Damaged by Amy Reed Page B

walk.
    I can’t be certain, but I think I just won that round.
    * * *
    I am watching TV. I am trying to stay awake. I start getting drowsy as soon as I get bored, which is always. I click through channel after channel, not staying on anything too long. The longer I sit here, the more like a zombie I feel. I can sense myself getting stupider with every reality show I linger on too long. It seems like every other channel has a version of the same show about ridiculous, irresponsible rich people. Why are there so many of these shows? Why do we allow these horrible people to be famous? Is it because of people like me, bored idiots sitting on their couches for hours on end, needing desperately to be entertained? People who, despite their better judgments and taste, can’t help but be fascinated by how this different species lives, these people who are so far removed from the real world the rest of us live in.
    What would it be like to never have to worry about money? To be so rich you don’t even have to care about how you treat people because you know there will be more lined up to follow you around and be your “friend”? What if you felt entitled to anything you wanted, entitled to having your own TV show, entitled to hundreds of thousands of people fascinated by watching you shop and talk on the phone. What if you could get away with anything? Would that power automatically corrupt the best of us? If you gave a saint a billion-dollar trust fund, would he turn into an asshole overnight?
    No matter how fast I change the channels, my eyelids start to feel heavy. I make a pot of very strong coffee. Agave syrup will never taste as good to me as good old-fashioned white sugar, but it’s better than nothing. I sip the sweet concoction as I watch a series of commercials: dating hotlines for lonely people, two-year technical colleges, drug rehab, something about Jesus, weight-loss systems, at-home electrolysis kits. They assume I am one of the lost and ugly who watches late-night TV on a Friday, and they are right. The marketing companies are speaking to me. They are saying, “Get a life.”
    I return to a show about rich people. An orange-skinned, leathery-faced woman gets Botox. Someone’s toy poodle catches a lizard by the pool, and they all have to talk about it for ten minutes while drinking margaritas.
    This tiny blender will change my life, and it comes with a free knife that’s sharp enough to cut tin cans! This man found the Lord, Hallelujah! This woman lost 133 pounds and now she’s perfect!
    Mom’s still not home.
    This pillow is soft.
    My eyes are heavy.
    Heavy.
    So heavy.

Motionless. The air is like paper. Thin and sterile. Blank. We sit on a log on the side of the road, watching the show.
    â€œWhy can’t I feel the fire?” I say.
    â€œThis is what it’s like to be a ghost.”
    â€œI’m not a ghost,” I say. “I’m dreaming.”
    â€œSame thing.”
    A fireball lights up the trees. Shadows dance across every­thing solid. Red and black and red and black. There is your car, becoming a skeleton. The world is melting in front of us.
    A semi truck is tipped over, cradled by a wall of trees. The driver is out, eyes wide with flames, a phone to his ear, petrified, his only movement his wet mouth: “Oh god oh god oh god oh god,” he says, such useless words against fire.
    I close my eyes. So many lives are over.
    â€œKinsey, look!” you say.
    â€œNo,” I say.
    â€œYou have no choice.”
    Hunter is no longer a mannequin. He is a live, breathing thing. He is all movement. His skin is charred. He is made of fire. He is pulling me out of the burning car. “Are you watching?” you say. He sets me down on the side of the road, in a grassy spot away from danger.
    â€œDo you see how he cushions your head with his hand?” you narrate. “How gentle?”
    â€œI didn’t know he did that.” My