Was there ever a day where everything was sad but everything was going by so fast that your emotions couldn’t catch up? 2nd grade was one of the hardest years of my life.

In my classroom, I remember my teacher answering the phone. She hung up and looked at me. Her face had a serious, yet compassionate look; as if she could feel my emotions inside of me and was already trying to comfort them. Then she said, “ Go ahead and head to the office, your parents are picking you up early today.”

It felt like hours that I waited; as time ticked on, and the expressions on the staff at the school's faces changed in ways that I couldn't explain or begin to understand then, but now I do. My parents weren't normally this late when they had to pick me up early from school, and that should have been a sign of things to come. Something I didn't realize then, but I didn't realize a lot of things back then.

"Miss Young, come this way," the principal's secretary, Mrs. Carly, said as her face scrunched up like she had smelled something really bad.

My parents normally met me in the office, so I wondered why that wasn't the case this time. However, hindsight is 20/20. I walked behind Mrs. Carly, whose high heels clicked across the hard floors of the hallway before they stopped in front of two police officers in blues, and a short, chubby woman with a sweet smile, and a red cardigan.

"I take it you can take it from here," Mrs. Carly said, but she didn't wait for an answer before turning back to the office. She didn't even look at me.

"Go ahead, Ms. Matthews," the taller officer said, looking at the only woman in the hallway.

"Hi there, Daniella. I'm Ms. Matthews, and I am from the Department of Children and Family Services, and I am here because, unfortunately, your parents can't be here right now." Ms. Matthews lowered herself to my level as she started to talk, but nothing she said made sense, though it would.

"Why can't they be here? I need them," I knew enough to be scared at what Ms. Matthews was saying to me.

"This is very difficult, but your parents told you that your name is Daniella Young, and that they were Richard and Ellen Young?" the second officer with red hair asked me.

"Yes," I answered, but my voice was small, and things were not adding up. "That is our names." I didn't understand why they were questioning that.

"I'm sorry to tell you this, but Daniella is not your name, and Richard and Ellen Young are not their names. You were kidnapped as an infant," Ms. Matthews responded.

And my world collapsed.

Kidnapped. The word sat in the air between us like a stone dropped into a pond, except there were no ripples. There was nothing at all. I remember staring at the speckled tiles on the floor and counting them. Ms. Matthews was still talking, her mouth moving, but the words sounded like they were coming from underwater.

“Daniella, sweetheart, do you understand what I’m saying?”

“No,” I said.

“That’s okay. That’s completely okay. It’s a lot. We’re going to go slowly.”

I looked at the officers. The tall one had a moustache and kept shifting his weight like his shoes were too tight. The one with red hair wouldn’t quite meet my eyes. Grown-ups who wouldn’t look at me were becoming a pattern.

“My mom made me a sandwich this morning,” I said. “She cut it into triangles because I don’t like squares.”

Nobody said anything. The officer with red hair cleared his throat and looked at the ceiling.

“Where are they?” I asked. “My mom and dad. Where are they?”

Ms. Matthews and the tall officer exchanged a glance. “They’re with other officers right now,” she said carefully. “They’re safe, and they’re not hurt. But they can’t come get you today.”

“Are they in trouble?”

Another glance.

“Yes,” she said finally. “They are.”

I didn't like that. In second grade, trouble was a time-out or a note sent home. Trouble was something that happened to me, not to them. They were meant to be the ones who decided what counted as trouble.

“But they didn’t do anything,” I said. “They’re my mom and dad.”

Ms. Matthews’s smile wavered. “I know it feels that way,” she said softly. “And I know you love them. Nothing I say today changes that you love them. Okay?”

I nodded, but the floor felt like it was tilting, and the hallway seemed longer than it had a minute ago, and the fluorescent lights buzzed their way into my skull.

“I want to go home,” I whispered.

“I know you do.”

“I want my own bed. And my blanket."

“We’ll make sure you have a blanket tonight,” Ms. Matthews promised. “I’ll do everything I can.”

The officer with red hair crouched down finally, so we were nearly eye to eye. His eyes were green and a little wet. “Daniella,” he said, “you didn’t do anything wrong. I need you to hear that. None of this is your fault. Not one piece of it.” I didn’t understand why he said it. It hadn’t crossed my mind yet that it could be my fault. But years later I would understand that he said it because he knew, better than I did, how many times I would try to make it mine.

Ms. Matthews held out her hand. I looked back down the hallway toward my classroom, where my backpack still hung on its hook beside my name, the name I’d written in crooked letters on every worksheet since kindergarten. Daniella. And I wondered, with a horrible, quiet dread, whether it had ever really been mine.

I took her hand.

We walked out through the front doors into the cold November afternoon, and the sky was an ordinary grey, and the buses were lining up the way they always did. Everything was exactly as it had been that morning. That was the part I couldn’t understand. The whole world had split in two, and no one outside had noticed.

Behind me, the school doors swung shut with a soft, final click.

And I realized I didn’t know where I was going, or who I was when I got there.