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 paused before the last paragraph. He could write the football version AND a second, truer one, then let Marcus pick when he woke up. He opened a new document and started typing fast, the real story pouring out of him.

In the morning Theo set both versions side by side on the laptop. Marcus read them slowly with his good hand on the trackpad. He stopped at the true one, the one about quitting the team and being scared to tell anyone. "This is the one," he whispered.

Marcus picked the true one, but asked Theo to soften the part about their dad. Theo did, keeping it honest but kind. They sent it. It felt like the first thing the two of them had ever really made side by side.