Setting out without a plan was maybe not the smartest thing to do, but Iliana was low on options, so she went with it. She'd left a hastily written note on her pillow, scrawled in red crayon in her best third-grade print:

"Dear Mami and Mama, don't be mad. I am ok. I will come home when you make up. Love, Ily."

She knew the first sentence was pointless, because they were going to be really, really mad—even Mama. Wandering around the city was expressly forbidden, and she was only about a year out from having to hold one of their hands when they were anywhere beyond the front doors of their apartment building. Iliana knew they were overprotective but didn't know the word for it. She did, however, know enough to leave the note. She didn't actually want them to have a heart attack.

It was early when she left, her backpack filled with a couple bags of chips, two water bottles, a banana, and some cookies. Mama would be proud of her about the banana, she'd thought as she crammed it in among the food and some wadded-up clothes and her toothbrush (another plus!).

The sun had just come up and it was Saturday, so there weren't many people around. She got a couple of curious looks that made her a little nervous, but she just kept walking with purpose, thinking that if she looked like she knew what she was doing, other people would believe she did. She couldn't just walk around the city all day, though, and after about an hour, she was really tired and thirsty and kind of lost. The buildings looked familiar, but she couldn't say with any certainty which way was the way back home, or which way to Mama's dance studio, or which way to her school … so, she guessed she was lost.

No big deal, though. They wouldn't even be looking for her for a couple of hours, she knew. Mami slept in late on weekends, and Aunt Rachel probably wouldn't open Iliana's door, not now that they had their new ground rules about the boundaries of their relationship.

By the time she'd found a bench to sit down on, dug through her bag and cracked open one of the water bottles, drinking greedily, she was starting to rethink the whole thing.


What Iliana didn't know was that Rachel had come looking for her early that morning. And she was the one who found the note. After tamping down her knee-jerk reaction, which was to fling herself onto Santana's bed screaming, "Ily's gone!" and likely get socked in the nose for her trouble, Rachel used her superlative breath control to resume normal respiration. Then she called Kurt.

"Do you know what time it is?" he asked in a tone that was dangerously close to a whine.

"Iliana ran away," she blurted out, glancing back to make sure Santana hadn't crept up behind her.

"What?"

"I came in to see if she wanted to come with me to get breakfast while Santana sleeps off her hangover, of course I wouldn't have told Iliana her mother has a hangover, but she drank a lot last night, Kurt, and she got really sloppy and you know this whole separation is absolutely destroying her, I'm really worried—"

"Rachel! Focus!"

"Right. Yes. Iliana's bed was empty and there was a note on her pillow saying she's okay but isn't coming home until her moms make up. What should I do?"

"Oh my God, well, first of all you need to make sure she's really gone. Have you checked the whole house?"

"No, I found the note and I called you."

"Why me, Rach? Why am I your go-to person for a missing child?"

"I don't know, I mean, I thought about telling Santana, but it seemed unwise until I've investigated further. Right? She has a tendency to get a little … well, scary when she's upset."

"Rachel Berry, get your ass downstairs and tell Santana her little girl is missing. I'll call Britt. They'll want to call the police, but in the meantime we can all split up and look around. She couldn't have gone far, right? She's little."

"She is little. Oh, Kurt, you think she'll be okay, don't you?"

"I think she'll be fine until her moms get their hands on her. Call me back after you've survived telling Santana. I'm calling Brittany now."


Iliana had settled in a little park across the street from a doughnut shop. She sat on one of the swings, dragging her feet in the dirt and making little patterns and worrying. Why had this seemed like a smart thing to do? Surely there were other ways to get her mommies talking again. She could've played sick. She could've waited until she was with Mama for the weekend, pretended that she was sick and really wanted Mami there, and then they would've had to be in the same room without fighting.

They hadn't been able to do that for a long time. Iliana wasn't sure how long the fighting had been going on, but she knew it had started as a tension, little jabs exchanged here and there that were supposed to go over her head. (Their meanings usually did, but not the emotion behind them.) Then it had escalated into quiet yelling behind closed doors. She only pressed her ear up to the door a few times, and she came away with the vague understanding that Mama was upset about the hours Mami worked and Mami was upset about the hours Mama worked and that Mama's new studio co-director had something to do with the whole thing. His name came up a bunch of times, mostly from Mami, and mostly in a mean tone.

Then one day the fighting stopped being quiet and behind closed doors, and Iliana still didn't understand a lot of what they shouted at each other but she knew enough to know that it wasn't good. It came to a head one night when they got especially heated and Iliana had stormed down the stairs, screamed at them to shut up, shut up, SHUT UP!—and then fallen to the floor sobbing.

Silence had descended over the room, and then after a few moments Mama had picked her up off the floor and carried her back to bed. She'd lain with Iliana for a long time, stroking her hair and whispering comforting words in her ear until she'd fallen asleep.

The next day she moved out.

It still hurt just as much as it did that day, no matter how many assurances she got from how many people that it was nothing she'd done wrong, or that it was a grown-up problem and her moms were dealing with it and everything would be okay and everyone loved her more than anything in the world.

None of that mattered when her world was torn in two.

As she continued dragging her heels through the dirt under the swing, she started to wonder if maybe this would make things worse, instead of better. What if they blamed each other? That seemed to be what they did all the time these days. Mama would say Mami should have been watching Ily more carefully, Mami would say Ily never would've done this if Mama hadn't left.

Suddenly she felt like throwing up the banana she'd just eaten.

It had only been two hours, but she was suddenly convinced running away had been a huge mistake.