Oh my god, I think this an acceptance letter!

I stood next to my mailbox holding an envelope from the University of Florida.  It was a thick envelope and all of the rejection letters I got from other colleges had been paper thin.  I tore it open and smiled from ear-to-ear as I read the first line.  I had been accepted!  It wasn’t my first choice, but it was definitely better than some of the schools further down my list.  More importantly, it was far away from Las Vegas.  I started walking towards the house at a rapid pace, excited to share the news with my parents.

“Yes, I know it’s a fucking problem, Linda!”  I stopped in my tracks when I opened the front door and heard my father yelling.

“You wasted our life savings!”  My mother’s voice was even louder than his, and it sounded like she was crying.

I slowly closed the door and clutched the letter in my hand.  It wasn’t the first time I had walked in on my parents fighting.  It seemed like it had gotten worse in the last couple of years.  I had practically become a master of stealth and I could usually get past the kitchen without either of them seeing me when they were screaming at each other.  The few times I had failed resulted in me getting pulled into the conversation and becoming a verbal punching bag for the two of them.  I got past the kitchen door and let a slow sigh of relief escape my lips.

“How fucked are we, Harold?”  My mother yelled again.

“Pretty fucked...”  My father’s voice calmed slightly.  “We don’t even have enough for Madison to go to college.”

“You gambled away her college fund?”  I heard a wail, followed by a scream.  “Get the fuck out, you stupid asshole!”

I bolted towards the stairs and took them two at a time to avoid being seen.  When I got to the top of the stairs I sat down and stared blankly at the wall.  The letter in my hand wasn’t worth the ink on the paper.  My grandparents had set aside money for me to go to college.  It was what drove me to do so well in school.  I wasn’t a great student and I would never make the honor roll, but with a lot of extra effort, I managed to pass with only a few Cs.  My SAT scores weren’t that great either, but they were enough to get me into college if I could pay the tuition.

I don’t know why I bother getting excited about anything that seems to be going right in my life.  He always finds a way to ruin it.

I could hear my mother sobbing downstairs once my father was gone.  I felt numb inside when I finally stood and walked into my room.  I knew my father had a gambling problem.  It was a nice addition to his drinking problem which had made my childhood hell.  He wasn’t abusive, but I couldn’t really have friends over on the weekend.  He would drink until he passed out, no matter where that was, and most of the time he was in various states of undress or completely naked.  Stepping over him to get to the kitchen or the bathroom was just a part of my daily life.  I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised to learn that he gambled away my college fund.  It was just another shovel of shit to add to the pile that I called my life.

Well, so much for this.

I crumbled up the acceptance letter and tossed it into the garbage can next to my desk.  I could take out student loans if I had to, but it wouldn’t make sense to pay out-of-state tuition in the process.  There were colleges nearby I could attend for less, and still live at home to minimize expenses.  I was looking forward to getting out of the house, leaving Las Vegas behind, and starting over.  I loved my mother but she was a slave to my father’s addictions and was his constant enabler.  She never did anything to try and stop him.  She just made excuses and tried to pick up the pieces when his runaway train went off the rails.

“Madison, are you home?”  I heard my mother’s voice from the bottom of the stairs.

It was time to face the music, whether I wanted to hear the song or not.  I knew every verse by that point.  She would sit me down, tell me the terrible news, and then cry.  She would cry until I told her everything would be okay.  After that, she would retreat to her bedroom and pretend she was going to bed early, but I knew she kept a bottle in the closet.  Her drinking was controlled, but she still used it as a crutch.  At some point, my father would come home.  He would beg for her to give him another chance and she would.  I had seen it a thousand times over the course of my eighteen years as their only child.

***

“THIS REALLY SUCKS.”  My best friend, Abby, was holding the crumbled acceptance letter from the University of Florida in her hand.

“Yeah, but what can I do?  It’s over at this point.  On the plus side, I guess we’ll get to go to college together.”  I sighed and leaned back against my pillow.

“That isn’t all bad.”  Abby hopped on the bed and slumped down beside me.  “We can have study sessions together, talk about boys, and giggle profusely when we discuss penises.”

“That’s what we’ve been doing since middle school.”  I chuckled, even in the face of my despair.

