Miss Barks picks Demon up from school for a long country drive and Mexican dinner, thrilled to share “big news.” Demon enjoys the freedom but worries about missing his after-school job at Golly’s Market, which DSS doesn’t know about, and about Ghost getting angry if Demon fails to show.

At the Cumberland bluffs, Demon’s thoughts turn dark and floaty as Demon imagines what it would feel like to jump from the cliffs. Miss Barks then reveals DSS filed for survivor Social Security after Demon’s mother died, and Demon will receive monthly checks until eighteen, deposited into an account Demon can access after foster care rather than through foster parents. Miss Barks presses Demon to promise to use the money for college and to improve Demon’s grades, but Demon doubts the “away-college” world is real.

Demon asks about money connected to Demon’s deceased father, but Miss Barks says there is no father listed on the birth certificate and no way to collect, even though Demon knows a name and a burial place in “Murder Valley, Tennessee,” information Demon learned from arguments between Demon’s mother and Mrs. Peggot. The good news curdles into frustration at what Demon sees as his mother’s costly mistake.

Back in town over dinner, Miss Barks delivers the real change: Miss Barks has saved enough to take summer classes full time, finish a teaching degree, and start student teaching in the fall. That means Miss Barks is quitting DSS, and Demon feels abandoned and furious despite Miss Barks’s excitement.

Miss Barks drops Demon home before eight so the McCobbs won’t go looking for Demon at work. Demon lies to Mr. McCobb about an “appointment” and then vents alone in the laundry-room “dog room,” punching the washing machine until Demon bleeds. Demon hides the baby-monitor camera in a mop bucket so nobody can watch Demon cry, and reflects bitterly on how money determines whose lives matter, why DSS workers leave, and how neglected kids are set up to lash out.