He’s going on about how incredibly attractive Miracolina’s disdain for him is.

No, seriously, this is looking endgame ship and it’s squicking me out – like, this can be cute if there’s the sense it’s because the guy recognizes and respects her opinion, but here there isn’t, it’s just the novelty and he’s trying to stamp it out at the same time. Worst of all options, really.

He’s gotten used to being hated—for just as his brother Marcus said, as much as the public mourned for poor, corrupted, little-boy-Lev, they also despise the “monster” that he has become.

Also this keeps being a thing even though it makes no sense that “oh how sad it is this young tithe became evil after encountering older runaway unwinds!” = “I suddenly feel like the oldest kids currently on the chopping block, and only those kids, should all get to go home free!”

here he is one step short of being a god.

Lev’s saying that’s a perk, to be clear. He’s still happy about all this, he’s just obsessing about Miracolina at the same time.

Anyway, so, there’s to be an Easter dance because the guy in charge has noticed that the kids aren’t very good at socializing, and Lev says to himself that tithes are generally kept from the opposite sex because they’re obviously going to get murdered rather than married.

There are about twenty staff members, and Lev is the only one under thirty. Each of their faces are filled with concern that’s so long-lived, it seems burned into their expressions. He wonders if their passion comes from their own experiences with unwinding. Did they, like the Admiral, unwind their own child, and come to regret the decision? Was it personal for them, or did their dedication to the cause come from a general disgust with society’s status quo?

Okay, so earlier, Miracolina mentioned one of them had glasses despite the fact that laser surgery somehow didn’t die out with the rest of it and in fact became supercharged to fix all problems and was wondering at why they were deliberately making a show of having bad eyes.

I feel like the glasses thing should be a visible sign they’re walking the walk, like how last book’s one good adult had false teeth and visible signs of age. And now Lev is saying that there’s the option that they’re like The One Good Adult. But on the other hand, that we’re told there is a way to not have glasses without dead kid eyes, and that no one’s given a personal story, means they might be flaunting their activisim, which would go with general disgust and therefore evil activists who are bad and just like those original pro-choice monsters who first used this place.

Sadly, I’m almost certain it’s the latter and the possibility they weren’t bad was just brought up so that we could be reminded that only the personal story reason makes you The One Good Adult and so the other one must be evil, and also it’s definitely going to be that for the rest of the adults, because it immediately goes on to say that the guy in charge suggests the party and:

“Lev, can we count on you, as our goodwill ambassador, to join in the festivities?”
Everyone waits for his answer. It bothers him that they’re hanging on his response. “What if I say no?”
Cavenaugh looks at him incredulously. “Why on earth would you? Everyone loves a party!”
“Not really,” Lev points out. “The last parties these kids had were their tithing parties. Do you really want to remind them of that?”
The others around the table mumble to one another, weighing what Lev has said, until Cavenaugh dismisses it. “Tithing parties are farewells,” he says. “Ours will be about new beginnings. I’m counting on you to attend.”
Lev sighs. “Sure.” There is no challenging of ideas in the Cavenaugh mansion when those ideas come from the man who shares the mansion’s name.

Maybe it’s because it’s obvious you’re just being a peevish child about it.

They’re trying to get the kids to move on with their lives. Staying away from anything that reminds them they’re still alive isn’t very doable. “No, no birthdays, because they were TITHED after their last birthday.” “No, no favorite foods, they got to eat those before BEING TITHED.” Their tithing wasn’t even a traumatic event for them! And they’re constantly talking about tithing in the classes every single day, so it’s not like “reminding them” is something people need to tiptoe around!

Lev is uncomfortable with the party and cranky he’s not in control, so he was pushing. And it honestly makes sense Lev might balk when he just admitted that he too was kept very isolated and probably doesn’t know much about parties either, so asking him to be the centerpiece is putting a lot of pressure on him.

It does seem like the whole thing isn’t working very well, but I think that’s inevitable with them not really being sure if Lev is a child or adult. They don’t really respect him and give him as much autonomy as an adult, and really they shouldn’t, but they’re doing it just enough to make it more annoying when they don’t.

