Day 20
Underneath the table was a row of wooden drawers. I hastily dashed around the table to face them. One needed a key. Bingo.
A satisfying click resonated as I slid my stepfather’s key into its slot and twisted—like bones snapping. As I yanked it open, it groaned, specks of dust swirling about in little puffs. Envelopes. Not just one or two, but a stack of them, neatly tucked away, like King Tut’s mummy waiting to be excavated. They didn’t belong. The sour breath of air oozing out of each envelope exhibited the forgotten—secret—nature of these brittle pages.
I wasn’t sure what I was looking at, but it wasn’t what I was searching for. About a year ago, he found my hidden folders. They didn’t contain anything detrimental to him. They had nothing to do with him. His presence in my life was as insignificant as a candle lit in the middle of the day—until he found my folders.
I had been investigating my real father’s death, starting the day after I got word of his disappearance. "Disappearance" is what happens to socks or the iPhone you swear you left on the counter or my mother when she hears her sons getting a beating. This was something else. Nobody just vanishes into thin air.
The thing about investigating your own father’s death is that I kept thinking there would be some clear path, a clue to the puzzle left behind just for me—like I was the chosen one to piece it all together. Only there wasn’t. It didn’t take long for me to realize just how little I actually knew about the man who raised me, and just how small and incapable a little boy is. Because the reality is, that is what I was. But now I am sixteen, double the age of when I began my investigation, and double the size, curtosy of my mother. I must admit that although she neglected both me and my brother for the past eight years, she always made sure we ate.
"The answers are bound where minds wander but bodies stay still."
