her bedroom wall was a collage of every valentine's day card, folded secret note, doodles, drawings, things her friends had written before their father's got a job in another city and moved. Streamers, deflated balloons, pressed leaves, plastic flowers, candy wrappers, subway, bus and concert ticket stubs. Polaroid pictures and regular rectangle pictures and pretty much anything else a teenage girl might come across in her lifetime of movement.

The detective went over every piece thumb-tacked, taped or stuck to the wall, writing in his little notebook.

"Usually they just run away for a few days," he said. "Then they realize life isn't quite as easy as they thought and they come back. Tired, hungry, but otherwise fine".

Her parents stood in the doorway, holding back tears and misplaced anger and each other.

"Sometimes, though," the detective continued. "Not very often, one out of 20, say, they have been taken. We'll do our best to find her.