Cooler pushed Bunk into the doorframe, leaning in heavily. “If I gave a single fucking word, you’re not with us anymore. Not work, no parties, nothing. Don’t fucking bitch at me about what’s right when I’m doing nothing wrong. Sour-ass smelling bitch.”

Bunk remained frozen, his face all clenched up, his eyes looking everywhere but at Cooler.

Cooler backed off, leaning away, swaying, and putting his hand on her poster again to steady himself. Crinkling it. He sat on the bed, and her perception of the motion was like her body was on a boat and a wave had rocked it. She didn’t really feel much. It was why the drool—

—ink-black fear washed over her mind—

—didn’t register most of the time.

“What do you think, Carrie?” Cooler asked. “Ladybug? Little girls like ladybugs, right? That’d be cute. One on the ankle? Or a unicorn? I could put something on your hand so you can look down and see it all the time.”

Carrie floated, disconnected and anxious.

“And an Eidolon to match the Eidolon-jammies? Hm?” Cooler leaned over, almost falling on top of her.

He fiddled with the device. It whirred, and it made a sound like a dentist’s drill.

“You take after your mom. She’s so pretty,” Cooler slurred. “Beauty mark right here, doesn’t she?”

It took him three tries to touch the right spot on her body’s cheek. She barely felt it, tracking it more by the way the shadows fell and what she could see at the edge of her vision.

“Give you a ladybug there?”

He drove his finger into that spot in her cheek with enough force that it should have hurt. It didn’t.

Mostly she just felt confused. She had never really thought about getting a tattoo. Was it like a temporary tattoo, but stitched on like a sewing machine did? She felt like she could remember or connect the dots if she wasn’t so… balloon headed.

But it was needles, and she hated needles, and it was dentist-like and she hated dentists.

But it wasn’t really her. She didn’t feel attached to her own body. It was a thing.

The string felt shorter, though. She felt closer to her body. Like the ceiling was only twenty feet above everything.

“Cooler,” Bottom Bunk said.

She hated Bottom Bunk. He smelled and the smells always led down the same roads to the fear of throwing up and not being able to breathe after.

“Bitch!” Cooler’s response was belligerent. “Didn’t I say to shut the fuck up?”

“You’ve been using that a lot tonight. Shouldn’t you change the…” he struggled to find the word. “The battery. Refill the, uh, the ink?”

“Bitch,” Cooler said, like he was going to say it in response no matter what Bottom Bunk said. Then he lurched to his feet.