A/N: I know what you're thinking.

Oh, God, not another of these stories. When will all these dumb authors realize that no one likes this plot line?

Well, I've come here to say no, that's not entirely the case.

Because I'm taking this cliched plot line, and I'm turning it around. Friends, I am determined to change this overused concept forever, if it kills me. So, I hope you enjoy, because it is the fruit of my crazed determination. Cheers.

You know the Read-Review drill... Right?

Enjoy!

~Sunshine

Turn away
If you could get me a drink of water
'Cause my lips are chapped and faded
Call my Aunt Marie,
Help her gather all my things
And bury my in all my favorite colors

My sisters and my brothers
Still
I will not kiss you
'Cause the hardest part of this is leaving you.

The fluorescent lights shine on her barren scalp, making it look like she has a halo circling the crown of her head.

She smiles, her fractured, blue-green eyes crinkling at their corners. Despite being sick this long, she never stopped smiling. She was immortal.

"Indie, you'll be okay. Don't worry about me. It's my time, apparently."

"You didn't deserve this."

She takes all her strength, and forces herself to sit up so she can kiss my forehead. "Indie dear, who ever deserves death if they've always repaid for their sins?"

"Then why are you going to, if you always repaid?"

"There was unfinished business."

"Like?"

The delicate woman sighs. "I don't have enough time to tell you. You'll find out soon enough, though."

"Does it have to do with Dad?"

"...Yeah."

I sigh. "Then I don't want to know."

She nods, in understanding.

We sit in silence. I can hardly stand listening to her breaths when they're that shaky.

"Indie?"

"Yeah?"

"Could you sing? Just once more, for me?"

I nod, relaxing my voice box and sucking in air. Lyrics start flowing from my mouth like a river of noise, and I close eyes as I squeeze her hand tighter. She squeezes back, and nods her head to the beat.

My voice starts traveling higher close to the end of the song, and, for a second, I could be singing with angels, and I silently pray, 'Let her make it to you safe.'

As my voice trails to the end, the tempo of her heartbeat slows.

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.

Her last exhale.

A scream.

And my first tear as an orphan.

Our story starts.

Reyna Melbourne was the British - American daughter of a wealthy family who lived in New York, the youngest of three, and probably the smartest. She graduated valedictorian in her class, only to turn around and study fine arts. Her family had partially disowned her after she had been accepted, but still kept in some touch.

There, Reyna met a man whom she once claimed to be the love of her life. They met at a party, and got along immediately.

Reyna kept on studying art - specifically, modern abstract and pop. Her idol was Warhol. She had taken a summer in high school just to fly to various art museums to see his works. She was going to be just as famous. And she had already been making a name for herself, and had sold a few pieces already.

And then came sophomore year.

This love of her life and her decided to go to some party, got drunk, and some stupid shit happened.

Meanwhile, an offer had come from LA for her to join an art team.

After the party, Reyna wasn't sure about anything anymore, in New York.

She broke up with this love of hers, packed her bags, and flew out to LA. She took the job, and just as she had started her first piece, making art for various private investors, Layla started getting sick.

Reyna was nineteen, single, becoming famous, and pregnant.

Despite being with child, she pushed on, taking art as it came. Her team offered to help raise the baby when it arrived. Her family fully disowned her at that point. They would not have anything to do with a girl who got pregnant in college, refused to get a stable degree, and didn't rely on anyone. Too unconventional.

While on a trip to Denver to discuss a series being presented in the art museum there, she went into labor, and gave birth to her daughter, Independence, four hours later.

And, right then, Reyna Melbourne decided to live in Colorado, catering to this museum as she raised a baby girl.

This is when I finally drown out of the recitation of my mother's life.

A woman with spiky red hair - Reyna's best friend and my 'aunt', Kaitlin, keeps on reading this subdued version of my mother's turbulent life. I add in what she would never say: the party. Her getting disowned. The fact that my mother broke all ties with my father, and not the other way around.

I straighten the hem of my dress, and tense my legs, waiting for my turn to go say something about her.

Kaitlin steps away from the podium, and, as the pastor introduces me, I stand to talk.

When I'm there, I clear my throat, and meet the eyes of everyone in the room.

