Colborne visits Oliver in prison on his final visit before retirement, asking Oliver to finally tell him the truth.

The friends receive the Julius Caesar casting results at the Bore's Head; Richard gets Caesar and James gets Brutus.

The Halloween Macbeth casting is revealed: James has been given the lead role while Richard receives only a minor spirit part.

After the Halloween lakeside performance, a furious Richard shoves James into the water and holds his head under until friends intervene.

During Julius Caesar assassination rehearsals, Richard deliberately injures James by hitting him too hard during the onstage attack.

Oliver, James, and Alexander agree to fight Richard for real during the Caesar assassination scene as retaliation for his violence.

At the Julius Caesar cast party, Richard attacks Meredith and Oliver pulls her away; they make love in her room as Richard rages outside.

The next morning, the friends discover Richard barely alive in the lake and collectively agree to do nothing and let him die.

Oliver's family can no longer fund his tuition, so Dellecher arranges a secret work-study scholarship requiring him to clean the castle.

The spring production is announced as King Lear, with James cast as the scheming villain Edmund and Oliver as his noble half-brother Edgar.

While making James's bed, Oliver discovers a gash in the mattress concealing a blood-stained boat hook.

Oliver confronts James, and James confesses that he struck Richard with the boat hook in the woods the night of the cast party.

During a Romeo and Juliet performance, Colborne arrives to arrest James, but Oliver steps forward and falsely confesses to Richard's murder.

Oliver is sentenced to ten years in prison for Richard's murder after Meredith declines to testify at his trial.

Oliver completes his account to Colborne and learns from Filipa that James died by suicide four years earlier.

The seven Dellecher acting students begin their final year performing Julius Caesar and Macbeth, but a shift in casting unsettles the group's power dynamic and ignites Richard's growing rage. Richard becomes physically violent toward James, Meredith, and Oliver during rehearsals and performances, until the friends retaliate by fighting him for real on stage during the Caesar assassination scene. After the cast party, James follows the furious Richard into the woods and accidentally strikes him with a boat hook, leaving him in the lake. The next morning the friends find Richard barely alive and make the devastating collective choice to let him die, agreeing on a cover story for the police. Months later, Oliver discovers the boat hook hidden in James's mattress and forces a confession that finally reveals the full truth. When Colborne arrives to arrest James during a performance, Oliver sacrifices himself with a false confession, is sentenced to ten years in prison, and learns only after his release that James died by suicide.

The core events driving Richard's death and Oliver's sacrifice.

Oliver auditions at the start of the school year using a Pericles speech that James had suggested to him.

After learning the Julius Caesar casting, the friends spend the afternoon lounging together at the lakeside docks.

In Gwendolyn's drama class, each student is forced to publicly reveal their greatest strength and their deepest personal fear.

During a Julius Caesar rehearsal, Richard grabs Meredith's wrist and shoves her to the floor during the Calpurnia scene.

After the Julius Caesar cast party, Richard pounds on Meredith's locked door threatening to kill Oliver and Meredith, then storms into the woods.

The friends separately give Detective Colborne their rehearsed cover story, each claiming they found Richard already dead in the lake.

Richard's memorial service is held at the lakeside beach, where Wren delivers a deeply emotional eulogy for her cousin.

The friends gather at the Bore's Head for a spontaneous wake before dispersing for the Thanksgiving holiday.

Oliver asks Meredith to the Bore's Head for drinks, and the two formally begin dating despite the disapproval of other students.

While cleaning the castle, Oliver overhears Colborne and a junior officer discussing their lingering suspicions about Richard's death.

Oliver discovers Alexander snorting cocaine in the library before the Christmas masque Romeo and Juliet performance.

Alexander is found unconscious in his room surrounded by empty pill bottles and is rushed to hospital.

During a King Lear combat rehearsal, James loses control and strikes Oliver hard enough to break his nose.

After realizing James may be responsible for Richard's death, Meredith visits Colborne and shares her suspicions with him.

Filipa visits Oliver with two sealed envelopes discovered in James's abandoned car found near the lake where he drowned.

From the moment Oliver auditions with a Pericles speech at the start of the school year, the seeds of the group's undoing are visible in small but telling details. Richard's violence escalates through rehearsals and public confrontations with Meredith, while the friends struggle to maintain their alibi after giving Colborne their rehearsed cover story. After Richard's memorial service and the Thanksgiving break, Oliver and Meredith begin dating, and the group returns to a campus haunted by secrets and renewed police scrutiny. Alexander's drug overdose brings the tension to a breaking point, while James's aggression during King Lear rehearsals leaves Oliver with a broken nose and a growing sense of dread. Meredith eventually breaks ranks and alerts Colborne to her suspicions about James, setting the story's final events in motion. The pool closes in the epilogue when Filipa delivers two envelopes found in James's abandoned car near the lake, opening the door to one final mystery.

Secondary moments that shaped the tragedy from beginning to end.

Dean Holinshed delivers the school convocation speech, urging students to make bold choices and have no regrets during their time at Dellecher.

In combat class, Oliver freezes while watching James move and takes a real unblocked slap across the face.

On Halloween night, James soaks a bare-chested Oliver with fake blood to prepare him for his entrance as Banquo's bloody ghost.

James tells Oliver that Meredith flirted with him during their first year at Dellecher and he turned her down.

James shows up unannounced at Oliver's Ohio home during Thanksgiving break, unable to face staying with his own family.

Oliver cancels his planned visit to Meredith in New York when James arrives at his home, privately feeling it is divine interference.

Meredith asks Oliver directly whether he would rather be with her or with James; Oliver gives no answer.

During the Christmas masque Romeo and Juliet, Oliver watches James passionately kiss Wren as Juliet and realizes James is in love with her.

While cleaning the castle fireplace, Oliver finds a scrap of burnt fabric stained dark red at one end and secretly conceals it.

James and Oliver reconcile in their shared tower room after the nose-breaking incident; James presses his hand to Oliver's chest in a charged moment.

Gwendolyn forces James and Meredith to rehearse a romantic King Lear scene with real desire, and the sight makes Oliver sick with jealousy.

At the King Lear cast party, James stands on a table near an open window surrounded by burning candles, alarming Oliver with his desperation.

When James confesses to Oliver, Oliver realizes that Filipa discovered James's bloody clothes that night and has silently known the truth all along.

After his prison release, Oliver travels to Chicago and visits Meredith, who slaps him at the door before letting him inside.

Oliver researches James's death and discovers that James's body was never recovered from the lake, suggesting he may still be alive.

Beneath the main plot events lies a web of charged moments that reveal who the Dellecher students truly are, beginning with the school convocation that encourages reckless boldness and continuing through Oliver's growing, unacknowledged awareness of his feelings for James. Small but pivotal scenes — Oliver freezing in combat class, James soaking him in fake blood on Halloween night, James appearing unannounced at his Ohio home — accumulate into an emotional portrait of two people struggling to name what exists between them. Oliver's jealousy over James and Wren, Meredith's unanswered question about his loyalty, and Gwendolyn's coaxed passion between James and Meredith form a triangle of tension that drives Oliver deeper into denial and inaction. The discovery of burnt fabric in a fireplace and the intimate reconciliation after James breaks Oliver's nose mark the story's approach to its breaking point, followed by James's frightening unraveling at the Lear cast party. The pool closes in the epilogue as Oliver discovers that James's body was never recovered from the lake, leaving the novel's final fate open and alive with possibility.