The Summer of Broken Rules

Her dad follows a tradition of the Vineyard and breaks the speed limit along one of the dirt roads, which triggers Meredith’s fear of not being in control and not being the driver. She panics and asks her dad to slow down, but he only slows down when her mom gets his attention. They arrive at their designated cabin on the property—the Annex—and find everything exactly the way they left it when they were last there. Sarah comes to see the newly arrived Foxes, and Meredith can’t help but notice that Sarah looks as though she could be Claire’s twin. Sarah tells the family that there will be a cookout later in the evening and that there will be a big announcement at the cookout.

Meredith then goes to visit her grandparents, “Honey” and “Wink.” Wink tells her that Aunt Julia and Aunt Rachel have arrived with their two children, Ethan (who is throwing a tantrum) and Hannah (who is wearing a tutu), and Aunt Rachel is very pregnant with child number three. Later, the cookout begins, and Meredith reunites with her friends—Pravika, Eli, Jake, and Jake’s sister Luli—whom she ignored for most of the previous two years she spent away from family and friends after Claire’s death. Pravika, Eli, and Jake are glad to see Meredith, but Luli is resentful that Meredith ignored her text messages and Snapchats during that time frame. The group eats dinner together, and Meredith engages in small talk with various family members and bridal party members. Honey introduces Meredith to Michael’s stepbrother, Wit, who has a bruised face; he is the person Meredith kicked on the boat, and she prays that he will not realize that fact.

Meredith talks to Wit for a while and learns that he is currently a student at Tulane University, the school most of her family has attended. He seems hesitant to talk about the school, but before Meredith can inquire further, Michael and Sarah announce the big event of the week—a game of Assassin to honor Claire’s memory, as it was Claire’s favorite game. This year, the game has only three rules: the game will run 24/7, eliminations must happen outside, and the game cannot interfere with official wedding events. Everyone will receive their first targets at midnight, and the game will begin the next day.

That night, Meredith cannot sleep in her usual room because she feels the emptiness of the bed that Claire should be sleeping in. She gets up to go for a walk and hears someone else walking around in the woods nearby. She threatens the unknown person with a knife and Wit reveals himself, also revealing that he knows she is the one who kicked him in the face and gave him the black eye. Their conversation turns to the game of Assassin, and Wit acknowledges he doesn’t know the Fox clan that well, just as Meredith doesn’t know all of the Duprés. They make a pact to cooperate with each other and pass along information if either of them hears the name of the other in discussions. Meredith ends the night by visiting the tree where Claire marked each of her Assassin victories and vows that she will win this year in honor of Claire.

Early the next morning, Meredith gets a small water pistol from Claire’s stash of weapons and goes for her first target, Aunt Rachel, who meditates every morning at the same time. Before she arrives, she encounters Michael and Wit, who are both out for a morning run. Michael tries to introduce them, but they admit that they are already acquainted and that Meredith is the reason Wit’s face is bruised. Michael laughs but reveals that Sarah’s mom, Christine, is furious about the situation. Meredith leaves the stepbrothers confused by calling them both Duprés, even though Dupré is not Wit’s last name.

Aunt Rachel is outside meditating as expected. Meredith tries to sneak up on her, but Rachel hears her. She announces her presence to Rachel and then squirts her. Rachel thanks Meredith for eliminating her from the game, because she knows that her advanced pregnancy would have made it very difficult for her to play the game properly. Rachel hands her target card to Meredith, who learns that her new target is a person whom she has never met. Rachel then insists that Meredith meditate with her. Meredith complies, and although she does not quite understand the practice, she promises to return for more meditation sessions.

She makes her way to Wit’s room in the cabin after assuring Michael that there is nothing between her and Wit other than the bruised face. She enters Wit’s room as he leaves the bathroom, and he is caught off guard, not being accustomed to the Vineyard’s unspoken rule that there is no need for knocking. She gets information about her next target, and when she yawns, Wit invites her to lie down on his bed, which she does hesitantly. They talk and flirt a bit, but Meredith holds herself back because she doesn’t want to risk this newly developing friendship while her existing friendships are still on such rocky ground.

