Rain pounded against the window, and thunder rolled in the distance. Emma sat on their mattress, knees to her chest, watching David sew a hole in her sweater by candlelight. Power outages were common now. The city was growing darker, colder, but David's hands kept working steadily, as if nothing could shake him.
"David," she asked softly, "why don't you go to school like me?" He paused, needle in midair. "I will," he said. "Just not yet." "Is it 'cause of me?" David looked up sharply, the candle casting long shadows across his face. "Never say that. I do it for you. So you don't have to worry about things like I do." "But you're always tired. And you never smile like you used to."
He managed a tired grin. "That's not true. I smiled yesterday when you sang the ABCs backward and fell off the chair." Emma giggled, and for a moment the storm outside faded. Days blurred. Then one morning, as David was leaving the bakery, Mr. Ahmed stopped him.
"You ever think about night school?" he asked, handing David an old pamphlet. "It's free. For kids like you."David took it, hesitant. "But my sister—" "She'll still need you," Mr. Ahmed interrupted. "But maybe one day she'll need who you could become, too."
That night, after Emma fell asleep, David sat by the window, the candle flickering beside him. He stared at the pamphlet for a long time, fingers tracing the words: "You don't have to stop dreaming to survive."He made a choice.
The next week, he rearranged everything—early shifts at the bakery, a few less hours at the car wash. He enrolled in night classes at a community center three blocks away. He didn't tell Emma at first. But one evening, she woke up to find him scribbling algebra in a notebook."You're doing homework?"
He smiled. "Yeah. We can be geniuses together."She hugged him tight, and he held her even tighter.
In the months that followed, life didn't get easier—but it grew brighter. Emma's grades soared. David's did, too. The jobs still wore him down, but hope began to rise with the sun. And sometimes, when the city grew quiet and the world felt possible, David would sit on the roof, looking up at the stars and whisper a promise to the night: "We'll make it. Both of us."
And somewhere between the shadows and the sunlight, that promise began to come true.