I do.

Well, this will help you. Trust me.

I couldn’t tell her that I was starting to get attached to my violent tendencies. They were better than my fever; I wasn’t looking for a cure.

Cassie told me she was writing a book. Did I want to see it?

Not really, I didn’t.

Show her page one, Amber insisted.

Page one, Cassie said, and Amber made a drumroll sound.

Page one, Cassie said, in the story of my life. Pointing at a place just below her knee, she showed me the letters. Tiny, but perfectly even. SLUT, the letters said.

Page two, she said, now pointing to the smooth skin under her arm. Here too the letters were so perfect and careful that I knew it must have taken hours for her to draw the word, hours when she couldn’t have cried or shaken or asked for help.

BAD, the letters said.

Page three was written on her breast. She was only fourteen, so she didn’t even have breasts. There was just a small rise of skin, a tiny nipple surrounded by pale pink, and three letters messier than all the others. FTW.

You don’t know what that means? Cassie said. Justine has it too. On her wrist.

Oh yeah, I said, as if I was just remembering.

Fuck the World, Cassie said.

I’ve got it too, Amber said. It’s down here. Look.

I just looked up at the surveillance camera. The lens was still and unmoving. A broken, useless eye.

You want it? Cassie said. You don’t really deserve it.

She does. She helped China. She’s tougher than she looks.

Fuck the World. I’d thought those words so many times they were almost part of my memory.

Yes, I said, and Cassie grabbed my hand. She wanted to do it on my shoulder, the place where I was once given a flu shot.

Expertlike, she cut in my skin with her small hands and smaller blade. I felt a dull, stabbing pain.

Feels good, doesn’t it? Amber said, and she held my hand.

It didn’t feel good though.

When I told her to stop, Cassie jabbed me with the blade.

You’re a wimp, Cassie said. I’ve burned. I did it in juvie. Athena smuggled a lighter into her Tampax box. We burned flowers.

She showed me the small welt on her other breast. It might have been a poppy, a tulip; the skin swelled full and flowerlike. Her breasts were as small as those of a girl I used to baby-sit. Annie Sanders; she was twelve. I’d read her Anne of Green Gables five hundred times. I suddenly thought I should call Annie’s parents and tell them to get her out of Victoria before it was too late.