My alarm goes off at 5:30 every morning, and the first thing I do before I’m even fully awake is check the fridge.
Not because I’m hungry that early, but because I need to know how to divide what we have. What my little sister gets for breakfast, what goes in her lunch, and what I hold back for dinner.
Robin is 12, and she doesn’t know I skip lunch most days. I’d like to keep it that way. Because I’m not just her big brother. I’m all she has.
She doesn’t know I skip lunch most days.
I work the closing shift at the hardware store four nights a week and pick up odd jobs on weekends, whatever’s available. Robin usually stays with Ms. Brandy, our elderly neighbor, until I get home.
I’m 21. I should be in college, figuring things out like everyone else. But Robin needs me more, and those dreams can stay on hold.
She was doing well, and for a while, that felt like enough to keep going on. But now and then, I’d catch something small. A hesitation. A glance away. Like there was something Robin wasn’t saying.
It started a few weeks ago, casually, the way my sister always brings things up when she doesn’t want to make a big deal of them.
She was doing well, and for a while, that felt like enough to keep going on.
We were eating dinner, and she mentioned, without quite looking at me, that most of the girls at school had been wearing these cool denim jackets lately.
She described them in that offhand way kids use when they want something but are too aware of the situation to ask directly.
Robin didn’t say, “I want one, Eddie.” She didn’t have to.
I watched my sister poke at her food and change the subject, and I felt that particular kind of ache that comes from wanting to give someone something and not being sure you can.
Robin didn’t say, “I want one, Eddie.”
I didn’t say anything that night. But I started running numbers in my head.
I picked up two extra weekend shifts. I made my portions smaller for three weeks and told Robin I wasn’t hungry, which was only half a lie, because I’ve gotten good at talking myself out of being hungry when the alternative matters more.
Three weeks later, I had enough money, and I went and bought that jacket, feeling like I’d pulled something off that I wasn’t sure I could.
I left it on the kitchen table when Robin got home, folded with the collar up the way they had it in the store. She dropped her backpack in the doorway and stopped when she saw the jacket.
I picked up two extra weekend shifts.
“Oh my God! Is that?” she breathed.
“Yours, Robbie… all yours.”
Robin crossed the room slowly as if she were afraid it might not be real, then picked the jacket up and held it out in front of her, checking it from both sides.
Then she looked at me, tears gathering in her eyes. She threw her arms around me so hard that I actually stumbled back a step.
“Eddie,” Robin said into my shoulder, and that was all she said for a good minute.
“Oh my God! Is that?”
Leave a Comment