"Avelyn, come on, we're going to be late."

"I'm coming, stop bothering me." I lied. That was the first time I had ever lied to my best friend, Violet.

"Ugg, well hurry up!" Sitting on the floor, running my hands through my hair, I dug through the last of my clothes searching for the perfect bathing suit. Pulling a small blue tankini top with black swim shorts, I roughly grabbed the drawer and shoved it into my dresser.

Sprinting downstairs, I halted, forgetting my phone on the bed in my rush to leave. My footsteps heavily raced back in my room and down the stairs. "Okay, done."

Vi snorted looking at her new watch. "Yeah, it only took you another 20 minutes." Putting her hands on her hips, she sighed. "At least I called you
last night to finalize everything."

It was Violet's 11th birthday yesterday, and this was her birthday weekend. She invited me to the beach, but not just any beach, the Florida Keys. It was going to be about a day drive, and her mom was going to accompany us.

Ten long hours later, after stopping at 5 rest stops, Vi slammed the door shut and pulled me with her towards the McDonald's. Beep...Beep...Beep. It was the only food place we could find and it took an hour. I craved real food since I was filled to the brim with chips. Well, McDonald's wasn't my first choice when it came to real food, but a nice salad would do. Beep...Beep...Beep.

I gasped wide awake to the sound of my alarm clock. Beep...Beep...Beep... 5:50 am. I rolled over. Beep...Beep...Beep...Damn that stupid clock. Groaning, I whacked my clock. Beep...Beep...Beep... Ugh. My life sucks. Beep...Beep...Beep... Screaming into my pillow, I realized it fell to the ground still on. Remembering that today was Friday was my incentive to get up and shut off the alarm. I set it back on my nightstand. Thank God for the mute button. If it didn't exist, I wouldn't either.

I got out of bed, dressed up, and looked in my mirror. I was cursed with too straight brown hair but the funniest thing was that no one in my family had it. People used to say that they would pay to have my hair, but I hated it. Flyaway strands would always get into my eyes and it was just difficult, so I usually pulled it into a ponytail. My eyes were different, I loved their icy blue color. It gave me a pop of color. Looking back at myself, I saw pasty pale skin that contrasted my black jeans and plum shirt.

My phone buzzed. Carly. My best and probably only friend, with the exception for Alex. Get out of your stupid bed and get tortured at school with me! I rolled my eyes. Only Carly had that sense of humor. 6:40am. I ate a fast breakfast, 6:50 am, and ran out the door and stopped. Carly texted me again. Got to talk to u during lunch, Kay?

I sighed. Of course. She had been at the DMV yesterday when I got dragged out of the house by mom. Carly had been freaking out since it is a big deal to get your license, not that I know. I'm a Junior in high school and 17, and my birthday passed a few weeks ago. School's almost out with about a week until summer. This summer would be the 1000th year from The End. I responded to Carly
with an ok.

Looking down at my phone, it read 7:00am. Shit, I was going to miss the bus. I sprinted to the bus stop, but the bus swallowed the last student and drove away as I skidded to a stop, my backpack plunging to the cement below. Groaning at the way my day started, I checked my phone for no apparent reason, most likely from habit.

Throwing the bag loaded with bricks back on, I shuffled to school, the walk only a few minutes. Annoyed, I huffed and mumbled curse words under my breath thinking that walking was just about the worst thing that could happen to me, but I was wrong. It started raining.

The roaring of engines and talking filled my ears. I tore my gaze away from the rain soaked ground to see buses unloading kids in the school parking lot. As I got closer, Noah Liberty came off the bus. He was the most popular kid in senior year at 18 years of age. I sighed and watched every move. Don't think because I sighed means I like him, but...actually it does in this case. Someone standing next to him waved to me, it was Alex.

Now, Alex is also a character. He always listened to my problems if Carly didn't, which was most of the time. He was very kind but also quite annoying. I walked over to him.

He eyed me, "Hey. You look terrible. What happened?" Oh, I forgot to add how he always says the truth no matter what. It's like he's missing a filter.

"Other than missing the bus and getting rained on nothing." He laughed at my response.

I glared at him."Well, okay then, at least you can laugh at my sucky day."

======▪======

After a bunch of boring classes, I was in lunch. It was my turn after a long line of students had their pick for lunch. I took a tray off the stack and asked for some pizza.

The lunch lady looked at me "Sorry. We are all out. All that's left are noodles and popcorn chicken or pasta with way too much sauce if you ask me."

"The noodles and chicken, please." She dropped a mega spoonful of noodles and only two miniature pieces of popcorn chicken on my tray. It looked as if the popcorn chicken pieces were two people in the middle of an ocean of noodles. I grabbed a soft roll as the cashier waved at me.

"Ava. Correct?"

Her smile was wide and contagious, so mine matched hers. "Yep, Mrs. Lovana."

