Identifying Sara

Chapter Five

Walking the halls is the worst part of this whole "new student" process. Everyone stares at you, and I mean everyone. It's exactly what I don't want anyone to do, taking in my oddly mixed features gives them a chance to figure out who I am.

During English it came to my mins that this misterious blue-eyed boy was in 6 of my classes. It sucked, because all day I could feel his stare burning holes into my head. It made me feel very uncomfortable; what if he has something to do with my father?

I shook the thought. He's in highschool, he wouldn't be working for an at least 50 year old man. Unless he was super desperate for money.

The final bell rings signaling school is over, and I can finally leave. The stares I got today have been overwhelming and I am worn out, ready to fall to the ground and fall asleep right then and there. Chilly air smacks me in the face as I step outside, it feels nice soothing the burning feeling on my cheeks from embarrassment, but at the same time it feels dangerous, for reasons I can't explain.

I am only a few minutes down the street when a car pulls over next to me. Black car, slightly tinted windows, these are the first signs of a kidnapper, aren't they? My stomach flips, my legs go weak, my vision blurs, it's all leading up to a major anxiety attack, which I can see in my near future if I don't get out of here. I am ready to flee when the car window rolls down slightly and I see my moms face in the car.

"Mom?" I say.

"Get in!" She yells to me. My eyes widen and I enter the car quickly.

"What's going on?" I ask fumbling with my seatbelt.

"Oh n-nothing. I just, feel very uncomfortable with you walking by yourself in this kind of area."

"Why?" I ask suspiciously.

"Well theres some woods, never know what could be out here." She says quickly moving her eyes in all directions as we drive down the street.

"The city is like a 6 minute walk from here I doubt it all that dangerous." I say annoyed at her.

"Lets talk about this later, yeah?" She nervously chuckles.

"Uh ok." I look out the window and stay silent for the rest of the ride.

+++

Once we step inside the house my mother immediatly whips around and locks the door.

"Mom are you okay?" I ask slightly nervous.

"I'm fine darling. Now I'm going to go start dinner." She walks past me leaving me by myself.

"That would be fine if it wasn't 2:30 in the afternoon." I mumble to myself.

I drop my bag on the couch and rush up the stairs to my room. I should probably finish unpacking.

Once I enter I immediatly stop in my tracks. A box I have never seen before sits on the floor with no name on it to label it, usually all of our boxes are labeled. I look around to make sure this isn't some kind of joke and someone -being Kristy- will pop out at any moment telling me she was testing my reactions. I close the door gently and twisting the lock into place. Dropping to my knees, I open the box and see a bunch of unfamiliar items before me. My eyes land on a picture frame first.

I lift it out of the box. It's a picture of a man and a baby. The baby is sitting on the man's lap and the man is sitting on a rock with an ocean behind them. He looks at the baby with a smile on his face. The baby smiles at the camera,lips covered in saliva and chubby fingers pointing in the direction of the camera. I can't get over how similar they each look to each other; their noses and eyes take the same shape, their hair color is sandy, like sand that coats the beaches.

My curiousness takes over and I pop the picture out of its frame. My mother usually writes on the back of pictures, weather anyone she knows is in the picture or not, it's nice to see it's reason. I figure it must be a cute picture she found from the internet, but why? Why would she have a random baby and her father in a frame? I flip the picture over and examine the writing on the back.

Annalise and her father: 5 years left. It reads. My mouth drops and the glass frame falls onto the ground shattering into millions of pieces.

M-my father. That man is my father! My mom has been hiding this from me from me and she never felt the need to tell me. 5 years left, what is that supposed to mean? Suddenly I hear my mothers footsteps bolting up the stairs. A strong feeling of hatred for my mother is what I feel now. I want her to stay away, she is nothing but a liar to me at the moment.

"Sara! Are you alright?" She yells from what sounds like the middle of the stairway, she's coming, and she's coming fast.

I gasp and put the picture back into the box carefully trying not to wrinkle or rip it in any way. Rushing to my new closet, I push the box inside as fast as I can and kick the glass shreds under my bed so they are no longer noticeable.

The door swings open and my mother looks at me wide eyed.

"Sara?" She asks.

"I'm fine mom." I say harshly but it's a lie. I'm currently shaking and struggling to wear a fake smile. I just saw the first ever image of my dad. That's something my mind can't even provide.

"I heard something," she says suspiciously.

"Yeah I uh, fell." I lie. Looking away and giving the floor my best scowl.

When I look at her with the scowl remaining on my face, she looks back at me as if she is using a lie dector on me inside her head. I give her the most fake smile I can make and she slowly closes the door and walks back down to the kitchen.

When I am positive she's gone, I rush to my closet and pull the heavy box out of it's place and back out into my room where I can continue to dig through the items.

Before I can stop myself, my hands begin searching the box furiously searching for what other lies I can find. My hands discover a paper that looks as if it has been ripped in half and stained with coffee. I gently take it out of the box careful not to destroy it more than it already is. My eyes skim fast, it's an envelope, well, half of one. I realize it's a letter, and the return address was ripped off of the envelope, however the address it was supposed to go to is still partly attached and a certain line catches my eye immediately.

"490 Trini-" is all it says before the rip tears the rest of the words away from it.

I sigh in frustration. Of course the address wouldn't be fully there, with my kind of luck? No way. Inside is a paper which I'm assuming is the actual letter itself. I throw it back in the box, and for a moment I think of giving the box back but, I decide giving this box back to my mom is not the best idea, she will cover the whole thing up with a lie, or worse; burn the box. Plus, this could have me just a few steps closer to finding my father; letting me finally discover the truth.

My mother's done simular things to that before, destroying things the moment I find them. Like when I was eight, I found a gift from my father to me, but my mother found out because I wasn't very good at hiding things yet, and she burned it. This allows me to know by now; she isn't afraid.

As I try to sleep that night, I toss and turn, continuously switching sides of my pillow, finally giving up and throwing the dang thing at the wall. I can't stop thinking about my father, he's been the main thing on my mind lately and I don't understand why because this move is no different than any other. Besides the fact I found the box. Maybe it is different, but what affect does the box have on this? It's a box! Possibly with your entire life inside of it. My conscious says.

I groan and cover my face with my hands, taking a deep breathe. I feel as if I am living in lies, that everything I've ever been told is a lie. But I decide to ignore it because there's a reason behind it, and there's no reason why I can't find out.