While at a school picnic, Rhoda murders her classmate, Claude Daigle, who won a special penmanship award that she feels she deserved. After killing Claude, she retrieves the medal and leaves the dead boy's body in a local lake. While no one suspects Rhoda at first, Christine notices that her daughter seems startlingly indifferent to the other child's tragic death. Christine, who has always vaguely sensed something wrong with her daughter, is troubled, but dismisses any possibility that Rhoda was actually involved in the boy's death.