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.

Theo finished the football essay and hit submit at 11:52. Done. But that night he couldn't sleep. The essay was clean, safe, and totally empty. He kept thinking about how Marcus's real story never made it onto the page at all.

In the morning Theo confessed he'd submitted the safe version. Marcus read it on the screen, his hand throbbing, and went quiet. "It's fine," he finally said. "It's not me, but it's fine." Neither of them believed that, and the silence in the room said so.