"Casey, come on, I'm starving!" I shout through the small apartment to my brother because he's taking so long to get ready. We have to go shopping today for his boarding school dorm room that he's moving into soon to start his high school career. It's an expensive school that I have put a lot of work into affording but I want the best for my brother. I want him to have everything that I never did.

"I'm coming," He assures me from the bedroom. The apartment is small and only has one bedroom so I gave it to Casey; I have a bed in the living room behind the couch. It's easier that way, especially when I have to come home late at night. I tell Casey that I work the third shift-- what I tell all of my friends who don't know what I do-- but it's better if I don't wake him up coming home.

Hurrying from the back room, my little brother emerges as he runs his fingers through his blond hair. Looking at us, it's pretty obvious that we're related. The blond hair, the blue eyes, the height. We're both pretty tall but he's still growing so I know that he'll be taller than me soon.

I've worked really hard to be able to afford boarding school for him. It's not that far away so he can visit on weekends if he wants to but I want what's best for him and this boarding school is a sure-fire way of getting him a bunch of scholarships for college because it's that good. Maybe even Ivy League if he applies himself. And considering my job at the moment, it sure helps to have him out of the apartment.

"Okay, I'm ready. I'm in the mood for fried chicken for lunch," Casey tells me as we get ready to leave the apartment.

"Sure, fried chicken it is," I assure him because I usually just go with whatever he wants. Even when it comes to something as small as what we're getting for lunch, I want him to have whatever he wants.

So we head out of the apartment to the nearest metro station that we use to take us into the heart of Washington D.C. so that we can get some fried chicken.

"Do you have your list?" I ask him as we're waiting for the next train to arrive.

"Yes," He pulls a crinkled piece of paper out of his pocket with words scribbled down the front. "They emailed us a list of things that they think that we'll need so I wrote most of that on here. And some other stuff that I thought of. It's a lot of stuff though, we don't have to get everything."

"We'll get everything," I promise him. "This is big, you know, moving out and being on your own and everything."

"I'm not going to be on my own, it's a boarding school," He reminds me. "They have a thousand rules."

"Okay but you won't be with me," I add. "So it's different. I'm going to be so lonely in the apartment without you."

"You were the one who wanted me to go to this school, Ellie," Casey tells me, rolling his eyes at me.

"I know that but it's only because it's what's best for you," I insist as the train arrives and so after everybody spills out of it, we squeeze our way inside and find seats across from an old couple. "And I'm not forcing you to go, you know. But I'm glad that you're going. It's exciting."

"Yeah. I'm excited," He nods. "You know that they have this thermal physics class with an optics lab? You can't take it until junior year though."

"You're such a nerd," I say teasingly. "You'll fit right in."

"Shut up," He scolds me but then laughs. "They have a lot of really cool classes. It's just that they have all of these rules so I won't have all of those teenage experiences like binge drinking on the weekends or accidentally getting a girl pregnant."

"Okay, that's not how all teenage experiences go," I laugh at his perception of being a teenager. "The binge drinking, sure, but getting somebody pregnant is not a normal thing that teenagers do. If you want to have sex, I'll get you some condoms but,-"

"No. Ellie, don't say that. No. I will get them myself that is so weird," He cringes at me bringing up sex.

"Alright, fine," I appease my embarrassed brother. "Just be safe. You can still have teenage experiences at this school. There's no wrong way to be a teenager."

"Really?" He wonders skeptically at me.

"Okay, so my teenage years weren't ideal but you aren't going to grow up like I did. That's why I work so hard, you know, so that you can do everything right. Make good teenage memories, some bad mistakes. You'll have good teenage years, I'll make sure of it."

"Well, if we're comparing them to yours, they have to be better, right?" He jokes with me.

The train stops at our stop. We get up and leave and head for our lunch spot down the street.

"Yeah, you definitely can't get worse than mine," I go along with him. He's definitely right about that. My teenage years were awful, so if his are as bad as mine then I definitely did something wrong.

I'd been in the foster system since I was I was eight and I didn't get out until they kicked me out at eighteen. Casey was in foster care his entire life but when I turned eighteen and left the system, I brought him with me to the apartment that we live in now. Not legally, but our old foster parents know where he is. Sometimes, when the social worker visits, I have to take Casey over to the foster house so that the social worker doesn't know that he doesn't actually live there. That way, they still get their money and I get my brother. As long as they get the check, they don't really care where Casey is.

They weren't great people, and they still aren't I'd imagine, so my teenage years were pretty rough. I spent my time going to school, working, and then I was taking care of Casey. I made sure that nobody was touching him or hurting him. I made sure that he did well in school without getting into any trouble, went to his parent/teacher conferences. When we were in foster care, we were all each other had and I clung to that.

Once we're sitting down in the restaurant with our fried chicken and coleslaw, Casey starts going over his list again. It's basic stuff like towels, socks, soap, school supplies, and bed sheets. Just around the corner, there's a Walmart which is where we're going to do all of our shopping today and I'm confident that we can afford to get everything on his list.

