Blue by Danielle Steel

his nineteen-year-old mother. The boy had been badly burned in a fire and was disfigured but had survived. The girl left five other children in their hut with her own mother. Her husband and father hadn’t wanted her to leave their village, but had finally agreed for the sake of the child. Her face was heavily veiled, and she spoke to no one on the way, and kept her eyes downcast. And she was quickly absorbed into the group of local women when they returned to the camp.
    Ginny was busy from dawn to nearly midnight every day, but she never had a sense of danger. The people in the area weren’t hostile to them, and the number of women and children in the camp kept growing. It was another month or so before she went to Asadabad, the capital city of Kunar Province, in one of the trucks with one of the German women, an Italian man, and a French nun. Rupert had asked her to send several e-mails from Asadabad, where they had Internet reception, since at the camp they had none. There was a Red Cross office that they were allowed to use. She walked in with Rupert’s list of communications and reports to send. They gave her a desk and a computer to work at, while the others walked around town. After she sent Rupert’s messages, she decided to check her own e-mail, rather than join the others for lunch.
    She had three messages from Becky, reporting on their father’s deteriorating condition, and asking her to call when she could. She had been in Afghanistan for six weeks by then, and Becky’s last message was two weeks old. She had finally given up trying to reach Ginny, and sounded exasperated by her silence since Ginny couldn’t receive e-mails, a fact Ginny had warned her of before she left. And there was an e-mail from Julio Fernandez at the Houston Street Shelter, and one from Blue that was only three days old. She decided to read Blue’s first and opened it quickly. She had thought of him since she’d been there, but most of the time she had had more pressing things on her mind. Her days were very full.
    Blue’s e-mail began with an apology, and as soon as she saw it, she could guess the rest. He said that the people at Houston Street were very nice, but he hated all the rules. He wasn’t crazy about the other kids, either. Some were okay, but one of his roommates had tried to steal his laptop, and it was so noisy at night he couldn’t sleep. He said it was like living in a zoo, so he had written to tell her he had left. He didn’t know where he was going, but he told her he’d be fine, and said he hoped that she was safe and would be back soon, in one piece.
    After she read it, she saw there was another one from his school. It advised her that Blue had dropped out two weeks after she left. And the last one from Julio Fernandez said that they had tried to convince Blue to stay, but he had been determined to leave. He said that Blue didn’t do well with their routine and was too used to doing what he wanted on the streets. He said it wasn’t unusual, but it was incompatible with what they expected of their residents. So Blue had done exactly what Charlene had said he would, he had run away from the shelter and dropped out of school. And now she had no idea where he was and couldn’t do anything about it. And she would be there for another six weeks. With so little communication available to them, and none at the camp, her hands were tied. And there was no way to track him down from here.
    She answered Blue’s e-mail first, and told him that she hoped he was okay. She made a point of telling him that she was fine. And she begged him to go back to the shelter and the school. She reminded him she was planning to come back at the end of April, and told him that she expected to see him at the apartment as soon as she did. She tried to reassure herself, remembering he had managed without her for thirteen years, and she was sure that he would survive on the streets for another six weeks, although she wasn’t pleased with