Blueprints of Bias

Utah’s Best Poetry & Prose 2026: (CREATIVE NONFICTION)

THE OLIVE WOOLLEY BURT AWARDS: HONORABLE MENTION

AMY CLAIRE

"Favoritism does not just grant more to one; it teaches the other they are less."–John Bradshaw

The summer leading into my junior year, I plunged into the glamorous world of minimum wage at a local pizza joint. I scrubbed dishes that looked dirty again before they had even dried and scoured tables crusted with soot that seemed to mock every attempt at sanitation. I balanced serving trays as if the fate of civilization rested on keeping the heavy cast-iron skillets, sloshing sodas, and precarious breadbaskets upright.

The work was monotonous and grueling, yet it offered the breathing space I craved, a small pocket of freedom from the suffocating grip at home. Even if all I carried back most nights was the residue, the scent of pepperoni in my hair and greasy stains on my polo, each a reminder that the restaurant never truly let anyone clock out. Still, I treasured the fleeting illusion of autonomy, however laughable the terms.

The reprieve I found in that routine was short-lived, replaced by a different commitment as summer nights thinned into fall and dragged drill team tryouts in their wake. While I had scraped together enough money for school clothes, the dance fees still loomed, proof that every paycheck was spoken for before it ever reached my hands.

On one of my last day shifts that summer, I stood in the bathroom pulling my hair into a ponytail as I methodically ran through the duties ahead. Stock the salad bar, prep the dough, wrap the silverware, each task blurring into the next until my sister Mary’s voice cut straight through the rhythm.

“Claire, guess what? I’m trying out for the drill team too!” Her voice brimmed with excitement, as though she expected me to share it.

I kept my expression steady, even as panic pressed in and something inside me recoiled. Not this. Anything but this.

The drill team had never been just an extracurricular activity for me; it gave me access to a version of myself that felt visible and valued rather than defined by my shortcomings.

How could Mary really think I would willingly welcome her into that rare refuge, where the weight of being invisible at home briefly lifted?

When I didn't respond, Mary tried again, undeterred. “Can you imagine if we both made the team?”

“Oh… yeah, I guess so.” I summoned a smile I didn’t feel.

A week later, tryouts were over, and all that remained was to wait for the list of names to be posted.

I braced myself for the outcome I dreaded but could not prevent; no matter how fiercely I wished for another reality, I knew my sister would make the team.

As expected, Mary’s name was there, impossible to miss.

I forced a breath and turned away before anyone could notice the sting in my eyes. Laughter and cheers rose around me, the soundtrack of the untroubled. It wasn’t simply that Mary had made the cut; the harder truth was that I would be eclipsed, left in the long shadow of the special regard my mother reserved for her.

After the first practice, Coach announced a fundraiser, and I already knew what came next. I would hustle for every dollar on my own, but that had never stopped me before. Someone had to shoulder the character-building.

Once Mary and I got home, I went straight to the phone, dialing through the familiar numbers as I repeated the same pitch I used the previous year. My voice thinned into hoarseness, but I kept going, because taking a break felt riskier than discovering just how far desperation could stretch a vocal cord.

Mary did nothing, as if she inhabited an alternate universe from mine, where participation fees paid themselves. Sprawled across the couch, she flipped through the channels with the ease of someone certain life would always bend in her favor. Meanwhile, I sat only a few feet away, patching holes in my reality while she lounged comfortably inside hers.

By the time I crawled into bed that night, my body ached, and my mind sagged with weariness.

But I had done it.

I had reached my goal for the second year in a row.

The hall light clicked off, and I looked up. My mother briefly came into view, heading toward her bedroom just beyond Mary’s and mine.

A surge of excitement jolted me upright before I could think better of it, and for one hopeful moment, I let myself believe she might actually share in that excitement.

Hope, however, proved the hardest task of all.

“Hey, Mom, guess what?” I asked eagerly, as though my success would finally make her proud.

She paused in the doorway to her bedroom, stifling a yawn. “Yeah?”

“I finished all my fundraising today,” I said, the satisfaction evident in my voice.

She didn't respond or even turn toward me, as if she hadn't heard me, though I knew she had.

Growing unsettled by her silence, I tried again. “I worked all day and even found a few extra supporters this year.”

With that, she turned to face me, her expression barely discernible before it shifted like a storm crossing the horizon.

“You did what?” Disapproval curdled in her voice.

“I called our neighbors and friends and sold enough pies to cover all my dance fees, just like last time.”

Her eyes sharpened with judgment. “You asked all of my friends to buy from you?” She looked at me like I’d shoplifted from her personal inventory of human beings.

I started to answer, only to be cut off.

"Did you even think about helping your sister?" Her tone bristled with accusation, as if I had staged a town-wide coup or stationed guards at the phone to prevent Mary from doing exactly what I had done.

“But Mary didn’t even try. She sat there all day while I worked nonstop.”

“It’s unbelievable how selfish you are, Claire,” she growled, casting me as the villain in a storyline so off-kilter I almost admired her creativity.

Just when I thought we had reached the final act of madness, she turned and retreated toward her bedroom. She opened her purse, drew out her checkbook, and with one deliberate stroke of her pen, paid Mary’s fees in full.

That single check erased what had taken me seventy pie sales to accomplish.

Six hundred dollars in total, roughly thirteen hundred in today’s terms, casually dispatched, my labor illuminated against the disparity between what Mary received and what I was expected to earn on my own.

Fairness was a currency I was never allowed to spend. The unspoken cost had been daring to forget my place.

Speechless in my bed, I rolled back onto my pillow, my chest tightening as if the mattress had hardened to stone.

My mother hadn’t hesitated. Not for a second. No familiar excuse about being unable to afford extracurriculars, nor a lecture on the value of being self-sufficient. As if money had never truly been an issue, reducing my father’s favorite phrase that money didn't grow on trees to little more than a punchline.

Money did grow on trees, apparently, just not in orchards that bore fruit for me.

Note to Claire,

In a home where resources were handed out as proof of who mattered most, one child’s needs were granted without question while yours were turned into lessons about responsibility. Yet when your attempt to be resourceful was reframed as selfishness, you discovered that seeking help without permission was wrong too. Convinced there was no acceptable way to solve your own problems without blame, you internalized the conflicting expectations like a secret debt. The cruelty was not only in what was withheld from you but in how freely it was given to your siblings, conditioning you to believe you deserved less. Over time, even longing felt suspect and belonging was always meant for someone else.