She heard the add three days ago. The static from her dollar store radio had rendered it almost unintelligible, but without anything else to focus on, she was able to make it out just fine. But she herself is anything but fine. She hasn't stopped shaking since she made the decision, but she's convinced herself it's just from the cold. Sleeping on the roof of a shopping center nightly tends to adequately freeze you up. All she has to her name is what happened to be in her, now ragged, cheerios duffle the night her parents kicked her out. Again. Judy's a small-minded, inflexible, bigot sheep, and Russell's her smaller-minded, inflexible, bigot shepard. Sheep always return to their shepard. Quinn was never a sheep. She knows should have seen it coming. She's still enrolled in school, and by some miracle Russell still hasn't shut off her cellphone. Most likely that miracle's name is Frannie. Her accountant husband, Paul, manages the family's business expenses and she probably had him transfer the line to the company's account. Just like last time. Frannie's also the reason a three-hundred dollar check was in her locker the day before school started. She had shown up on a whim, expecting to not be enrolled. She had no one to fill her paperwork seeing as she had yet to turn eighteen, so she'd had little hope she'd be able to attend for the next few weeks, if at all. But thankfully, upon her arrival she'd discovered that Fran had taken the liberty to get her matriculated. So Quinn had wandered throughout the building, savoring the air-conditioned halls. When she passed by the locker she'd had since freshman year, when Fran was a senior, she saw a red string hanging out of one of the vents. It was the way Frannie had come up with to alert Quinn that she had left her a message. She was too cool to speak to her publicly. Quinn had no idea what to expect. She'd approached the locker slowly, and opened it with great caution, as if to avoid tripping any possible booby-traps, but all that awaited her had been a light pink envelope, contents being the check, and a note that said, It's all I can manage, make it last. Quinn slid to the floor and cried; grateful for the prospect of a meal, but devastated yet again from her loss. That night, the first thing she did was head to the pharmacy, buy a box of what would shape her new identity, and head into their bathroom. Blonde went in, and pink came out. After her transformation, she headed to get a new wardrobe. The workout clothes and sweats she'd been wearing the past three weeks had gotten fairly tattered, and as apathetic as she had wanted to appear, she'd really missed wearing underwear. She went to the Walmart for that, and then headed to the thrift store. She'd already spent almost thirty-five dollars, so she set herself a limit of equal value. In leaving the store, she was plus eight tops, six bottoms, and two pairs of boots, and minus nineteen dollars and sixty-seven cents, newly attributed with the knowledge that she could make this work. Or so she'd thought. The first day of school she was initiated into the Skanks, a ceremony which entailed the loss of all cash on-hand to Sheila, and the loss of all dignity to Mack. She'd had eighty dollars with her waiting to be deposited in her lunch account for the trimester. Down to one hundred and fifty-seven dollars, she'd started to panic. She started eating only one meal a day, a feat only accomplished when accompanied by a cigarette, and by the end of the month, she'd run down to twenty-two dollars. Which was precisely the reason that radio ad had caught her attention. It was the first of October and Quinn was turning eighteen in five days. The five hundred dollar prize from The Palace: A Gentlemen's Club's Amateur Night started to sound like a damn good deal, but the forty dollar entrance fee sounded a hell of a lot like a problem.