Eight Hundred and Fifty-Two Denials

Summary

Everyone always told me how lucky I was to grow up in a family that celebrated everything.

Every Thanksgiving, every birthday, my parents and my older sister kept a heavy mahogany box on the credenza in the entryway. Inside were dozens of scratch-off cards they had custom-made, silver foil stamped over hidden surprises.

When I was ten, a coin scraped away the silver film to reveal a voucher for a two-week sleepaway sports camp in the Berkshires. I stared at it, my heart hammering in my chest. But my fifth-grade class didn't do sports camp that summer. My younger brother Austin’s grade did.