It's Friday night, and Sora and Roxas' parents are leaving for the misses' work party. Roxas pays no attention, too captivated with a toy fire engine that he's had for years. Sora says, have a nice time, see you when you get home, and closes the door when they get in his mother's car. He locks the door, and turns to walk into the room where Roxas is sitting.

Roxas doesn't put the fire engine down on the floor and press the buttons. He likes to hold the toy up to his ear and listen to the noises. Sora has tried so many times to get him to understand that the point of playing with it is to make it go on a hard floor, but Roxas doesn't understand. He will never understand, and it frustrates Sora more and more every day.

"I could have gone out with my friends," he thinks. "We could be eating pizza right now."

At twelve years of age, Sora is more mature than anyone else in his middle school. Every day after school, he goes home so he can get his brother off of his bus, and watch him until his parents come home. Sora tries, but he can't remember a time when he wasn't expected to take care of his brother. And the youngest, Ventus, is no help either. Sora can hear him now; there is loud music playing on the second floor, and he can hear his youngest sibling pouring his everything into lyrics he knows by heart.

Between Ventus singing and Roxas pushing one button on his toy over and over again, Sora doesn't know how much more he can take.

But Sora takes it extremely well, considering it's all he's ever known. He settles in for the night with a blanket and a television show about animals in Africa. Half an hour later, after the woman narrating the documentary moves on to hyenas, Roxas walks into the room with a funny look on his face. Sora pulls the blanket off of him and stands up, afraid that something bit his brother or he did something he wasn't supposed to. But all Roxas does is raise his hands in the air, and brings them down rapidly, over and over.

Shower, it means. Shower, shower.

Sora jumps into action. He jogs over to the closet, where a container of plastic bags from grocery stores is hanging, and pulls one out. Then he grabs Roxas' wrist, because Roxas doesn't hold hands and his grip is always loose, and it's easier just to pull him along by his wrist. He takes his brother all the way upstairs to the shower, turns on the lights and the fan and begins to strip Roxas. His socks come first, then his shirt and finally his pants. Before helping Roxas with his diaper, which Sora knows he has pooped in, he makes sure he has disposable wipes before he does anything. He saps the sides of the diaper so that it comes out between Roxas' legs easily, and then he drops it into the bag. But Sora's work is not over, because now he has to wipe his brother clean before he can resume his shower.

It takes a few minutes, and a little ewing, before Roxas is free to enter the shower. Sora leaves the bathroom only long enough to throw the bag into the garbage can outside and wash his hands. Only then does he wash his brother's hair and scrub his body clean. Following that, Sora dries his brother off and dresses him: diaper, pajama pants, pajama shirt. Roxas runs downstairs, back to his toy, and Sora sits down to catch the last few minutes of the African animals special. Sora wishes Roxas could shower himself.

Sora's night is far from over. He gets up to check on his brother, over and over and over, all night. Roxas moves from one place in the fun room to the other, listening to his truck while watching Disney's Peter Pan play over and over. Sora knows the movie by heart, and can recite it, but not tonight. Tonight, he's too busy looking after his brother to pay attention to anything outside of Roxas.

Not only does he look to see what his brother is doing, but he checks his diaper. Roxas is in the clear for a little while, but he can't control his bladder very well and ends up wetting the diaper. So Sora replaces it. Roxas wets it again, and Sora replaces it again. It is a process Sora knows well, and he doesn't mind doing it, but he would like it if Roxas would learn to use the toilet.

Around eight o'clock, Sora prepares Roxas' medicine. He prepares a frozen waffle, and sprinkles what is in the capsules on top of pre-cut pieces. He then feeds these pieces to Roxas, and fills his cup of milk so he has something to drink. Sora wishes Roxas could fill his cup with milk on his own.

At nine o'clock, Roxas is in the room again, this time with his hands together over his shoulder. It's his way of signing to his brother, Sleep, sleep. While Sora is upstairs tucking Roxas in, and walking around the room to show his brother that his closet and all of his drawers are as closed as they'll ever be, Ventus takes control of the television. Sora is mad at first, but he can't stay mad forever, because Roxas is signing, Come here, tickle me, and he can't say no. Roxas is not an affectionate boy, and he doesn't usually like being touched, but he likes to be tickled before bed. Sora is more than glad to tickle him.

Roxas giggles, laughs and snorts as Sora pokes his fingers into his sides and his neck, and tickles his legs and his stomach. Sora laughs too, and dodges Roxas' legs as they kick, the tickling too much for poor Roxas. Sora keeps going until Roxas is breathless, and lets him catch his breath before he turns off all the lights and closes his brother's bedroom door.

Their parents return later, sometime between twelve and one, to see Sora just barely awake and trying to watch the Africa special he missed earlier. His father walks in, takes one look at the room Roxas was in, and goes, "It's a bit of a mess down there. Why don't you ever clean up after him?" Sora sits up, slaps himself in the face a little, and apologizes to his parents as he passes them. He enters Roxas' play room to clean up his brother's mess: toys go in the box, magazines go in Roxas' magazine bag, and any food left behind and his milk cup come up for cleaning. All the while, Sora listens to his father talk about him being lazy and not watching his brother like he is supposed to.

It hurts, because Sora knows other kids don't have to go through this. Sora knows none of his friends have to wipe their ten-year-old brother's butt, or shower and dress himm or feed him and make sure he's had his medicine. He knows his friends' lives don't revolve around any autistic sibling's life, because they don't have an autistic sibling. They have normal siblings, if they have any at all.

Sora wishes his brother was normal.

Sora's wishes never come true.