But it faded fast, and what replaced it was closer to pity, and something like a warning to myself.

Because the page had not changed a single fact about me.

I had been the same person the day before, when she thought I was nothing — the same mind, the same history, the same worth.

All the page changed was her behavior, and that was the whole indictment of her, wasn’t it: that respect, for people like the Ainsworths, was not something a person earned by their character but something a balance sheet unlocked.

I did not want to become someone who needed the page to feel entitled to basic decency.

I had deserved it at zero dollars.