It's a sweet story: a 17-year-old girl turns her passion for baking into a business in her Virginia hometown of Front Royal. Tiana Ramos, who co-owns Naughty Girls Donut Shop with her mother, has been baking as a hobby since she was 8 years old -- and is in Los Angeles this weekend for the 2015 MTV Movie Awards, to feed nominees her delicacies in the backstage gifting suite.

However, life isn't all sprinkles and sweetness for Ramos, whose flavors and shop decor are inspired by retro pin-ups. The high school senior doesn't sugar-coat the reason she got into making sweet treats: "I never fit in in school. I was always, like, the outcast. I was always, like, that one weird girl in the back. So, I never got along with people," she told MTV News. "So, when I was bored, I was volunteering at a local hospital and I started a baking program for teens and I fell in love with baking."

With the encouragement of her mother, Ramos formed a business plan for the shop and opened it in June 2014, staffing it with teens who -- like herself -- have been bullied or don't fit in socially. Ten percent of her shop's proceeds are donated to charity, and recently, they fed 2,000 people at a Thanksgiving dinner for charity. Despite all this, Ramos described her town as "like the town in 'Footloose'" and said locals despise her for her ideals. For example, she employs a teen runaway; and another employee has two moms... Which is "unheard of" for Front Royal.

"The shop is mainly about change and it’s mainly about stopping the anti-bullying, helping others and stuff," Ramos said. "And all the teens in the shop, we’re kind of the misfits of the town because the town is really, like, old-school." Of her employees, she said, "this is their safe haven...[the shop] is home for them."

Unfortunately, according to Ramos, her charitable efforts and entrepreneurship haven't earned her acceptance.

"The town completely hates me," Ramos said, mentioning that she's had restaurants refuse to serve her on account of her appearance. "They completely hate me, they don’t like me. I am getting currently bullied in school right now. I’ve been called a n---er. They told me to go to hell."

Oh, yeah, and about school: she still goes. Every day. Ramos refused homeschooling because she didn't want to miss her senior year, so she works from 1 a.m. to 8 a.m. daily, helping crank out the 3,000 donuts she estimates the shop makes per day, goes to school, heads back to the shop to help close out the day's 12-hour shift, then sleeps for roughly three hours. Lather, rinse, repeat.

It can be discouraging, she said, especially on days like a recent one when a car slowed down in front of her storefront and threw garbage at it, yelling at her to, "go to hell."

"When I’m, like, really overworked and overstressed, I’m just like, you know, is this what I want to do? Do I want to live my life being hated?" Ramos lamented. "And I think about it and then I’m like, ‘I’m doing this for a good cause. I’m doing this for people who may appreciate it. I shouldn’t worry about the people who are just hating me right now. So, they will move on eventually and then I’m just going to be fine with my life. I’m going to keep being successful and I will try my best, so I’m not going to give up."

Next year, Ramos is headed to the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York to study sugar art on a full scholarship, taking her dreams to a broader stage.

For now, she's in Los Angeles, serving up her donuts -- including a $100 creation made with edible gold, figs, black truffle and fleur de sel -- to Movie Awards nominees and audience members. Asked who she's most excited to pass a treat to, she answered without hesitation: Kevin Hart. She wants to make him a bourbon-spiced apple donut. "It’s an apple cake with a bourbon-spiced cinnamon glaze and it has fleur de sel with a fig imported from Africa inside an apple spice crumble."

Now that she's in California seeing her hard work pay off, Ramos has one simple, sweet message for teens.

"Keep following your dreams," she said. "It's not too late."

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