“My friend,” TJ said. “The goddamn girl we were just talking about.”

“Big freckle face?” Chastity said. “Sorry. If that girl was any more boring, she’d be damn well invisible.”

“Don’t say that,” TJ said. “Don’t you ever talk about my best friend.”

“Or what?” Chastity said. “You and Ladarius gonna chop me up, too?”

“That’s not funny.”

“It’s kind of funny,” Chastity said, smiling. “I wouldn’t joke if I thought y’all were guilty.”

“Goddamn Chester Pratt.”

TJ reached for a towel on the rack and began to wipe the makeup from her face. Chastity shook her head, so much good work gone wasted. The girl was crying a little bit now, too. Softer than she’d thought TJ Byrd would be when she’d first heard about the teenage killers on the run from Mississippi.

“Why aren’t you scared of us?” TJ asked. “Seems like everybody else is.”

“Maybe because I don’t much give a damn either way,” she said. Chastity turned over her forearm to show where she liked to cut on herself a little bit, a long trail of neat and even scars, like someone keeping box scores on a baseball game. Or at least that’s what her last therapist had told her.

“No one will listen,” TJ said.

“We make them listen.”

“How’s that?” TJ said. “By making me all gussied up and pretty? That sounds like more bullshit to me. And I’m done with that. I’m ready to fight back.”

Chastity put her makeup back into a white leather purse and walked from the bathroom, Sharon’s gigantic boobies staring at her like a couple of knowing eyes. She headed on into the bedroom with the big four-post bed and grasped hold, twirling back and forth, drunk with thought. And a little carefree after taking a whole Klonopin with her morning Diet Coke.

“Make them listen.”

“How do you do that?”

“Grab hold of something to make people take notice.”

“We’re just some country-ass kids,” TJ said. “Nobody gives a damn about us. Chester has money. He’s already sweet-talked the sheriffs down there. And now he’s putting out his lies on TV. Only reason he’s doing that is to scatter the damn truth.”

“You got me,” Chastity said, breaking free of the post and walking over to TJ. She grasped the girl’s small hands and put them onto her shoulders. “Listen. People are already looking for me. People want me. If folks won’t listen, I can help you get the truth and get us both money. Money for me to live my own life and money for y’all to get far, far away from here.”

“I don’t want to run anymore.”

“You call driving from north Mississippi to Hot Springs running?” Chastity broke free and touched her index finger on her lips. “Do you really have a gun?”