"Transmission," he said, and even I recognized that as bad news when I heard it. Two or three days would be needed to repair it.

"You can stay here, no problem," Margaret said.

"You ever meet anybody so goddamn cheerful in all your life?" Bethany asked me later, when we were sitting alone on the back patio. The girls were with Brad and Jean, doing yoga. "I mean, if six people, two of them mentally ill, came to my house unexpectedly, I'd be giving them the number for Motel Six. I don't know why anybody would sign up for this. Not that I'm not grateful."

"I get the impression that the program recruits from within. So don't be surprised if we're asked to take in people after the girls are better," I said.

After the girls are better. What a beacon those words were. Our world would expand. We would be givers. We could be human again.

Angelica and Trina returned from yoga and shared a cigarette break. They wandered through the yard and chose a spot where they could sit near each other. They appeared to be having a conversation and laughed at times. They were discovering each other, maybe becoming friends. Trina hadn't made a friend in a long time, and she'd lost most of her old ones.

"Wouldn't that be funny," Bethany said when I mentioned it.

There were no barracks this time. That first night, Bethany, Angelica, and Jean were given a room right next to the one I shared with Trina and Brad. Trina didn't protest Brad's presence, although she asked to sleep next to me. Brad put her in the middle of the three single beds. When he went into the bathroom, I could hear Trina mumbling to herself. "Are you talking to me?" I asked.

"I'm saying my prayers."

SINCE MARGARET'S HOUSE WASN'T IN THE HEALTH BAR industry, Jean gathered the girls together for what she termed a "group session" right before dinner. Jean, who'd been vacillating between a mental stupor and fits of self-flagellation since Eddie's call, appeared to rally. Never mind that Angelica was more likely to retreat into her shell of self-damage and mayhem than she was to be introspective, group was on the agenda, so group it was. They went into a room in the back of the house, closed the door, and didn't come out for two hours.

After dinner, the doorbell began ringing. "Summer school buddies," Margaret dubbed the friends of her children who sought them out, carrying laptops and books as they trailed through the hall that led to the teenagers' bedrooms.

Trina and Angelica sat on the sofa, watching a movie and talking. I could see them from where I sat in the kitchen. Margaret's daughter came to her, carrying her math book. Margaret shooed her away.

"Do you need help?" I heard Trina ask. The girl showed her the work. "I love geometry. This is how you do it." She explained the steps of the problem to Margaret's daughter and patiently answered her questions. It was an ordinary interaction, lasting no more than ten minutes, but it lifted me through the roof.

Almost as soon as Trina had finished working on the problem, a group of young people trailed into the family room, plopped down on the sofa, chairs, and floor, and began watching television. Trina and Angelica were part of the group. Margaret was passing them snacks and sodas when Jean rushed in, followed by Brad. There were Cokes on the tray. I meant to say something about that. Jean beckoned to me.

"We need to talk," she said.

"I'll watch the girls," Margaret said.

We went into the kitchen, where I could still see Trina.

"The police came back," Jean said.

Brad folded his arms across his chest, lowered his head a bit.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Eddie called me. The police just left our house. Somebody saw us with Trina."

"You mean the woman in the car?"

She shook her head. "No. When she was at our house. Somebody saw Trina and me the day we were walking. She started to run away, so I chased her and grabbed her arm. Somebody saw me pulling on her. I don't remember any cars, but I guess one must have passed us that I didn't notice."

"You didn't tell me about that," Brad said.

"It was over in three seconds. She didn't run that far. There was never any danger. It's happened before with other people. I've never told you about those times either."

"Well, you should have. Why did you take her to the road? It was too soon for that. You're the first stop, dammit," Brad said.

"I didn't mean-"

"What the hell are you talking about, you didn't mean? You've jeopardized everybody, the entire program. Jesus!"

Jean's mouth twitched. She looked down at her feet.

"What did you learn in training, huh? Keep away from people. It's like a commandment."

Her mouth twisted just a little, and then she was right in his face, snarling like a pit bull. "Don't you dare talk like that to me. I give up my time and take the same risks you do."

So that's how she was. She wore the calm Earth Mother brand well, but there in the dark she morphed into a spitfire right before my eyes.

"I have to go to the bathroom," I heard Trina say. I watched her walk down the hall.

"Look, the car is going to be ready tomorrow," Brad said, his voice lower, his tone softer. He looked at Jean. "We're about six hours from your house, six hours from the site. We'll drop off Trina and Angelica at the site and take the car back to your house. We'll see the police and explain what happened, leaving out a few details."

Jean didn't answer. Brad looked at me. "What do you think?"

"I don't know." The idea that the police were looking for us was one I still couldn't process.

"Tea? Coffee?" Margaret held up a cup. I looked into the family room and didn't see Trina or Angelica.

"Tea," I said.

"What do you want in it?"

"Sugar. I'll get it."

Minutes later, cup of tea in hand, I knocked on the bathroom door. No answer. Knocked again and went in. The bathroom was empty; the window was open.

"Trina! Trina!" As I called, I raced from room to room.

"What's the matter?" Margaret asked, coming out of the kitchen.

"I can't find Trina."

"Maybe she's with one of the kids."

Behind me I heard Bethany, calling Angelica.

We rushed from room to room. No Trina. No Angelica. I heard Margaret loudly asking her children if they'd seen the girls. Which of their friends had left?

Justin.

"Oh, goodness!" said Margaret.

Brad and Jean were waiting for us when we returned to the kitchen. One look at their faces told me both girls were gone. "It's that blond boy," Margaret said to Bethany and me. I remembered him.

