She rests her chin on her hand. “You know, I knew him for three years, and then I realized I never looked at him. I’d talk to him by the hour, but I never looked at him. Well, this really upset me, because I thought, if I won’t look at him, who on earth will? So, that very minute, I looked him in the face, and I mean right straight at him. And—this is really funny—he hated it! He tried not to show it, but he was really squirming! So then, I told myself, to hell with this! I’m gonna look at him, and he and I are both gonna like it! And eventually we did. Now I almost think he’s beautiful, because he looks like Willie and no one else in the world.”

“Is he your boyfriend?”

“Oh, no. I’m not in the boyfriend business.”

Carole returns in a huge sweatshirt and flip-flops, a big towel scrunched around her hair. “Sue, do we need to do the BM chart?”

“Yeah. Would you mind?” She’s just finishing the first foot.

Carole gets a clipboard from the cubicle. She kneels beside Sue and lays it on the footlocker, making Xs on a form. Mary, yesterday. Dolly, today. Then she comes to me.

“Jean, have you had a BM since you’ve been here?”

I shake my head no. “Why do you want to know?” I want to ask. But she moves on before I can speak.

Sara explains. “They want everyone to have a BM every other day. If you don’t, there’ll be milk of magnesia at breakfast.” She says it like the Wicked Witch of the West.

My face goes red. Laxatives give me cramps, and I hate going to the bathroom in a mad rush.

“Tell it not in Gath,” she says quietly, “and publish it not in the streets of Askelon, but a while back, we all decided it’s okay to lie on your BM charts. If you don’t want a laxative, get a walkie-talkie to take you off the toilet in the morning, wipe you, and flush. Then you can report whatever you want to.”

I shrug. As much as I hate laxatives, I hate to lie. Why don’t the others seem bothered? They probably have BMs on record, real or fake. I want to change the subject.

“Sa-ra, why did-n’t you go swim-ming?”

“Why should I? I’d rather spend my time drawing. I had to put ‘Swimming only if requested’ on my medical form, because otherwise they’d be after me to Overcome My Fear of the Water. Never mind that I’m not afraid. I used to swim, and I actually liked the ease of movement, the weightlessness. But it was too horrible when they pulled me out and all that gravity came crushing down.”