I secretly funded premium climbing gear for my team, covering costs to keep everyone safe and competitive. Until Haley joined. “Twelve hundred for a set? Sarah, you’re insane!” she mocked in the group chat. Others defended me. “That’s a steal. Custom gear retails for eight grand.” “Sarah owns the company. She charges raw cost.” Haley scoffed. “Raw cost? My family’s in retail. I know the markups. Order through me. Two hundred a set.” Greed exploded in the chat. “Two hundred? Insane savings!” “Haley handles our gear now.” “Sarah, how much did you pocket under ‘friendship’?” Pocket? Years of one-of-one custom builds, engineered to their exact biomechanics, dominating rankings. Gear no amount of money could buy elsewhere. I stared at the screen, typed “OK,” and stayed silent. If they trusted their lives to two-hundred-dollar gear on a hundred-foot cliff, it was their funeral. 1 Two weeks before the regional qualifiers, my teammates texted me their latest physical metrics. “Counting on you for the gear this season, Sarah!” Before I could even type out a response, Haley tagged me in the main chat. “Wait, twelve hundred dollars for a kit? Am I reading that right?” “That price is… literally absurd.” I initially thought she was complaining that the price was too low, and I was about to explain that taking a slight financial hit was worth it for the team’s overall performance. Instead, she dropped an audio message, her voice shrill and aggressively self-righteous. “How do you sleep at night charging everyone twelve hundred dollars for something that costs maybe two hundred bucks to make?” “Sarah, I know people hustle their friends sometimes, but you are absolutely bleeding them dry!” My fingers froze over the keyboard. Two hundred dollars? Was she pricing out cheap, plastic knockoffs from Temu? Jessica, one of our lead climbers, chimed in to smooth things over. “Haley, you’re pretty new to the pro circuit, but elite climbing gear is just insanely expensive.” “Sarah runs a legit manufacturing company. She’s hooking us up at cost. A rig like this would easily run you seven or eight grand in a specialized shop.” Haley fired right back. “I know exactly how this works, Jess. My family runs retail.” “MSRP is just a made-up number. The profit margins are completely bloated.” “When my family sources inventory, even the top-tier gear costs a maximum of two hundred dollars to produce, but they turn around and sell it to suckers for ten grand.” A heavy, awkward silence descended on the digital chat room. Then Jessica typed again, but this time, she tagged me. “Sarah… maybe you should clear the air here?” “We totally get that you run a business and need to make a profit, but marking it up six times over? That feels a little… predatory, don’t you think?” Like blood in the water, the rest of the team started surfacing. “I always thought she was way too eager to handle our equipment. Makes sense now.” “This is honestly messed up, Sarah. Every time we thanked you for the ‘friend discount,’ were you just laughing at us behind your screen?” Haley dropped a fake-innocent emoji covering its mouth. “Oh no, should I not have said anything? I didn’t mean to ruin your little side hustle, Sarah…” “But I just couldn’t keep my mouth shut. I absolutely despise people who exploit their friends for a quick buck.” “I used to source gear for my old team, and I charged them the real baseline cost. Two hundred dollars, flat.” “If you guys want, I can lock in that price for the whole roster.” The chat erupted into absolute chaos. “Are you serious, Haley? Two hundred? That saves us so much cash!” “Thank God, I don’t have to eat instant ramen for a month just to afford a harness.” “Man, to think of all the money I scraped together, only to line the pockets of a greedy corporate shill.” Even Greg, our supposedly level-headed team captain, finally weighed in. “I blame myself for not doing the market research. I let someone take advantage of this team’s trust.” A second later, a private message from Greg popped up on my screen. “Hey Sarah. Look, the team is pretty pissed off. I need you to refund the money we sent you for this season’s gear.” “We’re going to route the order through Haley.” “It’s nothing personal, but the price discrepancy is just too massive to ignore.” 2 I replied with a simple “OK” and instantly wired the $7,200 I had collected earlier that day straight back into his account. Over in the group chat, the whining hadn’t stopped. “So she refunded this batch, but what about the past three years? We’ve placed at least eight orders with her.” “Squeezing a thousand bucks out of each of us, every single time. Six people on the roster… that’s six grand a season!” “Wow. We basically bankrolled her entire storefront, didn’t we?” I quietly closed the app, not bothering to defend myself. There was no point. Even if I laid out the financial documents proving my actual production costs were closer to ten thousand dollars per set, they wouldn’t believe a word of it. They would just accuse me of forging invoices. I pulled up the spreadsheet containing everyone’s highly specific biomechanical data and picked up my phone, dialing the factory floor. “Josh, scrap those six custom orders. Shut down the