Before Gwendy starts her sophomore year, she decides to run the Suicide Steps. As she runs, she contemplates the role of the button box in her life, wondering how much of her life is controlled by the box versus her own actions.

Gwendy’s sophomore year begins well: She’s elected class president and captain of the junior varsity (JV) soccer team and a popular and attractive senior football player asks her to the homecoming dance. She continues to eat the chocolates from the button box but doesn’t pull the lever for more coins as often as she used to. She had one of the silver dollars appraised, and a man offered her $750 for it. When she left the shop, she thought she saw Mr. Farris smiling at her.

Gwendy decides she needs to learn the truth about what the buttons do, so she goes to her history teacher’s empty classroom to look at world geography maps. After examining the maps and contemplating various factors such as population and quality of life, she decides South America will be the target.

Back home, she pulls out the button box and then imagines South America, focusing on an image of a sparsely populated jungle.