The Lost

Chapter Six

“Food, water, shelter.” Peter ticks off the items on his fingers as he hops from Dumpster lid to Dumpster lid. Claire scampers behind him as if she were part-squirrel. She has her old teddy and Prince Fluffernutter stuffed in a sequined purse that matches her shoes. I follow along on the ground, trying to step gingerly over the muck.

“If you can get me home, we can skip all of that,” I say.

“He can’t,” Claire said. “He’s the Finder.”

“I find lost people. Like you.” He doffs an imaginary cap at me. “Bring them out of the void to Lost. Save them from disintegration.”

“Once you’re here, only the Missing Man can send you home,” Claire says. “Everyone knows that.” She skips across cardboard boxes as if she weighs zero pounds. “But first, you have to find what you lost. The Missing Man helps with that, too. If you can’t find what you need here, he can go into the void and it will come to him. That’s his power.”

“I didn’t lose anything,” I say.

“They all say that,” Claire says.

“What did you lose?” I ask her.

“My front tooth. And my parents. They left me in a shopping cart in the grocery store.” She says it calmly, as if it’s old news. “The police couldn’t find them, and so I went to look for them myself. That’s when Peter found me and brought me here. I’ve been here ever since.”

“How long ago was that?” I ask softly, gently.

“Long enough,” Peter interrupts. “But first, home, home, sweet, sweet home!” Crouching on top of a Dumpster, he points down the alley. It leads to bright desert sun.

Claire hops from the boxes and lands beside me. She sinks with a squish into the muck but doesn’t seem to mind. She slips her hand into my hand. “We can play house. Teddy will be the mommy. Prince Fluffernutter is the baby. He needs to nap.”

I’m not good with kids. I never babysat, except for one disastrous evening that was supposed to be a favor for one of Mom’s library friends wherein I nearly called 9-1-1 because I thought the three-year-old had locked herself in the bathroom. She hadn’t. The door was just stuck. But she did squeeze every bit of toothpaste into the toilet and then cram it full of toilet paper. I was in tears by the end of an hour. Still, it’s not so difficult to squeeze Claire’s hand and say, “Sure. He looks sleepy.”

“I know a lullaby,” she declares. In a sweet lilting voice, she sings as we walk toward the light, “Rock-a-bye baby on the treetop. When the wind blows, the cradle will rock. When the bough breaks...” I hear padded footsteps behind us and a low growl. Looking over my shoulder, I see yellow eyes in the shadows. One of the feral dogs. “...the cradle will fall.”

I catch Peter’s eye and jerk my chin backward.

He holds up three fingers. There are three dogs. My heart pounds faster, and I sneak another look. All three are large and muscled with yellowed fangs and fur in patches. In the bare patches, their skin is scarred.

“And down will come baby, cradle and all...” Claire trails off. I am gripping her hand hard as the three dogs trail after us. “Ow.”

I loosen my grip. “You have a lovely voice.”

“It’s not a nice song, is it? Babies shouldn’t fall.”

“It’s not nice,” I agree.

“Wonder why it was written that way. Much better, ‘When the bough breaks, the cradle will fly, and up will go baby, into the sky.’”

“He’d still have to land,” I point out.

“Possibly,” Peter says. “Or he could sprout wings and fly.”

“That’s silly,” Claire says.

The end of the alley is only a few yards ahead. I can see the wide stretch of desert before us. The blue sky gleams like a jewel, the brightest color that I’ve seen here. For some reason, I feel like if we reach the desert, we’ll be safe from the dogs. I know it’s not a rational belief.

Walking faster, I ask in as even a voice as I can, “Should we run?”

“They’ll chase if you do,” Peter says, equally conversationally. He walks faster, too.

“Do you have special Finder powers you can use on them?” I wiggle my fingers to indicate magic. I am half-serious. I wouldn’t be surprised if he were magic. He reminds me of light on the water, flashing and changing and unpredictable and beautiful.