The two wake up together, and Meredith almost invites Wit to come tubing with her and her friends, until she remembers that it will also be an Assassin strategy session and that he would not be welcomed by the rest of the group. Wit also has groomsman duties that will take up his time for the day. They make plans to meet up later and playfully call each other pet names. When Wit asks whether they should keep their cooperation on secret, Meredith assures him that Michael knows, which means that Sarah knows, which means that soon enough, the whole Vineyard will know.

Meredith and her friends meet and start to build their strategy to win the island-wide game. They plan to enact Claire’s strategy of “leaking” misinformation about who their real targets are to make their actual targets less suspicious around them. Then, the tubing begins, and Meredith and Pravika are the first two to get into the inner tubes and be pulled around by the boat. When Meredith eventually gets whipped off and crashes into the water, she has a small panic attack, wondering whether the pain she feels upon hitting the water is anything at all like the pain Claire must have felt getting hit by the car.

Once the gang returns to shore, Luli and Meredith talk, and Meredith apologizes for ghosting her. Luli accepts the apology but wants an explanation for why Meredith wasn’t there when she needed her, emphasizing that Meredith is not the only one who misses Claire. Before Meredith can explain, Wit shows up for their meeting, which puts Luli on edge again. Luli goes so far as to call Wit “the new Ben,” which Meredith doesn’t understand, as she and Wit leave to pick up groceries for that night’s family dinner.

Meredith and Wit bike to the Morning Glory Farm market and talk about past experiences on the island. She recounts a dare that she and Claire completed once, in which they walked down an unlit road at night while singing Taylor Swift songs; Wit takes up the dare and suggests that they do the same sometime this week. When they arrive at the market, their first goal is to acquire pies for dinner; the pies are a hot commodity and sell out in 15 minutes or less. Afterward, they get the rest of the groceries and eat lunch together while Wit explains his misgivings about Tulane. Realizing that his account is ruining her family’s shining image of Tulane as utopia, he quickly apologizes, but Meredith assures him that the image was already ruined. He jokingly offers to let her kick the other side of his face, but she laughs instead. Meredith can feel that there is something more between them than friendship, but she cannot identify exactly what it is. Lunch ends with Wit recounting his success at eliminating one of the bridesmaids by dumping the full bottle of water over her head because she called him “kid,” an epithet that he hates.

When Meredith returns from the shopping trip, she learns that her dad eliminated Pravika while she was gone. She takes the pies and groceries to her grandparents’ house and places the pies safely out of the reach of the dogs, then goes to open an upstairs window so that Wit can sneak onto the roof to eliminate his current target, Kate. He accomplishes his goal, but there is debate about whether or not Kate was 10 feet away from the door. A tape measure is brought out and they determine Kate was indeed 10 and a quarter feet away from the door, so Wit has made a legitimate kill. Wit then starts to leave, but Wink and Honey invite him to stay for dinner on the condition that he sits on the notoriously uncomfortable stool.

During the family dinner, everyone is laughing and having a good time until Sarah tells a story about how Claire hated salad, but Danielle, not knowing this, ordered one for her during a night out at Tulane. Too polite to say anything, Claire pushed the salad around and made it look as though she ate most of it, although she actually ate none of it. Everyone finds the story amusing except for Meredith, who feels hurt that Sarah is telling a story from the night Claire died as if it were just any other night. Wit pulls Meredith back from the memory of that night by gently placing a hand on her back to comfort her. Luli’s arrival interrupts the scene, and Meredith gets permission from Wink to leave the family dinner for an attempt at eliminating her target. She and her friends succeed in a manner that goes viral on Instagram. Night falls, and once again Meredith cannot bear to sleep in the Annex, so she makes her way to the cabin to find Wit and ends up spending the night with him.