Nothing mattered. “Maybe the agency won’t pay the rent,” said Hannah, “and we’ll be put up in a rubbish dump.” In earlier times her father would have answered: “That’ll be brilliant. There’ll be rats, highly intelligent animals, we can train them. And rubbish dumps are usually quite tranquil. There’s food there, old clothes, we can build a house. As for the odor, well, it’s just an odor.”

But her father didn’t talk. He just sat there, staring off, for so long that Hannah got angry. She was the child, for fuck’s sake. And rather than say something injudicious, it would be better to explore her new home. Labyrinthine subterranean hallways, on the walls graffiti, fluorescent lights, a few doors standing open, inside faint signs of life. Lots of old men; here and there sat a few single mothers who’d worked in industries that no longer existed, all their functions cranked down to a bare minimum.

And suddenly

DON

Was nervous. Her brother wasn’t there, he was probably in the basement playing with decomposing pets. It had just happened. She had just begun to observe herself and her surroundings as if from the outside. Since the vaccination, to be exact. Now she wouldn’t get encephalitis, but she’d also never manage to reoccupy her body. From one day to the next, Don had lost all sense of contentment. As if she had needed a pair of glasses that had now been paid for by medical insurance, bit of a joke there, because there were no glasses for people on welfare, which had led to a drastic increase in the number of rear-end collisions and illiterates. Don had also begun to notice the smell—a mix of cheap food, insufficient ventilation, damp clothes, mold, and carelessly washed people. Outside was the absolute emptiness of a Sunday evening. Don felt so utterly bored that her body started to itch.

Don figured it would be easier to die than to live on with this sense of unease.

The problem was

Don had discovered her sexuality. That’s how you’d say it if you were a nutter. Don hated everything about herself. Her muscles, the stockiness of her body, which made her look like a little wrestler, her skin, her too-big mouth, her crooked eyes, her too-high forehead. Don walked around the apartment, sat around, went out onto the street, and every activity ended with her flopping down in her bed trying to remember Karen’s lecture.

“It’s not bad,” Karen had explained a few days before. “It’s puberty. Hormones. It’s like they’ve swapped you out for an alien. Do you feel like that?”

“Well, let’s put it this way, I never used to think, Wow, this is me. But now all I can think is that I’m no longer myself. You know what I mean?” Don had answered.