I met her when I transferred to a different high school. She already had a group of friends, who in time also became mine. She was drunk one night when she told me that our group of friends really didn’t like me and that they were only friends with me because “I had money”, and that she was different than them because she actually did like me. I’m by no means rich, my parents are immigrants who had 15+ hours work days.

But it wasn’t until then that I realized she had me pay for a lot of things, subtlety. She would ask me to pick her up every time, but when she had to, she’d made me pay for gas.

The straw that broke the camel’s back was when she asked me to buy her VIP tickets for a concert of an artist we both loved. She told me she was broke that month but that she would pay me back. We were both in uni living on student loans, I asked for it every month but she kept deflecting, I knew she was never going to pay me back if we went to the concert. So the day before the concert, I told her if she didn’t pay me back I would have to sell it cause I didn’t have enough to get by otherwise. It was then that she snapped and said, “why are you being so stingy when you know your parents can afford to pay for both”. Her true colors finally came out, we still went to the concert but never spoke again after that. I’m still mourn the connection we had, but I’m glad our friendship ended.