Here’s a rewritten version that keeps the same meaning: “You’re nothing like your sister,” my mom remarked at dinner.

Vivian. My sister has always been the star. Tall, radiant, possessed of a devastating confidence, she is the kind of person who fills a room simply by inhaling. She debated her way to trophies in high school, earned a law scholarship that my parents framed before she even attended a class, and walked into a career everyone applauded before she had even proved herself.

And I? I was Nora. Quiet, steady Nora. I watched her take the spotlight like it was her birthright. My parents adore her with a religious fervor. At every family gathering, every holiday, every suffocating dinner, they lift her accomplishments like sacrificial offerings to the gods of success. New cases she won, promotions she was “guaranteed,” the house she bought, her plans, her vacations, her potential.

And then there’s me. Nora, who paid her own tuition at seventeen while Vivian’s was covered. Nora, who worked two jobs in college—one at a library, one waiting tables—while Vivian rushed a sorority. Nora, who never asked for help because she learned, through a thousand small rejections, not to.

It wasn’t that my parents disliked me. They just preferred the louder story. They preferred the dazzle.

Still, I kept showing up every Friday because they insisted. My dad, in his jovial, oblivious way, always said, “This family has a seat for you, Nora. Don’t leave it empty.” He said it half-joking, half-serious, completely unaware of the irony. My mom would call if I was even five minutes late, her voice tight. “Family first,” she’d remind me.

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