[ WP ] You finally reach your 18th birthday only to be told by your parents that you are actually the imaginary friend of your elder sibling

I consider it unbelievably lucky that my 18th birthday is on a Saturday; I spend the entire morning in bed, my phone buzzing far more than usual with Facebook greetings and texts from people I barely talk to wishing me a happy birthday. 
 
 My bedroom still looks too empty to me. Sarah only left for college six weeks ago, and we shared a room our entire lives, despite having a spare room just down the hall. There are huge gaps in the shelves of things she took with her, an empty bunk bed just above mine, still made up with her old bedding, half-used chapstick sitting on top of our shared dresser that has entire empty drawers. 
 
 I laid in bed for awhile even after I woke up, scrolling through my news feed and responding to the texts that I cared about. I half considered opening up a porn site just to get past the “ Are you 18? ” prompt without lying for the first time in my life, but my laptop was on the other side of the room, and I wasn ’ t that dedicated to the cause. It wasn ’ t until there was a soft knock on the bedroom door that I even thought about getting up for real. 
 
 “ Casey? ” The knock came again. “ Are you up? We ’ ve got lunch waiting for you. ” Mom waited until I gave her a noise of affirmation before opening the door. “ Why don ’ t you get dressed and come out? Dad and I want to talk to you. ” 
 
 I rolled over and buried my face in the pillow, but nodded and threw the covers off of me. A t-shirt and a half-hearted brushing of my long, curly dark hair ( so unlike everyone else in the family ) before I padded down the stairs into the kitchen. Dad sat at the table in the breakfast nook, his hands wrapped around a cold cup of coffee. I sat down to a plate of chocolate chip waffles -- a birthday tradition for both me and Sarah -- across from him while Mom slid in next to him, a fresh cup of coffee, lighter and sweeter, in her own hands. 
 
 “ So serious, ” I said, pouring artificial syrup over the waffles. “ Not even a happy birthday, gosh. What, is this when you guys reveal that you found me under a rock and adopted me? ” 
 
 Looking so different from my family had always left me wide open for the jokes about being adopted. Both of my parents were baffled by it, insisting that it must be recessive genetics from generations back finally having their moment in the spotlight. I stuck out like a sore thumb even in extended family pictures: my dark hair a contrast to all the redheads around me; short and lithe -- almost dainty compared to the tall, strong people around me. 
 
 “ You ’ re not adopted, ” Mom said, though she stared at her coffee as she said it. “ But it ’ s time we had a talk, Casey. ” 
 
 “ Mom, seriously, we had the sex talk when I was thirteen, ” I said. “ I ’ m not about to become some sexually deviant miscreant just because I ’ m legal. ” Dad turned an interesting shade of red and studied the tree outside the window with unnecessarily intense interest. 
 
 “ This isn ’ t about that! ” she said. “ Have you noticed... have you noticed that we don ’ t have any baby pictures of you? ” Her brow furrowed and her mouth turned to one side, a giveaway that she was chewing the inside of her cheek the way she only did when she was nervous. 
 
 “ Yeah, ” I said slowly. “ I ’ ve even brought it up. You said that you were so busy after I was born that it just never really happened. Sarah and I are only a year apart. ” 
 
 “ I know that ’ s what I said, ” she said. “ But that ’ s not exactly the truth. It ’ s a little more complicated than that. ” 
 
 “ You ’ re not seriously about to tell me that I actually am adopted. ” 
 
 She let out a big breath of air in an exasperated sigh, her bangs fluttering. “ It would be so much easier if that was the case, ” she said. “ Because we don ’ t really know how to handle this situation. Nobody writes a book on how to break the news to your kid that she ’ s an imaginary friend. ” 
 
 The statement hung in the air like some kind of lame impression of a birthday banner. It was so ridiculous, so impossible, that I was completely, 100 % convinced they were joking. 
 
 “ Sure, okay, ” I finally said, taking a bite of waffle and washing it down with orange juice before moving on to the next piece. “ I ’ m an imaginary friend, and Dad is part reindeer. ” 
 
 “ Casey, ” Dad said, still studying the tree outside. “ We ’ re serious. As far as we can tell, you ’ re real now, but you started as an imaginary friend. ” 
 
 The silence came back, making the sound of my own chewing obscenely loud. 
 
 “ You ’ re all crazy, ” I said finally. I looked for a sign of give in either of their serious expressions, some sign that they were finally about to break and start laughing. 
 
 “ When Sarah was little, we wanted to have another baby so badly, ” Mom said. “ And we tried for years. We had four miscarriages from the time she started kindergarten until the third grade. By the third one, we stopped telling her when we got pregnant... but somehow she still knew. ” 
 
 She took a breath and Dad unwrapped one hand from his mug to lay it on top of hers. 
 
 “ Sarah stopped asking for a brother or sister right before the last miscarriage, and after that one, we stopped trying. I couldn ’ t take it anymore. They couldn ’ t even give me a good reason why I kept losing the babies. ” 
 
 She stopped talking and I stopped eating; a blue jay outside complained at the bird feeder. It was a full minute of pause before Dad picked up the story for her. 
 
 “ You have to understand, everyone told us it was normal for kids to have imaginary friends, ” he said. “ And we always supported imagination. You know that. When Sarah started talking about her sister Casey, we thought it was her way of coping with the losses that she knew about. ” 
 
 “ And then you appeared, ” Mom said. “ Sleeping in the same bed as her one morning when I went in there to get her ready for school, warm and corporeal and there. ” 
 
 “ You ’ re telling me that I appeared one day, out of the blue, ” I said. “ Because Sarah imagined me hard enough. ” 
 
 “ We prayed so hard for another child, ” Mom said, finally tearing up. “ And you can ’ t imagine the joy once we got over the initial shock. We knew you might go away at any time, but when we realized everyone could see you, we got you enrolled in school, made up reasons to explain why nobody had known you before. ” 
 
 “ Who knows about this? ” I asked. “ Name one person who can corroborate your story. ” 
 
 “ Nana knows, ” Dad said. “ She has a different take on it. It ’ s not like we could convince your aunts and uncles that we had a secret baby that we kept stashed away for eight years. ” 
 
 “ So, what, you were just going to wait until I went away? ” 
 
 “ We honestly kind of thought you ’ d disappear eventually, ” Mom said. “ As far as we could tell, it was only Sarah ’ s wholehearted belief in your existence that made you actually exist in the first place. ” 
 
 “ Why are you telling me this? ” I asked finally. “ Let ’ s not even get into the logistics nightmare of the scenario you ’ re presenting me. I don ’ t get the point of telling me all of this. ” 
 
 “ We just felt like you deserved to know, ” Dad said finally. “ You ’ re getting to that point where you ’ re going to be figuring out who you are and what your place is in the world. You ’ re about to embark on adventures greater than any of us could even fathom, and we wanted you to know that you are statistically improbable and that you ’ ve been a huge miracle in our lives. You can do anything. ” 
 
 I bit into my waffles, chewing it over in my mind. It didn ’ t seem to be affecting my life in any way -- everything until now was as normal as I could expect it to be. There was no point in struggling over something I couldn ’ t control. At least not yet. 
 
 “ Alright, alright, ” I said. “ I ’ ll pretend I believe you and you can quit being corny. Now, what ’ s the plan for the rest of my birthday? ”
