Marcus sat against the headboard, his right hand wrapped in plaster and pins. The painkillers slurred his words as he tried to dictate his college essay. "Say I learned grit from football," he mumbled, then drifted off mid-sentence. Theo sat at the laptop, the cursor blinking. The deadline was midnight. His brother couldn't type a single word, so Theo would have to do it for him.

Theo typed exactly what Marcus asked for: grit, football, never giving up. He read it back and it sounded fake, like a hundred other essays. But it was Marcus's essay, not his. So he kept going, putting his brother's voice on the page even though every line felt stiff and borrowed.