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studies. I’d be encouraged to mix with the other girls, join some clubs. That’s what I needed. (“Yes, that’s what she needs.”) They’d seen worse cases, and more often than not, with gentle but firm guidance, the poor lost lamb was brought back into the fold. My mother needn’t worry. They’d look after me. They knew what was best. (“Oh, thank you. Thank you so much.”)
    Oh cruel kindness.
    Oh mean charity.
    Oh sweet free love.
    I still have it, by the way, the scar on the inside of my left wrist. I remember you asked me about it once when you were little. You were sitting in my lap and I was brushing your hair on the back porch one afternoon when you took my hand and ran your finger over the mark. I told you then pretty much the same story that Sister Mary Margaret told my parents at the hospital that day: an accident involving the bulletin board at school, nothing serious, two more stitches than necessary.
    Well. Now you know. Today it’s pale, almost invisible. But as I’m writing this to you I can turn my wrist up and still see it there, a jagged little memento of my first year at Sacred Heart, and a presage of scars yet to come. But more important than that, it helps to remind me now, Liz, as I wait for you here, of just how hard it is to be your age.

Three o’clock now and your father’s out on the back porch trying to repair the ceiling fan.
    He won’t say it, but I can tell he’s beginning to get worried. He drove around the city for two hours hunting for you. I suspect that was what finally got to him. “She could be anywhere,” he said, throwing the keys down on the counter when he came in. He pulled out your school directory, thinking we might go down the list of your classmates and phone their parents. But with two thousand students we hardly knew where to begin—really, you could be with any of them, or none of them. We gave up after the twelfth call. Then your father thought to phone the school counselor, in case she had some clue as to where you might be, but she wasn’t in her office, it being Saturday, and her home phone is unlisted. So after all this, he’s on the back porch, taking apart the ceiling fan. I hear him cursing and rattling metal. He’ll probably break something soon.
    It’s been almost fifteen hours, Liz. Fifteen. Do you know how hard this is on your parents? Can you imagine how this makes us feel? Do you even think of us at all?
    Missy’s parents, you like to say, let her do anything she wants. Missy’s parents let her go out with boys twice her age. Missy’s parents let her take vacations with friends to Cancún. Missy’s parents let her spend Christmas with her uncle in Aspen. Missy’s parents, I would say, are shitty parents. Pardon me, but it’s a parent’s job, like it or not, to set some boundaries. You’re still our daughter, and I honestly feel that we would be failing in our responsibility to you if we let you go off and do whatever you want.
    Do I sound like my mother now? Fine. I don’t care. Fear and worry, I’m beginning to learn, can turn even the most open-minded person into a raving conservative. I’m ready to send you to your room and lock the door for the rest of your teenage life. You think it’s hard being a fifteen-year-old? Just wait until you’re the mother of a fifteen-year-old. Honestly, I don’t know whether I’ll shout at you or hug you when you get back. Probably both.
    Okay, I’m going to stop ranting now and make carrot cake. I know it’s your favorite, or at least used to be. I’ve got the TV on in the next room so I can listen to it while I bake. No special bulletins about runaway teenage girls yet. Just the usual dismal reports from Iraq—boys with guns, women in black head coverings crying and shaking their fists at the air.
    Those poor women, losing their homes and husbands, their sons and daughters. Mothers all over the world must look at those women and say: I pray to God I’ll never have to know that kind of