My Week on the Milk Carton

For a week in 1987, my face was on a milk carton. MISSING – DAVID FORREST BECKNER, it read above a smiling photo of me. The photo was pulled from picture day—overexposed, freshly combed hair, chipped teeth. My parents had a framed version of it on our stairs. They walked past it for years without giving it much thought. But now that it was at our breakfast table staring out at them (and thousands of other families), they seemed sick at the sight of it.