"Hello. I'd like to thank you all for showing up to pay tribute to my mother's death. As you may know, I am Independence, Reyna's... Daughter." I clear my throat to mask tears. "Um... I'd like to talk about my mother's career that she had. Reyna was always gifted at art, and she saw what others never could. So, I'm glad she was successful while she did make art. I hope we all can remember this crucial aspect of her life as well. Thanks... And, Reyna, if you can hear this..."

I only hesitate for a second.

"We love you."

When I was little, I once asked my mother why I never had a father. She gave me that worried look, and said, 'When you're older."

Later, when I was twelve, I learned the truth. When I asked why she left my father, she said, "Because it never would have worked. You would know it, too."

Being completely inexperienced in the ways of dating, I didn't know.

Whenever I asked for a name, she gave me nothing. She said that I know his name, though. Whenever I asked for what he was studying, she'd get this faraway look, and mutter, "fucking cartoons, of all things." Whenever I asked for a physical description, though, was when she was vague above all. All she'd say was, "You have his hair. You have his eye shape, but your eyes are my color, not..."

His?

"You have his nose. And that's where the similarities stop."

Then, she'd go back to whatever, painting or cutting vegetables or doing something completely mundane, like, I dunno, watching TV.

Having a hand for realism, I tried making some kind of composite of him, so, if I didknow his name, I could certainly find my father.

I ended up with a drawing of a pair of almond-shaped eyes, a mop of dark hair, and a slightly triangular nose. At that moment, I had declared it was best I didn't know my father.

She said I was like him, though. It would slip out at the most random of times: "You draw kind of like him when you sketch like that." "That's what he would have said." "Yeah, your father hated running, too."

Every time, I'd stare at her, mouth gaping, and she'd turn away to hide tears, ashamed.

It was worse when I started singing at seven or eight.

I'd just sit there, hear a song, and start vocalizing it, and she'd look at me with this mask of shock. So I'd shut up.

About the sixth or seventh time she caught me, though, I caught her right back.

"I wanna play piano."

"What?"

"I. Wanna. Play. Piano."

A short six or seven months after I began piano, my mother finally introduced me to the guy she had been seeing for four months.

Reyna wanted me to call him Mr. Pollock. He wanted me to call him Charlie.

'If she calls you Reyna, can't she call me Charlie?" was his argument.

They married later that year. I was the overjoyed flowergirl at the ceremony.

I finally had a father.

I remember the flood of memories as I pack the framed pictures that sit on my desk and windowsill into a little cardboard box. They're a variety of things - pictures of Reyna and Charlie's wedding, various images of family and friends, and a selection of candid shots of me with various musicians.

What can I say? I'm a music nerd.

I slip all of them into a corner of the box in the stack: me with The Fray, The White Stripes, Sara Bareilles, Panic! At The Disco, My Chemical Romance, Lily Allen, The All-American Rejects, Florence Welch, Coldplay... The list went on.

I leave the box on the desk, cross the room, and approach the poster wall, aptly and... originally... named. I start in the corner, pulling off and rolling up a retro poster for The Black Cauldron and setting it on the black-and-red covers of my bed.

I turn to the rest of the room.

This was going to take a long time.

Instead of saying any last words before the soil goes down on her coffin, I start singing Amazing Grace.

The tears slide down my cheeks, but I don't care. I'm still belting out the notes in my loudest voice, my richest, yet most subtle vibrato, letting everyone hear my voice ring out.

"Amazing Grace," I repeat, "How sweet... The sound... That saved... A wretch... Like me... I once... Was lost... But now... I'm found... Was blind... But now... I see."

When I'm done, I step back. I turn to see Kaitlin wiping her big, caramel brown eyes, mouthing, "That was gorgeous."

I smile back, lip trembling.

The pastor dismisses us, but I stay, and watch them as they turn the dirt back in.

Jake, my best friend, puts a hand on my shoulder. "Indie, you coming?"

I smile. "Yeah, man. Just..."

He nods, pulls me into a brief hug, and jerks away. "See... See you, Indie."

He walks away, his mop of curly dirty-blonde hair bobbing under a black umbrella.

It's April 27th. A month or so after my sixteenth birthday, four days after my mother's death, about five years since Charlie died, and the first rain in Southern Colorado of the year. Precipitation stains the flagstone from orange-red to brown in seconds. I shift a little more under my umbrella, and watch as the last shovels of dirt cover her.