(And there’s the problem that, just because tithes have certain common qualities doesn’t mean Lev is necessarily representative of them. As the book itself points out, he’d have been acting like Miracolina in this situation – and Miracolina is unique so far out of sixty-six kids, more if they’ve added anyone new since then. Lev’s original tithing opinions clearly aren’t theirs and he doesn’t seem to have had much interaction with other tithed kids before – does he really know what sort of things they feel now and what’s best for them?)

With attendance mandatory, the entire population of ex-tithes is there.

For god’s sake, it’s just a group activity.

The kids eventually start to dance and Lev thinks about how he doesn’t want to dance even though he’s sure all the girls would be so thrilled to agree aaaaaaaaand then he sees Miracolina and he decides that this is a challenge worth taking and just fuck you Lev.

The moment she sees him approaching she looks away, a bit panicked, hoping he’s headed toward someone else. Then she takes a visible breath when she realizes she is the subject of his attention.
“So,” says Lev, as casually as he can, “you wanna dance?”

You could argue that maybe he wanted to try to get her to enjoy herself. That maybe even the “challenge” bit was more like, oh, the challenge of hanging out with a feral cat patiently, and not the “challenge” of seeing how far you can push someone.

But –

Then she takes a visible breath when she realizes she is the subject of his attention.

He has all the power. And he knows it. And he’s seeing her brace herself, gather her courage for yet horrible encounter with him in a place where everyone in the world is against her. And that’s what he wanted.

“Do you believe in the end of the world?” she responds.
Lev shrugs. “I don’t know. Why?”
“Because the day after that is when I’ll dance with you.”
Lev smiles. “You’re funny. I didn’t think you had a sense of humor.”

“It’s so funny of you to think I give a fuck how you feel.”

He then goes on to say he read her essay, and “You have a dancing princess fantasy—don’t deny it.”

“Next, I will tell you how you feel and preemptively frame any denial as further proof it’s true.”

“My legs have a dancing princess fantasy.”
“Well, to dance with your legs, I guess I’ll have to put up with the rest of you.”
“No, you won’t,” she says, “because not a single part of me will be here.”

So, to what degree does the author know how this reads, I wonder?

Actually abusive men know what they’re doing, but I’d say the majority of guys just don’t imagine that jokes can be taken as threats. On the other hand, to write characters you have to be able to look at it from both sides, and too much of Miracolina’s description here really does read like she’s just refusing to show weakness before a predator.

And the way Lev talks here really is more heavy on the “threatening” than “accidentally”. He’s opened by insisting that she totally wants it and he won’t believe anything she says otherwise, and now he’s phrasing things as if it’s already decided that it’ll happen. It’d have been easy to say he read about the dancing and something about how since they won’t be going to a princess they might as well have a dance here, but the rest would have to put up with him to do it – it doesn’t have to involve saying “I read a thing and decided you fantasize about it therefore your consent is assumed no matter your objections” followed by “I have decided this will happen right now”.

Now, I’d see someone knowing what this is as irresponsible if they’re depicting it as normalized, as we see here, but I’m pretty sure the author saves his soapboxing concerns for how having opinions about abortion is super ultra wrong, so it’s possible this is meant to be Lev being awful.

But it’s also possible this is just meant to be Lev trying to get her to dance with him and then being sad she tells him to go dance with his stupid portrait.

Then she storms out. The adults at the door try to stop her from going back to her room, but she gets past them anyway.

Lev gets in her face when she just wants to be left alone, won’t take no for an answer and actively belittles her feelings, then acts like he’s going to force her to dance because she secretly wants it – and when she “storms out” to “escape” being “fucking harassed”, you’re all “haha she’s so fiery she pushed past the adults, who otherwise would have kept her in a place she didn’t feel safe”.

She’s just a little girl, and even if she slipped past there’s plenty of adults and no one else is causing trouble, so someone could just go after her. So, it would seem like the adults moved to stop her, then did not go through with it and they let her pass. Why might adults not go through with it when standing right in front of a twelve year old girl who is trying to leave a party after an incredibly popular older kid she’s scared of cornered her and demanded a dance?

It was because she just looked SO FIERCE AND MAD, right? I’m sure that was it.

One of the other kids then calls her a loser.

