I ate cereal standing up, milk dripping onto the lenolium. Dad walked in later. Ty loosened and ruffled my hair without a word. That was his version of sorry.
Travis’s birthdays were different. The whole block showed up. Mom rented a bounce house one year, hired a guy to grill ribs the next. She’d stand at the gate in her sundress, waving people in, telling everyone how Travis struck out the side in the seventh inning. I’d sit on the porch steps counting cars, wondering if anyone noticed I was there. Mom never hid it.
“Travis is going places,” she’d say, while folding his uniforms, the fabric soft from too many washes. “You need to support him.”
Support meant giving up my Saturday mornings to sit in the bleachers, meant handing over my allowance when his fundraiser jar came up short. I did it without complaining. Complaining got you nowhere in that house.
Dad Harold worked downtown numbers and spreadsheets all day. He came home tired, kicked off his shoes by the door, and disappeared into the den with the TV. If Mom raised her voice about Travis needing new gear, he’d nod and sign the check. If I asked for 20 bucks for a school trip, he’d glance up long enough to say,
“Ask your mother.”
That was the end of it.
The only person who saw me was Aunt Eileen, Dad’s younger sister. She lived across town in a small apartment above a bakery, the kind where the smell of cinnamon rolls leaked through the floorboards. She started showing up on random Sundays, pulling into the driveway in her beat up Honda trunk full of groceries she didn’t need to buy. Mom would frown but let her in. Eileen waited until Mom was in the shower or out running errands. Then she’d slip an envelope into my backpack, $50, sometimes a hundred folded tight with a rubber band.
“For books,” she’d whisper, tapping the side of her nose like it was our secret code, “or whatever you need.”
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