They were gone long enough that people had stopped referring to them as “missing,” which implied a temporary state of being, and now simply called them “lost.” You looked for missing children. You mourned lost ones. By that November, the boys’ missing posters on the signboard at Red Crow had faded and wrinkled behind the protective plexiglass. When Maggie and Tom noticed the posters while looking for the trail map, they remembered that they’d forgotten all about the lost boys. Because that’s how it worked. First you were missing. Then you were lost. Then you were forgotten.
