Winter blurs as Demon moves into Dori’s house, keeping clothes and meds there while trying and failing to taper oxy. Dori cares for her father Vester and fusses over Demon, hiding him from DSS. School recedes; teammates drift, Ms. Annie’s class inspires less, yet Demon draws and connects to books about alienated and exploited kids. He misses Angus’s easy companionship even as he avoids that home.

After Demon complains he will never see the ocean, Angus dares him to go. Dori, tied down by caregiving, urges him to go without her and lends a Polaroid. Demon recruits Fast Forward for wheels, Maggot for escape, and Emmy, whose joining seals Fast’s commitment. With no money or plan, they set sights on Virginia Beach, counting on Fast’s promised cash hookup in Richmond. Demon resents wealthy classmates’ effortless trips and reflects on mountain kids’ tethers and invisibility.

They leave late, detour through substances and goodbye sex, and only reach Hungry Mother State Park. On its grim fake beach, tensions surface: Emmy and Fast flirt and dance; Maggot jokes and seems sidelined; Demon bristles that this is no ocean. Fast and Emmy return from town disheveled with cold pizza. The group breaks into an empty cabin, and Demon, sweating and restless, takes a small oxy, mindful that Fast limited contraband before the Richmond pickup.

Outside, Emmy confides that June is threatened by desperate opioid seekers and prescription thieves, and that local insurance covers pills but not treatment. Emmy admits she lied to June, drove Martha Coldiron to Knoxville for an abortion, and broke up with Hammer because she felt unworthy. She worries about Maggot, who is using meth and trading sex to procure it. After she returns to bed, Demon broods on the quilts, their hungry origins, and the four of them—Demon, Fast, Emmy, Maggot—as children of starving hearts, headed toward a risky Richmond deal.