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.

Theo emailed the admissions office at dawn, hands shaking. "My brother broke his hand and we submitted the wrong draft. Can we send the real one?" He hit send before he could chicken out, then went to wake Marcus and tell him what he'd done.

The office never replied. Friday came and went. The football essay was the one on file, and that was that. Marcus shrugged it off, but Theo carried the guilt for weeks, wishing he'd just written the true thing the first time.