I heard Margaret's children talking. I heard the word stoner.

Bethany grabbed my hand. The way she squeezed was like screaming.

My cell phone rang. It was Frances. "I've been calling and calling. What's wrong with your phone?" she asked.

As soon as I heard her voice, I started crying. She couldn't make out what I was saying.

"What's wrong?" she kept asking. "Where are you?"

I just cried some more until I could say good-bye and hang up.

Jean stayed behind in case, by some miracle, the girls returned. Bethany and I got in Margaret's SUV. Brad drove. Backing out of the driveway, he caught my eye in the rearview mirror, then looked away.

She'sgoneshe'sgoneshe'sgone. Same sinking feeling as that time at the flower market when she had wandered off while I was bargaining for birds-of-paradise. I looked at Bethany; she stared back at me. By now we should have been used to losing our children. But really, when does that time come?

26.

THE BLOND BOY LIVED WAY PAST WHERE THE PRETTY flowers grew. Even in the dark, I could see that the lawn in front of his house was more dirt than grass, and what grass there was appeared half dead. There were sheets at the windows, dingy and torn. Paint was peeling all around the sides of the house; the ledges of the windows were the worst. The wood on the door was splintered; no one answered when we rang the bell. So the four of us stood there, trying to come up with a magic word.

Nobody really knew where to go next, but Brad pretended he did. Around the corner. Around the next corner. To his right, his left. The park, the 7-Eleven; zoom, zoom, zoom, as if speed meant being in charge. That resolute chin looked as though it were made of chiseled rock. Bethany and I sat in the back. She held her head. I kept pressing down on the area above her thumb, but the acupressure wasn't working. We drove to a mall, which by LA standards wasn't very large. The four of us fanned out and did a thirty-minute search. Like a storm trooper, I marched into and out of the hot girls' clothing stores that Trina favored when she was manic. Saleswomen flinched when they saw me coming, and shoppers stepped aside. Have you seen a girl, two girls, one is white and the other is . . . about so tall and so big and very pretty and-No? Sorry. I raced back to the car, trying to tell myself that Trina would be waiting for me, because I needed something to keep my legs moving, my heart pumping. But Trina wasn't there, and neither was Angelica.

Bethany was the last person to return; she was panting, her movements labored. She seemed to favor her left leg.

"You okay?" I asked her.

"Are you kidding?"

"Don't you fall apart on me," I said.

"We're going to find them," Brad said. "I've put out an alert. We have other people in this area. It's not just us looking for her." His voice was conversational, but the vein in his neck was throbbing. He was in charge again.

"Well, then, find them," I said. "Find them before anything bad happens. Find them so this will turn into an amusing little anecdote I can tell at select cocktail parties. Okay? You're trained, aren't you?"

"This in no way reflects on the program," Brad said. "These things happen. We're dealing with-"

"I know what we're dealing with, Brad."

"This place isn't that big, compared to LA," Margaret said. She started going on and on about her son, how he used to run away when his meds weren't right. Even the happy endings were irritating at this point. I saw Bethany wincing.

"Margaret," I said, "your voice is too loud. Bethany has a migraine."

"Oh, goodness. Sorry. There's another place," Margaret went on, her volume turned down, "where all the kids hang out. A hamburger joint. Not far away. Well, not all the kids."

No, just the black kids with gangbanger and teenage-pregnancy aspirations. A mile from the mall, we crossed tracks and landed on the dark side of town. Depressed area didn't begin to describe the urban blight that surrounded Woodie's Hamburgers, which appeared to be the only survivor of an economic bomb that had blown up an entire block. The buildings adjacent to Woodie's were boarded-up tragedies. Woodie's exterior was none too prepossessing: The front was dirt-colored and sprayed with graffiti, a crack ran from one end of a large picture window to the other. The interior consisted of a scarred counter, a few booths, and a couple of tables and chairs, some of them broken. There was a greasy fry kitchen in full view of the clientele. Rap music blared, the lyrics more profane than poetic. The young people who looked up when I walked in-and kept checking me out the entire time I stood there- may have been teenagers, but their souls were much older.

"Jesus," Bethany said, inhaling sharply. She was standing next to Brad, who was making his own quiet assessment.

I was about to return to the car in defeat when I heard the woman behind the counter.

"Margaret, you looking for your son?"

She was scraping well-done burgers from a grill and lowering a steel basket of French fries into scalding grease. The woman was large and moved slowly, and I could tell that none of the patrons would even think about giving her a hard time. Her quick glance sized me up efficiently.

"Charlene," Margaret said. "How are you?"

"I'm doing all right. How about you?"

"I'm good. No, not my son. We're looking for two young women."

"How's he doing?"

"Much better, thank you."

"They was in here."

Bethany clutched my hand.

"A white girl, a white boy, and a light skin-ded girl who favor that lady," she said, pointing to me, "came in here about thirty minutes ago. They left in a hurry."

"Did they happen to say where they were going?" I asked.

Charlene shook her head. "They was looking for something."

"Like what?" I asked.

"What do white boys come down here looking for?"

Our eyes met. "What were they looking for specifically?"

She turned around to check the food, then faced us. "They wanted some weed, mostly. The white girl wanted some meth." She looked at Margaret. "They kids like your son?"

"Our children have mental illnesses too," I said.

"Had me an auntie like that. She was-uh, mentally ill." Charlene had a completely different accent for the words mentally ill: proper, refined, an educated woman's language. She was used to saying crazy.

"So, are you all like a club or something like that?" Charlene asked.

"No," I said.

I felt Bethany's body brushing against mine. "The white girl, how did she seem?"