She liked to curl up as close to the top of her bunk as she could get, where none of the roaming Superiors would come by and grab her by chance. But the ones who already knew her and knew where to find her still came. When he bit her without saying anything, she knew it must be the Man Who Hurries. The other one always talked to her, and ever since she’d taken him out to the garden, he seemed to have a preference for that. She lay still while the Superior sucked on the back of her leg. He’d bite her any old place, not just in her arm like the Man with Soft Hair. She didn’t mind the leg bites so much, except when he got her right behind the knee, and then the little painful bumps rubbed on everything—the chairs when she sat down, the back of her leg when she squatted or sat on the ground, everything. And the Man with Soft Hair only took the lumps out of her arms, never her legs. Cali wondered what would happen if for once she just kicked this one right in the face. It probably wouldn’t hurt—people said Superiors had no feelings, physical or otherwise.