"I won't know anybody at this school," Casey randomly brings that up.

"You'll make friends," I promise him. "I know that it'll be scary but you'll be around a lot of smart kids and you're a smart kid so you'll make friends and they'll even be into thermal physics. What if you get a girlfriend?"

"Unlikely," He says quickly.

"Why?" I ask him. "You're smart and you're nice and you're funny. Lucky for you, you look like me and our genetics are basically flawless. We're a gorgeous people."

"You can't possibly be that conceited, Ellie," Casey says with a laugh as he bites into his chicken.

"No, I'm not that conceited but I'm just saying that it's possible if you just put yourself out there," I explain to him. "But you don't have to. Just do whatever feels right for you."

"I'm starting to feel sick," He admits, putting his food down. "Maybe I shouldn't go."

"No, you should go. I know that it's scary but you have to challenge yourself," I insist. "You want to go to this school, it's a really great school, and you have to at least give it a chance. If you try it for a semester and don't like it, you can come back home."

"Haven't you already paid for a whole year's tuition though?" He asks me.

"Yes but the money doesn't matter as much as you being happy," I tell him. "And I want you to be happy but I want you to try this before you decide whether it's what you want or not. Think about that optics lab that you could be missing out on."

"Alright, you're making fun of me," He accuses me but he starts eating again which is good. I'm glad that I could diffuse his anxiety for now. I just hope that I can keep it up until he leaves next week.

"I am just a little bit," I admit with a small shrug. "Come on, eat faster, we have to beat rush hour traffic."

He starts stuffing his face a bit faster and when we're both finished eating, we head over to the Walmart to start getting everything that he needs for school. It takes a long time, there's a lot of stuff on that list, but we do eventually get through the whole thing. It's a lot of money but I was expecting that and I had prepared for it so it's not a big deal.

Casey looks guilty though, hating that we have to spend this money just for him to go to this fancy school. He's always been that way, feeling bad about spending any money because he knows that money is always tight. He'll never ask for anything that he doesn't need like any toys or games that he wants. I try to surprise him sometimes with a new video game or something that I know that he wants but it's hard when he doesn't actually ask for anything.

"It's not as bad as I was expecting," I try to make him feel better about it. "And you know, I don't have to work tonight so how do you feel about a movie marathon?"

"Which one?" He asks me.

"You choose. We haven't done Harry Potter in a while."

"What about Lord of the Rings?" He suggests instead.

"Sure, Lord of the Rings," I agree with him. It's pretty difficult to ride the metro with all of our bags but we squeeze onto the train and lug every single bag back to the apartment with sore arms and a few ripping bags. Luckily though, everything stays intact until we can get it into the bedroom where we start getting everything packed into his suitcases.

"So what are you going to do with all of your free time?" Casey asks me while we work. "Since I won't be here for you to worry about."

"I'll still be worrying about you," I inform him. "You could be a world away and I'd still worry. But yeah, I guess that I'll have some more free time. Maybe I'll take up a hobby like knitting or something."

"Knitting?"

"Well, what would you suggest?" I ask him in response.

"I don't know. Maybe a sport like boxing or something."

"I look like a boxer?" I raise my eyebrows and then laugh at him. "I'm honored. I guess it could come in handy, I'd be able to kick some serious ass."

"Yeah, I can definitely see it," He tells me with a nod.

My phone bings with a notification in my pocket as I'm stuffing his new towels into the corner of his full suitcase so I grab it out of my pocket and see that the notification is from a news station that I have subscribed to on my phone. The new notification reads "Silas Barkley Addresses the Nation on his Stance on the Healthcare Bill Tonight at 7". I lock my phone again and then keep trying to fit everything into the suitcase.

"Dad is on TV tonight," I tell Casey.

"So?" Casey responds with a bitter note in his voice. "I don't know why you care about that stuff."

"I like to keep up with him," I explain with a small shrug.

"It's useless," He informs me.

"I know that."

"Suit yourself," He sighs.

I know that he doesn't like hearing about our dad, what's going on with him or anything but I do. I don't know why. Maybe it's because I actually met the man a few times and when I did meet him, he was really nice to me. He bought me a lot of things, let me have ice cream, he was the one who gave me the nickname Ellie from my full name, Eleanor. When I was little, until I was eight years old, he was a hero that I occasionally saw when he came to town.

Now, I know that he's a shitty person but I still have those fond memories of him. Casey doesn't have that, he just knows him as the piece of shit who threw us away like last week's leftovers.

Once seven o'clock comes around, Casey is in his room and I'm in the living room on the couch with a can of beer as I watch the news come on. At first, they're just talking about my father, Senator Barkley, and what they expect him to say in this interview that he's about to hold. He's a republican so it's pretty obvious where he stands on healthcare so I don't know why this news station is so amped up about this but from what I've gathered, his vote is pretty important for this bill.

