Sarah sat in homeroom and texted Melissa. "Can't believe we're not in the same homeroom this year...need to meet up with you and Tiff at lunch to discuss the empty slots on the squad."
The message came back. "Not sure we all have the same lunch. After school?"
She sent an acknowledgment emoji and looked around. The only one of the squad in the room was Amber, but Amber didn't exactly, in Sarah's opinion, have anything interesting to say. She looked around the room, and found it was a pretty mixed room. She'd had the same homeroom class the last two years, but this year, for some reason, they changed everything around. She wasn't even sure she and the other squad members all had lunch in the same period, as there was more than one lunch you could be assigned to. And then there was that new girl...there was something about her that just rubbed Sarah wrong...probably because she looked at Sarah liked she wasn't impressed. And Sarah needed everyone to love her or envy her. There were plenty she'd written off as just...losers incapable of that. But until she decided what Julia was or converted her...it was like an itch she couldn't scratch.
In another homeroom, Tiffany Sanders looked at Melissa Smith. "What did she say?"
"She wants to talk about the empty slots on the squad..." Tiffany said.
"She always wants to talk about the squad..." Melissa said. "It's the first day..."
Tiffany shrugged. "So...what did you do all summer?"
Outside, in the studio, Josephine was watching the data. "We didn't touch any of their code," she complained to Roger. "What is going on?"
"Elias changed all their schedules," Roger said. "He generated a memo from the state education department that they'd noticed that the same students were in the same classes together every year, and suggested this inhibited student growth. You know Elias...he's a master at that kind of subtle influence."
"Well, hopefully it doesn't backfire. Melissa and Tiffany never had this conversation the first time around."
"Because Sarah was there," Roger said.
Elias Ellis walked right behind them. "Exactly. The studio wanted the show to recapture the ratings. We have to make sure events don't just play out the same way."
"The way Sarah kept Tiffany from challenging her was keeping her close. So you paired her with Melissa instead and paired Sarah with Amber."
"We don't want Sarah's plots growing stagnant while we're trying to recapture their interest. It's also a hedge if Karyn continues to make unpopular friend choices. I don't want to have to do another rewrite. Which reminds me, I do need to speak to Taylor...she went entirely too far with the new Zoe Gibson. Did you see how much she added to her matrix? I thought you were checking her work."
"Me? I thought you were...she's your intern," Josephine said.
He sighed. "I guess we were all focused on other things. Zoe is now a full blown secondary character program, and hopefully we can justify the extra processing power at the next budget meeting. I told Taylor to give her more personality...although I have to give her credit...it is astounding for her first solo work."
