The morning after my little sister spent every coin she had on a birthday cake for a boy at the hospital, I opened our front door and found our lawn covered in balloons.
Dozens were tied to bricks and planted across the wet grass.
In the exact center stood one enormous black balloon. Under it sat a red box.
Della, my little sister, gripped the back of my shirt. “Syd, who is that from?”
Under it sat a red box.
I couldn’t answer. My stomach had already dropped.
A note was taped to the lid.
You came to my window every day. Nobody else did. And nobody knew anything about me. Please open it.”
I’d raised Della alone since I was 19.
Our parents got lost while hiking 8 years earlier and never came back. One week, I was arguing with Mom about curfew. The next week, I was signing forms for Della with shaking hands.
I couldn’t answer.
By the time Della turned eight, we had a routine. She got the bedroom. I slept on the pull-out couch and worked breakfast shifts at a diner and nights in a pharmacy stockroom.
Della never complained. That scared me more than whining.
One Thursday evening, I was folding laundry while she sat on the floor, shaking an old mint tin full of coins.
You’re eating lunch at school, right?” I asked.
Della froze.
“I’m eating parts of lunch, Syd.”
Della never complained.
“Parts?”
“The free parts.”
I set down her shirt. “Della.”
She sighed like a tiny, tired grandma. “Nobody dies from skipping canned peaches.”
“Why are you saving lunch money, monkey?”
She hugged the tin. “I have a project. A hospital boy.”
“The free parts.”
The hospital sat two blocks from her school. Della walked with the Keene kids and Mrs. Keene, who crossed them at the corner.
Still, my chest tightened.
What hospital boy?”
“The one in the third-floor window. He watches us walk by.”
“You talked to him?”
“No. At first, I just waved.”
“At first?”
“You talked to him?”
“What did you say?”
“His name is Tobias. He turns 11 tomorrow. He likes dinosaurs and hates vanilla pudding.”
“You learned all that today?”
“He talks fast when someone listens.”
That line stayed with me.
I looked at the tin. “And the lunch money?”
He said nobody was coming for his birthday.”
“Honey, his parents may have reasons.”
“He turns 11 tomorrow.”
“I know,” she said. “But he still looked sad.”
Then she opened her backpack and pulled out a small grocery-store cake and a dollar-store dinosaur with one crooked eye.
“I spent $11.40,” she said. “Every coin I had.”
My eyes burned. “You gave away all your lunch money