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"You okay, buddy?" Liam asked "Need to stop and smell the scholasticism?"

"What’s the point?" Chubs shook his head "It’s closed like all of the others"

I whirled around in my seat "Why?"

"Lack of students, e, you’re old enough to be drafted Even if that wasn’t the case, I doubt people can really afford it any," I said

"The offer still stands," Liam told his friend "You know I’m happy to break into a classroom for you if you need to sit in one of those cramped seats and stare at a whiteboard for a while I kno much you like the smell of dry erasehis hands in his lap, "but it’s not necessary"

We passed what I thought ht iron fence, but it was almost impossible to see, trapped as it was beneath what looked to be raggedy, patchwork blanket It wasn’t until we got closer that I realized ere actually looking at: hundreds, maybe thousands of sheets of paper that had been tied and taped onto the fence or stuck between the thin bars

Lialasses down to squint at them

"What do they say?" Chubs asked "I can’t…"

Zu only put her head back down and shut her eyes

They were "Missing" posters with the faces of little kids and teenagers, photographs, signs whose wording had been s a banner that said nothingcrookedly, almost like someone had tried to rip it down, only to have so it back up The wall of faded paper took a beating as the wind blew through the fences, ripping so others flutter like hus And where there was room,stuffed ani, I thought Those kids had been taken, or really were gone forever Their parents and fa their pictures, because they wanted them back Needed them

"God" Liam’s voice sounded strained "Where did they say we could pick the eighty-one back up again?"

The ash trees lining the lonely one-lane back road were just coht their shadows couldn’t have been longer