She pulled up my school account. "You're all set."

"Thanks have a great day!" I exclaimed while walking to the entrance of the cafeteria.

"Ava! Hey! Over here!" There was Carly, waving me over like a madman. I smiled. After looking at the food on my tray, I plopped down next to her. She looked like she won the lottery.

"So...what happened during your drivers---"

"You won't believe it. I got it. I got my license! Well, sort of." She motioned me closer.

"What do you mean sort of? How can someone sort of get a license?"

"Just shut up and listen."
I put my hands up surrendering."I drove through a red light, but they didn't care. I missed a car crash. OMG. Did you know that Noah asked me to go out with him? Isn't great?"

"Rewind, please. Before the part about him asking you out. What happened again? And, this time go a lot slower."
Of course, Carly was being Carly and she said, "You should really listen better because that was the one and only time I am going to say that" a lot slower than she should have.

Yes, this best friend was very odd, too. She always was interested in boys instead of more important things. The drama was her life as she always put it. She was a distracted person. I guess the part about her dating Noah Liberty, my crush for like 3 years, didn't get processed in my brain until now. When if finally registered, I gave her the evil eye kind of pissed that she would do that to me.

Carly felt my glare and looked up from her cold pizza that she had brought from home, acting all innocent. "Why you looking at me like that?"

It hurt me that she didn't remembered how I felt about him. She should have known. My emotions were currently not in check, so the best thing to do was to be alone. Pushing my chair back to leave unaware of my surroundings, a guy got hit in the gut by the corner of my chair, and his tray went flying in the air.

I felt even worse now that my selfish behavior caused someone to get hurt. "I'm sorry...I didn't see you."

Something caught my eye. I looked up at the cafeteria tray traveling in the air. The pasta and its sauce floated just above the tray, threatening to fall. As it dove towards me, time slowed. The food seemed to stop in mid air, hovering just above my head, when--Splat. The food hit its target, me, and--Why did he have to get the pasta--I gasped. Carly's mouth dropped open at the scene and everyone's eyes were trained on me and the boy.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry about that..." He sputtered, my face beet red from the public humiliation.

I couldn't remember leaving the scene but that was most likely because of shock. Sprinting to the girl's bathroom, I looked through the partly broken mirror. The face that looked back was ugly. Actually, ugly would be an understatement. It was more repulsive.
Tomato sauce was splattered on my shirt and pants. My face was orange from smeared sauce. There was some pasta in my hair. Pulling it off my head, a piece of sauce hit my eye. No! No! No!

My eye was burning. There were angry red lines that made me look like one eye was bleeding. Turning on the faucet, I lowered my face to the sink about to clean them when Carly rushed through the bathroom door.

"Jaxon is such an idiot. I can't believe he dumped his lunch on you. I totally yelled at him for it and..." she trailed off after seeing me. "Ava?"

"Why?" My voice broke, a few stray tears streamed down my cheeks their trails cleaning off a bit of the sauce.

"Shh. It's okay...Ava, what's this all about?"

My heart ached even more than it did before. Carly still didn't know what my outburst was about. She reached out ready to give me a comforting hug, but I pulled away not in the mood. "Don't even try."

Thankful that lunch was almost over and my study hall was next, I left Carly in the bathroom alone and headed outside. Once I reached the school's main entrance doors, a body collided with mine, hard. My balance was lost causing me to trip down a few stairs and fall on the ground on the last.

"Hey, are you okay?"

Noah. I hit Noah. Oh no. I never got to wash my face from the sauce. He was sure to think I was an oompa loompa. Getting off the rain-soaked ground feeling a bit sore, I kept my head down and muttered a small "I'm fine."

Alex appeared at the top of the stairs staring at me. "Ava! Wait!"

He sprinted down them, apologized to Noah for me, and reached my side.
"You okay? You have a scrape on your arm." Alex touched my shoulder, but I shrugged it off. "Hey. If you need anything call me." He started to walk away before I got to say thanks.

A car picked up a kid and drove right by me. It ran through a puddle, which came at me like a tidal wave. You know when something goes terribly wrong, the world seems to stop. Yeah, that happened for the second time today. The wave grew until it towered over me. I threw my hands in front of my face of my face, shielding the water, but nothing came. It was completely still, as was the car, and everything else I saw with my peripheral vision. My eyes shifted to the car, and the water suddenly came to life and traveled through the holes in between my fingers.

Continuing along the sidewalk, I realized that today had to be the worst. I was late for the bus, Carly completely backstabbed me, I got humiliated at lunch, and then I was humiliated again in front of Noah. He probably thought I was starting to be an okay person, and then there was me falling down a flight of stairs. Way to get on a guy's radar.

