17 & Gone(42)

Isabeth nodded, and within moments she was depositing her schoolbooks in the backseat. She was climbing into the front seat. She was closing the car door.

Only then did she waver. She hadn’t done the wrong thing, had she? Did she really know this man? Should she ask his name to be sure? Would that be rude?

That would be. So rude. She didn’t want to be rude. That’s what she was thinking moments before she realized the door had been locked automatically.

Isabeth had done everything she was told to do for the past 17 years: She had studied. She had washed the dishes. She had kept her legs closed. She had stayed off the Internet past ten o’clock. She had joined her family for church every Sunday. She had eaten her vegetables.

She had, once or twice, helped an old lady cross a street. She had never once rolled up the waistband of her school-uniform skirt to show more leg.

She’d done so many things right, and one thing wrong. She shouldn’t have gotten in that car.

Isabeth Valdes: Gone 2010 from Binghamton, New York. Age 17.

— — —





MADISON


Madison was going to be a model. She’d been told she should model all her life, like randomly when she was out shopping for a cute new outfit at the mall or sucking on the straw of her iced, sugar-free, skim-milk chai latte at the coffee place or just minding her own business walking down the street. She figured it was only a matter of time before someone plucked her from the great big nothing that was her life and plastered her face on a billboard and made her into Something. She figured heading to New York would only bring her into Somethingness that much faster.

She met the photographer online, or talked to him anyway. He said he’d do her portfolio for free, and he had the lights set up in his apartment and everything.

So Madison spent the entire six-hour ride practicing her posing face in the bus window. She had an expression she was trying to perfect, half serious, half sweet, lips pursed, eyebrows lifted, chin held high. She knew the photographer would love her for it.

Madison Waller: Gone 2013 from Keene, New Hampshire. Age 17.

— — —





EDEN


Eden simply wanted a taco. She was the one who saw the roadside stand at the edge of nowhere and begged her friends to stop. She was the one who raced out of the car before anyone else did. The light was falling, and picnic tables were empty, and all she knew was that the roadside stand said TACOS and she needed one, right now. The rickety shack was covered in hand-painted signs like that. One said STRAWBERRIES and another s a i d BLUEBERRIES. And the biggest of them all said JEWELRY PIE WOVEN RUGS

/ CIGARS. Though the place was ready to close up shop, Eden talked them into serving her and her friends some tacos slathered in cheese and sour cream and pico de gallo and heaps of guac. But by the time she and her friends were finished eating, the place was closed and dark and there was nowhere to use the bathroom before they got back on the road, so Eden had to make use of the weeds.

The last thing Eden’s friends heard her say before she trampled off into the darkness beyond the picnic tables was, “Back in a sec! Gotta pee.”

Eden DeMarco: Gone 2011 from Fairborn, Ohio. Age 17.

— — —

YOON-MI AND MAURA Yoon-mi said she knew the minute she walked into the gymnasium for early pep-squad practice. She knew as she stretched and as, across the gym, the last phys ed class of the day counted off into teams. She knew as the class spread out to start dodgeball, getting ever closer to where they were practicing. And she knew as she stood up to learn the new cheer. She knew when she felt the smack of impact as the ball hit her square in the face. She knew as she fell backward, and she knew as she lay there, staring up at the ridiculously tall ceiling, where caught in the rafters was a lone silver balloon from the formal the month before. She’d gone to that dance with a boy, even though she secretly liked girls.

What she knew is that something significant would happen today.

The feeling took shape and grew eyes and a mouth and a face, turning into this girl, this fellow junior named Maura.

“I’m so freaking sorry!” Maura was going. “I didn’t mean to get you in the face!”

And

there

were

more

people

surrounding them—the gym teacher, the other juniors in last-period gym, and the girls on the pep squad, a crowd of heads and hands—but Yoon-mi focused in on one of them.

Maura Morris, who’d moved here from Canada last year.

Her future girlfriend who’d just clocked her in the face during dodgeball.

Maura, on the other hand, didn’t know a thing when she walked into PE that day. Not even when she smacked the beautiful pep-squad girl in the face with a speeding dodgeball. Yoon-mi Hyun, the girl to whom she gave two black eyes—little did Maura know that, within a week, she’d become her first girlfriend.

The mystery wasn’t how they fell in love—that was quick; that was easy—it was what happened once they went public. Their families’ reactions. The kids at school. When Maura suggested they could run off together and start a new life up in Canada, she’d only said it offhand. A little wishful thinking, a silly dream. She didn’t expect Yoon-mi to show up at her house with her bags that very night and say, “Let’s go.”

Yoon-mi Hyun and Maura Morris: Gone 2007 from Milford, Pennsylvania.