Can think of. It was like being in a haunted house, where the unhappy souls of the dead staggered around. Except that here they were still alive. Barely.

Nobody knew what anyone else wanted, understood anyone else’s feelings. They were unable to comfort each other. They were inconsolable, they were lonely. The poor people. Peter at least understood that he couldn’t make connections to anybody here. The others believed they could connect with their small talk, their endless stream of meaningless words. Or show something of themselves, something brilliant, with all the lies they told. Every word that flowed through the filter of, and was monitored by, an adult mind in order to meet the expectations of others was a lie.

At the shelter Peter began to radicalize. He had always thought the freaks were his friends. The sick, addicts, the disappointed, he’d always believed them to be his friends, that they accepted him and liked him, just as he liked them, those with prison tattoos, with Rasta braids, the sad sacks, the lonely. But now once again he was just the stranger. The outsider who was stared at. People loved to look down on everything that seemed inferior. Here, too. There was no redemption. No peace. No quiet. The fluorescent lights crackled in the long hallways with gray flooring, where people stood in front of the yellow doors and fell silent when Peter approached. When Peter didn’t understand something he began to hit his head against the wall. When he hit his head against the wall, he thought of his mother, who had been the only person able to make him stop. Then he hit his head against the wall even harder.

And

DON

Sat next to Peter. She didn’t touch him, just sat there until he calmed down. The poor nutter. Who always fell asleep after these fits. And even then didn’t look any more relaxed. Or happier. None of them knew this feeling, though they were all so desperate for it that they bought drugs to try to attain it. Didn’t help. They just got fucked up. Tired. Passed out and got skinny legs. The people. I’d love to know what it’s like to be happy, thought Don, lying in her bunk at night. Listening to her brother’s grunts and her mother’s heavy breathing. Outside, the clank of a bottle somebody was kicking along. Don suddenly realized that her relationship with her family would never change for the better.