Gangrey
Vol. I · No. 1Prolonging the Slow Death of NewspapersEst. 2026

Burned, Not Broken

John Barry: The little girl who walked through fire wants to show her pictures.

She opens a binder with her stiff, taped hands. One photo shows her posing in her cheerleader uniform, and another shows her grinning beside her mother, surrounded by Pooh bears. Then she shows a newspaper photo of a bedroom that is no longer a bedroom, just a black ashen hole.

She points out a heap of soot on the floor.

"This was my bed."

She is 9 years old. She likes Hannah Montana, lip gloss, tiaras, macaroni and cheese, and doll babies.

She wants to know what this story is about. She is told it's about how she got up from that bed and walked through flames hot enough to melt a television set.

It's harder to explain…

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