The How & the Why

by Cynthia Hand

  None of it felt real, but I was going along with it.

  Then the car started to slide. It was January—bitterly cold, icy roads. Mom has never been the greatest driver. She had just finished telling me that it was the right thing, and we hit a patch of black ice. The car swerved one way and then the other, and then we started to spin. Time slowed the way it does in these situations. I remember the grimace on Mom’s face, the terror, the panic. I even remember the whiteness of her knuckles as she clutched the steering wheel. My stomach lurched. Snow and trees and lights whizzed by the windows. A horn blared at us. I screamed, and it was like the sound a deer makes when the mountain lion gets it.

  Oh shit.

  The car stopped. We both took a moment to catch our breath.

  “Are you hurt?” Mom had her arm in front of me, like she could have kept me from going through the windshield.

  I’d been wearing my seat belt. I was fine. We were both totally fine. The car hadn’t collided with anything. We hadn’t hit another car, even though there was traffic. We hadn’t gone off the road. We hadn’t flipped. We were stopped, having turned a perfect 180 degrees. We were facing the other way. Behind us, another car honked, because we were blocking the road.

  Mom started driving, slowly pulling us into the correct lane. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  I rolled down the window and threw up.

  “All right,” Mom said. She put on the turn signal to exit the road. To turn us back around. To be on our way to the clinic again.

  I put my hand on hers on the steering wheel.

  “Actually,” I said. “Can you take me back to the house?”

  I’m not a big believer in signs, X, and I didn’t suddenly get a different opinion about abortion, not that I had a strong opinion about it in the first place. It came down to this: I was going in one direction, and then something happened to cause me to go the other way.

  And here we are.

  S

  16

  I give the envelope with the non-identifying information form to Nyla at school. Because even though she may have said that searching for my birth mother was a bad idea, she’s the only person in my life outside of my parents who might understand what it feels like to read this form. And she’s my best friend and I can’t not share this with her. For better or worse.

  So by the end of lunch she’s read the whole thing and is officially ready to comment.

  “Okay, first: whoa,” she says as we get settled in one of our regular hangout spots on the floor in the Bonneville High School common room.

  “Right?”

  “How are you doing?”

  “It’s a lot,” I say, crunching on my last carrot stick. “It’s . . . a lot.”

  “But didn’t you already know most of what’s in here?” Nyla hands me back the envelope.

  “Yeah.” I put the envelope on the floor and stare at it. “My parents told me some of it. Like my birth mother enjoyed music, that kind of thing. But . . .”

  But this . . . this is a whirlwind of specific details I didn’t know before, like my aunt—I have an aunt, who’s seven years older than I am—is allergic to peanuts, and my grandfather is a bald Presbyterian lawyer, and my birth mother apparently had freckles and worked summers at Target.

  “But now you have people,” Nyla says.

  “Yeah.” That’s exactly it. Now, no matter how I try to look at it, it’s like I have a hidden family out there, not only a biological mother and the necessary biological father, but aunts and uncles and grandparents and great-grandparents who each have lives and histories of their own. Suddenly, they’re all real.

  Nyla gets a wistful look, and I think, maybe I shouldn’t have been so quick to share this with her. Maybe this is dredging up her own long-buried baggage.

  But then she says, “I liked the part with the sexually transmitted diseases. Gross!”

  “Wow, you too, huh?”

  “So what are you going to do now?”

  I stare at her. “What do you mean?”

  “Are you going to search for her?”

  “I thought you said that would be opening a can of worms.”

  She examines her fingernails. “Maybe I was wrong.”

  I scoff. “Who are you, and what have you done with my friend Nyla?”

  She glances around us. It’s loud in here. People are talking, eating, laughing. None of our other friends are nearby. No one’s looking at us.

  She scoots closer to me. “I have people, too,” she says quietly. “I had a brother, once.”

  My mouth opens, but I don’t know what to say. “Like . . . from . . .”

  “Liberia,” she whispers. “He was older, maybe ten or eleven when . . .” Her brow knits.

  When her parents were killed. In the civil war there. Which is all I know about the situation. That’s all Nyla’s told me.

  “I only remember him a little,” she says. “Flashes. A joke he used to tell. I couldn’t even repeat it to you now. I don’t speak the language anymore. But I remember it was funny. And his name was Tegli.”

  “Oh, Ny,” I breathe. It seems impossible that I have known her for so long, so many years, so many late nights up talking, and she’s never said a word about having a brother.

  “I was ten before I even told my mom about him. And then my parents discussed it, and they decided that they were going to look for him and make him part of our family, too, if they could find him. So they tried, and . . .” She stares off toward the lockers like she’s seeing something far away. Something unpleasant. “Yeah. It didn’t end well.”

  “I’m so sorry—” I begin.

  She shakes her head. “The thing is—and I know this is going to come as a shock to you, Cass—but I’ve decided that you’re not me. And I’m not you.”

  “Thank goodness, right?” I try to make this a joke, but it falls flat.

  “I was being judgy about your birth mom,” she says.

  “You were?”

