It was the house from my dream. The exact same house. It had the same crabgrassy lawn, the same black mailbox with just numbers, no name on it, the same windows with all the blinds down. The more I looked at it, the more I suspected that, in the backyard, there'd be a rusty old swing set, and one of those kiddie wading pools, cracked and dirty from having sat outside all winter.

It was a nice house. Small, but nice. In a modest but nice neighborhood. Someone who lived nearby had gotten out the barbecue and was grilling burgers for dinner. In the distance, I could hear the voices of children shouting as they played.

"Well," Rob said, after a minute. "This the boyfriend's place, then?"

"Shhh," I said to him. That's because someone was coming toward us on the sidewalk. Someone short, dragging a jean jacket behind him. Someone who, when he got close enough, suddenly veered off the sidewalk and onto the lawn of the little brick house I was staring at.

I pulled off the helmet Rob had lent me.

No, my eyes weren't playing tricks on me. It was Sean Patrick O'Hanahan, all right. Older than he'd been in the picture on the back of the milk carton by about five or six years. But it was him. I just knew it.

I don't know what made me do it. I'd never done anything like it before. But I got down from Rob's bike, crossed the street, and said, "Sean."

Just like that. I didn't yell it or anything. I just said his name.

He turned. Then he went pale. Before he even saw me, he went pale. I swear it.

He was probably about twelve. Small for his age, but still only a few inches shorter than me. Red hair beneath a Yankees cap. Freckles stood out starkly against his nose, now that he'd gone so pale.

His eyes were blue. They narrowed as his gaze flicked first over me, then behind me, toward Rob.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he said. He didn't shout it, any more than I'd shouted his name. Still, I heard the undercurrent of fear in his little-boy voice.

I got as far as the sidewalk before I thought I'd better stop. He looked ready to bolt.

"Oh, yeah?" I said. "Your name's not Sean?"

"No," the kid said, in that snotty way kids talk when they're scared, only they don't want it to show. "My name's Sam."

I shook my head slowly. "No, it isn't," I said. "Your name's Sean. Sean Patrick O'Hanahan. It's okay, Sean. You can trust me. I'm here to help you. I'm here to help get you home."

What happened next was this:

The kid went, if such a thing is possible, even whiter. At the same time, his body seemed to turn into Jell-O, or something. He dropped the jean jacket as if it weighed too much for him to hold on to anymore, and I could see his fingers shaking.

Then he rushed me.

I don't know what I thought he was going to do. Hug me, I guess. I thought maybe he was so happy and grateful at being found, he was going to throw himself into my arms and give me a great big kiss for having come to his rescue.

That was so not what he did.

What he did instead was reach out and grab me by the wrist—quite painfully, I might add—and hiss, "Don't you tell anyone. Don't you ever tell anyone you saw me, understand?"

This was not exactly the kind of reaction I'd been expecting. I mean, it would have been one thing if we'd gotten to Paoli and I had found out the house I'd dreamed about didn't exist. But it did exist. And what's more, in front of that house was the kid from the milk carton. I'd have staked my life on it.

Only, for some reason, the kid was claiming he was someone else.

"I am not Sean Patrick O'Hanahan," he whispered in a voice that was as filled with anger as it was with fear. "So you can just go away, do you hear? You can just go away. And don't ever come back."

It was at this point that the front door to the little house opened, and a woman's voice called, sharply, "Sam!"

The kid let go of me at once.

"Coming," he said, his voice shaking as badly as his fingers were.

He threw me just one more furious, frightened look as he stooped to pick his jean jacket up off the lawn. Then he ran inside and slammed the door behind him without glancing in my direction again.

Standing out on the sidewalk, I stared at that closed door. I listened to the sounds of the birds, of the children I could hear playing somewhere nearby. I could still smell the burgers grilling, and something else: fresh-cut grass. Someone had taken advantage of the unseasonable warmth and mowed their lawn.

Nothing inside the house in front of me stirred. Not a blind Was lifted. Nothing.

But everything—everything I had ever known—was different now.

Because that kid was Sean Patrick O'Hanahan. I knew it as well as I knew my name, my brothers' names. That kid was Sean Patrick O'Hanahan.

And he was in trouble.

"Kid's a little young for you," I heard a voice behind me point out, "don't you think?"

I turned around. Rob was still straddling the motorcycle. He'd taken his helmet off, and was observing me with a perfectly impassive expression on his good-looking face.

"Takes all kinds, I guess," he said with a shrug. "Still, I didn't have you pegged for having a Boy Scout fixation."

I probably should have told him. I probably should have said right then, Look, I saw that kid on the back of a milk carton. Let's go get the police.

But I didn't. I didn't say anything. I didn't know what to say. I didn't know what to do.

I didn't understand what was happening to me.

"Well," Rob said. "We could stand around out here all night, if you want to. But the smell of those burgers is making me hungry. What do you say we go try to find some of our own?"

I gave the little brick house one last look. Sean, I thought to myself, I know that's you in there. What did they do to you? What did they do to you, to make you so afraid to admit your own name?

"Mastriani," Rob said.

I turned around and got back onto the bike.

He didn't ask me a single question. He just handed me my helmet, put his own on, waited until I said I was ready, and then he hit the gas.

We left Paoli.

It wasn't until we were doing ninety again that I perked up. It's hard to keep a speed freak down when she's doing ninety. Okay, I reasoned to myself as we cruised. You know what you have to do. You know what you have to do.