Lev turns to the kid with a vengeance. It’s Timothy, the boy who arrived with her. “I could say the same about you!” he snaps. “All of you!”
Then he shuts himself up before he goes too far. “No, that’s not true. But you shouldn’t be judging her.”

See what I mean? He’s snapping at other people for not respecting her, but also he wants to crush the refusal out of her. It’s like he’s a dog growling possessively over his chew toy.

One of the girls then says she’ll dance, and so he dances with all of them, and then the next day his portrait is spraypainted and everyone’s all MIRACOLINA DID IT.

“How do you know she’s the only one?” Lev asks them. “She’s just the only one with guts enough to say it out loud.”

This seems weird because we know she has no support and everyone else loves Lev until you remember Lev is technically part of the group of tithed kids, but then wraps back to weird again when you remember he’s been gushing about how great getting worshipped is.

The adults consider security cameras and Lev says that there needs to be more freedom to express opinions. Then things like this wouldn’t happen.” and the guy in charge is all “wait what the kids get to say what they want” – which, yes, they really do, I’m sympathetic to Miracolina’s feelings of being beset on all sides but they really haven’t tried that hard to keep her quiet.

“Well, I guess not everyone feels that way.”

Lev is such a brat in this, he really is. And worse, I think this is him moving toward narratively endorsed behavior rather than being a petty little asshole lashing out because the adults dismiss him when he’s being dumb and a girl wouldn’t dance with him.

26 • Miracolina

We then switch to Miracolina, and, in what I’m hoping is not a sign of what’s to come, it’s very short, much like how very big the difference in wordcount between Connor and Risa is.

She’s in her room, someone knocks, she says nothing because there’s no lock so they’ll ust come in regardless.

Lev steps in. There’s a quickening of her heart when she sees him. She tells herself it’s anger.

…

She snarkily confesses to doing it, Lev says he knows she didn’t, then he says “I’ve been meaning to apologize for the way you were brought here. Tranq’d and blindfolded and all. I mean, what they’re doing here is important, but I don’t always agree with how they do it.”

Because endgame ship, she notes that this is the first time she’s heard him say “they” instead of “we.” because she’s apparently been hanging on his every word in the hopes of finding something she can praise.

She asks why he’s suddenly saying this. He says it’s bothering him. She asks if he’s apologizing to everyone. He says her only.

“Why?”
He begins pacing the small room, raising his voice. “Because you’re the only one who’s still angry! Why are you so angry?”

He’s attracted to her, but his attraction is based around the anger he feels toward her and motivates him to excesses of passion in trying to oppose her. It’s the kind of love to make you wonder if love should even exist.

Miracolina points out he’s the one yelling and asks him to go away. From what, I really want to emphasize, is HER ROOM, that he only entered because THERE’S NO LOCK.

So she throws a brush at him.

“Ow!” He grabs his head, grimacing. “That hurt!”
“Good, it was supposed to.”
Lev clenches his fists, growls, then turns like he’s going to storm out, but he doesn’t. Instead he turns back to her, unclenching his fists and holding his palms out to her, pleading like maybe he’s showing off his stigmata. Well, there might be blood on his hands, but it sure isn’t flowing from his palms.
“So is this how it’s going to be?” he asks. “You’re just going to stew and bitch and make things miserable for everyone here? Don’t you want something more out of life?”

SHE SAID TO LEAVE SO FUCKING LEAVE.

But endgame ship, so she says no but then she thinks about imagining tithe-Lev and how She could like that boy but this one is too different from him and then turns around to ignore him thinking he’ll stay, but then he actually left, oh no.

Then we jump back to Lev for a short chapter of nothing where he objects to the fact they’re going to put up a fresh portrait but the guy in charge says the tithes love it.

“I agree!” says one of the teachers. “I think it draws their focus toward the positive.” Then she punctuates her remark with a brownnosing nod toward Cavenaugh. “I, for one, like it and approve.”

God I hate this.

Lev has a quick temper tantrum about how he’s sick of being worshipped, not because he actually has any sense of ethics but because it’s getting in the way of slow dancing with Miracolina, then at the end the guy in charge privately says to Lev that for future reference turpentine helps with removing spraypaint from your fingernails.

Anyway, next chapter, we finally hit the “plot” and you’re all going to be sorry for complaining about the days when this book didn’t have one.