What would you do if you were Wright?
“How to pretend I do not know my best friend's secret while I do know ?”
Wright and Webster were assigned（ 被編排）to sit together at school many years ago, and that started their close relationship. They have been boon companions（好友）and they always say that people with names starting with a W have the same personality（性格）. True or not, they are still best friends till today.
Between the two boys, they have an unspoken（默許）practice of buying the same pair of new sneakers（波鞋）during the first week of a new year. That is not only to show others how close（密切）they are, but more on a practical side（實際方面）—— buying two pairs gets a higher discount offer. The new pair of sneakers will also be the designated（選定）Christmas presents from home, which saves their parents much effort to shop for other things.
Yet this Christmas is different. Webster's father is not doing smooth（順利） with his investment（投資）. His whole family has to move to a subdivided unit（劏房）to cut rent（租金）down. His mother, used to be a housewife, is now working part time. Life is not easy as before. Webster seldom talks about this, but it is a fact that everyone knows about at school.
As the usual practice, this weekend is the time for shopping for a new pair of sneakers.
- If my good friend was tight on budget（財政緊張）, I could ask my parents to pay for him the new sneakers. My parents would be happy to help. He did not deserve（值得）to be deprived（剝削）of anything that he usually had.
- To protect my friend’s feeling, I’d suggest that according to our maturity（成熟）, we should not use our parents' money any more. Instead we could both get a part time tutoring（補習）job and try saving up our own money for our new pair of sneakers. That would be the best present to our parents to show that we have really grown up. More, there would be no rush to buy anything unless the old pair was worn-out.