A few months after Reyna married, Charlie had an idea that we would go to every continent except Antarctica that following summer. So, I was freshly nine that year, and Charlie was planning a route: Denver, to LA, to Tokyo, to Sydney, to Johannesburg, to Frankfurt, to Barcelona, to Rio, to Santiago de Chile, to Belize City, to Miami, and back to Denver.

I was used to going to LA; we went there all the time for Reyna's art shows.

But nothing on God's Great Earth prepared me for the carnival of Tokyo.

I hadn't been alive for even ten years, when, all of a sudden, I was exposed to the world. I was seeing everything in this new light, with a naive curiosity that almost demanded me to experience everything. I had been freed to something completely different from my home. Colorado was gorgeous, but after a while, one finds dramatic, barren purple peaks to be monotonous, the chill of ice caps unappetizing, and sagebrush plains ugly.

I found myself living for the first time.

And by the time we had made it to Frankfurt, I was already seeing the world differently. I saw a road as a vein of blood in the body of a city, not just a way for people to pass through. I saw each slightly freakish item on a menu to be something curious and delicious - although, when we went to Thailand a year later, I strayed from scorpions. I no longer saw people as having features, but as individuals, mothers and fathers, daughters and sons, wives and husbands.

Charlie changed me into someone I wouldn't have recognized otherwise. I could never have thanked him more.

I catch up with Jake after a few minutes. He tucks me into a half-arm hug, and asks, "You okay?"

I shrug.

"Don't worry about it."

'I'm not worried, Jake. My mother died. I'm devastated."

He sucks a breath in. "You riding with Kaitlin, or...?"

"Can I ride with you?"

He nods.

When we get to the curb, his mom's maroon SUV is waiting. She gives me a worried glance, and as I climb into the car with Jake, she turns, and, in a careful, hushed voice, asks, "Indie, babe, how are you?"

"...Fine, Mrs. Wallace."

She gives me a raised eyebrow, before starting the car, and driving to where the after-thingy-whatever is.

I couldn't care.

I notice the absence of mass in the passenger seat. "Hey, Jake, where's your dad?"

He groans. "Stupid fucking business trip. He chose working in Vancouver over honoring your mom's death. Sick, isn't it?"

I nod, and stare out of the window, nearly crying.

Jake's mom tries for conversation several times, failing each attempt. None of us can talk. We're still taking in the shock of her death. I pull off my black flats, and tuck my feet into the skirt of my dress.

When we get there, I peel myself out of the car, slipping my flats back on, and walking around the side of the car to slide next to Jake. Sub-consciously, I slip my hand into his. Normally, one of us would be embarrassed and a little shocked, but now, no one really cares. He accepts, and squeezes my hand. We walk into Kaitlin's house in silence.

There's a low hum of chatter that echoes through the rooms, a sea of black that floats through like a dying river, like a dying pulse. Kaitlin stands in the middle, her shock of naturally scarlet hair being a beacon.

When I enter, she pulls me into a hug. "Baby, are you okay?"

I nod before burying my face into the crook between her neck and shoulder. "Kaitlin, what's gonna happen to me?"

"I dunno, baby. You're gonna have to go testify to a judge, I guess, unless Simon has already figured something out. If we testify, I guess I could come forward as a fit guardian, but..." She sighs, and pulls me away from her gently so she can look at me and wipe tears from my blue-green eyes. "I don't know anything."

When I was eleven, my life started diving.

Imagine a realitively tall man with cropped, light brown hair driving in a small car. Do not worry about the brand, model, or whatever of the car. It isn't relevant to this exercise. You are free to your imagination. I just want you to picture this man in a small, silver car. Small, but large enough to drive three around a state 280 miles wide.

Now, imagine a field with khaki brush everywhere. It is night; it is stormy; the sky is a wondrous, deep indigo, solid and rolling. Rain jumps from the sky, as if falling will save it, but it only makes it worse for all, whether the driver or the drop. The road is slick. Against the varying lights of an occasional stoplight, it shines Christmas colors despite it being late April.

Imagine the man at a light. It's red... Red... Red... Green.

As he goes, pause the picture.

Imagine a man driving a massive, sixteen-wheeled truck. He has a straggly, brown beard, and there's no cargo on the back of the truck, but has been going since five this morning to drop the damn truck off. His eyes start to droop, but he quickly rouses himself. He must stay up. He must stay awake... Awake... Awak...

Awa... Aw... A...

He sees the light ahead. It's blurry, but there it is. Green... Yellow... Red... Red... Red...

