In Search of..
prologue
by Beth Horowitz

I always lived a normal life, well relatively normal. I moved to upstate New York when I was 10 after my mom got hurt at work. My mother was always possessive of me, always keeping an eye on me, even in my teen years. She would never let me go to friends houses, parties, nothing. She would drop me off at school and pick me up, never letting me go anywhere without a cell phone and without asking me where I would be, with whom, and for how long. It would get aggravating, but I never really thought about it too much, I just thought she was over-protective.

I'm an only child, and only children tend to have over-active imaginations. I would think that all these weird visions I had were old tv shows I had seen when I was younger or just pure make-believe. They had to be, right? I thought about them a few times, wondering if they were surpressed memories, but I'd rationalize "I would remember a place like that." The memories got more intense, and harder to ignore. I had convinced myself that they were just the products of an overactive imagination. I'm 16 years old I thought, my mother would have told me if I was ever in such a place, this place by the ocean. But, I had never been to the ocean, I had lived in Nebraska before I moved. More time went on, and I stopped rationalizing, I became more and more convinced something was wrong. When I stayed home from school one Tuesday I decided to go to the basement and look through old albums and paperwork for any kind of evidence. I went down to my basement with a flashlight because the light wasn't working. I walked slowly down the creaking stairs wondering why I was being so paranoid. I went down to the stacks of photo albums my mother had, and went through the stacks, she had about a dozen. One was her wedding album. The next was the most recent, showing my first day as a senior in high school. I was skipped two grades, instead of entering 10th grade that year I entered 12th. I was still at the top of my class, and no class I took ever challenged me, I'd go over the material and in a matter of minutes I would memorize it. School became boring for me, and I'd often skip school, I actually had the worst attendance in my class, despite the fact that one of my peers had had heart surgery and he was out less then I was. My guidance councilor and teachers were used to my behavior by now, my absences, and they didn't say much about it because I was still at the top of my class easily. I thought about all of that as I went through that album. I skipped through most of the next 6, most of them were of ages 5-10. The next 2 were of my mother before I was born. Then there was one large dusty one at the bottom of the stack. Come to think of it I had never seen this one before. I went through it and saw myself at age 4. I went through it expecting baby pictures or pictures of my toddler years to come up. None did. I sat there thinking, "Why are there no pictures of me before age 4?" On the last page there was this letter some place in Delaware. It looked like a fax.
 

March 7, 1989
The Centre
Blue Cove, Delaware

The child is ready, the twin will not come with her, only the girl. All paperwork necessary for the transaction are in the mail. Take her before the week is out, we have no use for her.

Dr. William Raines
 

I sat there Indian style on my basement floor reading that fax over and over. So many questions swirled through my mind. What was the Centre? Why didn't my mom tell me I'm adopted? So this explains why I never looked like my parents, but who is "the twin"? Do I have a twin? Why would they "have no use" for me?

I'm not sure how long I sat there that day. It was probably hours. Eventually I pulled myself together and looked through all of my mother's files for anything else on this place called 'The Centre'. There was nothing else, just that fax. I decided to take it out of the album and hide it in my room, so at any time I could take it out and remind myself that it was real. I put the albums away and went to my room and logged online. I searched all week for anything pertaining to the Centre on the internet, skipping all of my classes.

Eventually I went back to school, and everything seemingly went back to normal. But it was never normal again. I would stay at my computer from the time I got to school until I fell asleep, which was normally an hour or two before I would have to return to school. I barely ate, and I no longer talked, especially to my mother. I was probably in shock. I resented my mother enormously for keeping all these secrets from me. Everyone noticed the change to my appearance and to my attitude. I lost a lot of weight those 6 months and I was pale and gaunt, probably from not eating. When I was not at my computer or at the library searching I was sitting in class, thinking of new tactics to use to intensify my search. I was a woman on a mission. But sometimes while sitting in class thinking, it wouldn't be about strategy. It would be about my real parents, and of my twin brother or sister. I wondered whom they were, where they were, if they loved me, and why the woman who raised me lied to me.

While sitting in class I came to a brainstorm, the FBI and CIA, I'll hack into their websites, I had done it before. I quickly got a bathroom pass and put on some white makeup I had purchased at Hot Topic in case I ever had to go home quickly. I put it all over myself, and then used my mascara to darken the area under my eyes. I came back saying I had vomited and was going to go home, nobody suspected what had really happened. When I got home, at about 9 am, I threw my car keys on my table and ran to my room, and spent the rest of the day hacking into the FBI website. I got nothing. I didn't sleep that night because I was on the CIA page now. I had spent 24 hours at the computer when I came to the conclusion that there was nothing on the CIA page about the Centre either. I got up, went to my bed, and passed out. I was asleep until about midnight that night. I got up and padded into my kitchen, trying to be as silent as I could while making something to eat. While the oven re-heated the meal my mother made that night it hit me, that fax. I ran upstairs and read the location again, Blue Cove Delaware. Dr. William Raines. It was so simple, it was always right in front of me, I had a car and a license, I would drive to Delaware and follow the doctor.

I decided right there in my room that night that I would leave immediately. It was the most rash and impulsive thing I had ever done, I was always the good kid, the smart one, the brain, always playing it safe. I rationalized that I had some impulsiveness coming my way. I grabbed my backpack, emptied it's contents (books and a calculator) and threw a few outfits in and grabbed all my money. I went downstairs in the clothes I had worn the day before, turned the stove off, grabbed the left-overs and my keys and scribbled a note to my mother.
 

Dear 'Mom' -
Finding the truth.
-Cathy

I left a copy of the Centre fax with that note, and then I was off to find out about my family, and about my past.
 
 

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