In Chap­ter XII, the nar­ra­tor finds her­self over­whelmed by the chaos erupt­ing around her and the noise of con­flict­ing voic­es in her head. She begins by flee­ing from Will Junior and the dilap­i­dat­ed house, rush­ing past her friend Lester Swan and Bob­bi. After ignor­ing the dis­com­fort of seat­ed kids, she hides beneath a cot in the back of the bus along­side Sam­son, try­ing to block out the tur­moil by plug­ging her ears and hum­ming. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the inces­sant chat­ter per­sists, along with a new voice belong­ing to Will Junior, who entices her with secrets.

In a moment of des­per­a­tion, she yells at Will, insist­ing he needs to wash his hand, appeal­ing to him while feel­ing the weight of secrets she is reluc­tant to share. As con­fu­sion mounts, Fish, her broth­er, reacts to her dis­tress with­out ask­ing for con­text. He engages Will Junior, whom he per­ceives as a threat, lead­ing to a phys­i­cal alter­ca­tion. Amid the brawl, the nar­ra­tor screams for Will Junior to wash his hand, height­en­ing the ten­sion. The con­se­quences of Fish’s esca­lat­ing emo­tions man­i­fest through cli­mate change—the bus win­dows start to shat­ter as his pow­er surges.

Once out­side, she wit­ness­es Fish’s con­fronta­tion with Will Junior, whose ink-doo­dled palm starts to sym­bol­ize deep­er issues as storm clouds form over­head. In a cli­mac­tic moment, acknowl­edg­ing her dis­tress, Fish spits into Will Junior’s hand to smear away the ink drawing—a messy yet pro­found act of sol­i­dar­i­ty and pro­tec­tion. With this act, Will’s secret van­ish­es, leav­ing only the echoes of the nar­ra­tor’s own con­flict­ing ver­sions of real­i­ty.

As order is restored, Will Junior, vis­i­bly flawed with a black­ened eye from Fish’s ear­li­er punch and spit­ting inci­dent, wipes off the ink while the nar­ra­tor reflects on the bur­dens of ado­les­cence. Final­ly, over­whelmed and weary, she slips her thoughts away, wish­ing for reprieve from her trou­ble­some teenage exis­tence as sup­port from her broth­er allows her to relax for the first time. Car­lene and Rhon­da, voic­es in her mind, quip about the usu­al trou­ble that seems to fol­low every­one involved.