Chasing Abby(8)

I push off the counter and head upstairs. As I reach the second floor, I hear a sound coming from Abby’s bedroom. I tiptoe toward her room then I close my eyes as I listen. She’s playing her guitar and my eyes instantly well up with tears when I realize she’s singing “Blackbird” by The Beatles, a song about learning to fly with broken wings.
It’s the first time I’ve heard her voice in four days. I want to go in there and hold her and tell her everything will be okay. But if I can’t tell her everything, then that will just be a lie. I can’t tell her the reason she feels like a caged songbird. I can’t let her fly away.


Chapter 5 - Abby

I LAY MY GUITAR on top of my bed and grab my laptop off the nightstand. I sit cross-legged as I set the computer on the bed in front of me. Flipping open the screen, I type in my password then open my browser to my bookmarks. I stare at the name of the website for a moment before I click on it: birthrecords.com.
I know my dad’s credit-card number. I have it saved in a text file because my dad was tired of giving it to me every time I wanted to download a new movie. But my parents will definitely notice a charge on their account made to birthrecords.com. Then I’ll lose my credit-card privileges and they’ll probably move us to a remote island in the South Pacific with no Internet access. Well, my dad will probably protest for a couple of days before he gives into my mom, as always.
I open up my “Saved Orders” page and stare at the “Submit” button. Just a few more clicks and I can have the name of the agency that handled my adoption. That doesn’t mean they’ll give me the names of my birth parents, or that the agency still exists. All it means is that I’ll have one more piece of the puzzle. One tiny piece of a puzzle that’s missing half its pieces. It may seem insignificant and pointless, but it means the world to me.
Why can’t my mother see that?
If I knew what hospital I was born in, or what time I was born, I could go to the county courthouse and search the birth records myself. But my parents have already admitted to lying about this information when I asked them about it years ago in casual conversation.
“Mommy, where was I born?”
“In a hospital, of course.”
“What hospital?”
Mom and Dad exchanged shifty looks as they used their ESP to come up with a lie. Always covering their tracks. God forbid I should want to know anything about my true identity.
I wonder if I look more like my biological mom or dad. I wonder if they play music like me. I wonder if they live here in North Carolina or somewhere cool like New York or Hollywood. I wonder if they broke up or if they had more kids after they gave me up. Maybe I was the only one they didn’t want.
Most of all, I just wonder if they ever think of me.
I open up a new tab on my browser and begin a new search: abigail jensen adoption decree. I hit go and, of course, nothing related to me or my parents comes up. But that hasn’t stopped me from repeating this same search string a billion times over the past three days. Since he gave me the idea.
I open my email next to check for new messages and I’m relieved to find I have two. I already feel like a ghost in this house. I don’t think I could handle being invisible to my friends.
I check Amy’s message first.

From: [email protected]: [email protected] Subject: Lameness

Vanessa’s party isn’t gonna be a sleepover anymore. Her parents flipped out when they heard boys were coming. Her parents are the worst.

I chuckle at the last sentence in my best friend’s email. She doesn’t know what I found out a few days ago. If she knew, she would have to agree that my parents are the worst. At least, my mom is.