Chapter 2: The Dream

---------------------------

"July, your father and I have something to talk to you about," Mary Jones said, her blue eyes full of fear as she nervously ran her hand though her brown hair. Next to her was her husband, Sam, a middle aged man with matching features. Worry was evident on his face as he sat with a calloused hand on his wife's back.

"July, we need to sit and talk," her dad echoed.

"Okay," July replied, sitting down across from them. She was trying to figure out what was going on. They never done this before, not even when she was in trouble.

"July, we have something very important to tell you, but we aren't really sure how to tell you," her mom said through a sigh, looking her straight in the eyes.

Now July knew something big was up. The ideas were flying through her head: someone was sick? Someone was in the hospital? Someone was dead?

"Well, why don't you just say the truth," July suggested bluntly wanting to know what had them so worried. She was never much for the small talk when it was something important.

"July, what we are about to tell you is going to change your entire life," Sam said sadly.

By now, panic was beginning to run haywire though her body. She really wished they'd just get on with it. The more they stalled the worse the scenarios in her head got. "Well, it is my eighteenth birthday, my life is going to be changing a lot right now so this one detail can't be too bad."

Her parents shared a look before turning to look back at her. "July… what your mother and I are trying to tell you is that you're…adopted. We aren't your biological parents." Tears were in his eyes, and July could see the trails already traveling down her mother's face. She felt her eyes go wide and her mouth open. The air seemed to disappear from her lungs and it felt like she was drowning.

"Wh-wh-what? When? How?"

Mary's cries rendered her unable to explain and Sam was forced to explain.

"When you were around eight, your parents were visiting here. They took you to that park down on Newton St., you know, that one with the pond you use to really like? Someone tried to kill you for some unknown reason. In the process of protecting you, both of your parents were killed. That scar on your arm is the only place that the man managed to get to before your parents got to you. You never got it helping me on a car. We figured you were going to ask so we just made up a story," he confessed, his hands clenched tight together.

July ran her hand on the three-inch scar on her left forearm; it seemed to burn now that she knew how she had really got it.

Sam cleared his throat and continued on. "You were taken into custody and placed into an orphanage. We had been trying to have kids for a while but couldn't so we put in for an adoption. No one came to claim you even though they ran ads. So you were given to us as a temporary home, and after a year we put in the final papers and we adopted you."

July could feel my head spinning, trying to absorb all this new information. "No one came for me?" she croaked out.

"No, they were never able to contact anyone and no one came. Your parents had a document that said if anything ever happened to them, you were to be given everything on your eighteenth birthday. Which is today, August ninth." July's father got up and disappeared. He returned in seconds with a large manila envelope, which he placed on the middle of the table and sat back down. "Inside this envelope is a copy of their will, a letter to you, a album book and a set of keys." She sat there in disbelief. This couldn't be happening.

"This can't be true. Ha ha, stupid joke, you can stop now," she tried to joke, but her stomach turned and she felt like she was going to be sick.

"This isn't a joke July," her mom spoke up, speaking for the first time. Her face looked like it had aged ten years within the last five minutes.

"How can you expect me to believe this? You are my parents. Everything, every memory has you in it."

"July, watching your parents being killed was very traumatic. The psychiatrist said that it was so traumatic that it gave you something almost like amnesia. You were in such denial that you would accept whatever was given to you. She said that as we were put into your life as your new parents, you would place us in all of your old memories. Every memory from when you were little isn't really real. They are real in the fact that they happened but we weren't really there. Your real parents were. You just put the image of us it because you were in such shock," my dad explained.

July shook her head in denial, very much wanting to stomp her feet. "No…no… everything has you two in it. A person can't do that. I couldn't just make it all up." Her mind was in complete overload.

"July, the memories are real, it's the us in it that aren't." Sam signaled to himself and Mary.

"So you're saying that everything in my head is a lie and you aren't my real parents?"

"Essentially, yes," Mary said quietly.

"So you have lied to me for the past ten years?" July questioned, anger creeping into her voice.

Mary's face broke as she recoiled from the anger vibrating off her daughter. "July, it wasn't like we wanted to lie to you. We actually wanted to tell you sooner but we didn't think it would go so well when you were younger so we waited until we had to tell you. We still consider ourselves your parents, regardless if we gave birth to you or not."

July was furious. "So, you would have never told me? You only told me because you had to? You let me think this was all real when it was a lie?" she grit out.

"July, you have to understand, we were only doing what we though was best."

"The best for who, me or you?" Rage swamped her veins at the thought of what they did.

"July, you have to understand-."

She slammed her hand down on the table, making them both jump. "No I don't," she said cutting her off. "You aren't my real parents. What you need to understand is that you don't just lie to a person for ten years and expect everything to be perfect. You don't lie to a person for that long when you claim to love them. How could you just pretend everything was okay when all along you had this big secret, about me nonetheless? How could you let me believe something that wasn't even true? Didn't you feel any guilt at all? I don't know how you can live with yourself." She grabbed the envelope from the table and ran to her room. She couldn't be here any longer. This was all fake, all lies and deceit. Her skin itched with all of it.

July opened her closet, pulled out her big black duffel bag, and put the envelope in. Setting the bag on her bed, she turned towards her dresser and began to move the clothes from the drawer and into the bag. She vaguely registered that her parents hadn't followed her and that tears were falling silently down her face.

Once she had emptied every drawer, she grabbed all of the money from her secret hiding spot and put it into the front of her jeans. Tossing whatever else she wanted to take into the bag, she zipped it up. Standing at the door with the duffel bag in one hand and the other on the doorknob, she took one last look around the room, at the pictures on one wall of her and her parents, smiling, laughing; it made her anger burn hot. Doing the only thing she could do at the moment, she walked out.

She was half way out the front door when my parents began to chase after her. July started to walk faster to her car. No way were they stopping her.

"July where are you going?" her mom asked.

July was already opening up the driver's side door and tossing her bag in, where it landed on top of her jacket. She got into the car and started it up.

"July, honey, please stay? You can't go!" Mary pleaded.

She gave her former mother an icy glare and squealed out of the driveway. She watched as Mary broke down in her former father's arms and felt guilt swell up inside of her. She quickly shoved it away as she though of how they lied to her all these years and didn't feel any guilt at all. July watched as they, and the only home she'd ever known, got smaller and smaller in the mirror as she drove away.

---------------------------

tbc…