Mr. McCobb sets Demon up with an after-school job at Golly’s Market (Mary’s Mini Mart), where Demon can ride the bus there and eat leftover hot food as part of his pay. Demon worries about being made to sell cigarettes or beer, but learns the real job is a separate trash-and-recycling operation on the property, recommended through Murrell Stone’s connection to Stoner Stone.

Behind the store, Demon finds a massive trash pile where locals pay to dump garbage, and he discovers Swap-Out already working there washing bottles. Swap-Out is no longer in school and speaks in fragments, but he clues Demon in that the boss is named “Ghost.” When the boss arrives, Demon recognizes Ghost as the pale, tattooed man Demon previously saw with Stoner Stone at Pro’s Pizza.

Demon learns the work is brutal and dangerous: sorting filthy refuse (including diapers), living with constant rats, and separating materials for resale. Ghost assigns Demon the “smart” tasks, including puncturing old car batteries and draining acid into glass containers, then storing it in labeled metal cans near other chemicals. Ghost’s locked “HQ” room reeks of harsh odors, and he orders certain containers thrown straight into landfill piles, suggesting hazardous activity beyond simple recycling.

Demon earns cash wages but spends long hours there, eating Mr. Golly’s leftovers and sometimes helping stock shelves. Demon notices heavy sales of cold medicine like Sudafed and sees regulars who come not for trash disposal but to slip around back to meet Ghost, reinforcing Demon’s growing sense that the place serves criminal business as well as trash.

In a shift back to school life, Demon explains how slam books turned him into a target: his page is filled with insults, and afterward classmates avoid and mock him, treating him as contaminated. The humiliation compounds Demon’s neglect at the McCobbs’—old clothes, no haircuts, and visible “acid holes” from work—until, after Demon explodes in anger in Mrs. McCobb’s car and admits what school has become, Mrs. McCobb takes him to Walmart for new basics. The new clothes don’t change his social standing, and Demon retreats into silence, clinging to small kindnesses while ending the chapter convinced he may be working for a meth lab.