During that time, he moved around the country. This was pre-cell-phone days, and I’d receive collect calls from time to time, always with the promise that I could talk to her, but really he just wanted to taunt me. The calls came from New York, Hawaii, Virginia, wherever. When he decided she should start school, he settled back in his hometown, and at that point one of his relatives called to let me know where she was. Even after I found her, it took months to get law enforcement help and finally a judge in California told me to “kidnap her back,” because as soon as we left the county he lived in, there wouldn’t be a problem.
Under threat of “getting our heads blown off if we showed up,” and with the aid of my ex’s grandmother, my husband and I flew back, picked her up from school, and were across the county line before my ex could carry out his threat. He did, many years later, tell my daughter he wished he had killed me when he had the chance.
There’s a lot more to that story, and I’ll write it extensively one day, but those years without my daughter remain frozen in my mind. That one parent could take a child away from the other parent, all in the name of revenge, is unbelievably cruel. But according to missingkids.org, more than 200,000 children per year are victims of family abduction. Here are some statistics.
• Of the 203,900 children who were victims of family abduction in one year, 53% were taken by their fathers, 25% by their mothers, and the rest by other relatives, including stepparents and grandparents.
• Of those children, 44% were younger than age six.
• Law enforcement was contacted in 60% of those cases, to locate or help recover a child from a known location.
• In the cases where families did not contact the police, 23% resolved the issue within the family, 15% didn’t believe police could help, and 10% knew the child’s location. Other reasons for not contacting the police included dissatisfaction with prior police contact, fear that the child would be harmed, and the resolution of the issue with an attorney.
• Only 30% of abducted children were gone for more than one month, with the majority gone between one day and one month.
ELLEN HOPKINS is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Crank, Glass, Fallout, Burned, Smoke, Impulse, Perfect, Tricks, Traffick, Identical, Tilt, and Rumble, as well as the adult novels Triangles, Collateral, and Love Lies Beneath. She lives with her family in Carson City, Nevada, where she has founded Ventana Sierra, a nonprofit youth housing and resource initiative. Visit her at EllenHopkins.com and on Facebook and follow her on Twitter at @EllenHopkinsLit.
MARGARET K. MCELDERRY BOOKS
Simon & Schuster
New York
Visit us at
simonandschuster.com/teen
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ALSO BY ELLEN HOPKINS
Crank
Burned
Impulse
Glass
Identical
Tricks
Fallout
Perfect
Tilt
Smoke
Traffick
Rumble
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MARGARET K. McELDERRY BOOKS | An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division | 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020 | www.SimonandSchuster.com | This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. | Text copyright © 2017 by Ellen Hopkins | Jacket art copyright © 2017 by Simon & Schuster, Inc. | Jacket photograph © 2013 by Marya May | All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. | MARGARET K. MCELDERRY BOOKS is a trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc. | For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-866-506-1949 or
[email protected]. | The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event, contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com. | Interior design by Michael Rosamilia | Jacket design by Greg Stadnyk | Book edited by Emma D. Dryden | The text for this book was set in Avenir LT Std and Caecillia LT Std 45 Light. | Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data | Names: Hopkins, Ellen. | Title: The You I’ve Never Known / Ellen Hopkins. | Other titles: You I have never known | Description: First edition. | New York : Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2017. | Summary: With both joy and fear, seventeen-year-old Ariel begins to explore her sexuality, while living with her controlling, abusive father who has told Ariel that her mother deserted her years ago. | Identifiers: LCCN 2016027736 | ISBN 9781481442909 (hardback) | ISBN 9781481442923 (eBook) | Subjects: CYAC: Parent and child—Fiction. | Identity—Fiction. | Sexual orientation—Fiction. | Lesbians—Fiction. | Psychopaths—Fiction. | Kidnapping—Fiction. | BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Social Issues / Physical & Emotional Abuse (see also Social Issues / Sexual Abuse). | JUVENILE FICTION / Family / Marriage & Divorce. | Classification: LCC PZ7.5.H67 Yo 2017 | DDC [Fic]—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016027736
Ellen Hopkins, The You I've Never Known
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