HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN?

My family's not very close. There's some excuse for this on my father's side, since one of his brothers lives in Hong Kong and the other in Barcelona. But my mother's brother lives in Greenwich, Connecticut, and she only has lunch with him once a year. (We live in New York, 45 minutes away.) Still, everyone thought it a bit extreme of my uncle Mark to up and disappear.

My uncle Mark is 12 years younger than my mother, 11 years younger than my aunt Susie and 10 years younger than Peter, my uncle in Greenwich. After his first day of nursery school, Mark came home and announced, somewhat confused, "There are other people my size." He never quite learned to relate to them. He talked Sartre with Susie at six. Peter got him drunk when he was eight. My parents married when he was nine.

Mark was smarter than any of his siblings, but he never graduated from college. He moved to Boston and played harmonica at the Cantab Lounge and the Middle East. Sometimes he worked at a music store; sometimes he called my grandmother for money. After she died in 1988, Mark lived off the inheritance. My mother worried about him a little, his being young, motherless and often drunk. She invited him out to Cape Cod one summer; I remember he taught me to do a "Walk the Dog" with a yo-yo. Otherwise, the visit was a bust.

A few years ago, Mark got really into New Age: crystals, aromatherapy, veganism. He put down his harmonica and took up yoga. He followed some guru out to a town called Ayer, 40 miles northwest of Boston. No one knew what he was doing out there, but no one had ever known what Mark was doing, really.

My mother called him when she came up for Parents Weekend in November of my freshman year. He insisted on taking us out for some swanky dinner; he told us he'd just made several million dollars, but he wouldn't tell us how. My father suggested he pull out of whatever he was involved in while he was ahead. Mark ignored him. By last Christmas, he'd lost all his money and was $30,000 in credit card debt.

So, two weekends ago, I was on the phone with my father, explaining that I'm never going to have a real job, that I'm going to go pick fruit in Australia for a living. To which he replied, "Good, you can be a deadbeat like your uncle." "Who?" I asked. "Mark--he's disappeared." What? Soon, my mother was on the phone, telling me how the family had cut Mark off a month before, saying they wouldn't give him any more money until he got himself together. Both Peter and Susie had offered to put him up, but he'd declined. No one heard from him for a few weeks. Then, he called Peter and asked for a thousand dollars to pay for a bankruptcy lawyer. Peter sent it. Susie called two weeks later; Mark's phone had been cut off. She e-mailed him, but he no longer had an account. He'd disappeared.

I got very excited. The prospect of a scavenger hunt for something other than an Easter egg struck my fancy. A hunt for a real live missing person. A manhunt, in fact. I'll find him, I told my mother. She was touched by the gesture, but a bit confused. I assured her it was just for the thrill of the hunt, and she felt better.

An hour passed as I hopped around my room, accosting random passers-by (a.k.a. roommates) and telling them about the manhunt. They were just as excited as I was, but they brought up a prospect I hadn't thought of. What will you do if you find him?

I called my mother back. If I find Mark huddled under a bridge, do I have to invite him back to Dunster House? Whatever you do, don't do that, she said--just get his phone number. But you'll never find him, she declared, though she did agree to send me the most recent picture she had of him (featuring me, circa 1987). She also looked up his most recent Boston phone number, just in case his old roommates were still there.

So last Friday afternoon, having commissioned a roommate's boyfriend and his car, I set out for Ayer, Massachusetts. I didn't have Mark's street address, as all he'd given anyone was his post office box, but I remembered him telling me at one point that he worked in a health food store. Unfortunately, there were no health food stores on the main street of the working-class ghost-town of Ayer. So, I stopped into the next logical place--a liquor store. Have you seen this man? I asked the clerk, flashing my picture. He hadn't, but he did have a phone book, so I jotted down all the health food store phone numbers in the area and made my way to a pay phone. After a third unsuccessful call, I remembered the number my mother had given me. I dialed and explained my situation. The woman on the other end told me that she'd last seen Mark a month before. He'd told her that he was going to live with his brother in Greenwich and had borrowed $20. Before that, she added, he'd been working in a gas station. A gas station? The plot was thickening.

I asked her if she knew anything about the New Age guru Mark had followed to Ayer. She said that her name was Joyce and she lived in Groton, Massachusetts. She hadn't heard anything about my uncle's health food store job, but she happened to know that there was but one health food store in Groton, and that it was on the main street.

So off we drove through the countryside to the town best known for its boarding school. I found the health food store. "Does anyone know a woman named Joyce?" I asked the store at large. (My uncle's old roommate hadn't known her last name.) I think she might do acupressure, I explained. No response. What about this man? I continued, again flashing my picture. Still no recognition, though they did direct me to an acupuncture clinic down the street--in staid Groton, of all places.

The acupuncture place didn't know Joyce or Mark either, but they kindly explained the difference between acupuncture and acupressure. Apparently insurance pays for acupuncture, while only New Age kooks believe in acupressure. Or something like that.

Meanwhile, night had fallen and my driver wanted dinner. I agreed to head back to Harvard without my green sash, my golden fleece, the right shoe size for my glass slipper. We drove back toward Route Two in silence. All of a sudden, I spotted the Ayer Police Station. Stop! I cried.

Do you know this man? I asked the men in blue. They didn't, but they ran a check on his license. We have an address, they told me, but we're not authorized to give it out. Please, I begged--my mother is so worried. "What makes you think he's in Ayer?" they demanded to know. I forced tears to my eyes. Give us your license, they barked. I pushed a tear down my cheek. That got them--they gave me the address.

Mark, it turned out, was living in Groton. We found his road--after a while. After another while, we found the unpaved turnoff--and the muddy turnoff off of that leading to his house. I knocked on the door. "Who are you?" a woman asked me. "Mark's niece," I said. "Who are you?" "I'm Joyce," she said. "Mark lives downstairs."

I found Mark in Joyce's unheated basement. He hadn't expected me. This is so surreal, he said. I'm glad you exist, I replied. In a Cartesian sense at any rate, he responded. It was a little depressing, but I was proud to have done it, to have found my long lost uncle Mark. My manhunt was complete; I had finally won a scavenger hunt. (I always lost the ones with the eggs.) And there he was, not even huddled under a bridge. We chatted, but I was tired and Mark's never been good with conversation. Well, I should be getting back, I said after 10 minutes of small talk. Thanks for stopping by, Mark said. He walked me out to the car and gave us directions back to route 2. Like I said, my family's not very close.

Mica Root is a junior English concentrator in Dunster House. She has a normal family, really.