A Void the Size of the World by Rachele Alpine

Author:Rachele Alpine
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon Pulse

39

I added the flyer I’d taken from the grocery store to the wall in my room.

Three missing tags.

Three chances to bring home Abby.

The paper was jagged where the tags had been ripped off, and I had to believe that they meant something.

If people were pulling off our number, then I was going to continue to plaster it all over town. I wouldn’t be like Mom; I’d do something—something useful. I’d make sure the flyers were everywhere so no one could miss them.

“We need to hang more posters of Abby,” I told Dad the next morning at breakfast.

“I think everyone did a pretty good job putting them around town, but I can talk with the police and see what they can do,” Dad said, always the practical one, even when practicality was useless.

“No, that’s not enough,” I argued. “I want to go out and distribute them myself so we can make sure we have them everywhere.”

It was probably pointless. I’m sure Dad was right about the town being blanketed in flyers, but what if more tabs were taken from some of them? What if all the tabs were taken from one and someone needed to take one? And I needed to get a new flyer up at the grocery store to replace the one I took. If I helped pass out the flyers, I’d know exactly where they were going, and I could keep track of them. If there was a chance Abby was still out there, I had to help.

“Please. We need to make sure the town is flooded with these posters,” I insisted.

Dad must have realized how important this was to me, because he didn’t even hesitate. “Sure, we can go this afternoon. I’ll pick you up at school,” he said.

“You can come too,” I told Mom.

“I’d like that,” she said, and I hoped she’d still be willing to go when the time came. It seemed as if her mornings were better than her afternoons. She got up, made us breakfast, and watched Collin leave for school. It was in the hours after that she seemed to forget about us. Something happened during the hours in between the morning and afternoon, so the Mom I said good-bye to in the morning was often different than the one I saw when I got home. She’d be sitting in front of the computer screen filling her notebook with name after name. The pins on the wall continued to multiply until it seemed as if Abby was everywhere.

“We need to keep her in everyone’s mind,” I said, as if anyone could think of anything but Abby. Her disappearance was a heavy weight, draped over us, dragging us down.

“What about me? I want to do something,” Collin said.

“You can take care of Hound Dog for Abby. He misses her,” I told him.

“Okay, the two of us will watch the circles,” he said, and tried to coax the dog to the window.

Collin’s obsession with the circles was getting worse.

Despite all of our conversations with

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