The fear and disgust that surround the Bug reveal its figurative function as an analog for social difference. For the novel’s teenage characters, fitting in feels particularly important, yet adolescent social mores are particularly unforgiving of behaviors and identities that deviate from whatever is perceived as normal. Burns uses the characters’ experiences with the Bug to explore the impact of this stigmatization. 

Because of the Bug’s association with sex, the stigmatized behavior in question is often sexual. For instance, during the kegger party in Chapter 4, Chris decides to go swimming with Rick Ames, who decides to strip down to the nude so that he can skinny dip. The partygoers laugh and cheer him on, but when Chris strips down to her underwear, they are stunned silent. Unbeknownst to Chris, she has inadvertently exposed the large gash on her back, revealing to them that she has the Bug. Because she isn’t aware of the gash, however, Chris thinks they are merely scandalized by her boldness. This incident underscores the double standard that Chris is held to as a young woman. Rick is celebrated for his actions, which tacitly ask onlookers to admire his sexual virility. The same crowd finds Chris’s body shameful, especially when it bears physical evidence of her sexual experience. This reaction speaks to the stigma that society attaches to women who utilize their agency to explore their sexuality. 

The response to the physical mutations that the Bug causes also evokes societal attitudes toward physical difference. The people who live at the camp are excluded from participating in society not because they pose any public health threat but because of the revulsion the community feels toward their physical appearance. Chris experiences this stigma on several occasions. In Chapter 9, Chris is compelled to leave a restaurant when her best friend, Marci, mocks a person who has the Bug as “disgusting.” Her desire to leave stems from the guilt she feels over recognizing the humanity of the person who has the Bug. She does not want to speak up against her best friend, yet she fears the judgment that Marci will show her if she confides her secret. 

Chris’s response also speaks to the novel’s interest in how stigmatization leads to internalized bias. When she later moves to the camp, Chris is reluctant to join the communal gatherings at the Pit, implicitly signaling her reluctance to identify with the other camp residents. This culminates in Chris’s dream in Chapter 3, where she views herself standing at the threshold of the world that the people with the Bug inhabit. The fact that she still views them as monsters informs the anguish she shows when she tears off her skin moments later. 

While Chris ultimately overcomes her self-loathing, not all the characters do. For Rick and Dave, the discrimination they experience after contracting the Bug is simply the latest iteration of the bullying and ostracism they have endured throughout their lives. In Chapter 2, for instance, Dee and Todd wreck the tent they find when they discover it belongs to Richard “Rick the Dick” Holstrom. When Keith asks them why they felt the need to destroy Rick’s things, Todd explains: “Cause he’s a fucking geek! He deserves to live out here!” (23). This plays into the motivations that drive Rick and Dave in the later parts of the novel. When Dave attacks the other customer at KFC, he is responding with the violence he has known all his life. When Dave dies in Chapter 17, he tells himself that he would have died sooner if he had been smarter, revealing his internalized self-loathing. The novel thus depicts stigmatization as fueling cycles of violence.