Peter snorts. “Nothing relevant for this situation. I can enter and leave the void safely, like the Missing Man, and I can find lost people inside it. I sense the kernel of hope within them. Now, if I had the power to conjure up bacon...”

I begin to feel my heart beat faster, my palms sweat, my muscles tense.

I look at Claire. She has her knife in her free hand. I hadn’t seen her pull it out. Her lips are pressed tight together so that they’re pinched white around the edges, and I suddenly want to protect this scared little girl who guided me through the mob with no fear in her eyes. Even though I never wore a princess dress in my life, even though I played with paints and not stuffed animals, even though I never held a knife or helped a stranger through an alley, she reminds me of me.

I don’t decide to act.

I don’t think at all.

I drop her hand, spin around, and shriek with every bit of air in my lungs. Scooping a trash can lid off the ground like the boy who held one as a shield, I run at the three dogs.

The dogs hesitate for a moment. And then they spin and flee. I skid to a stop, and I hurl the trash can lid in their wake. It clatters against the brick wall of an abandoned building.

Panting, I head back to Claire and Peter. Peter is staring at me, but all he says is, “Huh. Interesting.” He climbs off the Dumpster to join us on the alley floor. I take Claire’s hand. She smiles at me. And we walk into the desert.

I had seen the decrepit houses on my walk into town: Capes, Colonials, ranches, mobile homes. I see them now for what they are, homes that people lost. The foreclosure signs are proof. Once, they were loved, and there are memories within the peeling paint and chipped wood and warped aluminum and cracked shingles.

Peter stops, apparently to chat. “Tell me about your dream house.”

Claire and I stop, too. It’s hot but not unbearable. Just enough breeze to toss the red dust into the air. I breathe in air that isn’t thick with feces and dead animals and rotted food and unidentifiable garbage. The abandoned houses are an improvement over the alleys, which once again are invisible, blocked from view by houses and junk piles. I don’t understand why I can’t at least see the tops of the apartment buildings. A two-story house shouldn’t be able to block a twenty-story high-rise.

“Your dream house,” he prompts. “One house that you always wished were yours.”

I’m not sure why he wants to know this. All I need is a safe place to hide until I figure out how to get home, but I humor him. “I never wanted the white picket fence. Or a mansion.”

“Then what did you dream of?”

“A house with stairs I could climb up to an open room, a sunlit studio.”

“Dance studio? Art studio? Photography studio?”

Art, of course. I used to imagine a wide, sun-filled art studio where I’d have easels with works-in-progress and finished work on the wall. I’d have a potter’s wheel in one corner, and another section with fabrics and beads. But I don’t say this. “Why are we stopped?”

He stretches his arms out expansively. “I want you to choose your dream home.” He looks, for a moment, like he can grant wishes. He’s smiling, but his eyes are serious, as if they hold a thousand secrets. He has magical eyes.

I shake my head. “I want someplace that’s safe. A house that the townspeople won’t notice I’m in. And that won’t crash on my head if the wind blows. The rest doesn’t matter. I’m not planning to stay, remember?” I look at Claire, away from Peter and his captivating eyes. “You want to choose for me?”

She points at a little yellow house. It’s nestled in between an oversize sprawling Colonial and a rusted mobile home. Its shingles are half–fallen off so that it looks like a mouthful of baby teeth, half-gone and waiting for grown-up teeth. The weeds are so high that they obscure the porch, and the front door gapes open.

I like it.

I don’t admit that. “All right,” I say.

“I always wanted my own room,” Claire says. “I had three sisters and two brothers, and we shared. My sister Bridget always stole the covers. And Margaret snored. I used to make my own pretend room in the back of the garage underneath Daddy’s workbench. I’d move boxes around to make a nest and fill it with towels to make it comfy. I’d store snacks in case I was hungry. It was nice there.”

I want to ask if she misses them, if she knows what happened to her brothers and sisters, if she ever wants to go back. I want to know if it was an accident that she was left, and if so, how could anyone not return for her. I wonder if her parents are alive or not and if they regret what they did. “Where do you live now?”

