“What’s this?” I said, jaw hanging, chemical slow-melting.

“Percocet for the pain,” he said. I thought of my mother and swallowed anyway.

“Go rest,” Jake said. I put myself on the couch, tucked up my feet, and checked my comments—

@vayscorpio: you’re the best and I can’t stand iiiitttttttttttt

@Naurene48: Can u show your unfiltered face please?

@brittanychill: that waist

@sskintagram: nice.

@sskintagram:

@sskintagram: hi there! DM to collab

@giancarlobat4: ciao sei fantastica complimenti

@yogirealone: if you zoom in u can see the Photoshop

@reuben_dregsa: hot

@day078: beautiful!

I checked my DMs. Hey, what’s up, sexy, let’s collab, offers Jake said I’d never need now that I had him. He brought me a bowl of chicken soup. He brought me tea, a hot water bottle I held skin to skin, like a newborn. The broth and bottle, the pill, forced loose the fist inside me and I dissolved into the couch, into Jake, cross-legged at my side, laptop in his lap. “Check it out,” he said, and showed me the site where he bought legit fake followers. “They’ll like your posts and never fall off.” He pressed the button and delivered me to their love.

“I’m a star,” I slurred, and I was right. By the morning, the number 50,000 had appeared beneath my name, both prosthetic and true.

5.

So, we needed content to feed my new followers. Where better than Vegas? Jake said. Shots of the casino, dinner at Momofuku, glamorous images to earn follows, sponsors, hearts. He drove, I sang Vegas Baby to the camera, and posted. Two hundred likes, 427, 600. The sun set and we chased it. Ninety-seven miles per hour, 100, 103. Dark desert and then, from nothing, a glittering motherboard. We descended into that bright home.

On the strip, I looked out the window, elevated, separate from the wheels of light and color, the vans advertising backpagepro.com, Spearmint Rhino, Chippendales, Criss Angel, Cirque du Soleil; the gamblers in tracksuits and sweats, backpacks and visors; a team of high school athletes in slide sandals and pajama pants. All those bodies in close proximity, overwhelming in their press. My first summer with Leah, when we were both five years old, my mom took us to Galveston during high season. The Pleasure Pier was pumped with music and tourists, whose nearness made me small. Engulfed, I couldn’t breathe. It was a feeling I recognized from the nightmares I was prone to, dreams of thoughtless crowds enveloping and erasing me. I sat down on the sidewalk with my head between my knees, Leah trying to calm me with knock-knock jokes I didn’t answer, my mother a shield, a wreath of smells: hand sanitizer, Euphoria, secret deodorant and beneath it, sweat.