…reasons.

Thomas couldn’t believe the sudden bravery.

And so what makes you think we’d believe it?

Chuck had ended up in another room, and for some reason Thomas pictured him huddled in a dark corner, crying, squeezing his blankets to his chest like a teddy bear.

Because that’s just the sort of friend Thomas is.

Hours pass with no attack from the grievers, just lots of howling, which makes them seem even less scary.  How can you call something a sure death sentence and then have it not attack the house full of boys for hours and hours at a time?  It leaves the impression that there aren’t enough of these things to cover all the ground, and add to that the fact that you can hear them coming…why is it so impossible to stay out in the maze, then?  Just run around avoiding them.  Pacman can manage it, if you really must use a video game to justify your actions.

One of the grievers does finally come over and roll right up the side of the building.  By driving spikes into the wood and rolling up it…  When they live in a ramshackle… 

How is the building standing up to this treatment?

Then suddenly, Gally shows up!

Gally’s eyes raged with lunacy

Fucking die in a fire, book.

Gally yells that the grievers are going to kill them all (exactly what everyone else has been thinking, so hardly insane) and that it’s all Thomas’s fault (erm, well, we kind of did get indirect confirmation of that, still not insane) and then tries to beat up Thomas.

Newt puts a stop to that, and Gally goes on about how they’ll only kill one person a night.

“You shut your shuck-face, Thomas. You shut up! I know who you are, but I don’t care anymore. I can only do what’s right.”

After which he TEARS THE BOARDS OFF THE WINDOW AND THROWS HIMSELF AT THE GREIVER.

He knows that these monsters are going to kill one person a night.  And he’s decided it’s not going to be anyone else but him.  He didn’t throw Thomas to them.  He didn’t sacrifice Newt, was rendered unconscious in the middle of all that board-tearing-off.  He said “nope, it’ll be me.”

It’s hard to tell here how much was self-sacrificing and how much suicide, because he also says it’s better that way and that none of them should want to go back to the ‘real world’ on account of it being so terrible.  He was very clearly distraught and under stress, which was not helped in the least by the fact that no one would listen to him.  In fact, his last words were:

“No one ever understood what I saw, what the Changing did to me! Don’t go back to the real world, Thomas! You don’t … want … to remember!”

So our two options here are “guy who jumps on the grenade for everyone” and “guy who was relentlessly beat down by his compatriots and still didn’t take the chance to hurt them in the end” so either way we’re not talking about a bad guy.  But the book won’t stop calling him a crazy bully.

Because this book sucks flaming shitballs and I hope it chokes on them.

The Griever’s take Gally back into the maze and Minho runs after them.  Thomas and Newt follow at a lag, and they meet up with Minho as he returns to the glade and reports that the monsters once again went off the cliff.

But enough of that, time for a new subject.

“Somebody burned the Map trunks,” Newt said. “Every last one of ’em.”

Gee, I wonder who that could be.

Thomas goes to talk to Theresa, and they discuss how the map is a code again, for some reason theorizing that “code” must mean “the maze spells out letters.”  Um, pretty sure that would be obvious if you’re looking at a map of a maze.  Humans are actually really good at picking up on that.

Then again, we’re usually really good at exploring stuff, too.  And it’s all moot because the maps are burned.  But Thomas only cares about it now, after talking about it, when before this conversation he couldn’t care less.  The pacing of that is really strange, because it means that all through this conversation about maps and codes, we readers already know that it’s meaningless.  And we know that Thomas knows, he’s just not putting it together for no apparent reason.  So instead of saying “oh no, the maps!” at the end of this, we’re saying “no shit, dumbass.”  The reveal for the burned maps is in the wrong place to have any sort of significant impact.

This is what editing is for.

Thomas runs back to the map room where there is actually somehow some suspicion on whether or not Alby set the fire.  He was acting all suspicious earlier and insistent about getting to the map room right now, not before they set people to studying them, and he was found at the scene of the fire, but no, Thomas and Minho wonder if it could have been Gally who did it.

Idiots.

Thomas convinces the other to let Theresa out of the jail cell with a brilliant argument of “c’mon, what’s the worst that could happen?”  I’m more forgiving than usual, though, since there was no reason for her to be in it in the first place.  “Oooo, she triggered something while in a coma!  Let’s put her in this locked room, that’ll totally make her stop doing stuff with her mind!”

They tell the others about the code idea, and then Minho reveals that all the real maps had been hidden and the map room was full of dummies.  Wow, how great of you to have read the script and known that you needed to do that right before it became an issue.

What even prompted that?  Why did you think the maps needed to be hidden?  Until a few minutes ago, you weren’t even sure they were important?  They do mention something Alby said while he was sick (“protect the maps”) but why did they think that keeping them in a locked concrete bunker wasn’t protection enough?

They go down to look at the maps, and Thomas explains about the words theory.

Newt laughed. “Tommy, I might not be the sharpest guy in the Glade, but sounds like you’re talkin’ straight out your butt to me.”

Thank you, Newt.

Honestly, as Thomas goes on about how they’re “supposed” to study the maps, it reads more like the author knew the final answer but didn’t know how to explain it or how someone would get to it naturally.  Thomas just kind of bumbles into this very specific guess and then explains it in a really confusing way.

They end up making tracings of each section and then overlaying them on each other, so that when they’re all viewed together they make a letter F.  (Surrounded by jumbles, but an F all the same.)

Eh.  Kind of clever.  Still not seeing why this took two years to figure out, though.  Especially since, as Minho said, they really did compare the sections to each other, not just one section to the same section from the day before.  The only reason the F is so clear on their tracings is because a lot of the lines overlay to make it stand out more than the junk around it, so that should have been a noticeable pattern.