specialized line.” Josh, my lead materials engineer, practically cheered through the receiver. “Finally! Thank God you woke up, Boss!” “Running a dedicated custom line for them was bad enough, but charging them pennies? It didn’t even cover the electricity bill for the carbon-fiber molds!” “You could give some people the shirt off your back, and they’d still complain about the fabric. Good riddance!” I hung up the phone, a bitter, self-deprecating smile tugging at the corner of my mouth. When I first joined this team a year ago, they had stared at my gear like starving wolves looking at fresh meat. “Sarah, the rubber compound on those soles is insane! The grip looks unreal.” “How is your static rope so much lighter than mine, but rated for a higher load?” Greg had looked down at his own worn-out harness, sighing in defeat. “My rig cost me three grand, and I’m still paying it off. Yours has to be pushing fifteen thousand, right?” Back then, I had been genuinely moved by their raw passion for the sport. They were broke, struggling athletes, but they had heart. So, I made an offer. I told them I could get them the exact same tier of equipment I used, for only twelve hundred dollars. I lied and said I ran a small retail shop and could get wholesale prices. The truth was, I was the founder and CEO of Apex Dynamics, the premier climbing equipment manufacturer in the country. The very first competition they climbed in my gear, we took first place. Before that, they had never even cracked the podium. From that day on, the sponsorships started rolling in. We were getting paid to do what we loved. To give them an extra edge, I started requiring their precise body measurements, engineering bespoke equipment tailored to their individual weight distribution and reach. Custom manufacturing cannot be automated. Josh had to personally oversee the calibration of every single piece. The absolute bare-minimum factory cost for one of those kits was twelve thousand dollars. When Josh told me I was insane for eating the cost, I brushed it off. I told him they were my friends. The irony tasted like ash in my mouth. Greg’s name flashed on my screen again. “Hey, make sure you send all our measurement data over to Haley so she can place the order. Don’t drag your feet on this!” “OK.” I exported the file and sent the document straight to Haley. A minute later, she replied. “Wow, Sarah. You really commit to the bit, don’t you?” “Climbing gear comes in standard sizes. S, M, L. What the hell do you need wingspan and arch depth for?” “Adding all these fake, flashy metrics just to justify your ridiculous markup. You’re a total scam artist.” 3 I didn’t dignify that with a response. Trying to explain the aerodynamics and load-bearing physics of bespoke climbing gear to a girl peddling two-hundred-dollar death traps was a spectacular waste of oxygen. My phone buzzed constantly as the group chat continued their circle jerk. Haley: [She seriously tried to sound so professional asking for our measurements, acting like she was doing us a favor while ripping us off. The data is completely useless.] Jessica: [I mean, we’re not engineers. We just trusted whatever she said.] Greg: [Honestly, if Haley hadn’t joined, who knows how long we would’ve kept getting bled dry.] Rachel: [Thank you so much, Haley. It’s so refreshing having someone genuine on the team, unlike some people… smh.] I muted the chat entirely and swiped over to an unread message from a few days ago. It was from Dominic, the captain of our fiercest rival team. Dom’s crew used to absolutely dominate the circuit. But ever since I joined Greg’s team and quietly outfitted them in Apex Dynamics gear, Dom’s squad had been relegated to permanent second place. Dom had reached out to me relentlessly. “Sarah, I have scoured every pro shop in the country and I cannot find the brand of gear you guys are running.” “Can you hook me up with your supplier? I’ll pay a premium, I promise.” Yesterday, somehow, he had finally uncovered my real identity. “Ms. Mercer. I know you’re the CEO of Apex Dynamics. Please, I am begging you, can you manufacture a batch of that custom gear for my squad? Name your price.” I hadn’t replied. Custom lines took an immense amount of time and resources, and I had been prioritizing my own team’s gear. Now, I opened Dominic’s chat thread. “Nineteen thousand dollars per set. Do you want them?” Dom replied in less than three seconds. “Ordering seven sets right now!” Before I could even blink, a business wire transfer notification hit my phone. $133,000. The $7,200 I had just refunded Greg felt like spare change in a tip jar. Suddenly, Greg tagged me in the team chat again. “Sarah, why haven’t you sent Haley your $200 for the new order?” “The qualifiers are right around the corner. Stop stalling!” I typed back cleanly. “I have my own gear. I don’t need to order hers.” Haley immediately posted a crying emoji. “Are you punishing the team just because you’re mad I exposed your little hustle?” “Even if you hate me, you can’t jeopardize the squad. We’re supposed to be a cohesive unit. If you’re wearing different gear, we look sloppy and unprofessional for the sponsors.” Greg followed up instantly, his tone authoritative and