Welcome to the Family

(Lennon aka Bradley's POV)

Have you ever felt like you didn't belong? Like everything you knew was all one huge lie? Well, that's exactly how I was starting to feel after I spent an entire evening one day digging through my parents photos for a school project. I needed pictures of me from birth until now, showing exactly how I had evolved as a person in my style and whatever else. Only when I was going through said pictures, I started to dig more into a file folder I had found of my parent's important paperwork. "The official adoption order of Bradley Nicole Baker." I sat there for a good fifteen minutes, just staring at the thing. It said this girls parents were Zephyr King and Zack Baker, that she was born in Huntington Beach, California, and that she had the exact same birthday as I did. It was weird, because my parents never mentioned to me about her before. I had an older brother named Danny and that was all the siblings that I knew about. As I read further more into it, it even said that the girl had black hair and green eyes, exactly like I did. What was even more weird, was that neither of my parents had green eyes the more that I thought about it. They were both dark brown. Mom had always called it a lucky thing, saying that it meant that I was blessed by the heaven's to have such beautiful eyes. But this all seemed off to me, nothing felt right after I read that.

When I went downstairs to ask my parent's about it, Danny immediately stopped me. "What are you doing in the attic?" He asks with his usual snarky attitude as he then tries to snatch the paper from my hand. I swat him away, telling him to politely fuck off. "Not very nice, Lennon. Do I need to teach you some manners again?" He gets closer to me this time, his terrible hot breath a mere couple of inches from my face. Thankfully, our Dad comes in at the perfect moment, making Danny move away from me quickly without hesitation. I shudder, utterly disgusted as he leaves upstairs to his room while I follow my dad into the kitchen. There, he's sitting at the small dining table while my mom was at the stove, making some sort of exotic meal she always did for dinner. "What's the matter, Lennon? Danny bothering you again?" My dad asks while looking up at me briefly from his newspaper. I shake my head no, trying desperately to repress anything that had to do with Danny and slowly take the seat across from him. I fidget with my hands for a minute, waiting for the right time to bring up what I had read. "Dad, I was looking for pictures of me when I was a baby for my school project up in the attic boxes and I came across this paper." I show it to him, his eyes almost bulging out of their sockets once he scanned over it. He practically snatched it from my hands before passing it over to my mom whose reaction was equally just as shocked. "What? What's the big deal?"

Neither of them says a word to me and my mom exits the kitchen as fast as she could with the paper in tow. I look at my dad suspiciously, but he still remains quiet until mom comes back, a look of relief washed over her now. "Are you going to tell me or what?" They both shake their heads no and already on edge, I storm off angrily into the living room and upstairs into my bedroom. I had no idea what was such a big fucking deal about telling me about her, but obviously it was some sort of big secret. Instinctively I make sure my door is locked so that way Danny had no way to get in while I our parents were downstairs. I don't want to go into detail now, but later on, be prepared for a sick and twisted little detail that I'm leaving out for now. But just know, my brother is a total perv and can never be trusted. I grab my phone from off of my nightstand and dial my best guy friend, Vincent's phone number as fast as I could. "Hello?" He picks up on the first ring, just like I hoped. I sigh deeply, twirling a piece of hair between my fingers. I had so many thoughts and ideas running through my brain, I didn't know exactly where to start. "What's wrong, Len?" I stay quiet for a few more minutes until finally constructing the right sentence that could sum up all I was thinking in that moment. "I think I'm either adopted or I have a sister I don't know about, Vinny. I found this paper that said it was an adoption order and the girl has the same hair, eye color, and birthday as me. Except she's from California, and her name is Bradley. I don't know what to do! When I tried to tell my parent's they just wigged out and ignored me."

