Robert runs with Blue and Redbone to the Negro dormitory just before curfew and expects immediate punishment, but Boone lets the boys pass after confirming that the kitchen pantry was locked. Boone then gives Robert and two other late arrivals a grim orientation to Lincoln wing, explaining that lockers are unsecured, theft is common, showers are dangerous, and almost any trouble can lead to a whipping or a trip to the Funhouse. As Boone describes Warden Haddock’s late-night patrols and harsher punishments, Robert understands more clearly that the Reformatory is a prison, even though the windows have no bars, and he begins instinctively studying the building for ways to escape.

Boone leaves Robert in the rec room, where the boys are listening to Amos ’n’ Andy on the radio. Robert remembers that his father despised the show as a white mockery of Black people, but the familiar voices still make Robert laugh, and seeing Blue and Redbone laughing too briefly eases his fear. That moment matters because it is Robert’s first small feeling of relief and companionship inside the dorm, though the laughter also sharpens his grief for his mother and home.

After the radio hour, Blue and Redbone help Robert claim a flimsy locker and teach him the unspoken rules for surviving the dorm: keep up, do not show anger, and do not stand out. Robert worries that his new boots from his father will be stolen, and when he finds David Loehmann’s business card stuck to his foot, he tears it up in anger, deciding Loehmann never meant to help him. In the shower line Robert tries to arrange his face so he will not look weak, then hears his dead mother’s voice telling him this is only a season and it will pass. The voice seems to answer him through pinging pipes, convincing Robert that his mother’s spirit is near, even as a separate foul, rotting smell rises from the water like another supernatural presence.

In the shower, Robert is humiliated by having to wash naked among strangers, but the warm pipe and the answering ping reassure him that his mother is somehow with him. Another boy dismisses Robert’s whispered claim that his mother’s ghost is present, which teaches Robert that even the supernatural is treated as ordinary at the school. Back in the bunk room, Redbone shows Robert his bed in the hot middle rows and indirectly explains that boys do not simply crawl out the open windows because guards patrol outside with dogs. Robert notices boys reading, gambling, drawing, and watching one another, then sees how even nightly prayer is controlled by violence when Boone and Crutcher pace the room and strike boys with a ruler during the recitation of Psalm 23.

After lights out, the heat, fear, and smell of decay keep Robert half awake until the stench returns much stronger. He hears a dragging sound approaching his bed and finally turns to see a small, blackened ghost boy with white eyes and a ruined leg, charred as if he died in the fire Robert has already sensed elsewhere on campus. Terrified, Robert tells the ghost to go away, then shuts his eyes and counts to ten; when he looks again, the figure and smell are gone. The disappearance gives Robert a brief, shaky sense that he might be able to resist the ghosts, but that feeling is cut off immediately when the lights blaze on and Boone suddenly yanks Robert out of bed.