My family left me behind during a summer trip as a vicious joke, laughing while they drove off and said, “Let’s see if she can handle it.”

I walked until my legs shook beneath me. A pickup truck passed after dark. I shouted. It kept going. By morning, my lips had cracked open. I followed the road, collapsed near a cattle fence, and woke up to an elderly Navajo woman named Ruth Yazzie tipping water into my mouth from a dented canteen.

She brought me to her trailer outside Kayenta. She called the police. I gave them my name. I told them my family had left me behind.

Two days later, an officer came back wearing an odd expression.

“Your mother reported you missing,” he said. “She claims you ran away after an argument.”

I stared at him, waiting for the joke.