The thin piece of fabric draped over her mirror flutters as the air kicks on and floats down from the ceiling vent. Maria got tired of constantly looking at her own reflection when she was applying her makeup, so one day she threw an old scarf over it. The only time she takes it down or moves it is when she’s fixing her hair or makeup. But then it goes right back up again. By most people’s standards, she knows she’s considered pretty. With her Puerto Rican background, she’s never had to step foot in a tanning salon to fake and bake or get a spray tan. Her long dark hair and even darker eyes help mask what she’s really feeling inside.

If there’s one thing she’s gotten good at over the years, it’s been hiding her true emotions. It definitely helps that she’s able to shut herself down completely the minute her fingers touch the pole. Because if she couldn’t, it would slowly eat away at her soul until the person she saw in the mirror was a complete stranger. As it is, she can barely look at herself. Hence the scarf.

For now, it’s a means to an end. Which is the only reason why she continues to come back day after day. From the moment she understood the horrors of a shitty life, she vowed to be as far away from this as she could. She promised to break the cycle and not be like her mother. Yet here she stands as she coats on another thick layer of mascara. Wiping away at her bare lips, she removes any stray foundation before applying her lipstick. If there’s one thing she can guarantee before stepping foot onto that stage is the flawlessness of her makeup and it’s staying power. She applies her pouty pink lipstick, the color rightfully named bombshell, because it makes her feel more like she’s somebody famous and she can pretend even for five minutes that she’s playing a role. She just an actress.

With another layer of glitter gloss, she quickly does a once over of her appearance. The sultry virginal look always gets the tips flowing onto the stage when she’s up there. Over the years, she’s perfected it and she doesn’t even have to try anymore. She just has to remind herself that for the five minutes she’s on that stage, she’s a star. Everyone is here to see her, she is the main attraction after all. The stage lights make it impossible to see the audience and she’s able to tuck everything to the back of her mind. Pretend that she’s not removing articles of clothing and her dignity right along with each piece that falls to the floor.

She slides on more coconut oil to her already moisturized skin. The lights hit just right to make it appear as if she’s glowing on that stage. Maria is a perfectionist and she needs to look good every time she steps foot up there. Each night she works, she’s that much closer to freedom and that’s what she has to keep telling herself. It’s a means to an end. Nothing more.

Her hair is perfectly teased, her liner completely smudge-proof, and her skin glows effortlessly. But she can’t help the sadness shining through her eyes. It hurt like hell to walk away from Rhett today. She would have given him her phone number in a heartbeat, but then what? Maybe he’d call her and they’d hook up while he’s in town but then nothing. He would fly back home to Texas and take her heart right along with him. Because there’s no way he would actually ask her to go home with him. And it’s not like she could do that anyway. Leave behind her responsibilities and run away from it all with a night in shining armor. Or in Rhett’s case, cowboy hat.

It’s too much to think that she’d actually have the perfect prince walk into her life and take her away from it all. That kind of thing is a fantasy and only happens on TV land or in romance novels. No, real life is ugly and heartbreaking. She watches as one tear slides out of her eye and down her cheek. And she lets it fall. Drip away with all of the what-ifs of her miserable life. But she forces it to stop there. One guy, one tear, and nothing more. She can’t let her feel anything else. Because if she lets the dam break wide open, she doesn’t want to know what would be left behind. Just a shell of the girl she once was.

Because the moment she walks out that door, she becomes her onstage persona. And she refuses to let that molded exterior crack. It might seem silly but the competition to be the top girl here is fierce and these girls would do anything to get to the top. So, to them, she’s as cold as ice and that’s how it will always be. She’s only ever let one person see the real her. And she refuses to contemplate why of all people, she released the real her, today with a stranger. It could mean something but she won’t go there. It’s already in the past and she needs to move forward with the present and her future. And the only way that can happen is by getting back up on that stage.

She takes a small deep breath like she does every night before going out on the stage and then she shuts everything off. If she were to go out there feeling everything, there’s no way she could continue doing it every single night. Instead, she forces herself to feel nothing and go through her routine like it’s nothing more than that. Just a dance. Just a routine. Because that’s the only way she could keep going on day in and out.

The song ends with the previous girls' performance alerting her that she’s up next. Maria has been doing this for two years now but something about the idea of stepping foot on stage always gets her heart racing right before she’s about to go on. It’s exciting and yet it’s not at the same time. She loves the idea of being on stage with all eyes on her, just minus the whole taking her clothes off part. If it were a burlesque show, that would be something different entirely. She went to one of those one night and was completely mesmerized. There’s a huge difference between what those women do and what she does. And all she wants is to be more like them and less like herself. But she can’t. There’s a debt to be paid. (or something)

She’s done this a million times before and tonight isn’t anything different. She closes her eyes as the lights go out and Sasha walks by. She doesn’t actually know her real name, like the rest of the girls. That’s part of her persona of staying in character. She doesn’t know them and they don’t know her outside of the walls of this building. And that’s the way she likes to keep it.

She takes another deep breath and walks through the curtain.

Here goes nothing.

She swipes her hand across her brow attempting to remove the excessive pool of sweat that has collected. The lights are bright tonight. Brighter than they ever have been and she can’t see anything or anyone in front of her. But after the day she had? Maybe it’s just putting everything into perspective and she’s finally noticing her surroundings. A familiar song turns on and she can’t stop the motions of her body as it falls into her routine. She’s the only one out of all the girls who doesn’t dance to a traditional song. There’s a lot of old-school rock and hip-hop songs, but Maria had to stick to her roots with her favorite genre: pop-punk. It helps her to get lost in the music and forget everything around her.

It’s a little unnerving, not being able to see who is watching her, but Maria continues on with her dance and tries to stay in the moment. She still has a job to do after all and her tips are the only money she gets to keep for herself. But if she lets herself think along that train of thought she’ll just make herself go crazy. Nope, not going to happen.

“Maria?”

Her eyes pop open and she almost loses her mask. She slightly shakes her head but forces herself to work the head movement into the routine, because she cannot mess this up. She takes a small deep breath but continues on flawlessly. As if that small little hiccup didn’t even happen. Fortunately, Charles isn’t here tonight or else that would have made things even worse. As her song comes to a close she bows her head and starts to gather up everything she just took off and the pile of tips.

What is he doing here? And what the hell is she supposed to say to him now?