Thomas stands around outside doing absolutely jack-shit nothing while Chuck goes to get them something to eat.  He doesn’t bother to go see the kitchen or help make himself a meal or introduce himself to this “Frypan” character who seems to be in charge of food.  Nope, he just mopes around on his ass and lets Chuck fix him a sandwich.  Because that’s just the kind of “friend” Thomas is.

The wonderful tastes of ham and cheese and mayonnaise filled his mouth.

Supposedly Thomas is oh-so-curious about this place and that’s why he’s been spending so long staring around and describing stuff to us, but he’s not nearly curious enough for me.  For instance, we see farm crops growing in small fields and pens full of livestock and…where did the mayonnaise come from?  It’s made of oil, egg, and vinegar, so it’s not beyond reason that they’d be able to make it with what they have, but would a group of teenage boys know that?  Do they have a “how to make everything you’ve taken for granted before” book in the shack?  Do the Powers That Be that brought them there also provide jars of condiments?  As well as glass for the windows?

Are they butchering the pigs?  Milling their own flour for bread?  You can’t really just throw “farming” in there and call it a day.

Thomas finally bothers to ask what’s beyond the walls.  Chuck claims to not know.

“Why are you guys so secretive?”

“That’s just the way it is.

No.  No.  No.  You do not get to literally give the excuse of “because reasons.”  You’re taking away MY job!

Things are really weird around here, and most of us don’t know everything. Half of everything.”

I bet you guys would know more if you’d all actually talk to each other instead of say “well, I guess that’s just how the world works here.”

Thomas gets annoyed at all this and decides to just take a walk and see for himself.  That finally gets Chuck to talk a bit more and tell him the “big openings” are really doors and they’ll close soon, like they do every night.  Thomas doesn’t believe him until they get closer and see that each side of the openings will fit when they move together.

Chuck says that the walls move to close, and the same thing happens out in the maze beyond the walls.

“You just called it a maze—you said, ‘same thing happens out in the maze.’”

Chuck’s face reddened. “I’m done with you. I’m done.” He walked back toward the tree they’d just left.

BUT WHY?  WHAT IS THE POINT OF THIS?  THIS MAKES NO SENSE!

It’s not in any way consistent.  They hide things from him, until they don’t, until they once again hide thins from him.  Chuck wants to tell him stuff and be helpful, but some things he doesn’t know, but some things he does but won’t tell?  Or can’t tell?  There’s no sense to why these things are being kept secret or why certain things are but others aren’t.  The tell/no tell standard seems to be “oops, this conversation is going on too long, better shut up now.”  We don’t even have a sense that certain things are secret or that Thomas isn’t trusted or that there even is a reason for keeping things from him because of how random it all is.  At least if I had a sense that the boys were guarding information for a reason, I could treat it as a mystery, but I don’t get that sense here.

Instead, I’ve been flat-out told that there is no reason beyond because-reasons.

As Thomas stands there, several runners come out and rush over to a little concrete bunker that was mentioned earlier.  He asks Chuck why they just did that, and Chuck emphatically replies that he’s not telling.  Why?

thinking it kind of strange that Chuck was suddenly acting like an adult instead of the little kid desperate for a friend he’d been only moments earlier.

There had better be a reason for this, because hanging a lampshade on your lack of consistent characterization doesn’t actually fix it.

The walls close, which makes Thomas freak out as it happens.

Massive stone walls, hundreds of feet high, moving like sliding glass doors—an image from his past life that flashed through his thoughts.

Now that I think about it, Thomas really doesn’t have any proof that he had a past life.  What’s stopping him from being some artificially grown human or something?  Maybe the reason he doesn’t have any memories is because he just got a dictionary dumped in his brain when they released him from the science lab.  But he seems flat convinced that he did have a life before now, because…???

I hope his ‘curiosity’ is going to be try and be a personality point, because there’s a ton of things he’s not curious at all about.  In fact, he’s barely meeting the minimum standard for ‘not brain dead.’