As he keeps on going, a flash of silver. He can't stop the brakes...

The car and truck spin. Swerve. Topple. Fire and smoke intermingles with the rain.

And two finite exhales commence.

Can you imagine that?

You just saw my stepfather's death.

The funeral was my first. I couldn't deal with the black, the sunlight contradicting the somber mood, the coffin with Charlie's battered body being lowered deeper, deeper, and still deeper. I hate remembering it.

Like I said: You are free to your imagination.

A solid month after his death, I came back from school to find Reyna packing everything in the kitchen into cardboard boxes.

"We're selling this house," She said, "To a lovely young couple expecting a child. I just bough a house down, close to Durango. We're leaving in a week."

At first, I was angry. Shocked. Scared. Later, I came to accept it.

We drove. Minutes, miles. Hours passed. We stopped to eat once. I stopped to puke twice. Once from carsickness, once from nerves.

Soon, we pulled into a dirt road, no longer than thirty feet, twenty minutes away from town and a stones throw away from a creek. The house was two stories, cream with flagstone-red trim, and a black roof. A door the same shade as the trim beckoned.

I pulled my backpack on my shoulder and walked in.

My resentment of my mother's lack of better judgement faded as soon as I stepped in. I was welcomed by a living room, a black couch set tentatively over a thin, honey rug, spread over cool, slate floors. A dark brown staircase led up the left side of the room, and underneath, I could see a second couch tucked underneath the stairs. To the right was a door the same dark, woodsy color of the staircase.

Reyna entered the house behind me. "Well, this is lovely." She turned behind me to the door on the right, entering what she revealed to be the master bedroom.

"Go upstairs," She said, "Check it out."

I jumped up the staircase, two steps at a time, until I reached a second floor. It was a balcony-like hall, only a few feet long, opening into a small kitchen with a circular table big enough for three, tons of windows, allowing golden sunlight to spill in, and three doors. I opened the first, and looked in. A full bathroom, with the same slate tiles as the ones on the first floor and silvery curtains, contrasting with the sun pouring in from a skylight. I shrugged, and closed it. The second: a small room, probably a bedroom.

The third, behind the table and next to the kitchen.

I peeked in, gasped, and immersed myself in the environment.

The walls of the massive room were a cool gray, the floor the consistent dark wood of the house, paired off nicely. Silver, studio track lights lined the ceiling. A balcony beckoned at the end of the room, the platinum rays luring me.

This was heaven.

Four years later, I'm packing the last of my stuff into cardboard boxes, swallowing tears. I kick a box open, fold the black, gray, and red bedsheets and curtains, and stuff them into the manila confines. I shut the box, and, with a Sharpie, mark: Indie - Curtains and Shit.

I look up when I hear rapping against the open door and a voice. "And Shit? Really?"

To appease the guest, I cross out 'Shit' and write 'Stuff' underneath. "Happy now?"

The man sits down on the stripped mattress. He has kept brown hair and honey eyes hidden behind sleek,

professional glasses. He looks down at the boxes. "It's sad, moving."

I nod, grabbing a black-stained white hoodie and slipping it on, rolling the sleeves to expose my forearms.

I love this thing: my Concert Hoodie.

It was once white, until, just before my first concert, The Fray, when I was eight, I took it, wrote the band name on the left bicep, and got them to sign their names next to it, as well as the date. Since, I had done that for every concert I had gone to.

The man raises an eyebrow. "How many bands have you seen?"

Simon Headley is another of the friends we made when we moved to Durango. He lives across the creek,

with his girlfriend Lilly-Ann. Simon is a lawyer, running a firm in town and professing in child law. After Charlie passed, he became my next father figure. He immediately saw me as something of a daughter, despite Lilly-Ann being five months pregnant when we met them.

They still aren't married, but they both agreed that they didn't need marriage. It was kind of romantic, in a weird, new-age kind of way.

After we became comfortable there, Lilly-Ann gave birth to a baby boy, Marcus. He's a sweet one.

I look at Simon with a sideways glance. "Something happen yet?"

"No. I haven't found any loopholes that would allow the Wallace's or Kaitlin be able to gain custody of you before you got into the system. And your godmother died in an airplane crash a few years ago, right?"

"Yeah, Amanda."

"Your grandparents are dead, and your aunt doesn't want you, nor does your uncle."

"Well, I am devil spawn, don't see why they'd want me."

