Alyssa
When dad picked Jack and I up from his baseball tryout it was quiet. Almost uncomfortable. Jack nudges my arm and nods at me mouthing an "it's okay" to me. "So Jack how'd it go?" Melissa asks. "It went great. Half of the people who tried out suck anyway." He says and takes a sip of his Gatorade. Dad looks at me through his rearview mirror.
I give him a small smile and look down. "You okay, Alyssa?" He asks and continues to keep his eyes on me. "Yeah, fine." I say. Jack and I exchange looks and I look at my phone. "You seem off a bit." Dad enters. "It's just something I saw. It scared me, but I know it's fake." I say avoiding telling him what exactly I was scared about. He just nods
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"Are you ever going to tell him?" Jack asks me. I lay on his bed and throw a bouncy ball up and down. I just shrug. "Well, Alyssa, if it scared you that much and you think it's true then maybe you should research it, or ask who he adopted you from." Jack suggests. I remember dad telling me that it wasn't that he really went to the adoption agency and adopted me, but that he found me, and that my biological parents gave me up. "Maybe you could look through your baby stuff." He says
That wasn't a bad idea. But it did have one flaw. Dad doesn't like me looking at the box of my baby stuff. It's like it's sacred. "How would I get to it, dad keeps it hidden and I'm not allowed to touch it." I say and turn over on my side.
"well, tomorrow is a teacher work day and we can always search upstairs. Then on Saturday when they go to work again we can search in the basement."
"Jack you are brilliant!" I say and give him a huge hug. "But you stink so go take a shower." I say and leave his room. Before I get to my door I hear my dad call my name. "Yeah dad?" I enter the living room. Dad sits there calm and watches the news. Which is never a good sign, that usually mean something has happened. "Wanna tell me what happened, why you were so quiet?" He says.
"Dad, it's nothing. It just scared me a little, Jack helped me out with it though." I say and wave it off. "Alyssa." My dad says in a short tone. I huff and sit down. "I saw this thing on the Internet about a family and it had one of those captions like 'you would never believe' so I clicked on it and read it," I pause.
"And?" He waits for me to continue. "It was about a missing child, it showed the baby picture and a computerized picture of what she would look like today. She resembled me and it startled me, then Jack was like 'she looks nothing like you. You have different eye colors and hair colors' stuff like that." I tell him. My heart races because he's quiet and when dads quiet it's never a good thing.
"Okay, well he was right. You should never listen to what's on the Internet." He smiles at me. Wait? Is he okay? This never happens. "Y-yeah. He was." I say and get up waking to my room. "I love you Alyssa." He says one last time. "....love you too dad."
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