We grew up in a quiet suburb where the community was pretty tight.
I had the same friends from kindergarten to middle school.
We all sort of drifted to other cliques in high school after hitting puberty. Dad was an accountant and mom a lawyer, which meant we had a good life. We went on two vacations each year and had all the toys and gadgets we wanted. My dad was quite handy with fixing things around the house despite being a professional. He’d grown up on a farm where they had to fix a lot of things themselves. So that meant we rarely had any carpenters or plumbers coming to sort out things at home. My parents agreed that the central cooling and heating unit required professional expertise. Dad recalled a time at the farm when my grandpa had tried to fix a faulty heating unit in the middle of winter. He ended up making the issue worse, and they had to brave two days in the cold before an AC worker came over to fix the faulty heating unit. Dad learned from an early age to always call the AC expert if there was ever an issue with the central cooling and heating unit. It was a miracle they had survived the winter without heating that time. One time, the cooling unit at home was blowing cool air into the house. I guessed the issue was a dirty air filter and asked dad if we could change it. He said no and instead called over an AC worker to come and check if that was the case.