In the photo, Izzy and Cyrus sat on Seth’s tattered, chartreuse damask couch. She could remember now: the television droned, music played, people laughed. Cigarette butts lay like squashed insects in a crudely made clay ashtray shaped like the Salton Sea. Izzy’s fingers stuck to the surface of the coffee table where something sugary had spilled. The light from the television greened Cyrus’s eyes, made the room look like they were inside an aquarium.

Izzy and Cyrus weren’t touching in the photo, but you could tell how much they wanted to. Their heads leaning together. Their legs lined up, thigh-to-thigh. They both wore black T-shirts, black jeans, and black Converse. They both had the same skin tone, clearly golden even in the green light. They both had the same black hair—he hadn’t cut his yet and the stubble hadn’t grown in on his face.

For a second, she had the thought of showing the photo to Cyrus. No, no. It hit again like a fist knocking her back in her seat: he wasn’t here. She put the photo away.

They’d stopped taking as many photographs in recent years but here was one: Cyrus, not smiling, but it didn’t look like a mug shot either, and his brooding features tended toward that sometimes.

She set up a page on the missing persons site and signed up for local alerts from the SBPD. She used the picture and report to create a flyer. She was careful about the font she chose, the placement of his face on the page. Should she change “NO SOCKS” to lower case? Did it make her sound unhinged? Yes, better in lower case. Finally, she clicked on Missing Persons of America and submitted the same shot and the description. When she clicked through the photos, children’s smiles needled ice to her heart.

Jennifer Lane, sixteen, was found stabbed to death in a rail car… If anyone has any information, please contact the Homicide Cold Case Team at the telephone number below.

Missing from Colorado. May have travelled to California.

He was last seen wearing a CSI T-shirt, black cargo pants, white socks, and well-worn Sketchers athletic shoes with orange trim.

Three teens missing for over 40 years found at bottom of lake.

Please.

Please.

Please.

One young man, Elijah Chan, had Cyrus’s crow-black hair, long, the way it had been when he and Izzy had met, sun-burnished skin and full lips parted over charmingly pointed incisors. He posed with a beer in his hand, an eagle tattooed across his narrow chest. A beautiful child. Izzy tried to imagine his mother dreading every phone call. How could you go on after that?

A series of clicks and Izzy came to a page that featured artists’ forensic reconstructions of unidentified “decedents.” The artists, with compassion, had drawn these visages in a state of repose. Still, the eyes looked lost. Runaways, prostitutes, hitchhikers, migrant workers, all organized by state.

She found California.

Bodies raped, mutilated, dismembered, strangled, tortured, torched, left in ditches. Bodies that had never been claimed by anyone. The website said that dental X-rays, spinal injuries, and surgical implants were the only ways to identify the deceased if DNA was not an option. But artists could guess at some things from the remains, like the appearance of muscles and bones that shaped the face. Noses and mouths were more difficult, as was the skin. Though it could be surmised that older skin had more lines, less elasticity, that the eyes sank deeper in, the orifices enlarged. Ages could only be determined within a range of about fifteen years.