Read Unity for Free Online

smoke!” She shouted it back into the office and bolted, never seeing me behind the waiting room’s silk Ficus tree. As my newest nemesis’s heels clacked out a steady fading beat, I made for the slowly closing door and slipped inside the office. The main room was empty, but there were two smaller offices at the back. I couldn’t see inside them. The allure of the manila folder sitting atop the desk overrode my sense of caution. I didn’t even need to take it. With my memory, all I really had to do was read the information and scoot.
    But when I flung the folder open and saw the two faces staring back at me, each with recognizable parts of me, I froze. The image of my parents blurred, as tears filled my eyes. I tried looking at the documents below the photo, but the wet lenses of my eyes hid the information.
    “Hey!” a man shouted. “You can’t be back here!” And then, like safety was an afterthought, “There’s a fire!”
    I pinched the corner of the folder and ran, intending on taking everything. They would know it was me. Might even try to find me. Arrest me. It didn’t matter. If I could find my parents... Everything would be different.
    But all I managed to do was spread the details of my real life across the floor. There was no time to stop for them. The only reason I escaped was because the man with the chubby beet-red face was already winded from running across half the office. He couldn’t chase me beyond the door, but he would have caught me if I stopped. I exited through the side emergency door and walked away, staring at the photo of the man and woman on the beach, oblivious to the sound of approaching emergency vehicles.
    When my eyes cleared, I turned the photo over and found three words written in blue ballpoint pen that had dented the image. The penmanship was rigid. Masculine. It said, Mom, Dad and Euphemia.
    Mom.
    Dad.
    At some point in the past, when this photo was taken, and later, when it was developed and admired, my parents took ownership of me. ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad’ are personal. Had the child welfare Nazi written this, or anyone else who wasn’t my real father, it would have said ‘Mother and Father,’ or even more likely, there wouldn’t be any writing on it at all.
    So why had they given me up?
    No clue.
    And as I open my eyes to a blue sky full of impossibly bright cumulus clouds, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, I’m beginning to think I might never find out.
    I sit up with a groan, every part of me aching. My abdomen shakes as the battered muscles strain against the added weight of my go-pack, which according to the ache in my spine, I slept on all night. A flash of pain snaps to life between my eyes, spinning my vision. A high-pitched ringing fills my ears. I breathe through it, focusing on the seagull’s calls.
    I once read a novel featuring genetically altered man-eating seagulls with piranha mouths. As the bird overhead makes lazy circles, gives me a casual glance and then rides a breeze toward the ocean, I’m grateful I haven’t washed up on that horrible place. Jungle debris surrounds me like a nest, piled high enough that I need to stand to see beyond it. The pain in my head returns as I stand, my vision cutting to the right over and over. The ringing in my ears becomes a rumble. After a minute of waiting, I can see the world again, but the rumble has become a strange warbling sound.
    I’m a few hundred feet from the shore, which I can see, because I’m also at least fifty feet above sea level. But even if I weren’t, enough trees have been mowed down, along with all the undergrowth, that I’m pretty sure I’d have a clear view of the water, even if the land was level. The ocean beyond the island is a swirl of dark and light blue water; it’s light where the bottom is sand, dark where the bottom is earth scoured off the island. I can see some of it streaked over the beach as well.
    Halfway between me and the ocean is a tall tree with a tangle of branches.