Then Chuck wants to sneak around the back of the shack and randomly scare kids in the bathroom.  No, I don’t know why.  Yes, that did come quite out of nowhere.  Gally comes out after Chuck scares him and starts screaming at Thomas about “picking his friends.”  Don’t shake your head at me; it really is that random!  I’m just as confused as the rest of you.  I haven’t seen a scene this random since that “Let’s go skinny dipping” mess in Book of Shadows.

“I know you,” Gally added without looking back. “I saw you in the Changing, and I’m gonna figure out who you are.”

“I’m going to figure it out, mark my words.  I’m not going to talk to you, ask you questions, or try and work with you to gather information, but maybe if I repeat this enough the answer will magically come to me anyway!”

Thomas watched as the bully disappeared back into the Homestead.

I would just like to point out, Thomas, that Chuck was the one playing a mean prank, and Gally 1) did not try to blame you for Chuck’s prank, 2) did not retaliate, and 3) did not overreact, because a bit of yelling may not be the most mature reaction, but it’s also not unwarranted.

He was surprised by how much he truly hated the guy. He really, really hated him.

That’s right, folks.  The book really did just admit that Thomas has so little basis for this hate that it even surprises himself.

[to Chuck] Thomas shook his head. “Don’t be sorry. The … shank deserved it, and I don’t even know what a shank is. That was awesome.” He felt much better.

You suck and I hate you.

And my hate is at least not a surprise. 

They end up sleeping outside with a bunch of other boys in sleeping bags.  (Did they get those from the same place as the mayonnaise?)

“Well, Greenie, you survived First Day.”

“Barely.”

Uh, what exactly what supposed to be threatening him?  It was rude and confusing, but not exactly threatening at any point.  Well, I guess when Albie threatened to throw him off a cliff would count.  But still.

And then the author decides that Thomas should be a runner.  Thomas doesn’t decide, no. 

Not quite understanding how, he knew what he needed to do. He didn’t get it. The feeling—the epiphany—was a strange one, foreign and familiar at the same time. But it felt … right.

“I want to be one of those guys that goes out there,” he said aloud, not knowing if Chuck was still awake. “Inside the Maze.”

He also quite randomly has the feeling that he’s been there before.

So all signs point to Gally being absolutely correct.  But he’s still a bully?

Newt wakes up Thomas just before dawn and takes him over to one of the walls.  Thomas has the audacity to continue asking very basic questions about his surroundings and gets told, again, that it’s nunya. 

“Well, it’s kind of stupid to send me to a place where nothing makes sense and not answer my questions.”

Despite the author being clearly aware of the fact that this is all bullshit, it continues anyway.

Newt shows Thomas a window in the wall because he wants to show him what’s out there in the maze.  Oh, and also he tells Thomas that it’s a maze without any hint of anything other than “yeah, that’s a maze” so WHY THE FUCK DID CHUCK ACT LIKE IT WAS SOME SORT OF FUCKING SECRET?

Through the window, Thomas sees his first Griever, which is some big cow-sized blobby thing covered in sharp stuff.

It climbed the opposite wall,

[…]

Just be glad the Grievers only come out at night. Be thankful for these walls.”

Yes, be thankful for the walls that…keep out the beasts that can climb walls?

Newt says that their entire point and purpose is to survive and figure out the maze so they can get out of it and no I will not capitalize that.  You give it a proper name or you don’t; them’s the rules.  Then we get an abrupt scene change to later and are left to assume that Newt just gave the usual ‘fuck you with a rake’ answer to any further questions.

Thomas sits around moping and wondering how stuff can be.  The problem is, he’s not really wondering about anything other than the baseline existence of stuff.  He doesn’t ask questions about specifics or try to figure things out or try to puzzle out actual questions with actual answers.  He just sits around going “wow, that’s a big maze” and YES WE CAN BLOODY WELL SEE THAT IT’S A BIG MAZE, WHY NOT START WONDERING IF THERE’S FUCK-YOU-JUICE IN THE WATER OR SOMETHING?

Also, Newt says “bloody” a lot and now he’s got me doing it.

Thomas knew he was a smart kid—he somehow felt it in his bones.

Smart kids know that knowledge doesn’t come from bones.

Then Alby shows up for his tour and maybe now we’ll finally get at least a few answers.