The Missing -2014- -

Leo— Dad got a call. New job, new state. We left an hour ago. I’m sorry I couldn’t say it in person. You’re not boring. You’re the least boring person I’ve ever met. Keep watching the sky. It’s the same everywhere. —Mira

It was the summer of 2014, and Leo was fifteen, too old for the treehouse but too young to admit it. The treehouse sat at the edge of his uncle’s property, a plywood-and-nail cathedral built by cousins who’d long since grown up and moved away. Leo went there every day that July, not to play, but to watch. From that perch, he could see the whole dip of the valley—the old highway, the creek like a bent zipper, and the house across the field where a girl named Mira had just moved in.

He came down. His legs felt like stilts. By the time he reached her fence, his heart was a fist in his throat. the missing -2014-

Leo nearly fell out of the tree. He waved back, stiff as a flagpole. Then she cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled, “You gonna watch me all summer, or are you gonna come down?”

The house was empty. No porch chairs, no curtain flicker, no Mira. The For Sale sign was gone. In its place, a single sheet of notebook paper taped to the front door, weighed down by a flat gray stone. Leo— Dad got a call

Mira was seventeen. She wore a leather jacket even in the heat and sat on her porch steps smoking thin cigarettes, blowing the smoke up at the sky like she was sending messages. Leo had never spoken to her, but he’d memorized the way she tucked her hair behind one ear, the way she laughed at her phone with her whole body.

Mira laughed. It was a real laugh, not a mean one. “You don’t talk to a lot of people, do you?” I’m sorry I couldn’t say it in person

He unfolded it. Her handwriting was small and rushed, as if she’d written it in the dark: