I have an image of what my real parents are like. My mom, she’s thin and short, with my dark brown hair, but instead of my brown eyes, she has a crystal blue. She works in some little diner at the end of a street with the hustle and bustle of a small town crowd, and in between serving out dishes of hash browns and patty melts, a book stays propped between her elbows and a pencil scratches across a practice test booklet. My dad, well, he’s gone. He’s just not in the picture. She was his one night, drunken stand, and I was her first mistake. Her second was giving me up. Her third was not finding me. Her fourth was forgetting me.

My first mistake? Wanting her.