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Summary: 89 days before

Alaska spends time in Miles and Chip’s room and announces to Miles that they have found a girlfriend for him. She asks Miles what he thinks of Lara. Chip makes comments about Lara’s breasts and Alaska yells at him for objectifying women. Alaska tells Miles that Lara thinks he is cute. Alaska makes plans to arrange a group date involving herself and her boyfriend Jake, Chip and Sara, Miles and Lara, and Takumi. 

Summary: 87 days before

Jake arrives from Vanderbilt for the group date of the three couples and Takumi. Miles watches Jake and Alaska interact with jealousy. When the seven go to the Culver Creek basketball game, Alaska keeps Miles from sitting next to Lara. Chip continues his tradition of disturbing the peace at the basketball game and makes a lewd joke about the girlfriend of one of the opposing team’s players, nicknamed The Beast. To avoid The Beast’s wrath, Miles and Takumi try to escape the gym. But as Miles is heading out of the gym, The Beast throws a basketball that hits Miles, causing his head to smack the floor. Miles gets up and runs outside, but he feels dizzy and thinks he has a concussion. When Lara joins Miles outside, he vomits on her jeans. Miles spends the rest of their date at the hospital with Lara and Takumi, where he is diagnosed with a concussion. Later, back in the dorm, Chip informs Miles that he broke up with Sara.

Summary: 84 days before

A rainstorm comes and Miles continues with his classes and his studying. Chip spends more time in their room drinking his milk and vodka mixture because he is melancholy about his breakup with Sara. Miles has not talked to Alaska or Lara since the disastrous date. Miles asks Alaska if something is wrong when he sees her, but she refuses to answer because she is not in the mood to answer questions. 

Summary: 76 days before 

In religion class, Chip tells Miles that he is now over Sara because he remembers how awful they could be to each other. When the Old Man comes in, he gives the class information about their upcoming final paper. Each student must write about “the most important question that humanity must answer,” and then examine how the major religions of the world attempt to answer that question. After class, Miles and Chip hurry through the rain to get back to their dorm when they see Alaska running toward them. Furious, Alaska yells that the Weekday Warriors have flooded her room by redirecting the rain gutter into it. Chip promises they will get revenge. 

Summary: 67 days before

The rain finally stops. While Miles studies outside, Takumi appears and suggests that they go for a walk. When they are in the woods and smoking, Takumi tells Miles that it was Alaska who ratted out Marya and Paul. Takumi explains that he knows this because Alaska admitted that the Eagle caught her sneaking out. Takumi deduced that Alaska was the only person who could have known that Marya and Paul were drinking and having sex in her room, and that she ratted on them to the Eagle to avoid punishment for her transgression of sneaking out. 

Takumi tells Miles that Chip doesn’t know that Alaska ratted on Marya and Paul. He also explains to Miles that Chip and Alaska will probably include them in the prank they are planning as revenge for the flooding of Alaska’s room. Takumi warns Miles that he cannot snitch if they get caught like Alaska did. He says that Chip and Alaska protected him and Miles when they got caught smoking to set an example of the way they should protect their friends if they are caught.

Analysis: 89 days before–67 days before

Far from heeding Dr. Hyde’s advice to “be present” and to mature, Miles gets even more caught up in others’ drama and risks losing himself in it. Miles is a mostly passive participant throughout these chapters, as he follows Chip and Alaska’s lead, accepting whatever happens to him. This is foreshadowed and represented by Alaska flicking her cigarette ash into Miles’s pencil holder. It is a disrespectful gesture, and raises the possibility that Alaska does not care about Miles as much as she claims to. Nevertheless, Miles passively accepts the slight. This acceptance shows that being part of the group is more important to Miles than anything, including his own self-respect. Alaska’s announcement that she has found a girlfriend for Miles, without even asking Miles’s opinion, is further proof of Alaska’s disregard for Miles’s personal agency. At the basketball game, Miles’s blind allegiance to the group even results in physical harm, as The Beast takes his anger at Chip out on Miles and Miles ends up at the hospital with a concussion. This incident shows that a feeling of belonging is more important to Miles than even his own physical safety.

The terrible weather and the general malaise the group experiences represent a reproach on Miles’s immaturity. Rather than strengthening their bond, Miles’s “go along to get along” attitude has already resulted in the disastrous group date. Moreover, a two-week-long rainstorm descends upon Culver Creek and the group fractures, with Chip sinking into a depression over his breakup with Sarah, and Alaska becoming incommunicative. It is as if the universe is signaling to Miles that he is on the wrong track. But Miles does not heed these omens and when the rain finally clears, he allows himself to again be drawn into the others’ drama. Miles has no objections when Takumi warns him they will be included in Chip and Alaska’s prank, and instead thinks about how much Culver Creek means to him. This shows that Miles has not learned anything from the last few trying weeks. If anything, Miles is enmeshed even deeper in other people’s drama. His realization about why Alaska took the blame at Jury shows that Miles could not extract himself from the coming trouble even if he wanted to.

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