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Otis started to explain to her about the lead in the apron, but she interrupted him.

“Who gives a shit anyway,” she said. “We’re all gonna die.” She smiled at him with her cracked pink lips, her pale face free of makeup. She had some dark stuff in the tear duct of one eye.

He said, “I love you.”

She snorted. “Yeah, well, you don’t know me, right? Just ask my dad how unlovable I am.”

Otis didn’t want to get into a conversation about moms and dads, so he extracted a paper face mask from the carton and slipped it on. He offered one to Rusty, but she shook her head.

“I’ve got my protection here,” she added, shaking the tan leather medicine bag hanging around her neck.

“Do you ever take that thing off?”

“Never. Only when I’m in the shower.”

Otis asked her what was in the bag, and she said it was a secret.

“Whatever.”

“Okay. I’ll tell you. There’s some clippings from Royce’s toenails and one of Angel’s barrettes. They’re the only two people I love in the world, right? And a little magnet with Buckwheat on it I stole from Grandma’s Attic. I love my grandma, too. There’s one of her chewed up sucker sticks.”

She kept talking, sitting there on Otis’s stool, so he tried to tune her out and focus on his task. He slipped on his face mask, then transferred the radium powder to a piece of aluminum foil and balled it up—hard to do with rubber gloves on—then did the same thing to the beryllium powder. It was hard to keep his mind on his task, because he kept picturing Rusty, not wearing her medicine bag or anything else, in the shower. He often thought about her when he was in the shower, which had lately made the whole shower business seem totally worthwhile. Why had he told her he loved her? She hadn’t said it back, but she hadn’t seemed surprised. He poked the balls of aluminum foil into the cavity of his gun and quickly wrapped the gun up with duct tape.

All the while, Rusty kept yakking. “That stuff reeks. Royce ran away.” Royce the zombie boyfriend, last seen wearing an FBI sweatshirt.

“Where did he go?” His voice was muffled by the paper mask.

Rusty shrugged. “That’s what they keep asking me. His mom, his stepdad, the cops. Have you heard from him? Did he ever talk about wanting to go anywhere? They don’t get it. We never talked about anything, right? We just smoked weed and laughed. Do you get high?”

Otis told her he didn’t and then explained that marijuana was illegal, killed brain cells, caused auto accidents, and was a gateway drug. He had tried pot once, one day behind the gym at middle school. Some cool guys offered him some. It made him feel like he was losing his mind. Why would people seek out that feeling?

“There’s other ways to get high,” Rusty pointed out. “I bet some of the stuff you got here would work.” She reached over and grabbed a vial of radium flakes.

“Put that down!”

“Just kidding. God! Hey. Did you know that your little sister’s been going to our church? Your older sister went, too. How come you don’t?”

“I’m busy.” Otis positioned his duct-taped gun on the table and set the large block of paraffin in front of it. “Scoot back. There’s a radioactive neutron stream going out of this baby.” He couldn’t see it, of course, but he imagined it until he almost saw it, a ray of sparkling, dancing particles shooting out.

Rusty scooted the stool back a few inches. “I hate going to church,” she said, “but I have to go. Mom makes me. Mrs. Archer, the serial killer, was the one who brought your sister to church and introduced her to my dad. It was like she fixed them up. Really creepy, right? Your sister’s a preppy bitch, but I feel sorry for her getting mixed up with my dad. It’s all that witchwoman’s doing. I hate her guts. One day I saw her digging up her yard on one side of her house, and then the next thing I know there’s a bunch of plastic flowers stuck in there. Who would do that? She probably buried something underneath them. Probably body parts. I bet she’s killing people, right? She tried to give me a donut once. I suspected