Iredia clutched the Pizza Hut gift card like it was gold, the plastic rectangle still warm from the GameStop register where he’d just traded in his old Xbox games. Fifty dollars. Enough for pizza parties, late study sessions, maybe even impressing Sarah from chemistry class.
“Grandpa Imiavan!” he called out, bursting through the kitchen door. “Look what I got!”
His grandfather looked up from his crossword puzzle, reading glasses perched on his weathered nose. At seventy-two, Imiavan had seen every hustle, every deal, every kid who thought they’d struck it rich.
“Pizza Hut gift certificate,” Iredia announced proudly. “Fifty bucks!”
Imiavan’s eyebrows raised with mild interest. “I’ll give you twenty-five for it.”
Iredia laughed, thinking his grandfather was joking. “But it’s worth fifty dollars.”
“To who?” Imiavan asked, not looking up from his puzzle.
“To Pizza Hut, obviously.” Iredia waved the card like evidence in a courtroom.
Imiavan set down his pencil. “Well then, maybe the good folks at Pizza Hut can spot you some cash when you need gas money for your date Friday night.”
“Come on, Grandpa. You’re trying to rip me off.” Iredia flopped into the chair across from him, frustration creeping into his voice.
“Listen and learn, son.” Imiavan’s voice carried the weight of decades. “In any deal, there’s one question both people gotta ask: What leverage do I have? And right now, you got none.”
Iredia frowned. “What’s leverage?”
Imiavan smiled—the same smile he’d worn when Iredia first asked why the sky was blue, or how birds knew which way to fly south. “Leverage is how you move things that seem impossible to move. It’s how you get people to do what you want them to do.”
He pointed to the gift card. “Now, if we were both trapped in a Pizza Hut during a zombie apocalypse, and they only accepted gift cards, and we were starving—then you’d have all the leverage. I’d probably give you my watch, my wallet, maybe even my truck keys for that card.”
Marcus started to see where this was going, but his pride wasn’t ready to give up.
“But this ain’t the zombie apocalypse,” Joe continued. “I got cash in my wallet. I got leftover Chinese food in the fridge. I can drive to any restaurant in town. Your gift card? It only works at one place, for one type of food, and only if I actually want pizza.”
The room fell quiet except for the hum of the refrigerator. Iredia stared at the gift card, seeing it differently now. It wasn’t a golden ticket—it was a limitation.
“So what you’re really asking,” Imiavan said gently, “is for me to give you fifty dollars cash in exchange for a promise that I can only spend at Pizza Hut. That’s not a fair trade for me, is it?”
Iredia felt something shift in his understanding. It was like those moments in math class when a concept suddenly clicked. “Okay… what about forty dollars then?”
Imiavan’s eyes twinkled. “Now you’re thinking like a businessman. But still no.”
“Thirty?”
“Getting warmer.”
Iredia thought about his upcoming date with Sarah. They’d talked about going to that new Korean BBQ place—definitely not Pizza Hut. He thought about gas money, movie tickets, all the things he actually needed cash for.
“Twenty-five,” he said finally.
Imiavan pulled out his wallet and counted out twenty-five dollars. “Deal.”
As Iredia pocketed the bills, something still nagged at him. “But Grandpa, didn’t you just get the better end of this? You got fifty dollars worth of pizza for twenty-five bucks.”
Imiavan chuckled as he tucked the gift card into his shirt pocket. “Maybe. Or maybe I just paid twenty-five dollars for pizza I might never eat, from a place I rarely go, that expires in six months.” He winked. “Sometimes the person with leverage still makes bad deals. That’s business, kiddo.”
Later that night, Iredia lay in bed thinking about the lesson. He thought about kids at school who bragged about their designer clothes but couldn’t afford lunch. About the girl who had the newest iPhone but worked two jobs to pay for it. About his friend Tyler who always talked about his dad’s car like it was his own.
He thought about Sarah, and how she never seemed to need anything from anyone. She brought her own lunch, drove her own (beat-up) car, and never asked to borrow money. She had something that couldn’t be bought or traded.
The next day at school, Iredia watched the social dynamics with new eyes. He saw kids desperate to sit at certain lunch tables, trading their dignity for acceptance. He saw others who walked alone but seemed perfectly content, unbothered by the social marketplace around them.
When Tyler offered to trade his AirPods for Iredia’s homework answers, Iredia heard his grandfather’s voice: “What leverage do I have?”
Tyler needed the answers. Iredia already had good grades. Tyler was offering something Iredia didn’t need for something Iredia had worked for.
“Nah, man,” Iredia said. “But I can help you understand the problems if you want.”
Tyler looked confused, like Iredia had turned down free money.
But Iredia was learning something more valuable than any transaction. Real power wasn’t about having things other people wanted. It was about not needing things other people had.
Friday night, at the Korean BBQ place with Sarah, Iredia paid for dinner with his twenty-five dollars. As they laughed over bulgogi and shared stories, he realized his grandfather had taught him something that would matter long after the gift card expired.
“You know what’s funny?” Sarah said, dipping a piece of beef in sauce. “My friends always ask why I don’t stress about having the latest everything. But I figured out that the moment you need something from someone else, they own a little piece of you.”
Marcus smiled, thinking of a weathered old man doing crossword puzzles. “My grandpa says that’s called leverage.”
“Smart man,” Sarah said. “Sounds like someone worth listening to.”
As they walked out into the night, Iredia felt something he’d never experienced before. It wasn’t the satisfaction of a good deal or the pride of ownership. It was the quiet confidence that came from understanding the game everyone else was playing—and knowing he didn’t have to play it their way.
The pizza gift card was long forgotten. But the lesson would last a lifetime.