- Laurie really needs to see Amy before the issue comes out. She hopes that after Amy reads her story, she'll get out of The Wave before anything bad happens.
- But Amy doesn't react the way Laurie planned. Instead, Amy chews Laurie out, saying she can't talk this way about The Wave.
- According to Amy, Laurie is only doing this because she's fighting with David.
- Not true! Laurie tries to explain that people are actually being hurt because of The Wave.
- Amy won't have any of it: she likes being part of The Wave. Everybody has the same social status and finally, Amy doesn't have to worry about competing with Laurie.
- This just confirms Laurie's suspicions: as we've heard before, Amy has been trying to compete with Laurie throughout their friendship.
- Amy continues: she says that the only reason Laurie is against The Wave is because it means Laurie isn't so special anymore.
- Laurie is shocked and angry to boot. But guess what: she's printing the story anyway. (You tell 'em!)
- Amy heads in the other direction – probably to report Laurie to The Wave authorities.
- Fast forward to the next day. When the issue comes out, it's super popular and it encourages a lot of people to voice their opinions.
- Students start talking about bad experiences with The Wave, and kids who didn't want to join step up and claim they have been threatened and abused.
- Parents and teachers have been talking to the principal about The Wave all morning, and counselors have started to interview students about it.
- This is a really, really big deal.
- Ben Ross – the man behind it all – is in the teacher's lounge reading The Gordon Grapevine. He has a terrible headache and wonders how things could have gone so wrong. He's sure that somehow it's his fault. (Um, yeah: Shmoop has to agree with him on that count!)
- He also realizes that the football team's loss kind of bothers him. He was thinking that if The Wave had worked for the team, he could justify it. But wait: he isn't supposed to want The Wave to work, or even to exist.
- This wasn't supposed to be what his experiment was about. He's super confused, to say the least.
- Now we get the scoop on how David feels about all this. He still thinks The Wave is a good thing. If everybody had joined, there wouldn't be all these problems.
- Also, their football loss does not mean The Wave doesn't work. The team had only known about it for five days when they played. At least they have some team spirit going on now.
- David's pretty sure that Laurie and her staff made up a lot of the stuff they printed in the paper. He can deal with Laurie not wanting to be part of The Wave, fine. But he's upset that she took things further: she's actually trying to destroy The Wave.
- And where's Robert in all of this? Well, Robert tells David that the things in the article are lies. David – who we know agrees with him – just tells him not to worry about it.
- Robert doesn't buy it. He says: "Laurie Saunders is a threat […]. She must be stopped" (15.34). (Somebody's watched Terminator one too many times.)
- This doesn't sit well with David, so David starts to argue with him. Brian jumps in, stopping David and telling Robert to relax. Brian says he and David will handle Laurie.
- Brian pulls David aside: he thinks David can probably convince Laurie to stop attacking The Wave.
- David agrees, but he just doesn't feel right about it.