June asks Demon to visit because Emmy has been gone for two months with Fast Forward. Demon goes out of loyalty to June, notices how worry has aged her, and admits Dori is exhausted at home while Demon tries to stay functional with work and their prescriptions.

June vents about Emmy’s refusal to be “rescued” and worries about Maggot too, even saying Maggot needs a boyfriend to pull him out of his gloom. Demon defends Maggot as someone who needs time and listens as June insists that, no matter how much adults provide, kids can still throw it away.

Walking to a ridge at sunset, June presses Demon for what he knows about Fast Forward and whether Emmy is taking pills. Demon carefully tells June that Fast Forward is magnetic and money-focused, and that pills are so common Demon doesn’t know anyone their age who isn’t using them, a truth that leaves June shaken.

June then explains what she has been seeing at the clinic: patients across ages “need their scrip,” follow-up care is impossible for many, and the system is built to keep people dependent. She blames Kent and the drug-company “vampire” network, saying Purdue used data to target places like Lee County and push doctors with many disability pain patients. June sends Demon home with food, studying him as if she senses what he is not saying.

Later, at the Lee Courier, Tommy is overwhelmed by national articles that portray their region as a “blight,” and he fears Sophie’s family will see him as a stereotype. Demon argues that America needs a scapegoat and that their people have become it, then tears up the humiliating local-interest comic “Stumpy Fiddles.” To replace it, Demon draws a new anonymous strip, Red Neck, featuring a miner-hero who restores power to an elderly couple’s home, reclaiming dignity for the place everyone mocks.