She shrugs. “Nowhere. Everywhere.”

A homeless six-year-old. My heart lurches. “You can have a room in this house, if you want.”

Her face lights up as if the sun poured over it.

“It’s just temporary, remember,” I caution her. I don’t want her thinking that I’m inviting her into my life long-term. I’m not her new mommy. I am a very long way from being anyone’s mommy. I’d have to be a lot less selfish and a lot less cowardly first. “But you can stay as long as I stay.” With luck, that won’t be more than a few days. I try not to think about how statistically unlucky I am. In a few days, I could be squashed by a chunk of falling satellite. Or mauled in a shark attack.

Her face falls. “You feel sorry for me.”

“And for myself.” I am not going to lie to her. I always hated when adults did that to kids—all the classic lies, like you can be anything you want to be and work hard enough and good things will come to you, and all the little lies, like you’re smart, you’re beautiful, you’re special.

She considers that. “Okay.”

Peter has run ahead. He’s scrambling over the junk in the yard and then over the roof. He climbs to the peak and scans the view. I am surprised more of the stray kids aren’t here, but there’s no hint of movement around any of the nearby houses. The kids must still be in town, or playing on other heaps of rust and broken glass elsewhere. I wonder how long we have until they return, if they’ll return. Perhaps the place has already been picked over. I wonder if they’ve left anything we can eat or use.

He swings down from the porch roof and lands on the railing. It creaks beneath his weight, but it doesn’t collapse. Claire and I wade through the weeds in the front yard as he disappears into the house.

“I wanted to see it first,” she pouts.

“Let him scare away the rats, snakes, and whatever other wildlife is in there.”

“You didn’t need him to scare away the dogs.” She mimics my charge at the dogs. Her mouth is open in a mock scream.

“I don’t like dogs,” I say.

“Why not?”

“It’s the drool. And the teeth. And when I was in kindergarten, one of the kids brought in their pet dog for show-and-tell. It peed all over the R in the alphabet carpet. I used to always sit on the R.”

“I don’t like them because they bite,” she says.

“Your reason is better.”

We reach the porch. Some of the slats in the floor are broken, but overall it seems solid enough. Stacks of old moldy letters, catalogs, and magazines lean against the wall of the house, and cobwebs encase two rocking chairs. I can clean them easily, ditch the old mail, sweep the floor, make it livable.

The front door swings in the breeze, slapping against the wall. It looks to have a lock and dead bolt, though they won’t do much good since the window in the door is missing. Also, there are other broken windows around the house. We could board them up, I think. Prevent unwanted visitors.

Claire skips inside as if this place is already home. I wonder what on earth I’m thinking, playing house with a little girl, thinking of home improvements as if I mean to stay for longer than a day. But it might be longer, and the motel won’t take me, the car is uncomfortable, and there are houses to spare. Besides, Claire is happy. I tell myself that it’s okay to be practical, that I’m not running away by staying, that I do want to go home as soon as I can, that Mom is most likely perfectly fine and her stomachaches aren’t part of a relapse, or worse. I don’t need to hide from the truth.

I follow Claire inside. The entryway has peeling wallpaper with roses so tiny and dirty that they look like bugs. A grimy mirror hangs on one wall. Coat hooks are beside it, and one raincoat hangs on a hook. To the left off the hallway is the kitchen. Claire has disappeared into another room, but in the kitchen, Peter is investigating its cabinets. “Pasta!” He picks up a box of spaghetti and shakes it. Moths fly out the top of the box. He puts it back. “Never mind.”

“Is there electricity?” I ask, crossing to the refrigerator. I open it, and a blast of sour milk and the reek of rotted vegetables washes over me, but so does cool air. I shut it. “Running water?”

He tests the sink. It gurgles at first, and then a gush of rust-colored water sprays out. The pipes haven’t been used for a while, but I bet it will run clear soon.

“How’s this possible?” I ask. “I don’t remember any power lines. All the houses look just plopped in the desert. And besides, no one is here to pay the bills.”

