“Good morning Mom! Good Morning Dad!” I shout down the stairs while I slide my hand down the smooth wooden railing.
“Good morning to you too Katherine!” My mom, Tracy, responds while Dad stuffs his mouth full of toast and mumbles a “good morning” to me. The smell of syrup fills my nostrils, and I know Mom must have made my favorite for my first day of Junior year.
“French Toast!” I scramble to put enough pieces on my plate, and quickly drown them in syrup. I have to be careful though, because I wouldn't want to ruin my brand new dress that I bought specifically for the first day of school.
“Are we driving you today?” My mother asks me as I put my dish into the kitchen sink.
“No, I think Claire is driving me today. She just got that brand new Honda, remember?”
“Oh okay! I think I'll head into the office early today then.” As soon as the words are out of her mouth, a horn beeps from outside. I slip my backpack on, and I head out to where Claire is waiting in our driveway next to my mom's Audi.
“I absolutely love your dress! Jake is going to think you look totally hot!” Claire exclaims as soon as I step foot into her car. I hope she's right about Jake though, we hung out a couple of times this past summer, and I'm praying that he'll finally ask me out.
The car ride to school is short and filled with chatter. We wonder out loud who we'll have in our cla**es, and debate on who will have changed the most over the summer. We pull into Claire's a**igned spot for the year, check our makeup, and get out of the car. I have to mentally prepare myself to walk into school. What if Jake doesn't think I look hot? What if all of my teachers are completely psycho? My mind is rushing through a million terrible things, and I have to prepare myself for the worst.
Claire can always tell exactly what I'm thinking without me even saying a word. “What's the worst that can happen? Absolutely nothing, now let's go.” She tugs on my hand, and I have enough courage in those few seconds to start off the new school year. The first day of school has always been a stressful event, but Claire has always pushed me to keep going. On my first day of Kindergarten, tears poured out of my eyes and I cried so hard that I ended up peeing my pants, but Claire still wanted to me my friend. Ever since that day, Claire has never left my side, and she wasn't going to now. My lungs fill with the clear air, and I walk head on into Madison High School.
Flocks of freshman crowd the halls, pushing past us in clothes that are way too nice for school. At this point, I've practically stopped caring what I look like when I go to school, but today, I wanted to look nice for Jake. My junior year would be completely ruined if I didn't have a boyfriend, who would I go to prom with? Claire has already been with her boyfriend, Austin, for a year, which meant that I couldn't go to prom with friends this year.
“You okay Katherine? We have to get to Biology before we're late. I don't want to make a poor impression on the first day, even though we won't be counted tardy today.” Claire trails off. I will my feet to move, even though I'd rather not go to Biology, science has never really been my strong subject anyway.
Cla** is starting already when we take a seat, books fill the desks, and I wonder to myself how I could possibly manage carrying a book this enormous around. “Today we're going to be talking about dominant and recessive traits,” the voice of the teacher penetrates my wandering thoughts.
“For example, an easy one to start, brown eyes are a dominant trait. This means that if your parents have brown eyes, you will too.” The teacher rambles on, and I don't pay much attention. It's the first day of cla** anyways, which means that we'll go over all of this information later. Instead, I stare at the back of Jake's head while he listens to the lecture. His hair is the color of wheat, and all I care about is how beautiful we would look together. My brown locks, his blue eyes, my hazel eyes, perfection. Then it hits me. Why do I have hazel eyes? My parents definitely both have brown, and if what the teacher says is true, then how in the world could I ever have hazel eyes? It just doesn't make sense. I can't focus on anything else for the rest of cla**, because I'm too busy thinking up reasons why I could possibly have hazel eyes.
“Maybe your mom cheated on your dad or you could have been switched with another baby in the hospital. OH! What if you're adopted?” Claire rattles off her ideas of why I was born with hazel eyes instead of brown. I try to ignore her, but the ideas get to me.
“I doubt it!” I try to laugh it off. Later that night, the ideas float back into my brain as I stare at the Christmas lights that line the ceiling of my room, brighter than my dark thoughts. Would my mom really cheat on my dad? They're so in love, always giving each other kisses, hugging, and going out to dinners. There is absolutely no way.
Now, how often is it that babies get switched at the hospital? I don't think that it's something that happens very often at all, and I think I look way too much like my parents to be adopted. Sleep washes over me at last, and I sleep restlessly, tossing and turning so much that my bed looks like a tornado tore through it the night before. The sun rises through my window, which means I wake up bright and early at seven in the morning, and my parents are already downstairs eating breakfast.
