I roll my eyes when I see her father, Mr. Skipp briskly walks toward us with a big goofy smile on his face. He is dressed in a black casual suit that goes well with his bright blonde hair. “Sophia! It’s so nice to see you. You haven't come by for a couple of weeks, I was beginning to think you were dead!” His snarky attitude always makes me chuckle. That was one of my favorite things about Mr. Skipp. ” No need to worry about me, there is more to me than meets the eye.” I reply jokingly. He laughs his distinguishable chuckle and turns to Vanessa with his arms out, “Come here baby girl. How are you doing? Staying out of trouble?” We both laugh and answer at the same time, “ Yes, we are staying out of trouble.” We make our way to the backyard of the house as guests are starting to pour into all the seats, we go to find a table towards the front of the stage that they set up for this event.

 Mr. Skipp had to go behind the stage to prepare the auction items so it was only me and Vanessa at the table. I looked around at all the strangers around me, all of them were wearing fancy outfits and it felt like they were all staring at me like they knew I didn’t belong here. Honestly, I didn’t belong here I belong in a totally different place. I stopped paying attention to everyone else and focused on the stage. At that moment Mr. Skipp came out onto the stage, he introduced the first painting, a landscape of a lake with a little cabin off to the side.

 As the auction goes on I start to lose my focus from boredom and notice that the usual plain night sky is replaced with the twinkle of stars, which is impossible in Los Angeles, I know a lot about the science of the world, there are very few reasons why there would be stars here. 

I turn my attention back to the auction when Mr. Skipp makes a loud gasping noise. Mr. Skipp had a tremendous look of fear on his face and almost fell to his knees in shock. I turned my head to the other side of the stage. A man was standing there, a crooked smile spread across his face as he slowly steps toward the middle of the stage where we could all see him clearly. This was why I had a bad feeling.