On Christmas Eve, my parents suspended my schooling until I apologized to their golden boy. I said one word: “All right.” By morning, my room was packed, and my Georgetown transfer was already approved. My brother went pale.
“Please tell me you didn’t send it.”
Dad’s smile froze mid-breath.
“Send what?”
I stood in my childhood bedroom on Christmas morning, surrounded by taped boxes and half-empty drawers, watching my father’s face drain of color as he read something on his phone.
My mother clutched my brother Tyler’s arm while he whispered urgently about damage control, his voice thin and frantic like he could talk reality into changing its mind.
The Georgetown University acceptance letter sat on my desk like a quiet witness, next to a printed email confirmation and a stack of scholarship documents. Twenty-four hours earlier, my parents had threatened to cut off my education unless I apologized to Tyler for exposing his academic cheating. I had smiled, held their gaze, and said, “All right.” Now they were realizing they had severely underestimated their supposedly obedient daughter.
My name is Christine, and until three days ago, I believed my brother Tyler walked on water.
At twenty-five, he had graduated summa cum laude from Harvard Medical School and was completing his residency at Massachusetts General Hospital. Meanwhile, I was just another junior at our local state university, struggling through my biochemistry degree while my parents reminded me, in a hundred small ways, that I could never measure up to their golden boy.
The dynamics in our household had been carved into stone since childhood. Tyler received the praise, the money, the proud introductions to strangers, the unwavering belief that he could do no wrong.
I received the leftover attention and the constant comparisons that left me feeling inadequate even on the days I tried not to care.
When Tyler won the state science fair in high school, my parents threw him a celebration dinner with cake and speeches and photos that still sat framed on the mantel. When I placed second in the same competition two years later, they mentioned it briefly over takeout pizza, like a weather update. I learned early that in our family, Tyler’s success was a holiday and mine was a footnote.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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