And I was the other one.

The quiet one.

The one who wore Stephanie’s hand-me-downs, who worked two jobs through high school and then through college, who learned early and thoroughly not to complain when our parents quietly emptied my savings account, again, to rescue Stephanie from another of her endless emergencies.

That was the arrangement of our family, so old and so deep that no one ever named it: that Stephanie was the one who shone, and I was the one who paid for the electricity.

She received, and I provided, and the provision was invisible, and the shining was celebrated, and if I ever showed the faintest sign of wanting some light of my own, it was treated as a kind of theft — as though every ounce of attention I drew was an ounce stolen directly from my sister, who deserved it more.

Chapter 3 — Professionally Boring