  “My birth parents didn’t choose to give me up. But your birth mother did. And I thought maybe that meant she wasn’t—”

  “—a good person,” I finish for her. I get it. Other people have reacted that way, too, sometimes, when they hear I’m adopted. Like my adoption is a tragedy. Like I’m an abandoned baby who some heartless slutty girl left in a box on somebody’s doorstep. A stray puppy in the rain.

  Nyla touches the envelope, which is still on the floor between us. “But when I read this I could see I was wrong. She was just really young, right? She seems totally normal. And if I were you, I’d want to search for her.”

  I shrug. “I don’t even know her name.”

  “There has to be something on the internet,” she says. “Like a registry or something. And isn’t there some information in this form you can use? Like clues?”

  “Maybe. But there’s nothing identifying about any of it,” I say. “Which I think is the point.”

  Nyla nods thoughtfully.

  “And—” I sigh. “I don’t want to upset my parents.”

  “Your dad is the one who gave this to you,” she points out.

  “Not so I could search,” I counter. “But so I’d know everything they know.”

  “You should ask him how he feels about it. Did you talk to him about—”

  “I was going to, but I got sidetracked. I said I wanted to talk to him, but then he said he had something he wanted to talk about, and then he gave me this, and I—”

  She folds her arms. “Cass!”

  “I know. I know. Ease off, Captain Bossypants.”

  The bell rings. Lunch is officially over. People around us start to move toward class.

  Suddenly Bastian appears before us.

  “Hey, ladies, what’s up?” He helps us get to our feet. “For the record, last night was amazing.”

  Last night with the kissing scene? I smile. “Yep. Totally amazing.”

  “Your song at the end,” he says to Nyla, shaking his head like he still can�
�t believe it. “You kill me, girl. I think I’m going to have to ask you to marry me in real life, even.”

  Hold on. He’s going to ask Nyla to marry him? Because he liked her song at the end of act two? But . . . I’m the one with the big solo in act two.

  “Yeah, good luck with that,” she says, the tiniest hint of a smile appearing on her face. “But thanks. You weren’t so bad yourself.”

  He turns to me, his brown eyes all warm and sparkly in a way that makes my heart beat faster. “And you, well, it should go without saying.”

  “Actually, I could do with saying.”

  He laughs. “Okay. Your solo is the shit, er, crap—” he amends for Nyla.

  My solo is crap. “Gee, thanks.”

  “I’m surrounded by beautiful, talented women,” he sighs. “How did I get so lucky?” His gaze falls on the big manila envelope in my hand. “What’s that?”

  Instinctively I pull it to my chest. I consider myself a pretty open person, really, but I don’t go around telling people I’m adopted. It’d feel like I was trying to call attention to myself, and people tend not to get what it’s like, anyway.

  “Nothing,” I say quickly, stuffing the envelope into my backpack. “Just some stuff for class.”

  “Speaking of class, we should probably scoot,” Nyla says.

  “Oh, very well. Goodbye, sweet ladies. Parting is such sweet sorrow,” Bastian says, a line from Romeo and Juliet. Then he bows, blows us a kiss, and bounds off across the commons.

  “He’s such a drama nerd, he makes us seem like normal people.” Nyla sighs, but she’s smiling.

  “He’s perfect,” I say.

  “Yeah, he might be growing on me.” She links her arm with mine as we walk. “Anyway, back to our conversation, before we were so charmingly interrupted. I will help you search for your birth mother, if you want me to. And for heaven’s sake, talk to your dad, Cass. About the adoption stuff. And about C of I. Talk. To. Your father.”

  “I’ll tell him,” I promise. “I will. I will.”

  17

  That afternoon I sit at the kitchen table waiting for my dad to get home from work. Then, partly because I’m bored and partly because that curious section of my brain will not shut up, I get out my laptop and type “adoption search” in the browser. And wonder if I’m opening a can of worms.

  It immediately spits out a list of possible sites. There are a ton of adoption registries, actually, like “adoptionsearch” and “reunionfinders” and “reconnect.com.” I pick the first one. It seems legit, and I can make my profile for free. I only have to answer the following questions:

  Who are you trying to find?

  —my birth parent(s)

  —my adopted child

  —a sibling

  —a family member

  Indicate the gender of the adopted person. (Not sure? Select both.)

  —male

  —female

  Indicate the birth year of the adopted person.

  Indicate the birth month of the adopted person.

  Indicate the birth date of the adopted person.

  In which country did the adoption take place?

  When did the adoption take place?

  —not sure

  —within a year of birth

  —more than a year after birth

  Since the time of adoption, have you been in contact?

  —not sure

  —have been in contact

  —have not been in contact

  For the purpose of this search, which best describes you?

  —I am the adopted person

  —I am searching on behalf of the adopted person

  —I wish to find a person who was adopted

  Allow search engines to index your profile (highly recommended)

  —yes

  —no

  It’s the first question that stops me. Who am I trying to find?

  I bite my lip. Am I trying to find her? Really? Am I seriously going to do this?

