remember the day I discovered my father's secret like it was yesterday. It had been a whole year since my father had disappeared without a trace, and life was pretty good for me. I had a job, an apartment, and was getting good grades at school. I still missed my father though, the hole in my heart growing larger every second. Today was particularly bad, as it was the anniversary of his disappearance. Had I known what I would find that day, perhaps I would have felt differently.

I was sitting around my apartment one morning, studying my English. I had always hated English, its pronunciation and its grammar rules drove me nuts. For instance, this week we were supposed to study the English names for school supplies. The 'a' in eraser sounded nothing like the 'a' in class. And if I wrote 'its' instead of 'it's', it was sometimes considered grammatically correct, but other times it wasn't. I wondered how the heck kids in English speaking countries could stand it.

I gave up after reading the English word for ruban , tape. Hang on, I thought to myself. Isn't it the same thing as a magnetophone, or tape recorder? After double checking my vocabulary lists, I discovered that was the case. But why? A Ruban was a cylinder wrapped with sticky stuff, but a magnetophone was something that recorded your voice and played it back. Why in the world were they so similar in English?

Angry at my homework, as well as the inventor of the English language, I decided to take a break. I walked over to the bookshelf. My father used to collect books. The shelf was full of classical books, such as The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas , Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo. It also held an array of miscellaneous books, such as A Beginner's guide to cooking broccoli, bread, meat, fondue, and many other appetizing recipes!

Today, I decided to randomly pick a book of the shelf. Running my fingers along the spines of the books, I came across one without a title. Curious, I thought, pulling it out.

Suddenly, the entire shelf began to rumble. I lept back in surprise as the bookcase slid away, reveling a staircase. I went down it, wondering where it went.

To my surprise, I had discovered a secret room in my own apartment. "Well, you don't see that everyday," I said aloud. At the sound of my voice, the lights flickered on reveling an entire room full of paintings. And they weren't just ordinary paintings either.

They were famous ones.