Claudia thinks she's adopted, and no one understands!

I began looking at the pictures of Janine and me again. I looked at them carefully. We don't look a thing alike now, but maybe we'd looked alike when we were little, when our parents dressed us in matching clothes and gave us the same haircuts.

Nope. We barely looked related.

When I thought about it, not only do I not look like Janine, I don't look like my parents, either, although Janine looks exactly like Dad.

A funny feeling crept into my stomach. I replaced the photo albums on the shelves. Then I silently pushed the door to the den until it was almost closed, tiptoed to my parents' desk, and began looking through the drawers. I felt like a thief, but I was just hoping to find more photos.

Zilch.

I found paper clips and rubber bands, scissors and glue, enough pens and pencils for an army, and an envelope containing Janine's and my report cards (I put that away quickly), a packet of letters and cards from Peaches, Russ, and other relatives, some bankbooks, some boring-looking files, and then...way back in the bottom drawer...I found a locked strongbox. That was weird. Where was the key? I searched the desk, but the only keys I found were spare house keys.

What was in that box?

All of a sudden it dawned on me. I knew. I just knew. I was adopted, and my adoption papers were in there. If I were adopted, that would explain why I didn't look like anyone in my family, why I didn't act like anyone in my family, and why there were so few pictures of me. I wasn't Mom and Dad's real kid. I was an unwanted baby, or an orphan like Emily Michelle.

I straightened up the desk, making sure it looked the way it had before I'd begun searching it. Then I swung open the door to the den and went upstairs to my room. I sat at my own desk and thought, Am I really adopted? Who are my real mother and father? Why did they give me away?...Who am I?

Claudia and the Great Search
Published by Scholastic Inc. 1996
ISBN: 0590424955