I avoid eating breakfast with them by taking a hot shower. The water stings as it hits my body, but it helps to wake me up. Ringing fills my ears, and I realize that Claire must already be here, which is fairly early for her. I pick up my favorite towel to dry off, it's the fluffiest, and reminds me of the deep blue of the ocean. Hastily, I put on my favorite pair of shorts, and a tank top perfect for the hot August day. Downstairs, I hear Claire making polite small talk with my parents, always trying to impress everyone she interacts with, and I try to cut her short by taking the stairs two at a time.
“Claire and I have some research that we need to do. We'll be in my room.” I say to both parents, trying not to look either of them in the eye. They look so innocent just sitting there eating breakfast, and sipping on coffee with just the right amount of cream and sugar. Could they really have done anything wrong? Maybe they really are innocent, I could at least trust them. I seriously hope that I just got switched at the hospital or something innocent enough like that.
“A research project this early into the school year? They must really be working you guys this year, huh?” Mom's eyes are quizzical, but she doesn't ask any further questions. Of course she believes me, I've never had reason to lie to her before, and technically I'm not lying, we are doing research. This research just isn't for school though.
We run up the stairs to my bedroom on the second floor of the house that I've lived in my whole entire life, and I can't help but think about how lucky I am. I have a nice house, nice parents, everything that I need, and so much more. My thankfulness turns into guilt, how could I possibly accuse my mom of cheating or accuse them of adopting me and not telling me? These people have always came to my bed when I felt sick, comforted me when I cry, and so much more.
“Maybe we should just leave it alone. I could just be a freak of nature, two parents with brown eyes, and I ended up with hazel. I'm sure it has probably happened to plenty of other people.” I try to convince Claire, but I'm trying more to convince myself that I have absolutely nothing to worry about.
“I was looking at their eyes when I was downstairs, and they both definitely have brown eyes. You heard what the teacher said the other day, if two parents have brown eyes then their child will have brown eyes. Your eyes are definitely hazel, not brown. So we need to find out why your eyes don't match theirs, and that is all there is to it.” Claire says definitively and I know there is no backing out at this point. Claire has this way of convincing people to do anything and everything. It's just the way she says things sometimes, like she's right, and that questioning her would be ridiculous.
“Fine. If we can't find anything out today though, then we're done searching, deal?”
“Deal.”
“So, I guess the first question is, how common is it that babies get switched at the hospital?” As soon as the words are out of my mouth, Claire is already furiously typing away on her laptop.
“It says right here that about 30,000 babies get switched every year. That's a whole lot of babies.” I get excited thinking that this could all just be an accident, no deceit, all just a misunderstanding. I could have been switched at birth, but the scary thought lingers in my mind, these two people should have a different child, and I should be living with another family.
“Okay, let's just keep that idea in the back of our minds and keep searching.”
“Does your mom have any male friends? Specifically ones with hazel eyes? Could be someone in her office.” My brain flashes back to the first day of school, and I can hear my mom saying that she's going to head into the office early. I can't stop thinking of the possibility that she cheated on dad. She goes to the office early sometimes, and sometimes she stays late. What if she isn't actually working on work? What if she's still cheating on dad, and I'm really someone else's child? I start to feel a little dizzy.
“Are you okay Katherine?” My face is pale, and I'm sure I look like I've seen a ghost.
“Oh my god, what if she cheated on him?” I try to keep my voice level, because I don't think my parents have gone on their morning walk yet, but I wanted to scream.
“I doubt that, your mom is way too nice to ever do that.”
“Yeah, except she goes to the office early, and leaves late. What if that's when she's cheating on dad? What if she's been cheating all of these years?”
“That just means that she's a hard worker. Maybe we should go look at some family photos, see if we can find out anything from those, because I really doubt your mom cheated on your dad, there has to be something else.”
“Sure. We keep all of our photo albums up in the attic, so we'll have to go up there to look through them. First, I want to make sure my parents have already left for their walk, because I don't really want them asking any questions.” I walk down our stairs once again, they're lined with family portraits throughout the years, just my parents and I. I'm an only child, and I've always liked it that way. Some people think that being an only child would be lonely, but my parents always made sure I was happy and had things to keep my occupied. Sure enough, when I took a peek downstairs, they had already left for their routine Saturday morning walk. Even though they were getting a bit older, they liked staying in shape, something that I feel like I definitely took after. I was always in sports ever since I could walk, and I enjoyed every single minute of them.
