I fell asleep crying and woke up shaking. My phone was ringing.

“Am I speaking to Kristin Blair?” a deep male voice asked.

“Uh, yes. Who is this?” I asked.

“Ms. Blair, I am with the Sacramento Star and I was wondering if you had time to answer a few ques—”

I hung up, staring at the phone for a few seconds before bursting into tears. I’d shut the site down but it was way too late already; I had made headlines and was now I was even getting phone calls.

I hurried over to the window. As I opened the curtain, the furry coil of Romeo and Juliet on the sill cast me unimpressed looks. But I wasn’t looking for them. No. Out the window, six stories down, waiting outside my building were what looked to be several teams of journalists, their video cameras and microphones at the ready.

Sinking to the floor, another wave of anguish crashed over me. So, this was how it was going to be now. A pariah of society, a famous freak, I couldn’t even leave my building now without being accosted.

My life as I knew it was ruined.

The memory of the insanely high bid returned to me, but I needed to eat first. A look in the fridge revealed that I could, if need be, hide out in my apartment for a few days—there was yogurt, ham and bread galore. What I was looking for right now, however, was in the freezer and in a pink and green tub marked Strawberry Mint Ice Cream.

I took the tub in my arms and grabbed a spoon out of the drawer and sat on the kitchen floor and dug in.

It was a slow, miserable sort of eating. The kind that you can only half enjoy, since you fear that when it ends, there will be no more frozen sugar to numb the pain. As I ate, the memory of the million-dollar bid returned to me. It couldn’t have been real, could it?

I brushed my hair out of my eyes. Well, now that my life was basically ruined, what exactly did I have to lose?

I stood up, and carrying my ice cream tub with me, I made my way over to my laptop. It was still on my bed; the hated thing had been shoved to the far corner. When I opened it, my recently deceased site popped up, along with that crazy impossible bid: one million dollars. Spooning myself some more ice cream, I stared at it. Even though I had shut the website down, I could still contact the bidder.

Yeah, contact the bidder, and have whatever 14-year-old sent it start trolling me. Or, maybe, just maybe, talk with a real man, a real interested man who actually was willing to give me a million dollars for a night with me.

My spoon scratched the bottom of the ice cream tub. Sure, the bid might be—was almost definitely—a joke, but I had to find out. I had to at least try.

Besides, what else was I going to do? The press waited like piranhas outside my building, and the thought of all the disapproving stares that would surely come my way filled me with terror.

I clicked on the respond button and typed out a reply: Is this a real bid?

I clicked send, finished off the ice cream, and, when I checked again, the buyer had responded: Yes. Would you care to meet me at Golden Era tonight, around 9? I’ll get a table under your name. No pressure, I just want to talk.

I gaped at the response, while my spoon scraped at the bottom of the ice cream tub in vain. There were still nine hours to go until 9 pm. I could definitely make it. I should definitely go. But, as I sat there, a cold wash of fear rolled over me. What if it was still a joke—just some teenaged girl and her friends taking it too far? Or worse, what if it was one of those tabloid journalists down there outside my building, eager to get a juicy story and a big upset? Setting me up to be sitting alone at a table in a fancy restaurant so they could take my photo and laugh at me some more.

I inhaled, and then exhaled slowly. All those things were possible, but what was also possible was that this bidder, this man, was real, ready and willing. At this point, it wasn’t like I had a reputation to maintain anyway.

I clicked Respond, typed in “Okay,” and then shut my laptop.

As I sat there, the ridiculousness of the situation once again occurred to me. Before I could stop myself, I was looking up the bar’s phone number and dialing it.

“Hello, this is Golden Era, how may I help you?” a high-pitched female voice answered.

“Hi,” I said, “Do you have a table booked for a Kristin Denton?”

There was a pause, and I fretted as to whether the woman was wondering if I was the (now-infamous) Kristin Denton. But her voice came back as smooth as before: “Yes, Ms. Denton, are you calling to change your reservation?”

“No, no,” I said, “I just wanted to check, thank you.”

I hung up and put my phone face-up in my lap. So, the bidder, whoever they were, was serious. This was really happening.

Lying in one ball of limbs on the floor, Romeo and Juliet were eyeing me warily. I walked over to the mirror and made myself smile at the pathetic mess I saw. Her hair was sticking out in five different places on her head, as if she’d been electrocuted, while her face was still red from crying, all puffy as if she’d been beaten up. There was pinky green ice cream smeared around her gaping lips, mascara smeared around her red eyes, which looked ready to cry again at any moment. But they would not cry again, no.

I opened my laptop, searched for an “Uplifting anthems” playlist, and clicked on the first one that popped up. As an irreverent fuck-you of a punk pop beat blared on, I got to work. First was throwing out the ice cream tub, cleaning up the moderate mess I had somehow made in only a few depressed hours. Next was the harder job: cleaning up myself.

A long shower worked wonders. Thirty minutes of spurting nice-smelling shampoo on my head then equally nice-smelling conditioner did the trick for my hair, while an after-bathing dose of vanilla skin cream all over my body helped combat the redness. Sticking my head out of the window on the opposite side of my building (away from the nosy press brigade) calmed me down enough to attempt the colossal task that was deciding what to wear.

I didn’t want to wear the red dress from my website photos, that dress had betrayed me; now even the thought of it made my stomach turn.

Opening my closet revealed that I had quite the job ahead of me. My closet was almost like a diary of my life these past few years—of slowly but surely giving up. It was made almost exclusively of shapeless drab shirts and ill-fitting pants and leggings. There were a few skirts, sure, but they were all either outdated or baggy. My old prom dress was even stashed in there somewhere, although there was no way I wanted to look at it, let alone touch it.

I flipped through hanger after hanger, hoping that despite everything there would be one nice outfit I’d forgotten about, some too-fancy top or nice-fitting shorts that I had never had the occasion to wear. But the longer my search extended, the more hangers I shoved to the left with all my other failures, the more reality sunk in: I had nothing decent to wear, I shouldn’t even bother going. And yet, I continued searching, even as I knew there was no point.

The possibilities dwindled until I was at the last hanger, the last failure wrapped up in a garment bag. I didn’t remember what was inside, but it hardly mattered. The past had already proven what would be in there: another unfortunate reject, another pathetic piece. I almost turned away. There was no point, really, in checking, but I did.

I unzipped the garment bag and my jaw dropped. Hanging there innocuously, as if it wasn’t the only beauty in a sea of ugly, was a dress. A silver-sequined, glistening vision of a dress.

Taking it off the hanger with trembling hands, I quickly undressed and slipped it on. Walking over to the mirror, I froze. The girl in the mirror was not me. She was rosy-cheeked with bright blue-eyed, porcelain skin, slight curves and was, undeniably, beautiful.

I stared at the girl for a few minutes as, slowly, the two images coalesced into one: the pretty one in the mirror and the me I was used to seeing. Yes, that girl in the mirror was me. This dress was more than perfect; it was a life-saver.

With this dress on, figuring out makeup was a breeze. I looked up a few online tutorials on how to do a smoky eye, dabbed and blended some black on my lids, put on my usual concealer and pink lips and bam, I was ready.

Once I was done, I sat in front of the mirror for a few minutes, smiling at myself, at the pretty brave woman pictured there—the pretty brave woman I was.

I could do this. Yes, I was going to do this.