“What’s going on?” Lucy said, standing in the center of the open door, her arms folded against her chest. She was wearing glasses and a matching light blue pajama set that made her seem old.

Brigid stepped back, cleared her throat. “I heard noises,” she said. “A lot of them.”

Lucy shrugged. “Okay...”

“Where’s Isabelle?” Brigid asked, referring to Lucy’s roommate, a forty-violation demagogue.

“I’m right here.” Isabelle, in a knee-length dress reminiscent of ones my mother wore, appeared behind Lucy, all the edge in her voice of an angry teenager.

From the very corner of the hallway, I could tell they looked disheveled, but not just-out-of-bed disheveled, like the rest of us were. It seemed fake.

The three of them stared at each other like bulls, each waiting for the opportune time to attack. That’s when the microwave went off deep in their room with a cavernous ding that seemed to ping-pong through the doorway and around the entire hallway in slow motion. There was a moment of silence, a moment of thinking perhaps Brigid hadn’t heard it, maybe we’d all imagined it, maybe it hadn’t happened. But then, quickly, Brigid burst through the door, pushing past Lucy and Isabelle, the lights inside blinked on, and we all inched farther into the hallway to get a better view. Inside, standing with their backs against the wall like cornered deer, were two junior boys wearing lumberjack Halloween costumes.

“What’s going on?” I heard a whisper.

When I looked beside me, Catherine and Annie had joined the crowd, their hair a perfected fake bed head (something they should teach to the rest of us).

“They were coming back from the post–Hell House party,” Ruthie said.

Catherine giggled. “Sucks to be stupid,” she whispered, before offering me a wink and turning back toward her room, Annie following silently behind her. It took every ounce of self-control I had not to burst out laughing. Because the four of us had done much worse than these people that night. And we weren’t even close to getting caught.

As soon as Brigid registered we were there, she shooed us away, telling us to get to bed or else we’d all be written up for whatever Lucy and Isabelle were getting. She did not need to say anything more.

During our next Violation Rotation, Ruthie and I saved the West Wing for last, like the most favorite part of a meal you want to cherish on your tongue. When we finally stopped outside 103, there were two postcards taped to the door frame and I could feel Ruthie’s excitement as she bounced down the hall, clawing at them until she had them both in her hands.

One-hundred-and-sixty points. Ruthie nearly fell to the floor.

“This could have been us,” I said. Just the thought of it made me throw up a little in my mouth.

“Absolutely not,” she said. “We’re not stupid.”