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So I know it’s really common now for college grads to end up moving back in with their parents, but I still felt like shit. I was back in my hometown, unemployed, sleeping in a room that still had faded stuffed animals and old posters of Zac Efron in High School Musical. I had thought that getting a “practical” degree in a STEM major would ensure my future post-college, but my grades sucked, I didn’t get into med school, and I ended up in the same boat as all of my friends who majored in art history and journalism. I figured I’d cave in a couple weeks and get some shitty job in retail or food service, but all I could do right then was sit around and wallow.
It only took a few days to get bored, though. All of my old hometown friends had drifted apart, and besides, I didn’t really want to see anyone. My parents had never gotten cable and I’d cancelled my Netflix in an attempt to save my dwindling funds, and there’s only so many Criminal Minds reruns you can watch before you want to smash the TV. None of my old books held any interest for me. I tried playing the violin again, but four years of neglect had essentially erased all of my skills. Which did nothing to boost my negligible self-esteem, of course. So somehow, I ended up in the basement with our old photo albums.
I wasn’t really sure why – nostalgia, maybe? I was certainly feeling like a child again, so maybe I wanted to revisit that. But we also never really looked at them for some reason, so there was some plain old curiosity. Maybe even just boredom. It took a while to find them, so I guess there was something motivating me. Other families had them prominently displayed on bookshelves or coffee tables in their living rooms, but ours were stuffed in an unlabeled cardboard box under the stairs.
When I opened up the first one on the stack, I was surprised – my mom had clearly spent a lot of time on it. It was full of stickers and fancy writing and pictures cut out into different shapes – all of that shit that suburban moms used to do in the early 2000s. I couldn’t figure out why she had hidden them away after putting so much effort into decorating.
Looking at the pictures momentarily distracted me from thinking about that. I started at the beginning, with my older sister’s baby pictures. There was my mom, looking exhausted but happy in the hospital. There was my dad, with a hairline that hadn’t receded yet. There was Carly, in frilly dresses and bonnets. And then in the next album – there was me! Angela Susan McIntyre, born 7 pounds 5 ounces. The page was filled with stickers of balloons and teddy bears. How cute. Who’d have thought I’d turn out to be such a failure?
I kept flipping through the stack, catching glimpses of Carly and me as babies, then toddlers, then starting kindergarten. First days of school, birthday parties, class pictures, trips to the beach. The pages were filled with cute captions in multicolored gel pens and my mom’s curly handwriting. But then – wait a second. The fourth album was completely different – no stickers, no gel pen, no captions, no pictures with scalloped edges and borders. Just plain photos glued on. An entire year went by in two pages.
I went back to the third album, trying to find what changed. 5-year-old me and 7-year-old Carly grinned up at me for pages and pages, but there was barely any record of us at 6 and 8. I tried to remember if something had happened – a death in the family? One of my parents losing their job? But I was drawing a blank. I kept staring at the pages, looking into my eyes from 18 years ago.
My eyes. Wait.
Those weren’t my eyes.
I didn’t have brown eyes. Mine were blue. Not even hazel, nothing that could be mistaken for brown. Those weren’t my eyes! That wasn’t me!
I sat there for at least a full five minutes, frozen, mind racing. Then I shook myself and tried to pull it together. Come on, Angie. It’s just a weird picture. These are old, the colors have faded. Just look at another page, you’ll see!
Brown eyes. Brown eyes. Brown eyes. I went through every page. “My” eyes were the chocolate-brown, dirt-brown, whatever you want to call it – brown as fuck, basically.
But then I remembered the fourth album, the undecorated one. And yes, there it was! First-grade me stared out of my school portrait with big blue eyes. I tore through the remaining albums (all undecorated, with hastily glued-in photos) and I had blue eyes in every single picture.
The front door slammed suddenly, breaking me out of my reverie. I hadn’t even heard a car drive up.
“Angie? Where are you?” my mom called.
“Downstairs!” I yelled back, shoving the photo albums back into the box. “I’m just – um – looking for some old clothes. Sweaters. It’s freezing in here!” (Why was I lying?!) I ran up the stairs before she could come down and spent the rest of the night playing the model daughter and trying not to panic. But I couldn’t stop the dreams. Eyes floated around all night – brown eyes, blue eyes, and my five-year-old face staring at me, with her stupid fucking brown eyes, giggling.
