The mortgage officer, a kind woman named Brenda with reading glasses hanging from a beaded chain, looked at me with deep pity. She slid the printed report across her desk. I remember staring at the green carpet in her office, suddenly noticing how worn down it was near the door.

My brain genuinely stopped working for a second because I couldn’t comprehend the numbers on the paper.

“I am so sorry, Claire,” Brenda said, her voice quiet. “We can’t approve the loan. Not with these numbers.”

I looked down. At the bottom of the page, in bold red ink, was my score. It was 412. My stomach dropped, and a sick, cold feeling pooled right in the center of my chest. My hands started shaking so badly that I had to tuck them under my thighs to make them stop.

I had spent 7 years saving every single penny. I worked as a front desk receptionist at Dr. Aris’s chiropractic clinic on Secor Road in Toledo, Ohio. I made 14 dollars an hour. I drove a 2008 Buick LeSabre with rust eating the bottom of the passenger door. I clipped coupons. I lived in a tiny, drafty apartment that smelled like old steam radiators and cabbage.

I had done everything right. I kept my money in a small credit union. I had an old blue vinyl checkbook cover with a cracked plastic seam that I had used since I was 18 years old. Inside that checkbook, I wrote down every transaction, tracking every 5-dollar lunch and every tank of cheap gas.

“There has to be a mistake,” I whispered. “I don’t even have a credit card. I pay for everything in cash. I’ve never borrowed money in my life.”

Brenda sighed and pointed a manicured finger at the page. “You have 6 cards, Claire.

All of them are maxed out. You owe 67,000 dollars. And they’ve all been sent to collection agencies.”

I stared at the names of the banks on the paper. Capital One. Chase. Discover. The billing addresses weren’t mine. They were all registered to a small, two-bedroom ranch house on Woodville Road. My sister Melanie’s house.

I need to back up for a second. To understand why this hurt so bad, you have to understand Melanie. Melanie was always the golden child. She was 2 years older than me, and from the day she was born, she could do no wrong. Our parents, Richard and Helen, treated her like she was made of glass.

I don’t even know why I remember this part, but when we were kids, Melanie wanted an expensive ten-speed bicycle for her birthday. My parents couldn’t afford it. My dad worked as a machinist at the Jeep plant, and money was always tight. They bought it anyway, putting it on a high-interest store card. I got a used bike from a garage sale that my dad painted pink. I didn’t mind back then. I loved my sister.

But as we got older, Melanie’s appetite for things only grew. She married a guy named Dave who worked seasonal construction. They had 3 kids in 4 years. Melanie didn’t work. She spent her days shopping at the Target in Spring Meadows, filling her cart with expensive home decor and clothes her kids only wore once. I was the boring one, the one who saved.