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Benjy was moaning. The baroness’s words were caught in his ears, Danny could tell. He needed to erase them, keep them from tunneling into the boy’s brain. He started whispering into his hair as they followed the endless hall: It’ll be fine, you’ll see, you’ll grow up and you won’t even remember thi…

She looks up. I’ve caught her by surprise. Her face opens up and all of a sudden it’s like that paper mask is transparent. I’m looking right through it, and I get a flash of some kind of life we could’ve had—barbecues, dogs, kids flopping over us in bed—it rolls through me fast but strong and clear…

I have dreams, oh shit. Drug dreams, those ones where the past slops all over the place like a backed-up line. Sometimes I’m at school. The other boys would steal your food if you didn’t steal theirs first. Howie couldn’t do it. When he first came in he says, I don’t want their food. I can’t eat th…

Hey, Hannah, I say. How come you’re so nice to criminals?

That’s got nothing to do with me, LB, she says. That’s between you and God.

She turns to me, and I swear to God her eyes are bugging half out of her head. Are you aware, she says, that every question you ask is costing the taxpayer money? Those two guards outside the door, how much you think they’re getting paid? We’re turning people away downstairs because they don’t have…