“See, it’s tradition.”  She smiled and nudged me.  “You’re laughing. That’s better than crying, right?”

“You do always cheer me up.”  I sighed and formed a half-smile with my bottom lip.

“So your Dad really hasn’t been home in a week?”  Abby tucked her arm under her chin for support.

“No.”  I shook my head back and forth.  “I guess my mother was serious this time.  I’m still in shock.”

It was the longest he had ever been gone.  The last time she actually kicked him out, he was back within two days.  I was surprised that money had been the final straw, because he had cheated on her at least a dozen times that I was aware of.  She even forgave him when we walked into the living room after a shopping trip and found him with his pants down and a woman half her age giving him a blowjob.  I still hadn’t gotten over the mental scars left behind from seeing that.

“You know, if you really want to abandon me and run off to California, there are ways you can make money.”  Abby turned to her other side and pulled her laptop out of her school bag.

“If you’re about to suggest prostitution, I haven’t hit rock bottom quite yet.”  I raised my eyebrows as she opened her laptop and started typing.  “Maybe give me a year?”

“You’re my best friend, Madison.  I know how much your dream means to you.  You’ve been talking about leaving Las Vegas as long as I can remember.”  She looked over and me and shrugged.  “How low is rock bottom anyway?”

“I’d like to think it is lower than this.”  I sighed and shook my head.

“Is it low enough to spend one weekend with a stranger?”  She turned her laptop towards me.  “You can walk away with two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

“For what?”  My eyes got wide.

“Selling your virginity.”  She pointed at the screen.

“Are you serious?”  I stared at the website she had loaded.

“Yeah.”  She nodded and sighed.  “It makes me really regret that night I spent in the backseat of Charlie’s car, because he definitely wasn’t worth a quarter mil.”

I scrolled through the website and realized that what she was saying was true, provided that it was legitimate.  The website was called Sin City Auctions and promised the girl being auctioned two-hundred and fifty thousand dollars if she qualified.  If the bid went higher than that, she would get ten percent of the total proceeds on top of the original price.  I was flabbergasted that something like that could even exist, much less operate out of Las Vegas.

“This has to be some kind of joke, right?”  I looked past the screen at Abby.  “Who would do something like this?  Who would pay this kind of money for a weekend with a virgin?”

“Well, the answer to your second question is people with so much money that it doesn’t matter to them.  I think you already know the answer to your first question.  The people doing it are just like you—they need money.”  She closed the laptop.  “I read a story about a model in Brazil or Venezuela or somewhere that got almost two million dollars for her virginity.”

“I’m no model.”  I shook my head back and forth.

“You’re beautiful though—easily worth a few hundred grand.”  She reached over and took my hand.  “You want out, right?  It’s one weekend.  After that, you never have to see Las Vegas again except for when you come to visit me six or seven times a year.”

“Oh god...”  I rolled over on my back and laughed.  “That is ridiculous, Abby.”

“Were you really planning to save yourself for marriage?  You almost slept with Brent.”  She squeezed my hand.  “Maybe this is fate giving you a second chance for always being the good girl.”

“I don’t know.”  I exhaled sharply.  “It’s a lot to think about.”

Abby left and I wandered downstairs to eat dinner with my mother.  She was quiet for the most part and I was pretty sure she had started taking Xanax again, based on the dead look in her eyes as she chewed her food.  She started taking them after she first found out my father had cheated on her and constantly went back to them as a crutch when times were bad.  Even in her numbed state, she still had the strength to turn my father away.  I just hoped she wasn’t mixing the pills with alcohol.

“Dinner was great, Mom.  Thank you so much.”  I stood and picked up my plate.

“Thank you, dear.”  There was no emotion in her voice, she just maintained a blank stare and pushed another bite of food into her mouth.

I opened my laptop when I got back to my bedroom and looked for the website Abby had showed me.  My virginity appeared to be worth a lot more to other people than it was to me.  The initial price alone would more than cover the cost of my tuition for all four years.  If I got a part time job, I could save some money and live a decent life in the process.  If the ten percent bonus was good, I might not even have to work.  I created an account on the website, put the information in that they asked for, and waited for my phone to ring.