If Ashna had a penny for every time she had thought about burning the dress, she could have paid off Curried Dreams’s debts. Now that she had come unhinged and was doing things that were drastically out of character for her, maybe she’d finally get around to it. Burn the dress, burn the betrayal that went with it.

Goose bumps prickled across her skin, and she rubbed her arms. When would this stop? This sudden jolt of memory at the most unexpected times. The worst possible thing for her to do right now, just before the filming crew arrived at Curried Dreams to shoot her first meeting with her celebrity, was think about any of that.

Shutting the drawer, she gave herself one last inspection in the mirror.

Nisha had picked out heather-gray trousers for her to go with the red chef’s jacket that all the chefs were going to wear on the show. A stroke of luck, because red was Ashna’s favorite color and it always made her feel just a bit stronger. Nisha had tried to convince her not to pull her waist-length hair back into a bun. But they were shooting in the kitchen, and Ashna would never leave her hair down in a kitchen. Her bun was, as usual, as wide as her neck and so heavy that her head felt weighed down with it. Given that she had never had hair shorter than this, her head should be used to the weight by now. Not unlike the mind, the body could get used to living with things without becoming entirely comfortable with them.

Ashna had often considered cutting her hair. Freeing herself from this thing that everyone who had ever loved her seemed to define her by. Maybe when she burned the prom dress she’d also cut her hair and sell Shobi’s ring and donate the money to her mother’s beloved foundation and then tell her what she’d done.

Yup, she had definitely come unhinged. Although, amazingly, she felt entirely calm. So calm, in fact, that it was almost disconcerting. She shook out her hands, then patted down her hair and smudged the black kohl she had lined around her eyes. Kohl made her already freakishly large eyes expand to nocturnal-animal proportions. She touched up her favorite red lipstick. The show was about how she cooked, not how she looked, she knew that, but she needed every piece of armor. Not that it would help her get around the little problem of passing out when faced with a cooking challenge.