Morning. I woke up at 6:47 AM and shot out of bed with this weird energy, like I was late for a meeting with the President. I was going to figure this shit out and put it behind me, once and for all, and then I was going to go out and get myself a job and pull myself together. First order of business was a simple Google search: “Can brown eyes turn blue?”
Well, it turns out that there are a lot of people willing to pay tons of money for laser procedures to turn their brown eyes blue, but that technology didn’t exist 18 years ago. I combed through all of the news articles and medical reports and ended up on parenting sites, where parents asked over and over why their babies’ eyes were changing color. And apparently, eye color really can change, mostly when kids are toddlers. Blue can turn green or gray. Hazel can turn brown. Light browns can darken. But brown eyes don’t turn blue. Goddammit, this was supposed to clear everything up.
I waited until my parents were at work before scrambling down the basement stairs and pulling out the albums again. This time I brought them upstairs, into the better light, and examined each photo. I hesitated for a second, then ripped two out to compare (it’s not like anyone really cared about them, clearly). I scanned them, back and forth, lining up facial features and staring at the eyes over and over and over. But I couldn’t ignore it anymore.
That girl wasn’t me. From the baby pictures up until age 5, there was some other brown-eyed girl in my family’s photo albums. It wasn’t just the eyes – the more I stared, the more I could see that compared to the 6-year-old girl, her nose was longer, her dimples were missing, her hair was a darker shade of brown –
Holy shit. I suddenly remembered something. My mom used to dye my hair, back when I was in elementary school. I had completely forgotten. I didn’t even know when she stopped doing it. Did she dye it just to make me look like the other girl?
So that was yesterday, and I think I’m losing my mind at this point. I moved the albums up to my room and I can’t stop staring at them. I’ve replayed my entire childhood a million times, looking for clues. Here’s what I know:
- I’m not the girl in those pictures. Until that first grade class portrait, that’s some other kid.
- Something changed in between those photo albums. My mom stopped caring about taking pictures or decorating them. And they were hidden away – I rarely saw them as a kid.
- My mom used to dye my hair darker. I never thought this was weird at the time, but who dyes their 6-year-old kid’s hair?
- I’m almost certain that my sister is the same. Between the albums, there’s no change in how she looks, just that she gets older.
- I have very few memories of my early childhood, and I don’t know where they begin, or if any of them were before age 6. I don’t think I remember living with anyone but my parents… but it’s all so blurry.
- I am definitely, 100% freaking the fuck out.
I don’t know what to think, but basically my idea is that the other girl died, and for some reason my parents (should I even call them my parents?) used me as a replacement. But then that leaves the question of… who the fuck am I? Where did I come from? Didn’t someone else want me? Why don’t I remember? And was nobody ever going to tell me anything about this?
I’m posting here because I really need advice on what to do. I don’t think I can just put this out of my mind, but I’m not sure if asking my parents is a good idea. I don’t know who to trust. I guess I should start with looking up any news stories about my family or hometown, to see if a 5-year-old girl died. I’m so scared.
I guess I’ll let you know what I find out.
Part 2:
I decided not to talk to my parents just yet (not that I’m afraid of them per se… we just don’t really talk much, besides surface-level stuff) and instead decided to try my sister. I wasn’t really sure how to say it over the phone or in person, so I started with an email:
“Hey Carly – so this might sound kind of weird / out of the blue, but I’m wondering if anything significant happened around 1997/98. When I was five and you were seven. Like did someone die, or… I don’t know, was Mom sick? Or depressed? I’m just asking because I’m looking through old photo albums and it seems like there’s a big difference between that year and the year after. And I don’t really remember anything. I don’t know if this really makes any sense. Email me back, okay?”
It didn’t really sound right but I couldn’t figure out how else to say it. Whatever, I hit “send” and waited around for a response. In the meantime, I started a new hobby: wracking my brain for any distinct memories from early childhood and confusing the fuck out of myself!
