And then there’s a sound like a champagne cork blasting off the bottle, and before Atlanta knows what’s happening, the Skank is staggering backward, her arm across the chest of her ratty T-shirt—she pulls the arm away and it’s sticky with blood, and the shirt’s torn open and so is the girl’s chest.

The air stinks of gun smoke. It burns Atlanta’s eyes.

“You shot my tits off,” Skank says, her voice quiet and bemused. “Shot ’em right off. What man’s ever going to want to suck on them again? Oh, God. How am I ever going to have babies? How am I ever going to feed them with these ruined tits?”

Skank makes a cry like a cat being kicked.

The blood flows hot, fresh, over the girl’s hands. And then Atlanta wakes up.

She pissed the bed.

That’s what she thinks at first, but then she realizes: it’s just sweat. No way she could piss that much. It’s up and down the length. Even the top sheet is soaked through.

First thing she does is feel around the floor for the Adderall and pop one.

No more sleep. Sleep can eat a bag of dicks is what it can do.

The next week goes by smoothly. She sees her old best friend Bee in the hall, and she sees that Bee is hanging out with a whole new crew. No more Petra, no more Susie. Interesting, Atlanta thinks. I see your new friends, but do you see mine? Does she even care? This new group of Bee’s friends isn’t the popular crowd, but it’s one rung below—the B-Team to the popular crowd’s A-Team. Soccer players, theater junkies, rich kids, smart kids. Bee gives her a look this time. Atlanta smiles at her because she’s having a good week. Bee smiles back—a ghost of a smile—and then it’s gone, and Atlanta figures, That’s all I’m ever going to get.

But it doesn’t ruin her mood. Things are good. She feels strong. In control.

The Adderall certainly helps. She even sits down to write that paper—for real, this time, even though it’s way overdue. She rereads Housman’s poem “To an Athlete Dying Young.” She doesn’t need Shane’s Google-fu to get to the point: sometimes it’s better to go out at the top of your game, the poem’s saying. The poetic version of Live fast, die young, leave a pretty-looking corpse. All with a lot of extra poetic horseshit thrown into the mix.

Chris sees she’s doing the paper. He tells her that Housman was gay. She doesn’t know what to make of that in terms of the poem—only that, hey, maybe he liked looking at boy athletes. No harm in that.