Violet had sat back down after her uncharacteristic burst of emotion and watched the rest of the session go downhill fast (had she started that, she wondered? but surely she wasn't the only one). Finally things went all to pieces as Gemma finally broke down--Violet had been wondering when that would happen, it can't have been easy losing your mother like that.

And then suddenly, without warning, Healer Poppy abruptly ended the session. Violet was starting to revise her theory that this woman was another Alliance plant sent here to cause further havoc in the school. If she was, she wasn't very good at it. In fact, she was showing all the signs of a person in over her head. Well, a mass group therapy session was probably not the best way to start out. One thing for sure, they probably wouldn't start out next time by making everyone talk about how they felt right off the bat.

Violet didn't blame the teachers for their actions last year, but the year before, when there were already strange things going on and no one would listen to the students--if they had paid attention then, maybe things wouldn't have gotten so bad. All Violet really wanted was for someone to acknowledge that some things could have been handled better and outline their plan for making sure it wouldn't happen again. That didn't seem too much to ask.

Still carrying her by-now-dry crumpet in its napkin, Violet got up and slowly walked away from the Lake.