The Vitamin Pyramid Scheme

My hair looked like a dead animal. That was the first problem.

"Trust me, cuz," Marcus said, flipping channels on the ancient cable box that crackled like static every time someone breathed near it. "I've got this connection. This guy Jamal? He's making six figures."

We were supposed to be studying for finals. Instead, Marcus dragged me into his room to show me a pyramid scheme. Not, like, the ancient Egyptian kind. The multi-level marketing kind, where you convince your friends to buy overpriced garbage so you can make enough money to buy... more overpriced garbage.

The product was "GlowFuel"—these hair vitamins that supposedly made your hair grow faster, thicker, and somehow cooler. Marcus had already spent three weeks of his Subway money on starter packs.

"Look at this before and after," Marcus said, pointing to the cable infomercial playing on his fuzzy TV. "This guy's hair went from basic to legendary in three weeks."

"That looks Photoshop'd as hell," I said, because it absolutely was.

"You're just negative. That's why you're sitting there with that sad haircut and I'm about to be an entrepreneur."

The truth was, I'd buzzed my hair the week before because I wanted to look edgy for Lily Zhang, who definitely had no idea I existed. Now I just looked like I'd lost a bet. So when Marcus offered me a "discount" on the vitamins, I said whatever. What did I have to lose?

Two weeks later, I was selling GlowFuel to kids in the cafeteria, pretending my hair was growing back thicker (it wasn't). Marcus had convinced half the football team to buy "bulk packs." We were making money. We felt like geniuses. We were absolutely not geniuses.

The pyramid collapsed on a Tuesday. Marcus's distributor got shut down for false advertising. The football team wanted refunds. Lily Zhang finally noticed me, but only to ask why I'd tried to sell her gross vitamins.

"You looked better with the buzz cut, anyway," she told me.

I learned two things that year: hair vitamins are a scam, and if something sounds too good to be true, it definitely is. Also, cable TV at 2 AM will ruin your life if you let it.

Marcus started a new thing last week. Crypto. I'm staying far away.