“They're gone, so we can probably head up to the attic for a little while.” I say as I turn to head back up the stairs where Claire is looking at the dark framed photos that perfectly match our wooden stairs.
“Why aren't there any baby photos of you on the wall here? Don't you think that's a little bit weird? In my house, there are baby photos of my brothers and I everywhere. It's like my parents can't get enough baby photos to put up for everyone to see.”
“They all got lost in a fire when I was little, or at least that's what my parents tell me. Our attic caught on fire when I was little and had to be rebuilt. We no longer have any photos of me before the age of three.” Claire nods her head as I speak, her curly blonde locks bounce as she nods, and we head up the stairs to the attic.
“Sorry it's so gross up here and dusty. We don't come up here very often, this is mostly just where we keep all of the stuff that we don't use very often.” The floor is layered in dust, and you can hardly tell that the floor is supposed to be brown instead of gray. Boxes are piled high in every direction, old baby clothes, dishes we no longer use, old toys, and so many other things that I would never have enough time to look through.
“Our attic is the exact same way, it doesn't bother me too much. Now, where do you guys keep all of your old photos?”
“Typically, we keep them in this corner.” I point to where a pile of boxes is near the only window in the whole entire attic. Claire walks over to them without saying a word, and starts opening boxes up and taking photo albums out. I take a seat on the ground next to her after I try to clean the dusty ground with my foot, but I give up after a bit. We flip through the pages silently for a while, and I comment here and there. It's mostly just typical family photos. There's one from my fifth birthday party, another at an amusement park when I'm seven, graduating elementary school, and pictures on my first day of middle school.
“I really don't think we're going to find much. I'm pretty sure I've looked through all of these photo albums dozens of times. It's honestly such a bore to go through these, all families have nearly the same exact same photos. We really aren't that different from anyone else.” I look at Claire, and she's still intently looking through pages of my family's history. It's like my life is the most interesting thing to her, but I don't think my life is really all that special or different than anyone else's life.
“Fine, we can head back downstairs. As long as we get to go to the mall today! Maybe we can even ask Jake and his super hot friend, Cameron, to come with us!” Claire starts getting excited, like she always does when she talks about cute guys. The idea of finding out who I really am, and where I came from is lost on her. She hops up and starts walking towards the door, and I turn to follow her when a box that I've never seen before in my life comes into contact with my foot.
“Hey Claire, hold up! There's a box here that I haven't seen before, and I think we should check it out before we head downstairs.” Claire reluctantly turns around, and trudges back towards where I'm standing in the other corner of the attic. I feel bad for making her come back over here, but I feel as if this box could be really important. It was hiding behind a bunch of other boxes, like it wanted to be hidden away from human view, alone in its own world. I don't know how I could have never seen it after all these years, but after all, I rarely ever come looking for things in the attic. I open the box slowly, with a feeling that my life was going to change, but I tried not to let that feeling stop me.
The box is light, and when I open it there are only two photo albums sitting inside, two that I've never seen before. At this point, Claire is completely engrossed in what I'm doing, and I can feel her breathing on my neck from behind me. I open the album slowly, and the first picture is of two adults with dark brown hair. I flip the pages and there are more photos of the couple. Then, there are photos of myself as a baby with them, and then some when I'm a little bit older, a toddler, with the couple.
“I thought that all of your baby photos got burned in a fire?”
“That's what I thought too. I've never seen any of these pictures before.”
“Who are those people in the pictures with you?”
“I have absolutely no idea who they are. I don't think I've ever really met them, except obviously when I was a baby.” Claire and I are looking at each other now, both equally confused. I decide to close the photo album, because I didn't feel like I was making any progress, and it was only making me way more confused with my life. As I go to set the album back in the box, a piece of paper slips out, and Claire picks it up. She studies it for a few seconds, reading it carefully.
“What is it?” I ask her, and she hands it to me silently. It takes me a few seconds, but I figure out what it is. They're adoption papers, and the person being adopted was me.
“I'm adopted.” I can't think of anything else to say, and a lump is building in the back of my throat, threatening to choke me.
“I guess you are.”
“Why couldn't they have told me?” I practically scream at Claire. I never raise my voice at Claire, and I feel bad for doing so, but she knows it's not directed toward her. Tears start to stream down my cheeks, ruining my perfectly made up face, and I can't seem to make them stop. Claire rubs my back as I continue to cry, the word “why” repeating in my head.
“Why couldn't they have just told me?” I repeat over and over wondering why my wonderful parents couldn't have just been honest with me.