'Runaway Girl,' by Carissa Phelps: review School is scary, rife with confusion and violence: Fights broke out almost daily, some between students but just as often between teachers and students. ... The world of hurt that Phelps is unable to express comes out in thoughts she will replay many times while making the wrong choices: No one ever said, 'We love you, and it matters to us that you're safe. For Phelps, juvenile hall leads to group homes, cold, sterile places she passes through rapidly, running from each to savor the dangerous freedom of the streets, sleeping under bridges, scrounging food out of Dumpsters, until the inevitable happens: she's picked up by a pimp and forced into prostitution. [...] Phelps does not take the easy way out and lay all the blame at the doors of the adults in her lives. Because she understands the runaway mind-set so well, she can later connect to rebellious teenagers in juvy and help them. [...] she gives the reader valuable insight into a problem that is larger than most people realize: "One in seven American children will run away from home, and within forty-eight hours, one out of three will be asked, as I was, to 'take care' of someone."