Well. It’s past noon and you’re still not home.

During a break from writing I went up and checked your room. I didn’t go through your private things, don’t worry, but I see you took your daypack and toothbrush. I phoned Missy DeSalle’s house, but no one was home except the maid and she didn’t know anything. So then I phoned around to all your other friends—all the friends I know of, at least—but they say they haven’t heard from you.

I wouldn’t be surprised if you went with Missy to Fort Lauderdale after all. That’s what this is all about it, isn’t it? That’s how our fight began, as I remember: our refusal to let you go to Florida for spring break, and then the arguing and the shouting and the cursing. Call me a hypocrite, call me any ugly names you want, I still don’t see how we’re being unreasonable. You’re fifteen years old, for god’s sake. What kind of parents would we be if we let you spend a week in Florida, unchaperoned, with a bunch of stoned high school seniors?

After your father came in for lunch I finally convinced him to phone the police. He didn’t want to. He says you’ll be in a world of trouble if they find you driving with just a learner’s permit and we ought to try and avoid that for now, if only for your sake. I said we ought to be more worried about your safety than about your driving record, and if you broke the law, well, you broke the law and there was nothing we could do about that now.

The police, as it turns out, weren’t very helpful. They said they don’t take reports of a missing person unless it’s been at least twenty-four hours, and then only if the disappearance is of a suspicious nature. I said it was, your father disagreed. Then they gave us the number for the Department of Juvenile Services. In case we needed help with ungovernable children, they said, we should contact them for an interview and a probation officer would be assigned to our case. I took the phone and said you weren’t ungovernable, just missing, and what good were the police if they couldn’t help people, wasn’t that what they were hired to do, to serve and protect and whatever? And so on like this until the woman on the other end of the line lost patience and hung up. After that I phoned all the hospitals in the parish. No one matching your description, thank god.

So just now I’ve sent your father out to look for you in the car. He says it’s a ridiculous idea: If you’re already in Florida, what’s the point? And if you’re not in Florida, how’s he going to find you in a city of half a million people? He says he’ll go to Home Depot first to buy some fertilizer for the lawn and then he’ll go check the shopping mall. He says you’re probably there trying on clothes. I said he shouldn’t be making jokes at a time like this.

If it’s your intention to punish us for being too mean, or too strict, or too whatever, well then, you’ve succeeded. We get the message. We’ll sit down, we’ll talk this out and find some compromise. You can come home now. We won’t be mad, I promise. We just need to know you’re safe. You hear so many terrible stories on the news these days. I turned on the TV for the noon news, hoping somehow I might see something about you—crazy, I know. What I saw instead was another report about that twelve-year-old girl in Prairieville who went missing last year. They found her, locked in a soundproofed basement below the home of a local couple. A middle-aged man and woman, no doubt with friends and jobs and club memberships, they could’ve been anyone you passed on the sidewalk. But the things they did to her—you can’t imagine human beings capable of such depravity. Horrible things, things you don’t even want to think about. God help that poor girl.

Okay. Now you see why I get so worried. Pardon the interruption. I’ve set my mind to tell you this story, so I’ll get back to it now.