Then, always, she had the same general realization, like becoming aware of her tongue in her mouth. That her tongue lay in drool that was accumulating in her mouth, and that wasn’t so different from puking and the puke filling her mouth, and her being unable to breathe.

That thought was like someone taking the cap off the bottle and dumping the blackness in. Even with the string being as thin and long as it was, she thought her heart might stop from the pressure of it.

“See this, Carrie?” Cooler asked, leaning forward. He waved something in front of her eyes. It moved too fast to be seen, and it was dark except for the edges that caught the light from the doorway. “Want a tattoo?”

She did not, but the distraction of this new situation was a relief from the heart-stopping blackness that flooded her head.

“Been giving them to people downstairs,” Cooler said, his voice airy.

“Leave her alone, Cool,” Bottom Bunk said.

“You’re not supposed to give tattoos to kids, but it could be our secret, yeah?” Cooler said. “Yours, mine, and Bunk.”

“This don’t feel right at all, man,” Bottom Bunk said.

Cooler sprung to his feet with a force that he couldn’t keep up with, and had to put an arm out to stop himself. It pushed at a poster Carrie had put up of Chorus Cross, and the bottom corner tore where it had been tacked to the wall.

You tore my poster!

“Bunk, bitch. This is why nobody likes you,” Cooler said, putting his face near Bunk’s.

My poster. The first band I ever actually liked. I don’t like people and I don’t like bands with people. Cross Chorus is entirely digital. Digital voices and digital faces. Absolutely nothing scary about them.

“It don’t feel right.”

“Who are you to talk about right, Bunk?” Cooler said, getting more heated. “You stole money from little old ladies and shit.”

Bottom Bunk looked over at Carrie, like he cared what she thought. She already knew, though.

More importantly, her poster.

“We saved your fuckin’ life, Bunk. This is the kind of loyalty you show?”

“No, uh,” Bunk said, twisting his face around so he didn’t have to look at Cooler, who had his face an inch from Bunk’s. “No. It’s not about loyalty, Cool.”

“Nobody likes an asshole who steals from grannies, Bunk. Everyone has a granny. Everyone loves their fuckin’ granny. But we protected you, because you were Gas’s cellmate.”

“I know, man.”

“Got you a job most ex-cons would love to have. You don’t make six figures normally.”

“I know. Shit.”

“Know your damn place, man,” Cooler said. “I’m having a little fun, giving the girl a thing so she doesn’t have her weekend totally wasted.”

Weekend?

Oh. She’d lost track of time.

She’d missed the Sunday morning movie on channel forty.