Damned Read Free

cells stretch to the horizon in both
directions, most containing a single person, most of those people screaming.
Even as my eyes flutter open, I hear a girl's voice say, "Don't touch the
bars...." Standing in the next cell, a teenage girl displays both her
hands, spreading the fingers wide to show her palms smeared with smut. There
really is the most dreadful mildew problem in Hell. It's like an entire
underworld with sick building syndrome.
    My neighbor I'd wager is a high school junior, because she has the hip
development to hold up a straight-line skirt and she has breasts instead of
just frills or smocking to fill out the front of her blouse. Even with smoke
clouding the air and the occasional vampire bat fluttering through my line of
vision I can see her Manolo Blahnik shoes are counterfeit, the kind you might
buy sight unseen over the Internet from a pirate operation in Singapore for
five dollars. If you can stomach yet another piece of advice: Do NOT die while
wearing cheap shoes. Hell is... well, hell on shoes; anything plastic melts,
and you don't want to walk barefoot over broken glass for the rest of eternity.
When it comes your time, when the proverbial bell tolls for thee, seriously
consider wearing a basic low-heel Bass Weejun penny loafer in a dark color that
won't show dirt.
    This teenage girl in the next cell calls over, asking, "What are
you damned for?"
    Getting to my feet, stretching my arms, and dusting off the legs of my
skort, I reply, "Smoking marijuana, I guess."
    Out of courtesy rather than genuine interest I ask the girl about her
own cardinal sin.
    The girl shrugs her shoulders; pointing one stained, smutty finger
toward her feet, she says, "White shoes after Labor Day." Her sad
shoes—the ersatz leather is white and already scuffed, and you can never
actually polish counterfeit Manolo Blahniks.
    "Beautiful shoes," I lie, nodding my head toward her feet.
"Are those Manolo Blahniks?"
    "Yes," she lies in return, "they are. They cost a
fortune."
    Another detail to remember about Hell... whenever you ask why anyone is
damned for all eternity, she'll tell you "jaywalking" or
"carrying a black purse with brown shoes" or some such petty
nonsense. In Hell you'd be foolish to count on people displaying high standards
of honesty. The same goes for earth.
    The girl in the next cell takes a step closer and, still looking at me,
she says, "You know, you're really pretty."
    That statement exposes her as a super, all-out, major-league liar, but
I don't say anything in response.
    "No, I mean it," she says. "All you need is more
eyeliner and some mascara." Already she's digging in her shoulder bag—also
white, fake Coach, plastic—picking out tubes of mascara and compacts of
turquoise Avon eye shadow. With one dirty hand, the girl waves for me to lean
my face between the bars.
    It's my experience that girls tend to be terrifically smart until they
grow breasts. You may dismiss this observation as my personal prejudice, based
on my own tender age, but thirteen years seems to be when human beings reach
their fullest flower of intelligence, personality, and pluck. Both girls and
boys. Not to boast, but I believe a person is her most truly exceptional at the
age of thirteen—look at Pippi Longstocking, Pollyanna, Tom Sawyer, and Dennis
the Menace—before she finds herself conflicted and steered by hormones and
crushing gender expectations. Let girls get their menstruation or boys have
their first wet dream, and they instantly forget their own brilliance and
talent. Again, here's a reference to my Influences of Western History
textbook—for a long time after puberty, it's like the dark ages that fell
between the Athenian Enlightenment and the Italian Renaissance. Girls get their
boobs and forget they were ever so gutsy and smart. Boys, too, can display
their own brand of clever and funny behavior, but let them get that first
erection and they go complete moron for the next sixty years. For both
genders,