25

Make a choice.
Find my voice.
Not sure I can.
I need a new plan.

— Kids from Alcatraz

THE MOST AMAZING THING happened. And that thing is called the weather dropped below ninety degrees. I wasn’t sure if it would last, but it was wonderful. And I was also grateful that the drop in temperature coincided with another riding lesson. There was something especially uncomfortable about sitting on a big hot horse in one hundred degree weather—kind of like how getting branded must be uncomfortable for cows.

“The horse show is next month already,” Bill said. “You ready to try the jump?”

“No.”

“Aven, do you even want to do this show?” He took off his cowboy hat and ran a hand through his gray hair. Then he put his hat back on. “Because you know you don’t have to.”

I stared down at Bill. Did I want to do the show? When I’d first had the idea to start horseback riding, I’d felt so confident, so sure I could tackle anything. And at the beginning of the school year, nothing could have stopped me from doing that jump. Now the fear I felt about it overwhelmed me.

High school was stealing everything away from me—my courage, my confidence, and my determination. And I’d only barely started. Four more years of this would kill me. I finally shrugged. “I don’t know.”

Bill hung his head for a moment. “Tell you what. We’ll hold off on the jump. How about we work on trotting for today?”

I cringed. I didn’t want to do that either. Trotting made me bounce all over the place and I felt like I was going to bounce right off Chili. Plus, it hurt my butt and I was always sore the next day. Not to mention that my ankle was still tender, making it difficult to use my feet to pull on the reins.

Bill gave up, and we walked around a little and practiced some simple voice commands. Instead of feeling happy, though, that Bill had eased up on pushing me, I felt worse. Because I knew he was giving up on me.

After my lesson, I checked on Spaghetti. I expected him to be a bit more energetic with the drop in temperature, but he was as lethargic as ever. “What is going on with you?” I said to him as I nuzzled his soft fur. I offered him a piece of broccoli, which was a special treat for him. Last spring, he’d have eaten it right up. But now he wouldn’t even glance at it. I held the broccoli with my toes and tapped it gently on his mouth, but he didn’t acknowledge it. I gave up and decided to go home.

When I walked into the apartment, both of my parents were sitting at the kitchen table. They stopped talking when they saw me.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“How was your riding lesson?” Dad said.

“It was good,” I lied. I didn’t have the heart to tell them I would never be ready for the horse show.

“That’s great,” Mom said, squeezing her hands together.

I looked from Mom to Dad. It was odd for them to both be in the apartment this early in the day. “What’s going on?”

“We got something for you,” Mom said.

I tilted my head a little. “Okay. Why do you seem so nervous?”

Mom picked up a box from the table. “It’s this.”

I walked to her and read the box in her hands. “Find My Family,” I said. “What is it?”

“It’s a DNA testing kit,” Dad said.

“What for?”

“For you,” they both said together.

Mom set the box back down on the table. “It’s for you to send in.”

“Why?”

They exchanged glances. “You might be able to find your father or someone in your father’s family with it,” Dad said.

I stood there staring at them, not knowing what to say. I wasn’t sure how I felt about this. I wasn’t kidding when I told Zion’s family I didn’t like surprises. And this was a big one. I felt completely unprepared.

“It’s just that,” Mom said, “ever since you found out Josephine is your grandmother and that your birth mother died, you keep bringing up your birth father. We understand if you’re curious about who he is, so we thought this might help you find that out.”

I stared down at the box like it was a scorpion sitting on our kitchen table, its venom-filled tail pointed directly at me. But it was just a box. “I’m mostly joking when I say that stuff.”

“Maybe sometimes you are,” Mom said. “But sometimes you’re not. There must be a reason why you keep mentioning him to us and to Josephine.”

“All you have to do is spit in a tube, Sheebs, and send it in,” Dad said. “Simple as that.”

Simple as that.

“Then they’ll contact you if you have a DNA connection to anyone in the database,” Mom added.

I kept staring at the box—just a harmless box. How could a box feel so scary? Even if I took it, that didn’t mean I had to use it. I didn’t have to make this huge life-changing choice right here in the middle of the kitchen at this very moment.

Mom and Dad were staring at me, so I picked it up between my chin and shoulder and carried it to my room. I set it on my desk, then sat down and stared at it some more. “Find My Family,” I said to myself.

But did I want to? What if he was a bad person? Like, what if he was an actual real-life meanie? What if he was a big bully like Joshua? What if he was a snob like Janessa? I wasn’t sure I could handle that. What if finding him was another great big disappointment in my life right now?

Or worse, what if I was a disappointment to him?