Aldrick awakes on Ash Wednesday and emerges from his room to look out at the yard with Carnival still swimming in his mind. He inhales deeply and the stench of poverty hits his nostrils for the first time in his life. He looks over all of the "pathetic and ridiculous looking shacks planted in this brown dirt and stone, this was his home". With Sylvia's rejection still fresh in his mind, he says, "I have to learn to feel." This marks his acceptance of Calvary Hill as his home, and his life. Meanwhile, Miss Cleothilda recognized, for the first time, a change in the yard that threatens her position of queen: a combination of Philo's newfound success, her inability to convince Aldrick to do something about Pariag's continued presence, and most of all, Sylvia's new man, Guy. Guy could "keep her in style",(135) and if she became ambitious, could become the new "queen". As a result of all this, Miss Cleothilda begins to use Miss Olive as a way to create a friendship with Sylvia so that she could mold her as she saw fit into the new "queen" of the yard. Her relationship with Philo causes a stir in the yard and people begin to question whether or not it is intimate. If so, it brings a more human side, a weakness, in Miss Cleothilda. A shyness comes over Aldrick and he begins to feel he is not the dragon he once was, and pines for Sylvia. One morning, the yard wakes to Pariag screaming over his mutilated bicycle.