Anyway, I was almost home and my parents would be there as well. Dad would be working and Mom would take her lunch break around this time. Technically, they aren't my parents because I was adopted ever since I was 15 years old, but I still think of them as it. The only people I have ever told about being adopted was Alex and Carly. They asked about my life before, but I always said that I never remembered it. What I said was true. I don't know why. I should have memories of my past especially if I was 15 years old when I was adopted, but the only thing that I knew was a white room. Nothing else.

Ha. Ha. Ha. What trouble I was getting into, Mom would be freaking out that I skipped class, but it was just study hall, so, whatever. This should be fun. I opened the front door of my house and was greeted by the smell of chocolate chip cookies. They were my safe haven.

Every time I needed someone to comfort me, Mom made her famous chocolate chip cookies. She would bring up a plate of warm gooey yumminess along with a glass of milk and sit on my bed listening to all of my problems. On the island was a tray and the cookies were cold and a bit burnt. That was the first thing that struck me as odd and Dad's computer was the second.

Dad always worked in his office, why would his computer be up here? It was already open so swiping my finger over the trackpad turned it on. I was greeted to his lock screen that was of our vacation to Australia. Snooping for anything out of the ordinary, I couldn't find anything but still concern ran through me. I needed to find Mom and Dad. It was beginning to feel like they disappeared out of thin air, my footsteps echoing in the silence.

"Mom, Dad?" I went to the basement and looked in Dad's office. His papers were everywhere. It looked like someone ransacked it. There was a swivel chair lying on the ground, a beat up looking file cabinets contents were all over the floor. My pulse ramped up.

"Dad?" I whispered.

He was not behind his desk, or behind the file cabinet, so I ran upstairs and looked into my parent's room. Everything was spotless. Everything was in its place, everything except for a drawer that was open, so breathing heavily I tiptoe to it. My heart was pounding when I looked inside. Empty.

I stared at the wood covering the bottom of the drawer and noticed something. It was a dull brown color, while the outside of the drawer was cherry wood. Almost like I was a character out of some spy movie, I pressed on one of the corners of the dull wood inside. Miraculously, it came up. A single folder was revealed. It was labeled "Ava P." I held my breath, anxious. What would be in there?

A sound tore my stare away from the manila folder. I got up and ran back to the kitchen. My parents were here. They didn't acknowledge what had happened, instead, they were acting mostly normal. Dad was on his computer, and Mom was eating a cookie from the tray that housed the burnt ones.

"Hi, sweetie. Oh." She took a cookie off of the tray. "I had a feeling you needed a cookie, so here." Inspecting the dessert, it was perfectly round, warm, and slightly brown on top which was the opposite of the cookies I saw before.

Puzzled, I asked, "Mom, where did you get these? I mean when I got home there was a tray of burnt cookies, and now their gone..." My mind drifted off, trying to understand what was going on.

Dad laughed at my statement. "When does your mother ever burn cookies? She just took those out of the oven."

"Oh, " I scratched my head. "I'm going to go do my homework."

Dad looked up at me worried. "Are you feeling well? You look like you have seen a ghost."

I pulled at my hem of my shirt to stop my hands from shaking. "No, I feel fine. Great, even."

My parents saw right through the lie, but they didn't say anything. Walking upstairs, I checked the time wanting to see if it changed, and to my surprise it was 3:15 pm. Throwing myself on my bed, I dosed off for a few minutes, and then all of a sudden I remembered something important, the folder. Flying in my parent's room, I dropped to the floor next where the files were. It was gone, the whole folder was gone. Where did it go?

Defeated, I trudged back to my room still wondering about the folder. Alex. Alex would be interested in my story and maybe even make a conspiracy about it. "Hey. Ava. What's---"

I cut him off. "Hey, so something weird is going on. I mean it's totally freaking me out." I twirled my hair around my finger, "So when I came home Mom and Dad weren't here. When I came upstairs, they appeared and acted normal, and that wasn't even the weirdest part."

I lowered my voice. "Alex, I found a folder with my name on it. I think they were trying to hide it from me."

"Who's they?"

"My parents, you...you...ugh just help me!"

"Okay, I will." Alex thought for a second. "Did you open up it up?"

"No. Um..." I played with my hands not sure if he would believe me.

"I think you should open it."His voice was shrill. "Well, did you open it yet?"

I took a deep breath and hesitated. "I mean I went back for it before I called you but it was gone, so...yeah." Yelling erupted on the other side of the phone and my words got lost.

"Bla..bla..bla." He grunted. "I would love to help you more, but Mom said I have to go," and he hung up.

"Thanks for listening." I rolled my eyes and flopped back on the bed disappointed.

I wanted to call Carly, but I was still mad at her. Why was life so complicated? My mind flicked to a more pressing issue, what had happened when I got home. Mom and Dad were both gone. Dad's office was a mess. One of his file cabinets smashed, its contents littering the floor. Me finding a fake backing to one of Mom's drawers, that held a paper with my name on it "Ava P.". Peering at the window, there was a black cloud in the distance, my mind left distraught.