Free Songs for the Missing by Stewart O’Nan

thought it was a skill, flying on autopilot. All morning, between calls, she’d felt herself drifting that way and had to snap awake. All she had to do was think of Kim walking up from the river with her, the two of them climbing single file up the path, the flaming sun on the small of Kim’s back peeking out of her cutoffs. What did she say to her—“See you there, Squinky Square.” It sounded like something from SpongeBob. That could not be the last thing they said to each other.
    They joined a group from the Larsens’ church as a heavy woman named Connie with brightly dyed hair and a clipboard briefed them on the procedure. The idea was to saturate every square on the map, moving from the center of town outward. The Copycat had donated the flyers, so they shouldn’t be shy with them. The most effective approach was to ask people who worked at gas stations or fast food places to post them on their doors. Banks, grocery stores, laundromats, pharmacies, the post office—anywhere people gathered. After that, hit utility poles on corners where cars had to stop. And no trees—this was very important. The town could fine them for any flyers on trees.
    “Questions?”
    “What if we run out?” an older lady asked.
    “We’ll give you enough so you won’t.”
    Connie split them into teams of two, making Nina wonder who was with J.P. They drew F-5, the neighborhood off State behind the Railroad Museum. It was mostly ratty back streets sloping down to Conneaut Creek. Nina couldn’t think of anything there except the old firehouse and Monroe Park and was disappointed. They wouldn’t find anything there.
    The church had provided a van, but the woman encouraged anyone with a car to drive and save those open seats for people who needed them. Heading over, Nina was just as glad; Hinch was more than enough company for her. He’d grabbed a free water and was reading the flyer out loud. He was surprised that Kim was five foot eight.
    “She’s not,” Nina said. “She’s five seven.”
    “Is this bracelet the one you gave her?”
    “Yeah.” Nina had given it to her for her twelfth birthday, and Kim still wore it for luck.
    “What would you call your complexion?” Hinch asked.
    “Olive.”
    “What about mine?”
    “Annoying.”
    There was no way around the Dairy Queen and the cemetery. They repeated like the background in a cheap cartoon. The sidewalks were empty, only the occasional car nosing in, windows closed against the heat. Even in the summer, Nina thought, this town was so dead. If Kim had run away (and she didn’t, she wouldn’t), the only thing Nina would blame her for was not taking her with her.
    At the Railroad Museum they had their choice of parking spots. A yearly field trip when they were in grade school, it was closed and for sale. Inside the chained gate massive black locomotives and coal cars sat marooned in thigh-high weeds. She held a flyer at eye level between the barred ticket windows while Hinch taped the top and bottom. Immediately she wanted to rip it down, as if it weren’t true.
    “Which way?” Hinch said, wearing the tape on his wrist like a bracelet.
    They zigzagged down the street, hitting every telephone pole, then at the end cut left on Sandusky. The blocks back here were shady and quiet. The farther in they went, the smaller and shabbier the houses were, bungalows and saltboxes with short driveways and carports sheltering derelict cars. A felt banner announcing JESUS IS THE LIGHT hung from a porch covered in astroturf.
    They’d just started on Rockledge when they came across a competing flyer. REWARD, it said, above a grainy black-and-white picture of what was supposed to be an orange cat. His name was Tuffy, and his family missed him very much. It didn’t say how long he’d been gone, but the paper was stained and wrinkled, and it hadn’t rained in at least a week. Down the block, his owners had stapled one to a tree; someone had torn it off, leaving the four corners.