Once upon a time — and by “once” I mean roughly three months ago, and by “time” I mean the ugly, sweat-stained timeline I used to call reality — I was Lawrence August Rieves.

Just Lawrence. No glow. No glamour. Just a guy so aggressively unremarkable that people would step around me on the sidewalk like I was gum on the heel of civilization. Hairy like a Greek myth but without the divine abs. Soft in all the wrong ways. Pale, patchy, forgettable. I wasn't even a proper tragedy — I was a footnote. A shrug of a man.

My bedroom — no, let’s call it what it was, a shame cave — reeked of day-old cheap wine and untold dreams. Picture it: one flickering yellow lightbulb, a $15 particleboard dresser with half the drawers jammed, and a bed that squeaked if I so much as sighed. There was a cracked mirror I hadn’t dared look into in days. It sat propped up against the wall, a kind of portal to the part of me I didn’t want to acknowledge: the part that still hoped.

I was sprawled on the rug — “rug” being generous; it was a matted square of former carpet I bought secondhand from someone’s garage sale — surrounded by the remnants of a personal pity party. Half a bottle of rosé (the kind with a label that reads “blush” instead of a vintage), an empty sleeve of Pop-Tarts, and my cracked phone blinking like a dying star.

Instagram was open, naturally. The modern oracle and muse. I scrolled through a feed of sculpted faces, sunlit beaches, polished lives so far removed from mine it may as well have been another planet. Boys in pastel mesh shirts frolicking in West Hollywood. Girls who looked like AI-generated Bratz dolls riding around on glittery scooters. And of course, the gods: influencers. Digital deities whose job was to be adored.

And then came him.

Kellan Virelli. Shirt unbuttoned just enough to suggest moral ambiguity, lounging poolside in a fuchsia linen suit with a grin that belonged on a billboard for salvation. His skin golden. His jaw unfair. His smile the kind you have to train in front of a mirror to replicate. The caption read:

Own it. Every day, every moment. #LosAngeles #NeverHide

Fourteen thousand likes in twenty minutes.

I stared at the screen and felt something twist in my chest — admiration, envy, longing. I wanted to be that. Not Kellan, per se. I didn’t want to be anyone else, not exactly. I wanted to be seen. Lit up from within. Glossy. Sacred. One of the gods.

I tilted the screen just enough to catch my reflection — the cracked glass of the selfie cam overlaying Kellan’s face with mine. I looked like a ghost haunting someone else’s life. Puffy eyes, red nose, a grease-slicked curl falling over my forehead like a wet noodle. My mouth tasted bitter. I don’t remember crying, but my cheeks were damp.

I laughed bitterly. "Must be nice," I whispered to no one. "To be born into that skin or to make it."

But something inside me — something half-feral, half-divine — stirred. I don’t know if it was the wine, or the loneliness, or the low-grade fever of too much screen time, but I whispered again: "I just want to be someone."

Silence.

Even the cheap ceiling fan seemed to pause, just for a second. I closed my eyes and pressed my forehead to the floor, cool against the heat of my embarrassment. I wanted the world to notice me. I wanted to shine so hard it hurt people’s eyes. I wanted someone to ask, “Who is that?” and for the answer to be me.

Crawling across the old carpet (yes, this was a literal rock-bottom moment), I reached under the bed for a water bottle and instead touched plastic. I pulled it out: a doll. A classic, beat-up one with a twisty neck and faded pink dress, a relic from a thrift store haul I’d meant to repurpose for an art project that never happened.

Her face smiled at me with that eerie, eternal serenity. Something about her gave me chills. Like a tiny plastic prophet. I held her in my palm and stared.

"You get it, don’t you?" I asked the doll. "You’re just a shell. All beauty, no soul. But people worship you anyway. Maybe that’s the trick."

She didn’t answer. Obviously.

But a phrase came to me, clear as champagne and twice as fizzy:

@LARieves.

Not Lawrence. L. A. Rieves. It sounded like a persona. A performance. A prayer.

I whispered it once. Then again, louder. "@LARieves." It wasn’t a name, it was a transformation.

Somewhere above, my light flickered again, and I swore it blinked in approval.

And just like that, reality shifted.