cold. “If you’re going to be this petty and selfish, you don’t belong on this roster. Pack your bags, Sarah.” Before I could even formulate a reply, the screen glitched. You have been removed from this group chat. I stared at the notification, then calmly locked my phone screen. Whatever. Did they honestly expect me to scale a vertical cliff face in two-hundred-dollar garbage just to protect their fragile egos? Unlike them, I actually valued my life. Dom quickly gathered his teammates’ precise biometrics and forwarded the massive file to my email. “Thank you so much, Sarah. But… won’t your current team be furious about this?” “They won’t care,” I replied. “They just kicked me off the roster.” The second that message delivered, my phone buzzed. I had been pulled into a new group chat: Dom’s Climbing Squad. “Got her! Everyone welcome the boss!” Dom texted. I sent a single question mark. “Had to snatch you up before anyone else did,” Dom replied with a grinning emoji. I let out a genuine laugh. The new chat was absolutely buzzing with hype. “Oh my god, Sarah’s here! Do you have any idea how long we’ve been drooling over your hardware?!” “I always wondered why Greg’s gear looked like it was literally molded to his body. Custom measurements. That makes so much sense.” “I flew to three different states trying to find those shoes! They don’t exist in retail!” “Wait, why the hell did Greg’s team kick you out?” I leaned back in my chair and typed. “Because a new girl offered them gear for two hundred dollars a set, and they decided I was an evil capitalist scammer.” 4 The entire chat erupted into crying-laughing emojis. “Two hundred bucks?! Are they suicidal?” “Bro, I saw a guy buy a cheap harness online once. The carabiner was made of pot metal. Snapped like a twig. If they use that trash on the wall, they are asking for a body bag.” “Well, guess we’re taking gold this season! Time to call our sponsors back!” Ever since Greg’s team started winning, Dom’s major sponsors had abandoned them. Competitive climbing had exploded in popularity, and a single corporate sponsorship deal could inject fifty grand into a team’s budget. That was why Greg was so quick to throw me under the bus. He had quit his day job and was living entirely off the prize money and sponsorships. With me out of the picture, that fifty grand would be split five ways instead of six. The day of the regional qualifiers arrived. At the base camp, Greg and the rest of my old team were huddled around, waiting for Haley to show up with their fresh equipment. I pulled my SUV into the staging area and popped the trunk. Before I could even grab my duffel, Greg marched over, his face twisted in a smug scowl. “What are you doing here, Sarah? I thought we made it perfectly clear. We are not buying your overpriced trash. Are you really trying to force a sale right now?” “Are you that desperate for cash? Can’t move your inventory without scamming us?” Jessica crossed her arms, shaking her head. “This is honestly just sad, Sarah.” Rachel rolled her eyes. “She really thinks we’re just dumb ATMs, huh?” I looked at them, my expression completely deadpan. “I’m here to compete. And this gear isn’t for you.” Greg barked a harsh, mocking laugh. “Compete? You’re not on our roster anymore!” “You get zero cut of our sponsor money today! If you try to force your way onto the wall, I will personally have the judges drag you out of here!” “Pack up your little bags and get out of our sight!” Suddenly, a heavy hand shoved Greg roughly out of the way. Dominic stepped squarely in front of me, glaring down at Greg. “Sarah is our lead climber today. Keep your damn mouth shut and step back.” Dom’s teammates rushed over, carefully unloading the heavy black duffels from my trunk and distributing the bags marked with their names. “Holy shit, the texture on this…” “How the hell is this helmet so light, but it feels like solid steel?” “These shoes… it feels like walking on a cloud!” Greg and his team stood there, their smugness faltering slightly into awkward confusion. But Greg quickly recovered, sneering. “A bunch of brainwashed idiots. Getting scammed and thanking her for it.” Right on cue, Haley’s bright pink sedan pulled into the gravel lot. She popped the trunk and waved excitedly. “Gear’s here, guys! Come grab your stuff!” Greg’s team practically shoved each other out of the way, shooting us dirty looks as they grabbed their plastic-wrapped packages. “Man, I almost feel bad for Dom’s crew,” Rachel giggled loudly. “Imagine dropping thousands of dollars and then seeing our two-hundred-dollar kits. They’re probably crying inside.” Jessica covered her mouth, snickering. “They’re gonna be too weak to climb after Sarah finishes bleeding their bank accounts dry.” Rachel enthusiastically ripped open the bag with her name on it. “Wow, these are so lightweight! Way lighter than Sarah’s heavy old junk!” Greg aggressively tore the zipper off his bag, eager to prove a point. Haley puffed out her chest. “I told you guys, I source nothing but the best—” Her voice was abruptly cut off by Greg. The color completely drained from his face as he stared into the bag. “What the actual hell is this?”
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