In the small hotel room that his family shared, Sam Evans gently tucked his younger siblings into bed before heading to the other side of the room to wait for his parents to come home. Home. How sad was it when 'home' was a hotel room? He supposed that it could have been worse, without his father's unemployment and his part time job, they couldn't have afforded that. He didn't like to think about what could have happened.
As much as he wished for the whole situation to end, it was more for Stevie and Stacy then it was for him. He was older, he could handle it. Somehow, the Glee Club had managed to keep his secret. No one outside his circle of friends knew that his family was on food stamps and living in a hotel. He was ok. He was older, he had his friend's and he had the clothes that Finn and surprisingly Puck, had giving him. It was his siblings that he worried about. They were much to young to have to deal with what was going on.
There was an innocence and a strength that he saw in the kids that made him proud and broke his heart at the same time. Sometimes he felt like they were handling it much better then he was. As Sam listened to Stevie state that God was in control, whatever happened was His will and that meant that it was all ok and they could handle what ever happened, he realized the meaning of childlike faith. He wished that he could be that confident.
As well as Stevie and Stacy handled things, it still broke his heart because they should never have to. They were still so young. Though Stevie never asked for anything anymore, Stacy still did from time to time. His sister was still too young to fully understand what it meant to truly have no money. Though his brother never asked for anything, Sam knew that didn't mean there was nothing he needed. The entire family was all to aware of how soon school would be starting back. Sam had never realized just how expensive the basic needs of clothes and school supplies were.
They had managed to buy a couple of new outfits for the kids, and there had been people from their church who has donated old clothes to the family, but for growing children, it wasn't really enough. Stacy needed new shoes badly, she had been in flip-flops for the Summer and had completely outgrown her old tennis shoes. Their mother was nearly in a panic trying to figure out how to afford shoes for her. Stevie and Stacy were the focus of the desperate search for clothes, but Sam was ok with that. He had enough old clothes that still fit and enough clothes from his friends that he would be fine.
He had felt a physical pain in his chest when he had realized that the reason Stevie was asking everyone for money for his birthday wasn't so he could make his own choices on what to buy and wasn't because he was saving up for something. Stevie wanted money so he could take some of the pressure off of Sam and his parents by buying his own school supplies. That fact only strengthened a resolve Sam had made earlier. He didn't care if there were things he needed, some of the money from the overtime he was working was going to be put aside to do something special for his brother's birthday.
With the large age gap between him and his siblings, Sam had always seen himself as their protector. He had very nearly acted as another parental figure to them. As a baby, Stacy had seemed to think that everyone had three parents; a mommy, a daddy and a Sammy. Considering that he seemed to spend more time taking car of them then their parents did lately, the habit of behaving like a parent was only seeming to get stronger. It was killing him to see his siblings in a situation where there was so much that they needed and nothing he could do to help.
Sometimes he wondered if that was why his parents spent so much time away from the hotel. He knew that much of applying for jobs was done online now and he couldn't help but wonder if part of the reason they chose to do it in person was to get away from that same guilty feeling he felt when he looked at his siblings. It just didn't seem possible that a family that had done nothing wrong could end up in this situation, but they had. There were so many nights that he laid awake trying to figure out if there was something they were missing, some magical fix for everything and he knew that his parents must too. But there wasn't. Everything that could be done had been done and it wasn't enough.
All that could be done was to keep looking, keep hoping and keep praying that someday soon his parents would find work and it would be enough to get the family back on their feet. Someday his parents would have jobs again. Someday they would have a house and they would have clothes and school supplies and everything they needed. Someday he would be able to look as his siblings without feeling that awful guilt because he needed to fix this for them, but he couldn't. Someday things would get better. They had to. He knew that the weight in his chest wouldn't go away until then.
When his parents finally came back in they whispered as they set their things down on the small table that no, nothing had happened while they were out and he whispered back that no one had called about an interview. Nothing had changed. He looked away from the weary faces of his parents and headed to climb into the bed with Stevie and Stacy. He closed his eyes and prayed that tomorrow things would finally get better.
Author's Note: I hope this is ok. My family is in a similar situation as Sam's family (though as of right now, we have not lost our house) and though we've finally gotten a glimmer of hope, it's been hard. I was thinking about how things must be for Sam, and how he must feel similarly to the way I do about his siblings since he seemed to care so much about them. Once I made the connection in my head, this pretty much wrote itself.