Sunday evenings in high school, I attended youth services at a local evangelical church. One Sunday, I tagged along on a post-worship excursion to the McDonald’s on Main Street. We ate fries and drank shakes. There was a boy there, Ron, a black-haired kid with a wide grin whom I liked but who I knew was out of my league. Whenever there was a lag in the conversation, Ron liked to bust out raps about Jesus’s coolness. That summer night, after the shakes and fries, my girlfriends and I lingered in the parking lot, giggling approvingly at Ron’s raps. I think it occurred to me to call home, but I didn’t have change—and I didn’t want the night to end, as I knew it would when I heard my mother’s voice. Around 9 p.m., I was finally dropped off at our mobile home park. My mother was in quite a state. It seems she had called the police, telling them that her daughter should have been home hours ago. I don’t know exactly what she asked the police to do, or if she managed to articulate a request at all. Maybe she just assumed that, hearing I was missing, they would begin combing the streets, on the lookout for a girl, seventeen years old, 5’8, with dark hair, a little overweight from all the shakes and fries.
