Victoria and I met in the first grade. At the time I couldn’t understand that she was a foster child because I had no idea about orphanages, unwed mothers and free social meals. It was a little surprising that some kids in my class were given presents for New Year’s or other holidays from the school, but not everyone else. Over time, of course, this became clear. Besides, Victoria and I were from families with about the same budget. We delighted in going to the movies with the class and very rarely could save a penny to buy ourselves chips on our walks.
Victoria grew up very down-to-earth because of this. Over the years, with the newfangled phones and stuff, we couldn’t afford everything, and that was quite normal. She left school after ninth grade, I left after eleventh. In her first year of college she was already getting a triple scholarship, a regular scholarship plus a social security scholarship, which allowed her to save some money, and I tried to earn it by tasting things in supermarkets or handing out flyers. Sometime during her freshman year, Victoria met her future husband. He was still a nobody then, riding the bus and living in the family dormitory.
I didn’t have much time to socialize with friends when I was enrolled, and I missed the moment when Victoria’s husband started earning a lot of money, bought his first car, and started driving my friend around the seas. I couldn’t afford anything like that, and my young man wasn’t rich. Sometimes I received offers to go on vacations with them or even abroad, but I had to pay for myself, and some of the money that seemed like pennies to them was too much for me.
My friends had a wedding not too long ago, but I was not destined to go to it. They could not confine themselves to our city and went to another part of the country to throw a lavish banquet. They invited a lot of guests, so they couldn’t accommodate them all by themselves and offered to rent hotel rooms on their own. And we also had to make a gift and take the road into account… Anyway, it was too much, so I couldn’t go.
More and more often I see how they go to Egypt, Turkey, that Victoria gave her husband an iPhone, that he bought a new car, renovated his apartment… And I feel that I fit less and less into their life as a friend. Our statuses are too different now.
