The next week, an email from a local non‑profit landed in my inbox. They’d heard—through Morgan, I suspected—that I had strong opinions about financial literacy and stronger ones about predatory ‘influencer’ contracts. Would I teach a Saturday workshop for first‑gen college students on building credit and spotting scams? I said yes. It was the most satisfying two hours of my summer: a whiteboard, a room of hungry faces, and a stack of myth‑busting handouts I designed at 2 a.m. They left with budgets and a group text called “Compound Queens,” and I left with a feeling I’d been chasing since the day I dialed that seventh call: the feeling that what I knew could be useful beyond my kitchen table.
My brother got married—and I wasn’t told. I found out the way strangers do: a photo on my phone, taken while I sat in a Kansas City coffee shop, a paper cup warming my hands.
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