I’ve been so angry for so long, but I’ve been telling myself I don’t care. But I have cared far too much, for far too long, about what everyone else thinks of me.

What is the best way to earn good behavior points? It can likely be determined by behaving polar to my impulses. If there’s any way to get magic on my side, it’s got to be holiday do-gooding.

I type how to start an online auction into my browser’s search bar and giddily run through all the possibilities. At first, I’m conservative with what I decide to donate. What if I want to learn how to play the guitar someday and wish I hadn’t sold the one originally meant for Kaia? What if I end up needing all the costumes from the 2013 film The Great Gatsby? But as I add items, I find myself liking the way this feels, feeding the high by giving more and more. I’m going to sell all this shit, which, it turns out, I maybe don’t actually need as much as I thought I did, which will make the world a better place. No exaggeration! I am actively contributing to society—me, Bettie Hughes. What a thrill!

The yacht, which Hall conjured for me during my Wish For Everything In The Song “Santa Baby” Extravaganza is presently stuck in the mountains, and is going to find new significance raising money for children in need. I am calling the organization Yachts for Tots. Having started off with a bang, I keep up the momentum by brainstorming as many sellable items as I can bear to part with: all the custom jewelry Hall designed for me, ball gowns, my collection of Valentino Rockstud bags that I craved to fill the void of having to sell all my bags when I went bankrupt. My La Californienne Large Cartier Tank Wrap Strap Watch joins the auction, and I just know that it’s going to end up on an ungrateful TikTok star. But this watch is four thousand dollars! Why do I need to impress strangers with brand names, anyway? Watches are useless. Time is a construct, so I do not recognize its authority. Time is math, which is another construct that I do not recognize.

The next order of business will be figuring out how to return all the stuff I can’t, in all good conscience, sell: Amal Clooney’s engagement ring. Elizabeth Taylor’s engagement ring. JLo’s green dress. Louis Armstrong’s trumpet. I’ll have to hire my nieces and nephews to shoot these items out of T-shirt cannons, over security gates, to land on the doorsteps of their rightful owners. And then run away very fast.

My notes app fills up with more stuff I asked Hall to procure for me: rare shoes, first-edition copies of old books I wanted purely for bragging rights, photographs of galaxies beyond the reach of our technology, a marble bust of Rihanna. And one big-ticket item I’ve been holding on to for years, despite the bankruptcy, which I bought with my first big paycheck: the oil painting above my bed in which I’m wearing a feather boa and nothing else, oiled-up legs dangling over the arm of a zebra chair. The way the light hits my cans is breathtaking, and I want to see if my tastefully decorated rack fetches fifteen grand—which, according to a GoFundMe, is how much a small town in Virginia needs to build a new playground. Maybe they’ll even name it after me. My attention flits toward the ceiling, imagining a mist somewhere above the roof of this house. Not that it matters. I’m not doing this for clout. You hear me, mystical cosmos? My motives are completely pure.