When young girls grow up without a father, they are prey. Men sense this. At 13 I was acutely aware of this and always on guard. My sister, Shelley, 14, was not. My intuition by this point had become strong, my guide, something Shelley had not developed, a way to stay in the dark. Since my mother was never home, working, putting herself through school, neglecting her 2 other younger girls, I felt it my duty to be in charge, to protect this fractured family. Shelley was already a drug addict, unprotected, with a death wish. I didn’t want her to die. We had been best friends in our childhood, until the divorce, and our worlds fell apart. Things like ballet lessons, church, even dental appointments were no longer deemed important. My father never came around, nor called. He felt we were traitors. After 4 years of moving from one apartment complex to another, due to constant evictions, ticking bombs, my mother had somehow assembled enough money to rent a condo in a good school district. She worked as a cocktail waitress at night and a laundry mat by day. Then it happened. Shelley was kidnapped, by an “upstanding citizen”, the local pharmacist; who was also a pedophile and a drug dealer and our next door neighbor. My mother was frantic, the F.B.I were involved, our house was tapped, his condo was evacuated; his 14 year old “wife” and newborn were also gone. This was before Amber alerts, CNN, news, in fact, no one really cared. We waited. My mother pacing, smoking, clunking around in her clogs while asking me questions in a blaming way. “You knew she went there to babysit! What was in that house? How could you do this, Rhonda?” I sat on our dusty sofa, pinching my legs, blaming myself. I had been to the house. I had seen the stacks and stacks of porn and the TV’s showing graphic images I refused to look at. I had seen the baby, always sleeping; the “wife”, who I assumed was older. But mostly I knew Shelley was there for the drugs. But I never told. “Mom, I knew he was weird, but I didn’t think he was dangerous. She gave me a punishing look. I had failed; her one good daughter; the one that never missed a class, despite the circumstances; the one that maintained high grades; stayed away from drugs, pleaded with the nuns to keep us at school despite never paying tuition. The F.B.I swarmed our house, talking on phones, inspecting our bedrooms. Did they also think I failed? Was this all my fault? Two days had now gone by. Shelley was a beautiful girl; blond, popular, funny, smart. But the drugs pushed her over a cliff and now she was just blond. Then the phone rang. There was silence. “Pick it up. If it’s him, keep him on the line. Act calm,” a detective instructed. My mother took a deep breath, and then we all heard his voice, as though our phone was on stereo. “I will let her go if you meet me. I want to do special things to you.” The F.B.I men kept signaling to keep it going and that is when I heard it. The swish. I recognized the sound. I wanted to scream it out but stayed silent. We lived in a small town with one hotel I had worked in for 2 weeks during the summer as a housekeeper. When you enter, the door is hydraulic and it swished. I knew where they were. The call was short. “They are at the Holiday Inn!” I blurt my heart racing. I can’t fail. There was a mass exodus. By the time they arrived, they were all gone, but they found my sister lying in a ditch two blocks away. She was alive. She had been drugged, tied up, raped and left to die. The man was found, there was a trial, he went to prison for life. But our lives were never the same. Shelley was institutionalized; then sent to relatives. My younger siblings were sent to live with my dad and his new wife. My mother and I left for California, hoping for a new direction, a better plan. I would not see Shelley for another 20 years.