And then the interview starts and that very familiar face is sitting across from one of the news reporters. He starts droning on about the healthcare bill that I have no interest in and Casey peaks out of his room. He walks down the small hallway and then approaches the living room. He stands behind the couch, right beside me, and watches the TV with me.

"Want a beer?" I offer him, reaching down to the twelve pack that I have at my feet and I grab a new can and I hand it to him. I've never offered him alcohol before but it's just one beer and I know that thinking about our father stresses him out as much as it stresses me out. I don't know why we torture ourselves with it but we do. Every single time.

He takes the beer and hops over the back of the couch, landing on his butt on the cushion beside mine and then he pops open the lukewarm cheap beer. "He got a haircut."

"Got a new watch too," I notice. I watch as he takes his first sip of the beer and cringes but looks the other way to try and hide it which almost makes me laugh. "Really moving up in the world."

In the interview with him is his wife and his two kids—his legitimate ones that he actually recognizes as his own. Silas Junior and Maryanne. Silas Junior, who they call Jay (J for Junior) is 27 now, 5 years older than me, and he works in politics with his father. Maryanne is 25 with a family of her own now with a husband and a new baby. I don't know why he has to bring his family to the interview with him, maybe to make a point about his political stance, but it's uncomfortable for both Casey and I.

"What would we be like if we were like them?" Casey asks me curiously as we watch the interview.

"We'd be spoiled," I respond easily. "Never having to work but we'd be in the public eye all of the time. You know how many scandals his children have gotten into, anytime that we screwed up anything, it'd be in the news."

"They look happy," He tells me.

"I like to think that it's just an act," I admit to him. "I like to tell myself that they're just good actors, smiling for the cameras but really, they're not so happy. The public scrutiny, the boring politics all of the time, I don't think it'd be much fun."

"But they also don't have to work midnight shifts just to get food on the table," Casey adds. "Poor little rich kids up on the mountain, while we're down here begging for dirt. It's not fair."

"I know that it's not fair," I agree with him. "But it's what happened. And you know that it's not personal, he's most concerned about his image and having two illegitimate children with another woman is a total no-no. Especially for his base."

"So you think that he thinks about us at all?" Casey asks me curiously and then forces down another drink of the beer. "Just not enough to care more about us than his reputation."

"No," I respond easily. "I don't think that he thinks about us at all. We don't fit into his life. We never have."

"Bonnie did," He counters, referring to our mother. He's never met her either. I mean, sure, I guess technically he had met her when he was being birthed from her but not long after that, she really lost her mind and was never seen again. Not dead, just gone. "At some point, she fit into his life or we wouldn't be here."

"She fit into his life as a fling once a month for ten years," I remind him. "And yeah, ten years is a long time but that was 14 years ago."

"But he knows about us," Casey adds. "I mean, does he even know that Bonnie left? Does he know that we're on our own? That you've had to bust your ass to get us out of that hellscape? Even if he did know, what would he do about it?"

"Probably nothing."

"I know. Probably nothing," He mumbles, staring blankly at the screen as he takes a sip of the beer. He grimaces from the flavor but he tries to hide it from me by looking the other way. It makes me laugh. "But he's the reason that we're here. That we're alive, I just can't imagine knowing that you've created life, that there are two beings out there that depend on you and you just don't even blink an eye."

"We don't need him," I promise my little brother. "I know that it's been rough but we've got this. We're a couple of misfits but we fit with each other and we make a good team. That man doesn't care about us, he only wanted to get laid. Bonnie was just a monthly hook up because she was easy, because she loved him. He didn't care about her either."

"I don't blame him for that one," Casey admits and then forces another drink of beer down his throat. "She's a fucking nut job."

"You shouldn't sleep with somebody that you don't care about," I say to him and I do understand the irony of me telling that to him but luckily, he doesn't see the irony. "And yes, he should accept the consequences of doing what he did but he just doesn't care. He cares about his job, his reputation, elections, and his family. His real family, the one that fits in his life. But not us."

"We don't fit," He finally agrees with me. "We should blackmail him. Two kids with another woman while being married to his wife and he already had his two real kids? He'd have to pay us, give us whatever we wanted."

"No," I say quickly. "I just said, we don't need him. And we're better than that. I know that we come from shitty people, Case, but we're better than that. Alright? We're doing just fine just the two of us."

I know that Casey wants to continue to rant but we've had this conversation so many times, every time that we talk about our parents, and it's just beating a dead horse now.

I've come to accept that our father is completely apathetic toward our existence but Casey hasn't. I think that it's because he's seen what it's done to me, being on our own. Casey is too young to get a job so he tries to help out as much as possible but there's not much that he can do which puts almost all of the financial burden on me. I don't mind carrying that weight but Casey does, and he hates our father for putting me through this.

Of course, I hate our father for putting us through this too, for abandoning us, but I hate our mother more. She was the one who actively poked holes in condoms, lied about birth control, stuff like that just to get pregnant. She had to have known deep inside that he would never love her but she got pregnant anyway in hopes of convincing a married man to leave his wife for her. And when that didn't work, she threw us away.