So after we'd pulled up to the burger place Rob had in mind—a Hell's Angels hangout called Chick's that I'd always wanted to go to, since we drove past it every January 5 on our way to the dump to get rid of the Christmas tree, only Mom would never let me—I did it.

I went to the pay phone by the ladies' room and dialed.

"1-800-WHERE-R-YOU," a woman's voice said after it had only rung twice. "This is Rosemary. How may I help you?"

I had to stick a finger in my other ear, the jukebox was pumping John Cougar Mellencamp so loudly.

"Hi, Rosemary," I shouted. "This is Jess."

"Hi, Jess," Rosemary said. She sounded like she might be black. I don't happen to know any black people—there aren't any in my town—but I have seen them in movies, and on TV and stuff. So that's how I knew. Rosemary sounded like an older black lady. "I can barely hear you."

"Yeah," I said. "Sorry about that. I'm in a … well, I'm in a bar."

Rosemary didn't sound too shaken to hear that. On the other hand, she had no way of knowing that I am only sixteen.

"What can I do for you today, Jess?" Rosemary asked.

"Well," I said. I took a deep breath.

"Listen, Rosemary," I said. "This is going to sound kind of weird, but there's this kid, Sean Patrick O'Hanahan. You guys have him on a milk carton. Anyway, I know where he is." And then I told her.

Rosemary kept going, "Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh." And then she said, "Honey, are you—"

Rob shouted my name. I looked toward him, and he held up two red plastic baskets. Our burgers were up.

I went, "Rosemary, I gotta go. But real quick. That Olivia Marie D'Amato? You guys'll be able to find her at—" And then I gave her a street address, a city in New Jersey, and a zip code, for good measure. "Okay? I gotta go. Bye!"

I hung up.

It was funny, but I felt relieved. Like I had gotten something off my chest. Isn't that weird? I mean, I know Sean had told me not to tell anyone.

Told me not to tell? He'd begged me.

But he had also looked so scared at being found out that I couldn't imagine whoever he was with could be any good for him. Not if they were making him lie about his name and stuff. What about his parents? He had to know they were missing him. He had to know they would protect him from whoever these people were who had him.

I had done the right thing, calling. I had to have. Otherwise, why would I have felt so good?

I ended up having a good time. Rob, it turned out, had quite a few friends at Chick's. All of them were guys who were way older than he was, and, for the most part, they had really long hair and were heavily tattooed. Their tattoos said things like 1/31/68, which I remembered from World Civ was the day of the Tet Offensive in the Vietnam war. Rob's friends seemed strangely astonished to see me—although they were very nice—which led me to believe that either:

a) Rob had never brought a girl to Chick's before (unlikely), or

b) the girls he'd brought there had looked more like the girls who were hanging around the Hell's Angels—i.e., tall, blond, excessively made-up, named Teri or Charleen, and who probably never wore gingham in their lives (more likely).

Which might be why, every time I opened my mouth, the guys would all look at one another, until finally one of them said to Rob, "Where'd you get her?" to which I replied, because it was such a stupid question, "The girlfriend store."

Everybody but Teri and Charleen laughed at that one.

So, overall, when I got home that night, I was one happy camper. I had saved a kid's life—maybe even two kids' lives, although there was no way I was going all the way to Jersey to check Olivia D'Amato's situation. And I had spent the afternoon and part of the evening with a totally hot guy who liked going fast, and who, if I wasn't mistaken, seemed to like me, too. What could be better than that?

Not having my parents find out about it, that's what.

And there was no chance they were going to, either. Because the minute I walked in the door, around nine or so—I made Rob drop me off way down the street, so my folks wouldn't hear his bike—I saw that they hadn't even noticed I was gone. I had called, of course, from Chick's, and said band rehearsal was running long, but nobody had picked up. When I walked in, I saw why. My mom and dad were having a huge fight. Over Douglas. As usual.

"He's not ready!" my mom was screaming.

"The longer he waits," my dad said, "the harder it's going to be for him. He's got to start now."

"Do you want him to try it again?" my mom wanted to know. "Is that what you want, Joe?"

"Of course not," my dad said. "But it's different now. He's on the medication. Look, Toni, I think it would be good for him. He needs to get out of the house. All he does is lie up there, reading comic books."

"And you think slaving away in a hot restaurant kitchen is the cure for that?" My mom sounded very sarcastic.

"He needs to get out," my dad said. "And he needs to start earning his keep."

"He's sick!" my mom insisted.

"He's always going to be sick, Toni," my dad said. "But at least he's being treated now. And the treatments are working. The doctors said as long as he was taking his medication, there's no reason why he can't—" My dad broke off because he saw me in the doorway. "What do you want?" he asked, not rudely.

"Cereal," I said. "Sorry I missed dinner."

My dad waved at me. A whatever wave. I got down a box of Raisin Bran and a bowl.

"He's not ready," my mother said.

"Toni," my dad said. "He can't stay up there in his room forever. I mean, he's twenty years old, for Christ's sake. He's got to start getting out, seeing people his own age—"

"Oh, and back in the kitchen at Mastriani's, that's what he'll be doing. Getting out." My mom was being sarcastic again.

"Yes," my dad said. "With kids his own age. You know the crew back there. They'll be good for him."

My mother snorted. I ate my cereal, pretending to be very interested in the back of the milk carton, but really listening to their conversation.

"Next thing, you'll probably want to send him to one of those halfway houses," my mother said.