Stand By Me

seis | history

❊

LAUREL 

 BEFORE MY ALARM clock screeches, I slam my hand down on it, turning it off. My hand falls on the tiny plastic clock heavily, making a slam echo through the dorm. I lean forward in urgency. Across the cramped room, I saw a small lump in Isabel's bed, still rising and falling gently, immune to the noise. Huh. I didn't hear her come in last night.

         Squinting my eyes though the dim light, I peeked out the window. The skies were angrily dark today, with no sun in sight and thunderous clouds looking awfully ominous. The clock blared in red and bold: 6:03 AM.

           Normally I would be awake and going down to the community kitchen to cook some eggs before class, but there were two problems:

   One: I had cracked the eggs last night.

   And two: I was no longer a student at the University of Madrid, effective this week.

      Oh right. I had lost my scholarship, because I am a complete idiot.

           My body crashed down on my bed, feeling limp and detached. I sank even more when I remembered my second day of work started today. I wanted to groan and scream, but one thing I learned from having a college roommate? You had to scream and cry in silence. Every fiber in my body ached to pull the covers over my head and sleep for six years, but instead, my hand instinctively went to my nightstand drawer, pulling out The Folder.

       Sitting up, I opened it, its contents spilling out. A variety of crumpled, folded articles of paper, napkin corners, and receipts were splayed out. All of them contained mismatched addresses and phone numbers I collected through the past year, all clues to finding out who this Eli Santos was. Most of them were dead ends, but some phone numbers had led me to here, to Spain, where an aunt of Eli Santos claimed he resided. I wasn't sure where in Spain, but that'd be the mission for today.

        I combed through the stacks of random evidence, and froze when Isabel tossed in her sleep. Knowing her, she probably walked in at four in the morning with books in her arms and a pencil in her hair, dropping dead at her bed from hours at the library. When I heard her faint snoring resume, I pulled out something I considered was concrete evidence. If I were to find him, I would show him this first, before saying anything. 

        It was a photograph -- a polaroid. It was of my mother and father, with another man. My mother, Vienna, was in the middle, carrying a bundle of a baby and possessing her ten-thousand watt smile. On either side of her were the two men: my father, Elliot, wearing his trademark classic grin, and Eli Santos on her other side. He was standing with both arms behind his back, smiling with closed lips. The three of them looked relatively young, and leaning together as if bonded through years of close memories. At the bottom of the photo was marked, in sloppy writing, "Madrid, Spain." 

      Whenever I'd ask about the man in the photo, my parents would claim that they don't keep in contact with him. They would admit his name, but they would hastily look away and quickly change the subject to something different. I

        I quickly made a mental note to stash this picture in my purse for safe-keeping. And for whenever the moment arises and I have to pull it out, asking him, "Am I your baby?"

       Note to self: Maybe learn to rephrase that.

       My mother claims that my elusive birth certificate was somewhere in our various vacation houses that we owned over the years, and that she'd find it once she could. She didn't know that I had secretly contacted the American hospital that she claims I was born in, only to have them say that they had no record of me ever being born there. At all. Ever.