  I have a mother, I tell myself firmly. A wonderful, loving, kind, talented, amazing mother, who is practically perfect in every way. I don’t need another mother. I don’t want one. I remind myself that I don’t actually think of my birth mother as a mother. I guess she’s, like, thirty-four years old now, but I picture her as still being sixteen, bent over writing the word gross on the non-identifying form. In my mind, she’s just a girl. Like me.

  But the truth is, I feel something. A connection, to this person I don’t know. But I still feel it. And whether she’s sixteen or thirty-four, I want to know more about her.

  I want to know who she is.

  I return my attention to the website. It takes all of five minutes, and I have an official profile.

  It reads:

  Cassieintherye

  I am searching for my birth parent(s).

  I was born on September 17, 2000, in Boise, ID.

  I was adopted in Idaho, USA, within a year of birth.

  We have not been in contact since the time of adoption.

  There’s a place for me to upload a picture, but I go with the empty silhouette. There’s also a section for a personal message I could leave, but I don’t know what to say that doesn’t feel obvious.

  The screen reloads as it processes my profile.

  View Matches?

  My heartbeat speeds up. Are there actually matches? Would it ask me if I wanted to view my matches if there were no matches?

  I press the button.

  1 Member Found!

  90% Match

  My breath catches. It can’t be this easy. My birth mother can’t be looking for me. She can’t be, can she?

  I click on it.

  Janet1222

  I am searching for my daughter.

  She was born in 2000.

  She was adopted in the USA, more than a year after birth.

  We have not been in contact since the time of the adoption.

  No personal message has been entered.

  I stare at the screen for a minute, my heart still pounding.

  It’s not me. That much I know for sure. I was adopted when I was six weeks old, not after a year.

  I’m not who she’s looking for.

  But my eyes keep returning to the words I am searching for my daughter.

  But she’s not.

  I shut my laptop and wait for my heart to return to its normal rhythm, which takes a while. And then there’s the sound of my dad’s key in the lock.

  “Hi, Boo,” he greets me as he comes in with an armload of groceries. “How was your—”

  I jump up. “I don’t want to go to Boise State.” I say it quickly but clearly. Rip the Band-Aid off in one smooth motion, I’m thinking. Get it over with.

  Dad’s expression goes slack. “What?”

  I help him put the groceries away and then guide him into the living room and onto the sofa, which is where we try to have all conversations deemed “serious” in our family.

  “Is this about Juilliard?” he asks hoarsely.

  “No.” I laugh. “No, no, Dad. I want to go to College of Idaho.”

  His eyebrows lift so much they almost disappear into his hairline. “College of Idaho?”

  I start talking. “There’s something about it, Dad. It’s like a feeling. And I know, I know, feelings are super unreliable, feelings can be fickle, like you say, feelings are nothing to base big decisions on, but I just really liked College of Idaho. I think it’s the universe.”

  Down come the eyebrows. “The universe.”

  “I think something has been—er, directing me, to go to College of Idaho.”

  He frowns. “But Nyla was the one who wanted to visit College of Idaho.”

  “I know. It was Nyla, and destiny.”

  He scratches under his ponytail. “But you seemed so happy about BSU. I thought—”

  “I was acting happy because you were happy. I want you to be happy, Dad. I do. But I also want to be happy, and College of Idaho, I think, would
make me very happy. And well educated. So. Now you know.”

  I stop babbling and stare at him. Any second now he’s going to burst out laughing and hug me and tell me of course he wants me to be happy.

  “I need to look at my notebook.” He goes off to his office. He stays there for like five minutes. I sit on the couch.

  He finally returns, notebook in hand, and sits down again, gingerly, at the end of the sofa. He’s got the notebook open to the C of I pros and cons page. He sighs.

  “I don’t think we can manage College of Idaho,” he says after a minute.

  “What?”

  “It’s too expensive.”

  What? I can already feel the tears coming, and it makes me feel immature, like I’m a toddler who wants to cry over not getting chocolate milk. “How expensive?” I ask in a whisper, because I don’t trust my voice not to break.

  He angles the notebook toward me, so I can see what he’s got listed in the cons column. The price of tuition.

  I gasp. “That’s almost Juilliard.”

  He nods grimly. “It’s almost Juilliard.”

  I’m on my feet, pacing. My unspilled tears evaporate in a flash of anger. I feel stupid. I should have looked up all of the information about College of Idaho myself. Then I would have known. I’ve been stalking their website since our trip, looking at pictures, acquainting myself with the professors and the buildings and the food menus. Why didn’t I look at the money stuff? I assumed since it was in Idaho we’d be able to afford it.

  “I’m sorry, Boo,” Dad says.

  I turn on him. “Why did you even bring me to see other colleges, if I’m not allowed to go anywhere but Boise State?”

  He looks pained, like root-canal kind of pain. “I wanted you to feel like you had choices.”

  “But I really don’t?”

  He shakes his head helplessly. “The other schools we went to—Idaho State, College of Southern Idaho—they aren’t expensive. You could go to either of those.”

  I stop pacing. “I could take out loans.”

  “I don’t think that’s a great idea, but we can talk about it,” he says, which is what he says when he’s really saying no. “I don’t want the start of your adult life to be under a mountain of debt.”