The 3 Amigos and Their Crazy App Idea

<scene>Westbrook High Cafeteria, 3:15 PM on a Tuesday, mid-October</scene> The linoleum floors stuck to the soles of sneakers smeared with cafeteria pizza grease and after-school field hockey mud, and the air smelled like burnt tater tots and the sickly-sweet artificial vanilla of the milkshake machine that hadn’t been cleaned since the start of the semester. At a sticky corner table half-hidden under a forgotten half-eaten pizza box, three sophomores and one junior hunched over their backpacks like conspirators, venting about the specific, sharp little frustrations that only feel like catastrophes when you’re 14 or 15 and have exactly $17.32 in your Venmo account until your next allowance or side hustle payout.

Mia Carter, 14, with neon pink streaks in her dark curly hair and three of her own handmade beaded bracelets clipped to her collar, was currently picking up scattered half-finished bracelets that had spilled out of her backpack when she’d tripped over a lacrosse stick ten seconds earlier. Her phone buzzed nonstop on the table: three Venmo payment reminders, two Instagram DMs asking for custom bracelet quotes, and a text from her mom reminding her to pick up milk on the way home. “I swear, if one more person asks for a ‘custom’ bracelet with 12 different colors and a specific pattern and then tries to haggle me down to $8, I’m going to lose it,” she muttered, shoving a handful of loose beads back into her bag. “I spent three hours last night going through all my cash and Venmo receipts for September orders, and I still missed two people who paid me in cash at lunch. I thought I made $180 off bracelets last month, but after buying new elastic cord and the special glow-in-the-dark beads everyone’s obsessed with, I only made $168. And I still have three people who haven’t paid me for orders I finished two weeks ago. Do I chase them? What if they get mad and don’t order from me again?”

Jake Miller, 15, a lanky junior with a faded Python hoodie and a student council lanyard draped around his neck, slammed a crumpled printed spreadsheet onto the table hard enough that a stray crouton jumped off the pizza box. The spreadsheet was covered in red pen scribbles, and a faint football cleat print smudged the “Fall Dance Budget” header. “Don’t even get me started on money stress,” he said, rubbing his temples like they ached. “I

The printed spreadsheet Jake had slammed onto the table was covered in red pen scribbles so dense they obscured half the columns, and a faint, mud-caked football cleat print smudged the “Fall Dance Budget” header so badly the word “Dance” looked like “Dunce.” He jabbed a finger at a line item marked “DJ Services: $500” with a scowl. “Don’t even get me started on money stress. Student council’s fall dance budget is a total black hole, and I’m the one who gets to explain to the principal why we’re $200 over when we only raised $1,200 from ticket sales. Last year we hired that ‘DJ’ who turned out to be a senior from North High who only knew how to play Minecraft soundboard clips, and he bailed after 45 minutes because his mom made him come home for dinner. We had to plug someone’s phone into the sound system and play TikTok viral audios for the rest of the night. Half the freshmen left early because we ran out of the free pizza we promised, and the PTA sent us a 3-page email complaining we were ‘irresponsible with student funds.’ The treasurer before me was on the football team, and the only thing he knew how to track was how many protein bars he ate a week. I found a receipt for $300 worth of protein bars in the budget folder last week. No one even remembered buying them.”

He flipped the spreadsheet over to reveal a mess of pencil calculations on the back, half of them crossed out. “I’ve spent three nights this week trying to reconcile the budget, and I still can’t figure out where $127 went. The dance committee says they didn’t spend it, the PTA says they didn’t allocate it, and the principal says if I don’t find it, I have to pay it out of my own college savings. I have $127 in my savings account for community college, and I’m this close to having to use it to cover a bunch of protein bars no one even ate.”

Next to him, Luna Park, 14, with pigtails tied with fuzzy rainbow scrunchies and a chipped Star Wars lightning bolt nail polish, snorted so hard chocolate milk came out of her nose. She wiped it off with the sleeve of her oversized Harry Potter hoodie and gestured at the half-empty chocolate bar on the table in front of her, the kind with the gummy candy filling that she’d bought after school that morning. “Oh, don’t worry, your $127 problem is way better than mine. I have $0 in my savings account, and it’s the 20th of the month. My allowance is $50 a month, and I’m supposed to be saving up for the new Zelda game that comes out next month, which is $60. I had $72 left on the 1st. I spent $18 on a limited-edition Sanrio blind box on the 3rd, $12 on boba three times last week, $22 on the new Taylor Swift vinyl my friend got me for my birthday that I had to split the cost of, and $20 on a glow-in-the-dark dinosaur plush I didn’t even need. And that’s not even counting the $7 my little sister stole from my sock drawer last week.”

She pulled out her phone and opened her banking app, waving it at the table so they could all see the big red “$0.00” balance at the top. “My mom says I need to ‘learn financial responsibility’ but every time I try to save money, something happens. Last month I hid $70 in my sock drawer for the Zelda game, and my 8-year-old sister found it, took it to school, and spent it on two bags of spicy chips and a light-up dinosaur keychain at the student store. When my mom confronted her, she said I gave it to her for ‘being a good helper’ and I got in trouble for ‘giving my sister money to buy junk food.’ I tried to use that budgeting app my mom made me download last month, but it’s for adults. It has tabs for ‘mortgage payments’ and ‘retirement savings’ and ‘investment portfolios.’ I don’t have a mortgage. I don’t have a retirement. I just need to not spend $12 on boba three times a week so I can buy a video game.”

Mia, who’d been silently picking stray beads off the table this whole time, huffed and held up her phone, which was open to her Venmo transaction history, the screen so cluttered with incoming payments and outgoing expenses it looked like a rainbow-colored spreadsheet. “Speak of money stress. I have three people who owe me $45 total for custom bracelets I finished two weeks ago, and I don’t know if I should bug them for it. I spent three hours last night going through all my cash and Venmo receipts for September, and I still missed two people who paid me in cash at lunch. I thought I made $180 off bracelets last month, but after buying new elastic cord and the glow-in-the-dark beads everyone’s obsessed with, I only cleared $168. And I have three pending orders I haven’t even started because I’m scared I’ll mess up the pattern and they’ll ask for a refund. My mom says I need to ‘keep better records’ but I’m using a notebook, and I keep losing it in my lacrosse bag.”

She flipped open her tattered pink notebook to a page covered in smudged pencil scribbles: “Sept 1: 5 bracelets @ $10 = $50, Sept 3: 3 custom @ $15 = $45, Sept 7: 2 friendship @ $8 = $16…” Half the entries were crossed out, and a coffee stain covered the bottom right corner where she’d written “OWED: $45.” “I tried making a Google Sheet to track it, but it’s so annoying to pull out my phone and open Sheets every time someone pays me or I buy supplies. And half my customers are freshmen who don’t even have Venmo, so they pay me in cash, and I forget to write it down half the time. Last week a girl paid me $20 for a bracelet and I thought she never paid, and I asked her for it three days later. She was so mad she told everyone at lunch I’m a scammer. I lost three customers that day.”

The three of them sat in silence for a minute, p