Lila stared at the notification on her laptop screen until the words blurred.

**Auction Closed. Winning Bid: $31,500.**

Her heart pounded so hard she could feel it in her throat. Thirty-one thousand five hundred dollars. For one night, for her virginity?.

She sat on the edge of her bed in her tiny off-campus apartment, pulled to her chest, the oversized t-shirt she slept in suddenly feeling too thin. The money would solve everything; rent for the next six months, the bills she’d been ignoring, the extra cash she’d been sending home to her mom.

But it also meant she was really going to do this.

The message from the site...