A writing assignment was the last thing I needed.

• • •

When we got home, everyone went upstairs except for me.

I went to the kitchen, took one of the big index cards Mom keeps for recipes, and wrote across the top, “Ideas for Making Doughnuts Faster.”

Then I underlined it.

And boxed it.

And waited for the ideas to come.

They didn’t.

I couldn’t focus on doughnuts. All I could think about was what Jim had said, about Petersville melting away like those icebergs in the Arctic. And not just Petersville. He’d said the same thing was happening all over upstate. How had I missed that? I mean, I didn’t live in the Arctic. I couldn’t see the icebergs getting smaller every day, but how had I missed what was happening right in front of me?

We’d only been in Petersville since November, not even a year, but Jim said post offices and schools were closing all over upstate. What about libraries? What would Josh and his mom do if the library closed?

Were other people talking about this stuff? In other small towns like ours, at other meetings, were they doing just what we were, working out plans for survival?

And that’s when it came to me, what we should be looking for: fixes that had worked. Towns that had already put survival plans into action.

Ice cream. I needed ice cream. I think better with ice cream. I’m pretty sure everyone does. I don’t know the science behind it, but computers have those little fans to keep them from overheating, so maybe ice cream cools the brain the same way. Then again, it could just be the sugar.

I scooped myself an enormous bowl of homemade chocolate peanut butter brittle—Mom lets us make up our own flavors—and went upstairs to my parents’ office.

The room was dark except for the glow from the computer screen. I closed the door but didn’t turn on the light, then sat in the roll-y chair, and swiveled to face the computer.

HOW DO YOU STOP UPSTATE NEW YORK TOWNS FROM DISAPPEARING I typed into the Google search box.

Just so you know, I’m not a complete nuddy. It’s not as if I expected Google to spit out exactly what I needed like a genie. But I’d found the more specific I could make my searches to start, the less time it took to find something useful. Part of the problem with getting results that are totally random is that sometimes before I know it, I’ve spent thirty minutes watching YouTube videos of people exploding doughnuts with firecrackers (there are way more of these than you would guess).

“Crumbling Ruins and Ghost Towns of Upstate New York, A Story in Pictures,” was the first hit.

Clearly, not an answer, but something made me click on the slideshow anyway.

A stone bridge missing its middle flashed onto the screen, then melted into a crumpled barn with vines crawling through its windows, then melted into an indoor swimming pool overflowing with school desks—