Chapter 4: Arriving in LA

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July arrived in California late in the afternoon after two long, boring days. So here she was in LA, knowing where she need to go but having no clue how to get there.

452 SW Palms Street. That could take me a long time to find, she thought with a pout.

The lights of the LA strip were starting to fill the sky as the sun began to set, and July had no intention of getting lost after dark in the foreign city that was unknown to her. She pulled up into a nice hotel and got a room.

Throwing her stuff onto the floor, she practically ran to the bathroom and took a nice long shower to rinse away all the grim of driving in the car all day long. Dressing into her pajamas and surveying the room, she saw a phonebook and some pamphlets sitting on a table in the corner. She grabbed them and found most of the pamphlets were tourist attractions or restaurants.

Tossing the pamphlets aside, July turned her attention to the phonebook. Opening up the first few pages she found some maps of the town. After a few frustrating minutes, she managed to locate the hotel and started to scan the map for Palms Street. Lucky for her, she found it quickly; it was about a few miles southwest of the hotel. Grabbing one of the hotels pens from the nightstand, she scribbled down the direction on a blank spot on one of the pamphlets and put it in her bag. It would still take her a while to find the place. She's been able to find Palms Street but the small map didn't get any more detailed than that.

Content with the knowledge she marginally knew where she was going, July sprawled on her back on the bed and stared at the speckled ceiling, her mind starting to wonder now that she allowed it to.

What the heck am I doing?

Doubt and fear was starting to cloud her mind.

What if this lawyer refuses to give me anything? What if this is all not true? What if there is nothing for me? What am I going to do?

Her biggest fear was that she would find nothing at all and here she would be, a girl who just turned eighteen, no family, no job, and stuck in a city that was unknown to here. She felt like crying. She was so lost. She felt like she didn't even know who she was anymore. If for the past ten years she had been lied to and was living a lie, how did she know who she was? Did she really like cars or was she only into them because her "dad" was a mechanic?

Everything was confusing. What was real? July felt like she was in someone else's body. All the images in her head were only half real. Everything felt blurred and was slowly starting to fade as her mind comprehended that she had somehow changed all her memories. In a way, she felt like she had betrayed her real parents by replacing them with someone else. What hurt even more was that she had nothing to really tie herself to them, nothing to remember them by. There was nothing there.

She dug into her bag, pulled out the photo album again, and flipped to the front picture. Here was this couple, her parents, and she didn't really feel anything towards them. How could she love someone that she didn't even remember, someone she didn't know? The people staring back at her were strangers. These were her real parents. These two faces that she only knew by her own. July did genuinely looked like her real mom.

The emptiness she felt inside rose up and she could feel it trying to consume her. Her breath caught in her throat and she could feel the pull inside as tears started to form. Her body shook with a sob and she clutched the album to her chest and rocked back and forth, the tears escaping from her eyes. She laid on her side and turned her over heated face into the cool pillows.

July's sobs started to die down and she hiccupped a couple of times. Finally the pull of sleep called to her exhausted body and she fell into oblivion.

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tbc…