Along behind Peter. Nobody sees her. She is the one witnesses will not remember. “Um, yeah, there was a, um, person,” they’ll say. Don hasn’t grown, except in breadth. She has put on muscle mass and is darker thanks to her time outside the hall, where she installed a pipe from the stream into the building because Karen had strictly forbidden the use of the water from the tap, worked in the field, fed the animals they’ve stolen from farms. The things you do in an assisted-living facility as a teenager in need of socialization.

The invisibility that comes with walking near Peter is what Don’s accustomed to anyway. She’s never looked at by others with a surge of interest. And has always assumed that she must do something extraordinary in order to be observed with such attention. The muscles she had built up were great, but she was still just a not very big almost-still-a-child with muscles. There had to be another field in which Don could distinguish herself. The thing that scares her when she’s half asleep. When she wonders why she is on earth and what talent she has, she gets anxious. There must be something. Something big. But—nothing wants to express itself in Don. She’s not as clever as Karen or as pretty as Hannah, not as otherworldly as Peter. Just as mountains don’t grow more than ten kilometers because the tops erode and the rock at the base liquefies from the pressure, Don will also never grow larger, in every sense. She is average. And it’s maddening. The fact that she’ll never be seen. Just as an example: by Hannah. Whenever her name enters Don’s mind she looks around nervously, checking that nobody can read her thoughts. Don walks in Peter’s shadow.

On the giant screen: a doctor with a smashed head. Close-up of the smashed-up bits. Close-up of a resident: “He was a courteous, understated man.” A doctor. Not true. Close-up of the police spokesperson, a woman with a blonde helmet of hair who looks like a governess. “We are proceeding on the assumption that the perpetrators are from a social housing block in Tower Hamlets and that the probable motivation for this barbarous act is hatred of the elite.”—

And so on.

The outrage of good citizens, anxious citizens, decent citizens toward society’s parasites grows.

They’re excited,

THE FRIENDS

In order to prove the dangers that come with the pleasure of automated driving, they’ve hacked the steering system of a blue, self-driving tour bus. It was relatively easy, and now they watch via surveillance cameras as the bus drives across Tower Bridge, swerves, and plunges elegantly into the Thames.

Shame

Thinks

PETER

He would like with people. For instance: to talk. And give his words emphasis with hand gestures. He would

Really like to be

Impulsive. But.