"Nor have I found anything about your father, not that you would want to know him."

I nodded. "Spot on."

I'm bowing my head down so no one sees me and pats my back and gives me sympathy: "Oh, darling, it's a shame your mother left us." "You're Kaitlin, right? Her best friend? Oh, you're her daughter? Oh, I didn't know she was ever a mother! I'm so sorry." "It's terrible that you're now going to have to go through the system. Good luck."

I was dying to scream at them all and run out of the house crying. But my dignity kept me in place.

I feel a hand on my shoulder, but I look up, trusting instinct.

Simon.

"Can I talk to you in private? It's concerning your custody."

Kaitlin, our spunky, redheaded new neighbor, was having a glass of wine with Reyna when she got the call from Fiona Wallace.

"We're moving to Durango. We got the house the street over from you. The one across the creek."

I gasped. Reyna nearly dropped her glass.

"So... Jake's moving here?" I asked innocently.

She could only nod.

A week later, we saw a car pull into the driveway of the house next to Simon's.

I ran out of the house, forgot shoes, ran across dirt, a wooden bridge, and asphalt barefoot to the next street, and sprinted to the car, tackling a blonde boy in a deadly hug. He weakly returned the embrace, gasping for air.

His storm gray eyes twinkled with happiness. "We're neighbors now!"

That summer was spent entirely with Jake. We swam in the creek, we walked downtown and pigged out at the ice cream shop, we held movie marathons all night. It was like the old times, before Charlie's death. It was heaven; I had my best friend back.

It was short lived after Reyna started fainting, collapsing, just being weak, a mess.

I think you can create the story from there.

Simon pulls me into Kaitlin's office, sets his briefcase down on the desk, and presses his fingertips against the surface.

"We found someone."

I raise an eyebrow. "Who?"

He sucks in air, turns to look out of the window, and turns back to me with wild eyes. "Indie, your dad's not dead."

It takes a few seconds for that to settle in, but once it does, I'm shaking. The breath has been knocked out of me. All I can do is stare at Simon incredulously. "What?"

He nods. "I don't know if your mother ever said that he was dead or not, if she never mentioned him in front of you, but he's not dead. Not in the least. He knows of you now, he was at the funeral, and he might be downstairs-"

"Simon!" I yell, cutting into his jumble of words.

He freezes up. I turn, and jump into Kaitlin's office chair, curling my knees into my chest. I spin the chair, and the office revolves around me.

"Simon, you just told me that my father is not dead. Then, you tell me that he's in this house with me. The father that hasn't been there for sixteen years-"

"Because he didn't know you existed until two weeks ago."

I stop the chair from spinning, and turn to look at Simon. "And what are you suggesting? That I'm going to live with this mystery father of mine? I don't know anything about him! All I know about him is that he studied comic art, and had dark hair!"

"Indie, calm down."

"Why should I calm down?"

"Because I would like you to know who he is."

It shuts me up immediately.

"Do you want me to give you a name?"

"No."

"What do you want?"

"Nothing. I want nothing to do with him."

"He knew nothing about you-"

"But if he loved my mother, he would have followed her to LA. He would have found out she was pregnant with her. He would have married her! He would have lived with her! With me! If he didn't love my mother, he would never-"

"And how do you know this?"

"Know what?"

"That that's what he would have done. You and your mother aren't the victim, Independence. He is. Your mother broke up with him. She never told him where she went. He would have been heartbroken, devastated. He would have searched all over, found nothing, and would have given up. He would have thought she was dead. And now she is."

I sigh. "Simon Headley, you are one manipulative bastard."

He smiles. "I'm a lawyer."

I lean forward. "Let's start with a basic physical description. What does he look like?"

He opens the briefcase that he set on the desk, and pulls out some files. "Um... Let's see... Dark hair, hazel eyes, five-foot-nine... You really do have his nose." My fingers wander up to said body part as Simon continues. "Thirty-five years old-"

"God."

"Your mother was thirty-five too, Indie. Ooh... He's married. With a kid."

"Wonderful! Bring on the bitchy stepmothers and snooty half-sisters."

"His kid will be turning three next month."

My lips form a ring. "Oh."

"Yeah. He makes a lot of money... He's a musician. And artist."

"Musician?" My jaw drops.

"Yeah. He's a singer. In a band. Is something wrong...?"

Yes, Simon. Everything is wrong.