He Fell For My Sister From A Class Photo Chapter 12

He Fell For My Sister From A Class Photo Chapter 12

Ethan was eerily calm. He blocked my way completely and stared at me with full focus.

He just hummed lowly, “Yeah.”

I asked him, “When?”

The winter night was silent.

Ethan’s voice was low and gentle.

“When your sister was away on that sketching trip,” he said. “During that calculus class, I saw your scratch paper. I recognized your handwriting.”

I closed my eyes. He’d known even earlier than I thought.

I asked again, “I never sent you my handwriting.”

Mostly I just sent him clean, blank problem sets.

But at my words, Ethan, as if prepared, pulled out his phone and showed me.

It was a photo from a year ago.

A physics problem, and in the corner, my scratch paper was visible-my messy calculations

scrawled on it.

Ethan zoomed in and pointed. “Here. Your handwriting.”

I frowned.

It was absurd and frustrating.

He could remember tiny handwriting in perfect detail, but he couldn’t recognize me in person.

Ethan kept talking. Like he’d been waiting to say this for so long.

He scrolled through his photo album, showing me.

“Two years. You sent me thirty-three pictures total. Thirty of them were homework problems.”

He said, “After you blocked me and I couldn’t find you, I spent every day studying those photos.”

I gave a bitter laugh.

I pulled out my own phone and opened my album.

I didn’t have many photos, and my favorites folder held just one.

I pulled it up and showed Ethan.

“Can you find me in this photo?”

Seeing that picture, Ethan flinched and squeezed his eyes shut.

It was the photo he had sent me.

After our high school graduation exams, I’d sent him my graduation picture and told him to guess

which one I was.

He’d drawn a red heart outline around my sister.

In the picture, I was standing right next to Vivienne.

That red line cut straight across my face, unsparing.

In that photo, my sister was circled in red, her smile dazzling.

My expressionless face was cut through by that red line.

Blurred and unrecognizable.

Maybe it was my emotions getting the better of me, or the lingering alcohol.

Half a year of bottled-up frustration finally broke free.

A tear slid down my cheek before I could stop it.

Crying, I asked Ethan, “Why did it have to be my sister?”

I said, “…Why does everyone only see her?”

“Mom and Dad love her. Classmates want to be her friend. And even you-you noticed my sister

first.”

I was drowning in hurt, and years of pent-up bitterness came spilling out right in front of him.

“My parents are just regular employees. Money was tight, but my sister got everything-dance, piano, cello, watercolor painting.”

“They sent her to learn the best of everything because she was pretty, because she was talented.

She’s good at everything, poised and gifted. Everyone adores her.”

“My grandparents always gave her bigger cash gifts than me. Classmates and teachers never

believed Vivienne was my sister.”

“I told my parents I wanted to learn piano too, but my mom just told me to be more considerate and understand how hard things were for them.”

“I always wore my sister’s old clothes. I never owned a single new piece of clothing of my own until middle school.”

I asked Ethan, “How much more understanding do they want from me?”