The Price of Stolen Genius

My phone screen was the only light in the suffocating darkness, casting a sickly blue glow on the corrugated steel walls closing in around me.

A notification popped up with Nicole' s latest livestream, her face triumphant, showing a thumbnail of me, huddled and sketching on a dirty cardboard box.

"My pathetic 'brother' making trash art for change," the title read, a cruel mockery of my homelessness and desperation.

Then, her message: "Feeling cramped, Caleb? I remember you don't like small spaces."