Demon becomes closer to Ms. Annie, noticing her goldfish tattoo and the ease of their lunches outside. Seeing he needs more time, Ms. Annie arranges an earlier ride so Demon can spend two hours in art before heading to Tech, strengthening his commitment to drawing and his quiet crush on her.

The ride is with Mr. Maldo, the reserved janitor who cleans both schools. Demon observes Maldo’s slight hand impairment and how other teachers ignore him, while Ms. Annie treats him with respect and shares breaks and lunch. At Tech, Demon watches military recruiters work the halls, pressing kids with hard statistics and shaming tactics, highlighting how few options exist.

Back in Mr. Armstrong’s class, Backgrounds presentations center on coal-mining histories: family injuries, black lung, scrip pay, and deaths. Bettina Cook counters with her pro-company lineage, touting Bluebonnet Mine’s civic donations and political connections. Demon keeps quiet and sketches, imagining a comic about a red-bandanna miner superhero.

Mr. Armstrong shows films on the Battle of Blair Mountain and reframes “redneck” as union solidarity. He then connects past to present, explaining how coal companies monopolized counties, let schools rot, and kept other industries out to eliminate choice. The class’s simmering debate between corporate praise and worker suffering breaks toward an uneasy recognition of systemic control.

Demon absorbs the lesson’s implications: recruiters target their manufactured hopelessness; the landscape and people have been stripped for profit. He leaves with anger sharpened into understanding and an artistic impulse—to tell this story through his miner-hero—while seeing his community’s pain as the product of long-standing exploitation.