"Eighteen years." My voice was ice. "You couldn't buy one decent bottle of vitamins? You had to feed me this unregulated garbage?"
The crowd went silent. Rachel's camera snapped toward me.
Mom looked around, panicked, hands twisting in her apron. "What's wrong with them? You've taken these since you were little. You always loved the orange flavor—"
"Because I didn't know any better!" I cut her off, staring straight at her. "These are made in some illegal basement workshop. Stop buying this junk. Give me the money—I'll get real supplements from a hospital."
Naomi shoved her way between us. "Don't listen to her!" she told Rachel. "Her mother scrimped and saved to buy those! All to keep this girl healthy!"
"Do you know how many streets she has to sweep for one box of these?"
"She doesn't need to save money like this!" I turned to face the camera directly.
"My classmates take high-end, imported vitamins. And I get this garbage?"
I pointed at the soup. "And this chicken? From the back corner of the wet market—probably diseased. But sure, let's make soup out of it."
The parents crowding around began to murmur:
"A single mom sweeps streets to raise her, and this is the thanks she gets?"
"What's the point of good grades? All that education, and she's still a snake."
Someone spoke directly into the camera, voice dripping with contempt: "This is exactly the kind of ingratitude that should be filmed. Let the whole country see what she really is."
Naomi's hand shot up toward my face—
Mom threw herself between us.
Her eyes were red, but she forced a smile. "The exam... it's so much pressure. This is my fault. I bought cheap things. Not good enough. I upset her."
Pat Morgan, a neighbor, shook her head urgently and grabbed Rachel's arm. "Last winter—big snowstorm—she carried her daughter to the hospital on her back. Caught pneumonia herself and didn't say a word." Pat's voice cracked. "Maybe they don't have much. But that woman's love for her girl? That's the real thing."
"Don't say that," Mom said to the camera, dabbing at her tears. "She's grown up now. It's normal that she looks down on these cheap things from her poor mother..."
I shoved the tin box at the neighbor. "Want this for your grandson? Next time he's sick, maybe skip the hospital down the street and take him to some back-alley clinic instead?"
The neighbor shuffled backward, embarrassed. The box clattered to the ground.