Some of you mentioned that the part about my not remembering stuff was “fishy” – I kind of get what you mean, it sounds like an overused plot device in a soap opera. But all of my early childhood memories are pretty generic, so I can’t place them on a timeline – I have no idea if I was 4 or 5 or 6 or whatever. And we didn’t move houses, that one I’m sure of (they’re the same house in all of the pictures), so I can’t try to remember the old house. Plus, now I think I’m psyching myself out and I might be creating false memories based on things I think might have happened. I’m freaked out about being kidnapped, so now I have a fuzzy picture of being on a long, long ride in a car with someone I didn’t know and being told to be quiet whenever I asked where we were going. But I could’ve made that up, or twisted a real memory into that, see? Maybe it was a family vacation and that guy was actually my dad.
Oh good, my sister responded:
“Ang – you don’t remember? That was the year you went missing. Call me.”
What in the fucking hell??????????????????
Well, I called her, obviously. “What the fuck do you mean, ‘the year I went missing’?” I blurted out the second she picked up.
“Well hello to you too, darling sister. Nice to hear from you for the first time in weeks.”
“Carly, I don’t have time for this shit. What are you talking about?” I snapped back.
Carly sighed into the phone. “I guess you really don’t remember, then. Yeah, you went missing for months. Everyone thought you were dead. They didn’t tell me much at the time, but obviously I was scared and kept asking where you were, and Dad finally told me you weren’t coming back. Mom basically gave up on life for a while. She slept all day. Dad was barely holding us all together. And then – one day you were back.”
My throat was dry. “Just – just like that? One day I was gone and the next I was back?”
“Well, I don’t know too much about the specifics, they wouldn’t tell me. I guess you could find it in the police reports. But yeah, one day you were back, except you were different. Which makes sense, I mean – you must’ve been traumatized. But Mom wouldn’t let anyone see you for a while, even me. She had some lady come over all the time – a therapist, I assume. And then suddenly on the first day of school she put you on the bus just like everything was normal, and things went back to how they used to be, almost.” Carly was quiet for a minute. “Ang – I know Mom and Dad don’t like to talk about this, but I can’t believe they never told you. And you don’t remember anything?”
I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t breathe. I had disappeared – been kidnapped? No, that other girl had been kidnapped! And somehow I had replaced her. Did my parents know? Did they delude themselves into thinking I was the same kid? How was that possible? Didn’t they do DNA tests or anything?
Wait a second. “Carly, you said police reports, right? I could look this up in the news, or ask the police?”
“Of course, it was all over the news. I’m sure you can find a lot of information. I doubt Mom or Dad talked to the press much when you got back, though, since they were so weird about keeping you hidden. You might have better luck with the police reports – I assume you’d have access to them, since you’re the person in question and you’re over 18,” she said.
“Yeah, I’ll… I’ll give it a shot,” I said distractedly. “I have to go. Thanks for – ”
“Angie,” Carly interrupted. “Are you going to be okay? This has to be weird, I don’t want you to freak out or anything – don’t think too much about it, okay? It was a long time ago. And, well, there might be stuff you don’t want to remember.”
“No, yes, I’m totally fine,” I gabbled, hardly aware of what I was saying. “Everything’s cool. I mean, not cool, I mean, I just want to know what happened. Gotta go, bye,” and hung up the phone.
Okay, news articles. I’d start there. I paused at the keyboard, wondering whether the newspapers would even have archives going back that far online, or if I should go to the library? No, definitely start here. I didn’t want to have to ask the librarians for articles about myself.
I typed in “Starksboro Vermont kidnapping 1997,” but paused before I hit enter.
There might be stuff you don’t want to remember, Carly had said. Did I want to do this? I couldn’t go back once I’d read the reports. Any number of horrible could’ve happened to me. I could just pretend that none of this had happened, put away the photo albums, go back to normal – no, fuck that, there was no way I could forgot. I squeezed my eyes shut and hit enter.
Local girl disappears! Local girl kidnapped! Parents plea for return of Starksboro child, age 5. “My” angelic smile was plastered everywhere, next to grainy shots of my parents’ haggard faces at press conferences. Holy shit, this was real.
