The morning air was crisp, carrying the scent of damp earth and the faint sweetness of autumn leaves. Amaal tugged her coat tighter around her as she hurried down the cracked sidewalk, her boots tapping a steady rhythm against the pavement. In her free hand, she clutched a brown paper bag, the edges slightly crumpled from where she’d gripped it too tightly. She was late. Again.

She glanced at her watch and sighed, picking up her pace. School had let out nearly an hour ago, and Charlie would be waiting at the usual spot—the bench under the old oak tree, just outside the library. He always waited, patient in the way only ten-year-olds with nowhere else to be could manage.

Amaal found him exactly where she expected, hunched over a tattered book, his dark hair falling into his eyes. Meanwhile, his sneakers, worn at the soles, swung back and forth beneath the bench. She slowed her steps and stopped to watch him for a moment, her chest tightening.

“Sorry, bug,” she said as she approached, the nickname slipping out without thought. “Mrs. Calhoun wouldn’t stop talking after class.”

Charlie looked up and grinned, revealing the gap where his front tooth used to be. “It’s okay, I was reading.”

Amaal dropped onto the bench beside him, passing him the paper bag. “Got your favourite: Tuna on rye, extra pickles.”

Charlie’s eyes lit up as he unwrapped the sandwich with careful hands like it was something precious. “Thanks, Millie.”

She ruffled his hair, something she knew he hated but endured nonetheless. “What are we reading today?”

Charlie held up the book, its spine bent and the pages dog-eared. “The Hobbit. Mrs. Summers let me borrow it from the library. I think I like Bilbo.”

Amaal smiled. “Yeah? Why’s that?”

He shrugged, chewing thoughtfully. “He’s small, but he’s brave. And also because he goes on adventures even though he’s scared.”

She leaned back against the bench, staring up at the branches above them, their edges tinged with gold. “Bravery isn’t about not being scared, you know. It’s about doing things anyway.”

Charlie nodded like he understood, even if Amaal wasn’t sure she did herself.

Life had been different before, back when their parents hadn’t left and when nights weren’t so quiet and long before Amaal had to become more than just his sister. She was fifteen herself when it happened, old enough to understand that things wouldn’t go back to the way they were, young enough to still wish they could. Their father had been gone first—walked out one night and never came back. And although their mother had held on a little longer, eventually, even she couldn’t find a reason to stay.

And so it had been just the two siblings.

There were days when Amaal resented it—the weight of responsibility pressing down on her in ways she never expected. She was so young yet had to balance school with her part-time job on the weekends, along with making sure Charlie had a clean uniform for school and enough to eat. It was exhausting, and sometimes, in the quiet hours of the night, she wondered if their mother had felt the same way before she’d left.

But then there were moments—like now—when Charlie would look at her with that quiet trust in his eyes, and the resentment faded into something softer. Something closer to love.

That evening, they sat on the worn-out couch in their tiny apartment, watching the television. Charlie had curled up beside her, his head resting against her shoulder as he mumbled sleepily about dwarves and dragons. Amaal stroked his hair absently, her eyes fixed on the screen but her thoughts miles away.

“Millie?” he spoke with a voice tired and sleepy.

“Hmm?”

“Do you think Mom will ever come back?”

The question hung between them; Amaal swallowed hard, her fingers still stroking his hair stopped.

“I don’t know, bug,” she whispered because lying to him felt worse than telling the truth.

Charlie didn’t say anything for a while, but his small hand found hers and held on tightly. “It’s okay. Even if she doesn’t, we’re okay, right? We do have each other.”

Amaal blinked back the sudden sting behind her eyes and squeezed his hand. “Yeah,” she said softly. “We’re okay.”

And in that moment, she believed it.

Time had a funny way of slipping by when you weren’t paying attention. And this is how days blended into weeks and weeks into months. Soon, winter came with the chill in the air, yet Amaal found herself caught in the same routine—school, work, home—each sun bringing the next day with a comforting and, simultaneously, suffocating certainty.

It was on one of those cold December evenings when the wind howled outside their apartment that she found Charlie sitting at the kitchen table with a look of deep concentration on his face. He had a stash of papers spread out in front of him while he wrote something on one, his tongue peeking out slightly.

“What’s all this?” Amaal asked, setting her bag down and leaning over to peek at his work.

Charlie grinned sheepishly. “Christmas list.”

Amaal’s heart sank, for Christmas was a sore subject. Money was tight—too tight for things like presents or decorations. Even though she had done her best, picking up extra shifts and scraping together what she could, it was never enough.

Thus, she braced herself for disappointment. “What’re you asking for?”

Charlie pushed the paper toward her. It wasn’t long—just a few items scrawled in his messy handwriting.

1. A new jacket (mine’s getting kinda small).
2. One of those cool dinosaur books.
3. A cake.

Amaal blinked. “A cake?”

Charlie shrugged. “We never have cake. I thought it might be nice to have one this time, don’t you think?”

Something in her chest ached, and she reached out to pull him into a hug, pressing a kiss to his messy hair. “We’ll see what we can do.”

Christmas morning arrived quietly, with a soft dusting of snow on the windowsill. Amaal had stayed up late the night before, carefully wrapping a secondhand jacket she’d found at the thrift store and the dinosaur book she’d managed to snag on sale. And on the kitchen counter sat a lopsided chocolate cake, made from scratch with whatever ingredients she could scrape together. It wasn’t much, but it was something for Charlie.

Charlie’s eyes lit up when he saw it all, and he tackled her in a hug, his laughter filling the small apartment in a way that made Amaal’s chest feel too tight.

“Best Christmas EVER!” he declared with a mouth full of cake.

Amaal laughed, shaking her head. “You’re easy to please, bug.”

He grinned up at her, chocolate smeared at the corner of his mouth. “Because I have you.”

And in that moment, Amaal realized something: it wasn’t about the big things—the presents, the money, the perfect life she sometimes wished she could give him. Instead, it was about the little things: the sandwiches after school; the stories shared on the couch; the way he held her hand when he was scared.

She might not have been the best sister in the world, but she was his. And that was enough.