flat hope
- On Friday, Violet and Titus go to his friends' party.
- A hush falls over the crowd of dancing, drinking teens whenQuendy enters the scene. In an attempt to one-up Calista and her fake lesions, Quendy now has super-showy artificial lesions all over her body.
- She apparently wants to impress Link, and try to get him away from Calista.
- Violet regards this as the Death Knell of Civilization as WeKnow It. And she's not just being her typical sarcastically-charming self. She's serious.
- To cheer her up, Titus hauls her up to the attic to show her something.
- Turns out they're in Link's house, and he's super rich, andhas a lot of old stuff up in his attic. Titus and all his friends used to play up there when they were kids.
- He tells Violet about how he used to feel when they would all play hide-and-seek in Link's old house.
- Violet gets more out of this story than Titus intended—hedoesn't understand why she connects with the idea of being alone, but having people watch you (his experience playing hide-and-seek).
- They look at paintings of Link's ancestors on the wall, people with old-fashioned names like Noah and Ezekiel.