Lies We Tell About the Stars, by Susie Nadler

After the Big One hits San Francisco, Celeste can't find her best friend Nicky.  The library, where he likely was at the time of the quake, has been reduced to rubble.  So when Nicky fails to materialize, people suspect the worst and he is eventually pronounced dead.  However, Celeste knows something:  right before the quake, Nicky was talking about going away, disappearing for a while.  Convinced that her friend is in hiding and not dead, she starts looking for him and finds tantalizing clues that he might still be alive.

Before all of this, they were both obsessed with space and the upcoming missing to Mars.  And as Celeste's search continues, she becomes obsessed with the notion that Nicky may have headed to Cape Canaveral, to be at the launch.  So, Celeste uses her savings to go to Florida in a desperate last effort to find Nicky.  There, she finds something far more impactful.  An epilogue, of sorts, either caps off the story or ruins it -- if you're worried by such things, you can skip it without suffering too much!

This is a languid novel that never really figures out where it is heading.  Despite that lack of direction, the story still makes plenty of mistakes. The quake, Celeste and Nicky's friendship (in flashback), and an aborted romance with another boy all feel like wrong turns.  Even Celeste's health problems, which is screaming out to be a pivotal plot point somewhere in the story, are never utilized as much of anything except a periodic insubstantial annoyance.  There are many fine ideas here, but I was left wondering what for?