Everybody knows the first hole is the hardest.
Zigzag watches his shows until he takes his drugs at four, and then the desire to watch the broken TV goes away for awhile. His tent-mates ignore the pills, because they are routine, and because they don't change him or make the crazy go away. He is always back in front of the screen by the end of the night.
Magnet wants to be a veterinarian someday, but where he comes from, nobody finishes high school and college is another planet. Squid doesn't want to be anything when he grows up, but he always tells Mr. Pendanski that he wants to be a mechanic. It's what his brother used to do, before Iraq.
Caveman is the only one who sends letters home. Sometimes Armpit receives letters, but he doesn't open them. Zero found one once, still sealed, crumpled and lying beside a trash can in the Wreck Room as though Armpit had taken a free throw and missed. Zero carried it around in his pocket for two days until they took his work clothes and the letter went away in the wash.
X-Ray is always first. Magnet often disputes Squid's place in line, but no one threatens X-Ray's.
At night, they are mostly half-drowned in sleep, too weary to stir. Zigzag is the only restless sleeper, because even when he slumbers, his mind won't let him go. He dreams of eyes and empty stairwells and an iron cage with a blue sky outside.
Sometimes Magnet talks in his sleep, but it doesn't happen often, and it is always in Spanish. None of the other boys understand what he's saying, but his voice is an aberration in the quiet rhythm of things, and it makes them uneasy. They don't talk about that, because they are all too old to be afraid of the dark.
Armpit always prays before he goes to bed: Forgive us our trespasses. He remembers when his grandmother was still alive and she would dress him in his Sunday clothes every week, and take him the sixteen blocks to church. He thinks about how her feet bled in her black pumps because she wanted to save the bus token and she was too proud to wear her regular shoes under her dress. He wonders if she would dig holes in those black pumps. He thinks she would.
X-Ray used to work in a convenience store. He has dug 192 holes and still remembers the exact change from a twenty for a box of Mallomars and a pack of cigarettes.
Zero is the only one who doesn't take the crust off his bread before he eats it.
Everything turns to calluses in the end.