That Mickey knew she wasn’t supposed to share. Her parents didn’t even know she knew that, but Sean had told her. It was a few years ago, on one of the nights when they made s’mores around the firepit. After they had packed up the marshmallows and graham crackers, Mickey tripped over her flip-flop and stepped straight out of it. Sean picked it up, grinning. Then he leaned in close and whispered, This is where Uncle Philip killed that girl, and ran away with her shoe, moonlight reflecting off his basketball shorts. Mickey froze right in that spot. She couldn’t move an inch. It was dark, and so much darker when she was alone. She stayed there, shaking and crying, until her dad noticed she wasn’t with them and came back for her. But no matter how many times Silas asked her what Sean had said to make her so scared, she never told. She knew instinctively, even then, that seeing her dad’s reaction would be so much worse than experiencing her own. He died before she was born, but she was nevertheless raised under Uncle Phil’s weight, the space in which he should’ve lived occupied, instead, by her father’s bone-dense grief.

“Here?” Ruth asked, and she wrapped her arms around herself, despite the thick heat of the New England summer.

Mickey nodded. She felt guilty, using her uncle like that. But Ruth’s yawn had hurt like a slap. She needed Ruth’s eyes back.

“That’s crazy,” Ruth said. But she didn’t look like Mickey did when she learned it. Ruth was grinning.

PEYOTE

I THINK IT’S TIME that I tell you what I’m actually working on.

This might not come as a huge surprise, but I wasn’t born Peyote Trip. Same with Calamity and KQ and everyone else. When a newb arrives in Hell, that lucky winner gets a new identity, stupid name and all. The idea is to strip us of our humanity. We have no use for that here.

Everybody starts off remembering their real name. I don’t know how it goes for the folks on the conveyor belts, but for the rest of us, repeating our real names becomes our version of prayer. Even so, with so much time and distance, we forget. Eventually, we all become whatever name we were given.

I would have done the same, if it hadn’t been for Slippery Pete.

Slippery Pete was my bunkmate on the Second Floor. He was a veteran Second-Floor man, and proud of it. He must’ve been a butcher topside, or maybe a serial killer. He knew about pressure points and how to snap a joint unlike anyone else I’ve ever seen. He seemed to like the Second Floor, as much as anyone could. It was honest work by Hell standards, and he was good at it.