I clicked a link at random. And the long and short of it was… it was just another child abduction case that went cold. Angela Susan McIntyre went missing from her own house in February 1997, while her parents were still asleep and her sister was at a friend’s house. Did she wander off (in which case she’d be dead soon, in the Vermont winter), or was she kidnapped? The neighborhood parents searched around, but no luck. A formal search party went out, and still no luck. The police picked up the case. My parents appealed to the kidnappers on TV and in the newspaper. Three days later, a ransom note appeared in their mailbox. They called the police, scraped the money together, and sent it where they were told, but nothing happened, and Angela was never returned. I was presumed dead. I could picture my parents sinking into depression. But then – a miracle! The newspapers reported my father saying that they woke up at night to the doorbell ringing, and found me on the steps, terrified, but alive.
Funny how my family was the only one who saw that. Was it true? The articles said nothing about whether I was DNA tested, or how it was confirmed that I was really Angela. I mean, if the parents say it’s their kid, I guess you believe them unless there’s a reason not to. Maybe no one thought there was a need to test me. But did no one notice the eyes? Call me crazy, but if you’re searching for a girl with brown hair and brown eyes, you should make sure that the one you get back has brown hair and brown eyes. We did look uncannily similar, though… maybe somehow, it was brushes off. Anomalies happen, you know. Why question it?
A thought struck me. I knew my mom had dyed my hair darker. What if she had given me colored contacts, too? Just long enough to fool the police? Starksboro didn’t exactly have a world-class forensics unit. Maybe no one noticed.
Oh god, I was going to have to go talk to them. Fuck.
Okay folks, here’s an interesting factoid: if you go to the local police department, where half of the officers are parents of your old friends, and you ask for records of your own kidnapping, they’re going to be incredibly professional and give you access right away.
Oh wait, just kidding! They’re all going to call you “sweetie” and ask if you really want to relive that. And you’ll have to convince them that yes, you really do want to know the truth about your own fucking childhood.
Well, the truth is that I turned up emaciated, dirty, bruised, and mute. No, there were no DNA tests done, because my parents both swore I was Angela, and no one really had time for that anyway. And yes, in the pictures of the returned me, I had distinctly brown eyes. But it was me. That girl looked like the pictures of 6-year-old Angela in the sloppy photo albums. Close to identical to the 5-year-old, but different enough that I could tell. Her nose was my nose. Her forehead was my forehead. She was me. She looked half-dead. And I puked on the floor of the police station.
Twenty minutes later, after apologizing and telling the officers over and over that I really, truly did not want them to call my parents, I made it to my car and drove off. Then I finally let myself cry. What else could I do? I didn’t want to talk to my parents. Not now, not yet. I knew I would have to, but honestly… I was afraid. They had cared for me and loved me, but it didn’t make any sense. They knew I wasn’t the right kid. They had to. But where did I come from? Did they kidnap me? Why did they lie all of these years? Everything was such a mess! This couldn’t be my life.
I had one thing to go on: Carly had told me that a woman came to visit me regularly. I knew that I was mute when I first returned. What if, when I was finally able to speak, my parents were worried that I would tell someone who I really was? What if the woman was a hypnotist? If my mom was willing to dye my hair and give me contacts to fool other people into thinking I was Angela, would she try to modify my memories?
Only one way to find out. I was getting good at making snap decisions by now. A quick search for hypnotists in my area gave me a list, and I dialed one number at random.
“Uh, hi. I’m looking for someone to help me with some old memories. I think that they’re blocked… like I was hypnotized as a kid and I can’t remember them anymore. Sorry, this sounds weird, I don’t know if I’m making any sense…” I trailed off.
The woman on the other end of the line laughed. “Honey, we’ve heard it all by now, don’t stress. Do you want to come in today? I have an opening at 4:30.”
Don’t stress! Okay then! I’ll stop stressing! Poof, everything’s back to normal.
“Um, sure. Yeah, 4:30’s good. I’ll see you then.”
It’s 4:15 now and I’m sitting in the parking lot typing this on my phone. I’m scared shitless about what I might find in that room.
There might be stuff you don’t want to remember. Something terrible had happened to me before I became part of the McIntyre family. And some people say that hypnotists can plant false memories. How do I know that what I find out is real?
