After Demon calls 911 for his overdosed mother, he rides to the hospital as Stoner claims credit and performs the role of concerned husband for EMTs, even producing coworkers’ pill bottles. Demon waits in the ER with the Peggots until an on-call DSS worker arrives and separates him for questioning.

The social worker probes alleged issues at the Peggots’ house—reflecting a complaint Stoner made—before Demon redirects to Stoner’s violence. She photographs Demon's injuries and asks about sexual abuse, which he denies. Fearing commitment to “Marion,” Demon answers a clinician’s questions about anger, access to guns, and self-harm; the clinician finds no need for psychiatric hold.

DSS informs Demon he cannot return home, and, pending investigation of Stoner’s complaint, he also cannot stay with the Peggots. Out-of-state relatives are ruled out by paperwork. Exhausted, Demon dozes at the hospital, startled awake by a ghostlike food-service worker who eats the tray he brought after warning hospital food can make people sick.

At dawn a new caseworker, Miss Barks, arrives, cheerful and poised, and tells Demon he’ll have a temporary placement at Mr. Crickson’s farm with other boys. During the long drive, she admits his mother will be released directly to a longer residential rehab and that Demon will keep his school but has no belongings yet; she will try to retrieve them.

They reach the overgrown farmhouse. Miss Barks and the weary on-call worker hesitate over who will escort Demon inside, revealing Barks’s inexperience and Demon's sudden dislocation. The chapter closes with Demon on the porch of his foster future, cut off from home and the Peggots.