For the rest of the day, I am kept busy with the makeover.

The injection filler doesn’t really hurt—okay it stings a bit—but it’s really nothing. I’ve had worse. The colored contact lenses are harder to get used to. They feel like grit in my eyes.

“That’s it,” the nurse—I’m assuming she’s a nurse because she wearing a white nurse’s uniform—says cheerfully.

The reclining chair is raised to an upright position and I look into the mirror she holds out to me. Oh, my God! My lips look like ten bees have stung them and they feel weird, but she tells me that because she has used a blunt tip cannula they will be hardly any bruising. They will settle in twenty-four hours and will then look the way they are supposed to for the next few months.

My next destination is a small cubicle where, turbaned and completely bare, I stand in front of a stranger called Clarise while she spray-tans me. The mist feels cold and smells like malty biscuits. After two all-over layers, my skin is basically the color of mud.

“Are you sure about this?” I ask, feeling quite concerned.

Above her face mask, her eyes crinkle at the corners. “Don’t freak out. The color will fade and you will look great by tomorrow.”

It takes two more hours for Helen, Tamara’s makeup artist, to complete my transformation. My nails and eyebrows are shaped and colored in. When I look in the mirror, a stranger with blue eyes stares back at me.

“Wow,” I whisper through numb lips.

Selena comes and stands behind us. “She’ll die if she sees you. You’re better looking than her.”

“Shhh…” Helen says, giving her a funny look.

Selena shrugs nonchalantly. “Why can’t I say it? It’s the truth. Tamara used to be pretty, but she’s just gone too far now. I swear if she has another nose job, her whole nose is going to fall off. Besides all the drugs and drink…”

Helen narrows her eyes in my direction as if to say, not in front of her.

“She doesn’t look stupid enough to repeat that to anybody, let alone Tamara,” Selena says carelessly and flounces off.

For the next hour, Helen teaches me all about makeup. Some of it is useful and I file the information away to tell Jesse. She tells me that while blondes are generally advised to wear only fiery, orangey reds if they’re going to wear red lipstick, the most dramatic and stunning red lipstick for blondes is blue based.

“It will make your teeth look brighter too.” She twists open a lipstick. “Like this Cherry Lush by Tom Ford.”

She applies it on me and she is right. It makes my lips, already big and swollen, look even more prominent. “Try wearing this with a blue dress,” she advises.

She drops the lipstick into a big cosmetics bag on the table in front of me. By the time the lesson is over, the makeup bag is full of all kinds of cosmetics.

After the lesson, I am shown to another room where Tamara’s personal dresser, a woman dressed from head to toe in black, is waiting with a tape measure. I cringe inwardly, but she is deft and quick.

“Now that was not so bad, was it?” she asks a couple of minutes later.

“No, it wasn’t,” I agree.

She puts her tape measure into her bag. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

“Are we finished?”

“Uh-huh. I’ll get a couple of suitcases ready for tomorrow.”

“Don’t I get to see any of the clothes I will be wearing?”

She smiles apologetically. “Sorry, my instructions were to fill two suitcases of clothing that will suit Tamara’s style in your size.”

I can’t help it. I become a bit anxious about what I’ll find inside the bags.

That evening, I join Ms. Moore for dinner. We sit at the kitchen table and eat a delicate chicken dish made with olives and white wine served on a bed of wild rice.

“Not only are you required to look like Tamara, but you need to mimic the way she walks, talks, and moves,” Ms. Moore says and switches on the DVD player. When the videos come to an end, she pushes a notepad toward me and gives me a brief rundown of Tamara’s childhood, likes, dislikes, hobbies, mannerisms, favorite foods, and drinks. “You can start practicing to be like her from now.”

I pout the way I saw her do earlier.

“Good. Toss your hair a lot like this too,” she says, tossing hers as if she is in a shampoo ad.

It looks ridiculous but I follow her and she smiles approvingly.

“When you get there, you’ll have to make some calls to Tamara and me. You better key our numbers into your phone now.”

I realize that I must be extremely blunt with her. “I don’t want to sound disrespectful, Ms. Moore, but I have twenty-three dollars and a pack of mints in my pocket. That twenty-three dollars is all the money I have left after paying my landlord. Since my cell phone is a pay-as-you-go, I will not be able to call anyone long distance.”

Ms. Moore’s eyes narrow. “If you want to act like Tamara, you must do better than that. Neither your attitude nor your words were disrespectful.”

I place the palms of my hands against my temples. “I’m sorry. I promise you that I can and I will impersonate Tamara’s behavior to the best of my ability as soon as I get to Montana, but for now, the last thing I want to do is be ungrateful to you. You have taken me under your wing and given me a huge break. You cannot imagine how big a break, so please don’t get upset with me for not being rude to you. I just needed to make you understand my situation. Mainly, that I don’t have any money at all.”

She sighs, her eyes suddenly filling with compassion. “I was in your position a few years back.”

I find that hard to believe. To me, she is the epitome of effortless glamor and sophistication.

She stands up and goes to the kitchen counter where her black patent leather purse is. She reaches into it, pulls out a wallet, and extracts a few bills.

When she extends the bills in my direction, I take them awkwardly and look at them. Five hundred in crisp new bills. I shake my head. “I can’t take all this from you.”

“Don’t worry. It’s not coming from me. You can’t go to Montana without any money. I’ll make sure you have a phone by tomorrow too. Tamara Honeywell would never be seen without the latest one.”

I fold the bills. “Thank you, Ms. Moore. I can’t tell you how much this means to me.”

“Like I said, I’ve been where you are before, maybe even worse. You’re a strong girl, Cass. You’ll find your way out of your pit.” She smiles and stands up. “Time you were in bed. I’ll see you bright and early tomorrow morning. Your flight is at eleven and there are still some things to iron out.”

“Okay.”

“Oh, please don’t go wandering around the house. Tamara tends to be active at night.”

“I won’t,” I promise. The last person I want to meet ever again is her.

“Tamara and you will leave from the same airport, only she will be getting on her friend’s private jet and you’ll be flying first class to Montana.”

My eyes widen. First class. My, my what will Jesse say?

“Goodnight,” she says and starts walking away from me.

“Ms. Moore,” I call when she is almost at the door. She turns to me with an emotionless expression on her face. She may seem to be all business, but the woman has a hidden heart of gold. “Just so you know in case it happens again, there are thirty-seven pearls in her necklace.”

“I knew that,” she says with a faint smile.

“So why did you say thirty-six.”

She gives a small shrug. “It was a test to see what you would do.”

“Did I pass the test?”

“You passed one and failed another.”

“Passed what and failed what?’

“You’re trustworthy, but you’re too naïve to survive around Tamara.”

She was a lot braver than me. “You took a chance. I could have gotten you in trouble and she could have fired you.”

She smiles confidently. “Tamara knows better than to fire me. Her loss will be her competitors’ gain, and she has many of those. Sleep well, Cass.”

She opens the door and walks out.

Alone in the kitchen, I go to flip my hair over my shoulder and realize that it’s no longer the same. The tips brush against my shoulder blades and I try to ignore the fact that I’m no longer myself. My mouth, my hair, the color of skin...

For thirty thousand dollars, I sold my individuality.