My Sister Got a New Car While I Got a Bus Pass but My 18th Birthday Changed Everything

to a pen and a notepad. Not from spite. Because it reminds me of who I was at 5:45 in the September dark, waiting for a bus that came every thirty minutes and a future that was not coming at all until I built it from the materials I had available.

I grabbed my backpack and locked the door and the alarm chirped once, that small confident sound that still continue reading …