8/1/2009 My Troubled Teen Part II con't

Over time, her attitude became really surly with me and she slept sometimes for 15 straight hours, only waking up when I made her. She had no energy and lost weight. I chalked it up to growing and just being a teenager. I had no suspicions and no one told me anything.

It took her leaving on a community service caravan to get to the bottom of things. I searched her room and found a cache of disturbing items:

• Condoms
• Cigarettes
• Glow Sticks
• Pacifiers
• Blank checks from her grandparents and me
• Blank prescription pad from my stepfather, a retired physician
• Multiple pages visited on a dating website
• Subscription to a rave-type social networking site, with her rave name as her userid

Everywhere I looked, there was more stuff stashed away, but the stolen checks and prescription pad was practically in plain sight. I took that to mean that she wanted me to find them. I was pretty upset, more like frantic. I didn’t know what it was, but I knew it wasn’t good. I could only ask one person – her sister. I pushed and pushed because it was clear she knew something. She cried out of guilt, both for not telling me and for ratting out her sister. I explained that it was my problem, not hers, and to unburden herself. It literally took 45 minutes for her to tell me that her sister had been sneaking out, going to raves, and using Ecstasy. It was the reason she was desperate to find jobs to make money, and why so much of her stuff was missing (explained away as stolen at the pool). Everything bad had to do with the raves.