The Wealth
Chapter 1/
Work brings money.
When I was a teen, I had no money.
I hated it. I had no allowance. I loved candies, but I could never buy them after school. I wanted to look cool, but I never had the right clothes.
It made me endlessly frustrated, and forever hungry for sugar and for fashion.
But my main hunger was for faraway places. I felt stuck on my island and everything I could dream about was outside of it.
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When I was fourteen, I told my mom I wanted to visit the world.
“Sure”, she said. “But for that you’re going to need to work”.
We made a deal. I would help at my parent’s restaurant for the month of July.
August would be all mine. I spent it in England as an exchange student, got lost in London for the first time, spoke some English, fell in love with a guy called Justin whose name I found profoundly exotic, and came back home with a plan to discover the rest of the world.
Work had brought me all of that.
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I never thought about summers the same way. I kept the deal I had made with my …