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Rebecca Boucher
The Dark Side of the Moon

Annie, my lean and lovely sixteen-year-old, floated down to the breakfast table early one Saturday morning. I realized as I checked the clock--it was eight-thirty in the morning--that there must be a cross-country track meet that day or she never would have been out of bed at such an hour. She calmly spread cream cheese on a toasted bagel and told me she would be taking the subway, by herself, to her meet. It was taking place in a huge park at 242nd Street in the Bronx, a significant subway ride from our Brooklyn home.

“I’ve been there plenty of times,” she said, wiping her hands on her jeans. She took a bite and chewed for a minute. “I’m fine alone.”

She was wearing a T-shirt, size ten-year-old-girl that my sister gave her (this by way of explanation that I would never have bought the thing myself and yet felt compelled to let her keep it). It was vivid green and had a map of Kentucky on it. It read, “Gettin’ Lucky in Kentucky.”…

Excerpted from I Wanna Be Sedated: 30 Writers on Parenting Teenagers Copyright 2005 by Rebecca Boucher