My mother was right. Choose your friends carefully, she said. As I trudged down White Avenue at 2:30 am, I remembered that. “There you are! Let’s go to a club!” The big blond girl had burst into Patrick’s room in our apartment earlier that evening where he and I were playing hearts while the guys took bong hits and lines of speed. Kimberly, the rotund, cherubic-looking girl who seemed bred from large-boned Midwestern stock, was prone to giving herself embarrassing nicknames. She had just spent too much time trying to get over breaking up with her first college love, only to grow moody when he started dating someone she deemed trailer trash. I looked over to Cheryl, my former roommate, the one I considered my third best friend and shook my head. “I’m broke,” I mouthed. Kimberly didn’t like hearing that I had no money. She thought my best friend spent too much on me. But I had no parents who were paying for my education. All the money I made went straight to tuition, …