But I have to know. I have to do something. I can’t stop now.
Okay, I have to go in. Thanks for the support, everyone, I didn’t expect so many responses. I promise I’ll update you all after my appointment is over. Maybe everything will make sense then, or maybe it won’t, I have no idea.
Right now I just want to know my own name.
Well, here goes. I’m heading in. Wish me luck.
I’m hiding under the bathroom sink. I’m still small enough to fit, but just barely. Daddy is yelling at Mommy. His words are slurring. Something smashes. I clap my hands over my ears but I can’t block out the sound. The pipes drip on me. I hold my breath and hope he doesn’t find me.
Daddy’s gone and Mommy is crying at the kitchen table. Her eye is black again. She hugs me and rocks back and forth.
I’m hungry. There’s no food in the cupboards. Mommy lies in bed all day. I find some instant oatmeal but I can’t reach the microwave. I eat the oats dry. They stick in my throat.
Daddy is back. He says he’s sorry and everything will be okay now. He brought me a doll.
He’s yelling again. I didn’t hide fast enough. He slaps me and my ears ring with the pain. Mommy is yelling, “NOT LINDY! DON’T YOU DARE TOUCH HER!” but he turns around and slaps her too, and throws a bottle. He’s hitting me. I can’t scream. Why is this happening?
Mommy is rocking me on her lap. “I’m going to get you out of here, I promise,” she croons, like a lullaby.
A strange man is in the house. He calls me Angela. He gives Mommy some money and holds out his hand. I press myself against the wall. “Go with him, Lindy,” Mommy says. She sounds like she’s crying but she’s not. “You’ll be safe. I’m so sorry. I love you.” The man picks me up and I howl. “I love you!” Mommy sobs. “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry Lindy, I love you so much.”
I’m in the strange man’s house. A woman is with him now. “That’s not Angela,” she tells him over and over, but he doesn’t listen. He keeps calling me Angela and tells the woman she’s just confused, Angela’s here, go back to sleep.
The man brings me to a police station. “Don’t talk to them. Don’t say a word,” he tells me, and I obey. They scare me. They take pictures of me. The doctors touch me. I want them to go away. I want my mommy.
Another lady is here. The man is arguing with her. “I can’t put memories in her head,” she says. “I can push away the bad ones but I will not create false memories for a child. And you won’t find anyone else who will!” She tells me to count backwards, slowly. I fall asleep. The lady comes to visit me and Mommy every day.
I’m waiting for the bus on the first day of school. “Remember, what’s your name?” Daddy asks me. He asks me every day. Angela Susan McIntyre. Angela Susan McIntyre. Lindy doesn’t exist anymore.
I woke up completely disoriented and lay there for what felt like forever. The hypnotist didn’t say anything, just got me a glass of water. Slowly, my thoughts come together. Lindy. My name is Lindy. I don’t remember my parents’ names. My dad abused my mom and me. And she wanted to keep me safe, so… why didn’t she run away? Why didn’t she take me to a shelter?
Pieces started falling together. I could see my adopted mom sinking into depression, and my dad tirelessly posting pictures of Angela, looking for her everywhere, afraid to give up. My real mom saw a picture of Angela, saw how much we looked alike, and took her chance. How could she do that? She had no idea who my adopted dad was! He could’ve been a child molester! Was she that desperate? Did she really feel like there was no other way out? And then… my adopted mom didn’t believe that I was Angela, but my dad brought a hypnotist for both of us. So that I would forget being Lindy, and my mom would believe that I was Angela. And my dad hid that, for all of these years.
I don’t remember walking out of the office, but suddenly I was in my car.
So I’m not the kid in my family photographs. My name is Lindy, not Angela. My mom and my sister have no idea. But my dad… he lied to me, he lied to my mom and my sister, he lied to the police. It’s completely sick. Sure, he didn’t actually kidnap me, but… how could he do that? Just take someone else’s kid to replace his own? What does he see when he looks at me?
What do I do from here? The McIntyres are my family, but I can’t look at them the same way, especially not my dad. I can’t go back and have dinner with my adopted parents and chatter away like nothing happened. But where else can I go?