Chapter 2

I smoke a lot, and now, of all times, the pack that lived by my bed was nowhere to be found.

I got up and started tearing through everything, but I couldn't turn up a single cigarette.

Back when I bought cigarettes, I'd stock up a thousand dollars' worth at a time.

I'd just leave them out in the dorm's common area for anyone to take.

Remembering that, I forced myself to walk over to Cyril and ask, "Do you have any cigarettes? Could you lend me one?"

I figured we were both guys, and after the way I'd treated all of them before,

surely one cigarette wasn't too much to ask.

But Cyril only glanced up at me, then dropped his eyes back to his game and flatly tossed out two words: "Nope."

My heart sank straight to the bottom. The whole thing felt fake.

Just last semester, knowing how much I smoked, he'd sneak his dad's Cohibas out of the house and slip them to me right here in the dorm.

But the itch clawing at my throat told me all of this was really happening.

My bankruptcy was fake. His true face was not.

I didn't dare imagine how wrecked I'd be right now if I'd actually gone broke.

I said nothing more, and shuffled step by step over to Dirk's spot.

"You got a cigarette I could borrow?"

He kept his eyes down, wrestling with it for a long moment before he finally opened his cabinet.

His hand hovered inside for a second before he pulled out a five-dollar pack and handed it over.

But I saw it clearly: still sitting in his cabinet were the soft-pack Marlboros I'd bought last year and left in the common area.

I took the pack, already damp and gone soft, squeezed it in my palm, and said nothing.

Right in front of Dirk, I dropped the cigarettes in the trash and headed out to the convenience store to buy new ones.

Seattle weather swings from sun to rain and back.

I'd just paid and was walking out of the store when the rain came down hard.

If this had been before, I wouldn't have had to say a word.

If Cyril noticed I wasn't back at the dorm, he'd get anxious and text to ask where I was, even though the library was a half-hour walk away.

And he'd come running to bring me an umbrella, no complaints, tilting it toward me on purpose the whole way.

I used to think that was friendship, so I learned from them and treated them just as sincerely, bringing umbrellas, grabbing food for them, buying them things to eat and use.

Now I understood it was only ever because I had money back then.

Now that I was "broke," I wasn't about to embarrass myself by asking if any of them would bring me an umbrella.

I sighed and pulled out my phone, sending a message to the dorm group chat: "It's pouring. Could you guys bring my laundry in for me? Thanks."

Five minutes after I sent it, no one had replied.

I've never had much normal social experience, but a request like that had to be about as ordinary as it got in a guys' dorm.

Yet fifteen minutes later, the group chat still sat right where it had, on the message I'd sent.

I lowered my eyes, and once the rain eased up a bit, I ran back to the dorm through the drizzle.

When I came in soaked and miserable, Cyril just glanced up at me, then dropped his head back to his phone.

Dirk stayed buried in his English vocabulary and didn't spare me a word.

I walked out to the dorm balcony. Their clothes had all been brought in.

Mine, along with my bedsheets, were still swaying out there in the wind and rain.

I stood there staring at the clothes, soaked all the way through and still dripping, and couldn't get a single word out.

Worse still, they'd shoved all my laundry into one crowded bunch, plainly so their own clothes could spread out and dry.

Out of nowhere, my tears fell.

The hurt and the ache tangled together in my chest.

In their eyes, a bankrupt me wasn't even worth treating like an ordinary classmate.

I took out my phone, photographed it, and edited it into the slideshow.

By the time I'd cleaned everything up, Cyril had already gone out with friends.

And Dirk sidled up to me, and one sentence left me frozen where I stood.