Dickers started telling Laurence that once you reached Level Three, life was pretty sweet: You got an hour of unsupervised computer time per day, and the school had just gotten Commando Squad (a game Laurence had beaten in a single day, two years ago.) At Level Four, officer level, you sometimes got to watch movies in Peterbitter’s apartment after lights-out, but that was a secret that Dickers absolutely had not told Laurence. Most of all, you did not want to get bumped down to Level Minus-One, because Dickers could not swear that they had gotten rid of all the MRSA in the Isolation Hole. Again, Dickers had not told Laurence about the MRSA, any more than he’d told him about the action movies (and microwave popcorn and pizza, delivered from outside) for Level Fours. Laurence said Dickers’s secrets would die with Laurence, which was probably true.

“This here’s Dirt,” Dickers told the dozen or so massive teenagers in various stages of getting changed from athletic gear, toweling off, and changing into fatigues, inside a small white-brick dorm room. “He’s stayin’ here a few days, see how he takes to it. He needs a bunk and some gear. Show him a good time, girls.” Then Dickers was gone.

Laurence drew himself up, kept his shoulders squared. “Hi. I’m Dirt, apparently. It’s not the worst thing I’ve been called this week. So, where am I supposed to sleep? He said you had a spare bunk here?”

The room was maybe three times the size of Laurence’s bedroom at home and had bunks crammed so tight it was like how Laurence imagined a submarine. He couldn’t breathe this methane-nitrogen atmosphere, and he wasn’t sure he’d be able to sleep in here. His head spun.

“Nope.” One dude with a DIY chest tattoo and a nose that had been broken multiple times rolled out of his bunk. He towered over Laurence. “No spare bunk here. You’re Dirt? You sleep on the floor.” He gestured at the dark far corner, which had a fresh spiderweb. Laurence looked for a bunk that was unoccupied, but he couldn’t see past the ring of massive kids on all sides.

The part of Laurence’s brain that stood back and analyzed shit told him he was being hazed. This was part of the “breaking you down” program, and also normal social dynamics. Don’t let them get to you, he told himself.

But what came out of Laurence’s mouth was: “What about the kid who just died? Maybe I can have his bunk.”

Probably the wrong thing to say.

“No way dude,” said someone farther back in the room, in a rumble like a forty-year-old truck driver. “You did not just disrespect Murph. You did not just piss on the memory of our fallen comrade. Tell me I didn’t hear that.”