I told myself it was normal. I told myself all families had a rhythm and this was just ours. I was seven years old when I started believing that. I was eleven when I stopped.
The science fair was in April of my sixth-grade year. I had spent six weeks building a working model of a water filtration system using materials from the hardware store and instructions I had adapted from three different library books. My teacher, Mrs. Patterson, told me the week before the competition that she had never seen a project like it from a middle-schooler.
I came home and told Ronald at dinner.
That was the whole response. One sound. Then he turned to Brenton and asked about baseball practice.
The day of the competition, I won first place for the entire district. Sixty-two students, one trophy about twelve inches tall with my name engraved on a small gold plate at the base. I carried it home on the bus because no one came to pick me up.
That same week, Brenton played in a Saturday morning scrimmage. Not a tournament, not a championship—a scrimmage, a practice game that didn’t count for anything. Ronald drove forty minutes each way, sat in the front row of the bleachers for two hours, and filmed the entire thing on his phone.
That evening at dinner, he made Brenton stand up while he played the footage on his laptop for Sylvia.
“That’s my boy,” Ronald said.
Twice.
My trophy sat on the kitchen counter for four days. Then it was moved to a shelf in my bedroom. Then it disappeared entirely. I never asked where it went. I already knew the answer would hurt more than the question.
