here it is..one of my short stories for my class. let me know what you think! and sorry about the language!
1982
Relief. Exhaustion. Anxiousness.
Miranda leaned up against her car, eyes closed, picture in hand. Her stomach threatened to come out of her throat and she felt the heat rise, filling her entire body. From the outside it might seem like she was just resting against the driver’s side door but in actuality she needed it to not fall over. This was it. The first step was going to be the hardest and try as she might she just couldn’t do it.
The house seemed ordinary. Just an ordinary house on an ordinary street with ordinary dysfunctional neighbors and ordinary misbehaving kids and ordinary divorces and her own ordinary upbringing. Except she was here to hopefully prove that it had been in fact, ordinary. God, she hoped it had been ordinary.
Her hand got too shaky to hold onto the picture any longer and it slipped and fluttered down down down to the asphalt. She looked at it one final time and the waves of nausea crashed on her as she remembered that day.
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“Mom! Where did you put grandma’s pin?” Miranda asked, phone in hand and glancing around the familiar room.
“Hunny I told you…in my jewelry box. I also said I would get it for you later, after I get home.”
“Fine, fine…” She half replied, half gave up. Until she saw that old box of treasures.
Rummaging through the different drawers of old and new, expensive and costume jewelry she got distracted by each unique thing. Minutes passed and suddenly something caught her eye. In the back of the small compartment, there was a piece of paper folded into a neat tense square.
Opening it carefully, Miranda was stunned to see her own face reflect back at her. A toddler version of herself, chubby cheeks, golden ringlets and a toothless grin in the arms of…some stranger.
“Who the hell is that…?” She whispered, turning it over. The year 1982 dark and cursive brought her eyebrows together. She was adopted when she was almost five which would have been in 1984. Everything before that had always been a blur, but something about this man holding her and the woman looking up at them seemed so familiar. The writing on the back wasn’t her mom’s but something told her she wasn’t supposed to be looking at this old picture.
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It had been two months since that day she had found it. Miranda walked into the police station where her best friend’s brother worked.
“Miranda! Over here.” Chad motioned her over to him. Hugs and casual talk is exchanged, more out of habit than anything.
“Ok, so did you find anything? Who are these people? Why do my parents have this picture? What the fuck is going on!” She got louder as the nerves began to make her words tremble.
“Shhh it’s going to be ok. I don’t know for sure what the real story is but I know I can’t find any proof of your adoption…”
“WHAT?! But how would I have been able to be in school? Maybe it just didn’t get processed right…no this has to be wrong” she interrupted him, walked around his desk and mumbled to herself. Trying to understand.
“Miranda, I know it sounds crazy but you were listed as a missing person by your biological parents…in 1982.” He said the last part under his breath.
She stopped. Sat down and the life was sucked out of her. Bent over. Thinking, remembering, trying to think of reasons that this would all just be part of her ordinary story in her ordinary house. Chad kept talking and talking and talking, a background to her thoughts. Memories of first days of school, a first lost tooth, first bike, first crush, first car. The memories blurred with the time before her parents and she knew.
“So, how did they get me?”
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Renee watched her daughter get out of her car. Watched her lean against the door and watched the sun hit that golden hair that had caught her eye the first time she had seen her. She had always wondered if this day would come. Confrontation.
She had been running around the store, hiding in the clothing racks while her mother distractedly discussed something about mortgage and eyeglasses and potty training to the man with them. Her father. Renee had watched while waiting on her own husband. A crooked smile with sad eyes, she had looked at this little girl with the heaviness of a newlywed unable to have children. They exchanged smiles and again she hid in the clothes. Jealousy overcame Renee and suddenly they were running, running, running and laughing, laughing, laughing out of that damn store.
They held hands and bought stickers and drank lemonade and Renee thought that when it was over she would just report the little girl as “found” and her perfect day would end. Except it didn’t. She walked right out of the store and no one said anything and the little girl skipped alongside her like it was meant to be like this forever. She was carrying a little play purse with some Happy Meal toy in it and some old candy and a piece of paper which Renee wouldn’t look at until they got home.
When she finally picked it up it was like the awakening from a dream. The reminder of reality was placed in the back of an old jewelry box and was replaced with the fantasy of a woman and man induced by desperation.
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Miranda glanced at the picture one last time. Back at the familiar old house and her (what was she? Mother? Kidnapper?) standing in the window.
One step in front of the other and she stopped in front of the trash can and without a second thought, threw the paper in.