At first she ignored him. Then he pulled the car closer, and she happened to take a peek and realized—a glimmer of relief—that it was only someone she knew. Well, sort of. The man’s face was familiar; he was from around the neighborhood. He knew her dad, or was it her brothers? He worked in a store in town, or was he a member of her church? Either way, she’d seen him before, somewhere.
“Need a ride?” this man, technically not a stranger, called.
She hesitated.
“Come on, get in out of the rain,” he said.
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.