“People lose power all the time,” Peter says. “And water is wasted every day.”

“Huh,” I say. “Convenient.”

Peter smiles a knowing smile.

I study him for a moment, the Finder, Little Red Riding Hood’s wolf, Sisyphus, whoever he is. “You led us to this house on purpose. You knew it had this.” I wave my hands at the sink with running water and the functional fridge.

He bows, sweeping his trench coat behind him. It’s an elegant, archaic, and practiced bow. “I am your guardian angel, your fairy godfather, and your knight in shining armor.”

“Kind of,” I say. And he kind of is. He’s my angel in a trench coat, first saving me from the dust storm and now this. It helps that he’s drop-dead gorgeous, exactly the type I would have picked out of a crowd from the wild-boy smile to the artist-quality tattoos—exactly the type I swore never to date again. Luckily, I’m not looking to date anyone.

He holds out his hand. “Come see the rest of the house. You’ll like it.”

I take his hand and let him guide me into the living room. A picture window (sadly broken, a quarter of the glass gone) with a window seat opens onto a view of the desert. Two once-white couches lie under a sheet of dust. Books and cobwebs fill the shelves. The fireplace is full of ash. It’s as if the old occupants simply left. It’s extraordinary that the place hasn’t been found by any scavengers or occupied by wildlife, especially with the broken windows.

He leads me into a dining room with a wide table and a cobweb-covered chandelier. A tiny pink bathroom is off the side of the front hall, and a second full bathroom with stenciled birds on the wall is between two bedrooms. One bedroom, the master, has a queen-size bed and a wide dresser. The second bedroom has a twin bed, a desk, and a bookshelf. Claire is in the second bedroom. She has a look on her face that is pure wonder, and she is turning in a slow circle to see every inch of the room. “Mine?” she asks.

“Yours,” I say.

She beams at me.

“Come upstairs,” Peter says. His hand feels warm and soft and real in mine, even though all of this is impossible, including him. He tugs me gently out of the bedrooms and toward the stairs. The stairs creak as we climb them, and I notice pictures on the wall. Dust and grime have obscured the faces of the people, but I think it’s a family. Babies. Grandparents. Brides and grooms. I wonder where they are now, who they were, why they lost this house.

Upstairs...it’s perfect.

A few birds startle in the peak of the cathedral roof. They dart out the open window. Sunlight streams inside and over the hardwood floors and white walls. It’s a single open room, a studio. There are no easels or paints or pottery wheel, but there could be and should be. It’s exactly what I’d described I wanted.

In the center of the attic room, there’s a stuffed bunny. It’s a ragged bunny with one eye. Its ear is matted from a toddler dragging it everywhere. I recognize it instantly. Mr. Rabbit, my favorite stuffie from preschool. I’d lost it years ago.

I let go of Peter’s hand as if it’s burned me. “Tell me how you knew,” I say. “You had no time to find this house between when Claire brought me to you and now. You didn’t know I’d come to you or that I’d need a place to stay. I only just now told you about the studio. And I never mentioned Mr. Rabbit.”

He’s wearing an enigmatic smile again, and I want to slap it off his face.

“You set me up,” I say. “This was all...a trap. Somehow. I don’t know how. You sent Claire to find me, to bring me to you. You led me here... Why?”

“I didn’t.” His voice is serious. He’s dropped the playful veneer that he wears with Claire. I shiver. “But I like that you’re suspicious. It will serve you well here.”

“Then explain.” I want to believe it’s a coincidence, that he’s my savior, that I’ll be safe here, that I can trust him and Claire, that it will be okay, that I will find whatever I lost and find my way home. But this...

“I can’t.” His dark eyes bore into mine—beautiful, dangerous.

“Can’t or won’t?”

“Both.” He walks to the wide-open window, the one the birds swooped out of. “Besides, you don’t really want to know how the magician does his tricks. It will ruin the show.” He grins, and then he leaps out the window.

I race to the window and lean out.

The desert is empty, and the Finder is gone.