Now it was Vinny's turn to go silent and all that did was succeed in making my anxiety flare up more. "Come on Vin, I need you to do some research for me, please." Vinny was my best friend since first grade, whenever I was in trouble or needed anything, he was the only one I could turn to. He also knew the horrible secrets about my brother Danny too. "Alright fine, give me what you've got." I try to jog my memory with the names of the unknown girls parents, it finally coming to me when I remember that they both started with a Z. "The dad is Zack Baker and the mom is Zephyr King." I can hear him clicking away quickly at his computer, the line remaining quiet for a good few minutes until eventually the typing of the keyboard stopped momentarily. "Okay so this Zack Baker guy is actually a guitarist for....Nova's favorite band, Avenged Sevenfold. Now the Zephyr lady is actually a well known amateur surfer on a woman's surf team." My jaw had basically dropped to the floor when I had heard that. My other best friend, Nova, was incredibly in love and pretty much obsessed with that band, especially with their lead guitarist. She had all their albums, shirts, stickers, posters, you name it, plastered all over her walls and folders. "Now according to records, they did have an open adoption back in October of 1999. So that would make you literally almost a month old. They were both 18 at the time she was born too. Now the people who adopted their baby, were a couple from Nevada with a toddler son. They're named...Oh my God."

When Vinny stopped talking so abruptly, I knew it had to be something bad. "Come on, Vin! Don't stop there now, just tell me! I need to know, please!" My heart was racing fast and hard in my chest as I sat up now, eagerly wanting to know the names that were on the other files. "The paper you found, was just the information on the birth parents for in case the adopted child wanted to ever look for their birth parents. The people who adopted their kid are named..Lee and Kathy Smith. Your's and Danny's parents. Holy shit, Lennon. They aren't your real parents."

At the moment, everything that I had ever known and believed, had crumbled right before my eyes. My entire existence, was one huge lie. That started to explain why my parents never had any pictures of me before a certain time, that explained why I didn't look like my parents hardly at all but Danny did. "I need to go and find them, Vin. Call Nova, but don't explain everything to her. Just tell her that we're going to have to find a way to get to California. We have spring break coming in two days. Then, we'll leave. We'll take a bus or something. Try to convince your parents or do whatever you can. Danny has been pestering with me again, so I'm gonna have a hard time trying to get around to my parent's. I have to tell them that I know, Vin. Does that mean they changed my name on purpose? So I wouldn't have any thoughts about it? God, now there's just too much building up on me." He tells me to calm down and try to relax as best as I could, that he would try to come over and spend the night so that way Danny couldn't try anything while my parent's were out at my dad's concert tonight and that I shouldn't tell them anything. "Thanks Vin, I love you. Let me know what Nova says." We then hang up and I can't help but to feel the tears starting to fall freely from my eyes.

I looked at myself in the mirror, not even knowing who I was looking at anymore. Was my name even Lennon? Or was it Bradley? Must importantly, why did my parents hide this from me if my birth parents wanted me to find them? They obviously couldn't be that bad of people, my parents were almost exactly like them. Dad was in a band and mom was a tattoo artist. What the hell was so bad about these people that they felt the need to completely cut me off from them? Then again, what if this was just one horrible misunderstanding? What if they had adopted a kid but it didn't work out and they returned her in the end? I didn't know how to make heads or tails of any situation at the moment. Only when a hard knock at my door interrupted my train of thinking did I try to snap myself out of it. Fearful that it could be Danny, I waited for whoever it was to make themselves known. "Lennon, it's Mom. Can we talk for a minute please?" Reluctantly, I open the door, revealing my mother standing there with a glass of juice in her hands. She comes in and sits at the foot of my bed, a distraught look on her face. "What do you want to talk about?" I ask uneasily as I keep a close eye on my phone that was on the bed behind her. She sighs deeply, running a hand through her thick hair.

"I know you found that paper, but I don't want you to think anything of it. At the time, yes, your father and I wanted a little sister for Danny because we weren't sure if I was having a boy or a girl but it didn't work out in the end with that family and we had given her back. We ended up finding out that I was having a girl, so it was just better that way. So you're not adopted, Lennon. You're from me and your father, don't ever doubt that, please." After she had said that, I knew it was a done deal. There was absolutely no way that I could believe her or anything that came out of her mouth, it all made entirely no goddamn sense. She was clearly lying, it was blatantly obvious, she had no idea of what to even say. So without letting her know that I knew, I just shook my head and gave her a half hug that she insisted on receiving from me. "I love you, Lennon." She says with a hopeful smile on her face. I don't say it back to her and insist on asking her to let me be alone for a minute. Then, that's when I hurriedly send a text to Vinny, confirming that I had the truth. "We're going to California, to find my real parents. End of story.