They Said I Spent 80,000, I Had 800 Chapter 02

They Said I Spent 80,000, I Had 800 Chapter 02

During the third class of the morning, my stomach growled constantly as my vision began to go dark.

I tried to hang on until class ended, but a sudden buzz echoed in my brain, and everything went black.

When I woke up, I was in the school clinic. A classmate told me I had slid straight off my chair.

Mom called. The moment I picked up, she snapped, “Are you on a diet? Kaysen said you haven’t been eating properly. You’re ruining your own health, you know that?”

“I’m not dieting. I just can’t afford…”

“Enough. I don’t want to hear your excuses. Your weight is perfectly fine; you don’t need to lose any!”

“Take better care of yourself and stop worrying us. I’ve got a contract meeting to get to—gotta go.”

She hung up.

I sat on the edge of the cot in the clinic, holding the paper cup of water they had given me.

I had no other choice—after paying for my meds, the money from home barely left anything for food. So I took a job cleaning up in the cafeteria during lunch hours.

It paid twelve dollars an hour, and I worked two hours every day after class.

Twenty-four dollars a day was enough for two basic meals.

One day halfway through my shift, a table of guys sat down.

As I walked past with the trays, one of them raised his phone, snapped a photo of me, and showed it to the guy next to him with a laugh.

I said nothing and kept cleaning.

Later, I found out that photo had been posted to a group chat.

The caption read: [Turns out even Brookfield has students scraping by on cafeteria work.]

Even later, that exact photo appeared in my family’s group chat.

An uncle had shared it.

Along with the picture, he said:

[You two make hundreds of thousands a month. Can’t you even support one girl?]

[Did you bring Oaklee back just to have her wipe tables at school?]

Kaysen rushed to reply:

[We only didn’t give her anything this one month. She burns through cash and now she’s putting on a show to embarrass us.]

Mom’s message followed immediately:

[Couldn’t you just ask us for money if you needed it? Cleaning tables in the cafeteria—what are people going to think?]

Dad called me directly.

“Did you do this on purpose? Just because we didn’t give you extra money to blow this month?”

“I didn’t…”

“Then why the hell are you cleaning tables?”

“We’ll be back at the end of the month. You’ll answer for this then.”

I didn’t explain and hung up.

It was the first time I had ever hung up on Dad. It would also be the last.

I counted my remaining pills. Exactly one day’s supply left.

This time, I didn’t go to Kaysen. Instead, I borrowed a few hundred dollars from a classmate.

Just enough to stretch until the end of the month.

When they came back then, we’d go our separate ways.