A/N: Yay! Two stories in one day! I'm going to warn you, this one ends on a bit of a cliffhanger... I know, i know but please don't hate me! Just enjoy the story!
It all started with one picture. One picture that turned my life upside down. One picture that told me my whole life was a lie, that family was a lie.
Two years ago, it was saturday and one of the rare occasions that I had absolutely nothing to do. I was laying on my floor, bouncing a ball against the ceiling. My mom comes in to check on me for the fifth time in the past ten minutes. "Hey sweetie. What are you doing?" Ugh… I thought. I swear if she asks me to… "Sofee? Sofee are you okay" My mom is hovering over me, looking at me with worry filled eyes. I sit up and sigh. "Yeah Mom I'm fine. Just like the last fifteen times you've asked."
When she finally leaves my phone starts ringing from across the room. I get up from my place on the floor and pick it up. "Hey Sofee! Can I come over? It is so boring here. My brother has friends over so I locked myself in my room to get away from them." I wince and hold the phone farther from my ear. "Sure, you can come over. As long as you don't blow my eardrums out. Again." We talk for awhile and she tells me she is on her way. "Mom!" I yell out for her. "What?" she says, sticking her head into the room. "Jaycie is coming over, okay?" "Okay, just don't make a mess this time."
When Jaycie gets to my house I turn on my TV and we watch season 4 of The Walking Dead. When we finish we decide to go through the hall closet because, you know, we have nothing better to do. We walk down the hall quietly so my mom doesn't know what we are doing. I open the closet and pull out this giant box. Jaycie has to help me since it weighs like, seven trillion pounds. We stumble down the hall, carrying the box back into my room.
I set the box down on my floor, or drop would be a better word, and the room fills with dust. Coughing, we try to fan the dust away. We sit down on the floor and open the dust covered box. It's filled to the brim with what looks like picture albums. I take out the first one and open it to the first page. On the page it says Sofee Astrid Baumer in big letters at the top. Below is a picture of me as baby. "Awe! You were so cute as a baby!" Jaycie gushes. I turn the page and see me with someone I didn't recognize. It was a man, tall and muscular with dark hair and light eyes, kind of resembling me.
I turn through the pages hurriedly. I see the same man in almost every picture. He stops appearing when I turn about three. I close the book, not understanding a thing I just saw. I hear my mom shut the front door. We scramble to put the book back in the box when we hear her coming up the stairs. We push the box into my closet sand close it. We're sitting on the bed in the same position we had been in when she left when she opened the door. "Hey girls. What have you been doing? Or is this it?" My mom says the last part with a small chuckle. "Yeah this is about it." I say with my eyes glued to the small TV in the corner. She then says that Jaycies dad called and he would be there soon. We say our goodbyes and my mom goes downstairs while Jaycie leaves with her dad.
I sit in my room thinking about that man from the pictures. My mom never talked about my dad. All I knew was that he wasn't around anymore. Every time I tried to talk about him she immediately shut me down. I walk down stairs, determined to get answers. "Mom?" The living room was completely empty. I walked around the corner and found her in the kitchen making dinner. Well it's now or never.