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And God, this is the one that costs me. Not the job. Not even the men. Her.

Because Diablo was supposed to be the costume. The character I painted on to make money, somebody I could take off at the end of the night and fold away in a drawer. And somewhere in the last few weeks, she quietly became the only part of me where I got to be brave. Big. Desired. Where I walked into a room and owned it instead of dissolving into the background. Agnes spent twenty-eight years making herself small enough to slip through the world without getting hurt. Diablo was the first time she ever took up any space. And now, I have to be the one to put her down, because it turns out, a woman who wants to survive can't afford to be the brave one. I just let myself forget it for a few beautiful weeks.

I delete her.

I cash out my earnings and delete my account, which disappears behind a big red box that asks Are you sure? and an equally insistent button that says yes. Agnes and Diablo, gone on the same afternoon, my own doing. That’s the one small mercy I get to keep for myself. Nobody took them from me. I burned them down myself.

And then it's just me. Whoever that is.

Sitting in a quiet apartment with no job, no Diablo, no money, no plan, and a text still sitting on my phone from Sal that says Friday. And it is Friday. And it is almost dark.

I have never been this alone in my life.

I don't cry. That's the strange part. I let one tear go in that office, and I've been bone-dry ever since. I think I've finally reached the place underneath any tears, the flat, cold floor at the very bottom of it where there's nothing left to do but sit and wait to find out what happens to a woman with nothing left to lose.

This morning, on my bathroom floor, I was afraid the worst thing would be somebody else choosing how my story played out.

So I chose for myself.

It might be the smartest thing I’ve ever done.

15

AGGIE

The first thing I learned about crashing and burning is that there are no instructions for the next morning.

I wake up at six, out of habit, because Agnes always got up at six to go be Agnes, and for one merciful half second, I don't remember I’m not going to Ardent Capital this morning and not just because it’s Saturday. And when I do remember there’s nowhere to go and no one to be, I lie there in the gray light doing the only thing there is to do, which is take stock of everything I set fire to.

Job, gone. I can't ever walk back through those glass doors, not for my favorite coffee cup or jade plant, not for anything, because the men behind them have seen every inch of me, literally, and know exactly who I am.

Diablo, gone. Deleted her myself. The one place I ever got to be brave, ended with a click and a little box that asked Are you sure.

The men, gone. And here's the sickest part. I keep having to remind myself that's actually the good news, because some idiot part of me keeps thinking I’ll virtually see them tonight and we’ll do all the sexy, naughty things we always do. I'll think, God, I have to tell KindRegards about whatever, and then I remember KindRegards is a man named Theo who lied to my face every morning over an oat-milk coffee.

Sal, handled, sort of. Friday night, I emptied Diablo's account down to the last crown, added the four hundred and the fistful of change in my coffee can, and drove it to the diner and put it in Sal’s hands. He counted it twice, came up short of the number he'd named, and didn't get loud about it. He just smiled, made a note in his little book, and told me short has a price, a fee that turns my one payment left into a few more, on a new date, and that if he has to text me again, he wouldn't be texting. "You're finally learning," he said, like it was a kindness. It wasn't. It was a man making sure I'd be his a good while longer.

I get up, because lying in bed is worse. I make tea I don't drink. I open my laptop to check my whatever, and there's nothing to check. No channel, no messages, no board with three thrones stacked at the top of it. Just a browser and a blinking cursor, reminding me I’m on my fucking own.

And of course, because my brain hates me, the memory it hands me is the good one, the night Theo told me to relax and take a break. I did, and it was the safest I have felt since I was a kid, safe enough I almost cried. I thought that was such a beautiful gift, all for me. Instead, it was a man running out the clock on a lie, knowing exactly what he was doing the whole time.

The worst part isn't that it was fake. The worst part is, my body still won't believe it was.

So I do the one thing a person can actually do at rock bottom, which is start counting what's left, because there is always a next payment, a next month, a next catastrophe with my name cosigned to the bottom of it. I open a browser and I start applying for jobs. Receptionist. Front desk. Office assistant. Anything quiet, anything invisible, anything where nobody has a single reason to look at me twice.

I get three applications deep before it lands, that I'm trying to rebuild the exact cage I just walked out of. Because it's the only thing I know.

I close the laptop and put my head down on the kitchen table and stay there awhile.

My phone lights up by my ear.

Birdie. A text, then another, then the three little dots that mean more is on the way.

Ag!! call me when ur up, I have the BEST idea, it's gonna FIX EVERYTHING

And something in me that's been holding on by its fingernails since Friday goes very still, and very cold.

Fix everything.