After No One Showed Up to My Graduation My Mom Asked for $2,100 and I Gave Her a Response She Didn’t Expect

My mother called to tell me that Ava wanted to attend a cheerleading camp that cost three hundred dollars. I said I couldn’t, that I was trying to save for something I actually needed. The silence on the line was the specific kind that preceded a recalibration. Then came the guilt, practiced and precise. “She’ll be the only girl on the squad who can’t continue reading …