The Orange men are as big as Sir, but they don't have bracelets or necklaces. I wonder if they are jealous. There's three. I like the number three — three brothers, three homes, three times speaking to the man in the white wig. Three years in my little Bar Room. Momma would have made it longer.

  I look up at the Orange men. One has pictures on his face and black and blue circles. I don't have any pictures. The second has curly orange hair, with some red in it, and it looks fresh. The third Orange man has dark eyes, and he only has one picture on his neck. I can't see all of it. Maybe he will show me. They are looking at me, and they are smiling. I wonder who told the joke.

  The picture man speaks: "Hello, baby boy. What's a cute little thing like you doing with the big bad wolves?"

  "The man with the white wig said I was bad." They all laugh, but I didn't hear anyone tell a joke.

  Curly touches my face. No hot air. "What's your name, cutie?"

  "Eli Hart." His shoes aren't as nice as Sir's, but he slaps like him.

  "Look at me when I'm talking to you, you little shit." I look at him. "Why are you here?"

  "The white man with the wig said—" Dark Eyes slaps me this time and says, "Why were you bad?" His voice makes me feel like little men with Shock Sticks are going up my back.

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  "Because I made lots of people turn red." I don't like it when they laugh.

  My necklace tinkles when Curly pulls me onto his lap.

  "What are you doing?" I ask.

  "Just giving you a feel, sugar." His hands are touching my legs. I don't like it. It makes my legs feel hot. Maybe I should move, but Momma never let me.

  Momma's friends used to do that. Momma said it was normal. So did her friends. They didn't say it when they turned red.

  My new friends bang on the bars. "Prisoner 202, don't touch the psycho."

  I like my new bunk better than Curly's lap. "Psycho?" Curly smiles. "I love a crazy bitch." Sissy would have given him a blue mark for that word.

  A bell rings. Dark Eyes says that means shower time. My friends come in to unlock my chains. I follow my roommates to the shower. No one else has a necklace like mine.

  Someone just touched my butt, just like Momma's friends would do.

  All the Orange men take off their clothes. A few are looking at me. They must be jealous of my necklace. I take off my clothes. I get in the water last. It's cold. Other Orange men watch.

  They whistle a lot. Maybe they like music. A big Orange man helps me get clean.

  "I can clean my pee-pee myself," I say, but he insists. I don't feel any cleaner.

  My new friends take me back to my cell. One leans over and says, "You don't need to let them touch you." Momma wouldn't agree.

  Curly says that he always sleeps in my bunk. I guess I have to let him. He makes more than my legs feel hot.

  I still don't feel clean.