The events of my misery unfolded quickly: my father dying in an accident, his last lingering breaths witnessed only by the drunken stranger who’d collided with him. The next week, the solid gold chain he’d given me with pictures of each of us, taken on the day I was born, went inexplicably missing.

And then the next day, I came home from Drama Club to find my best friend, alone in my room, putting a solid gold chain on the jewelry box’s hanger, its small gold heart swinging like a pendulum, so much lying in its balance.

“Jen? What are you doing with my necklace? Did you steal it?”

“I had to,” she whispered.

“Why? What could you need it for? You have your own.” Jen’s father made a lot of money. Her mother didn’t even need to work. Both of my parents worked, and they barely scraped by as it was.

“You don’t want to know,” she said.

“I’ll decide what -.”

“It was an accident that I found out. I wish I hadn’t.” She was crying, but she had my necklace and I had no sympathy.