Did that just happened? 
 Correction: What just happened? 
 Seriously, because I am bundles of confusion, and I need a Rosetta Stone to decipher what I just read. I really wanted to like Special Topics. I have no idea. I just had an irrational need to do so. It happens but every time it does happen, I end up severely disappointed. 
 Kind of like I am now. 
 Severely disappointed. 
 The truth is that I did like the harmless aspect of the story: a very precocious teenage girl is tired of traveler life with her very smart but arrogant father and wants to spend her senior year in one place. I would have invested in that kind of growing pains story. Pessl could have even kept the highly annoying Bluebloods since variations of them undoubtly exist in any high school setting. 
 I liked the main character Blue Van Meer. She was a combination of Dawson Leery and Juno. 
 Sure, it might have been slightly cliche and would not have been Pessl's magnum opus but it would have sufficed. It's evident that Pessl is a very good writer so she could have made the cliche work. However, she decides to throw in the weird Night Watch radical conspiracy theory along with the Gareth-Natasha-Hanna Schneider connection and it just may everything go haywired. 
 What was that? 
 Did Hanna kill herself? 
 Was she murdered? 
 By Gareth? 
 Why did Gareth abandoned Blue? 
 Then, Pessl had the audacity to leave everything extremely vague and confusing. 
 Am I missing the point of this novel? 
 Did I miss the point? 
 Can anybody tell me what happened?