The Lost

  Out here, on the farthest outskirts, the houses are spread apart so Peter doesn’t make us climb over the roofs. I’m grateful for that. I have scrapes on my palms and knees, and bruises pretty much everywhere else. On the plus side, I haven’t had a single encounter with a homicidal townie all afternoon. So I don’t complain. After a while, it even starts to be a little fun, a kind of wide-ranging treasure hunt. We continue to fill our backpacks until the sun dips low enough to kiss the horizon.

  At last, Peter calls a halt.

  “Nice haul,” he says approvingly.

  I’m coated in sweat and dirt and grime, but I’ve scored multiple slivers of mostly used soap and a nice wash towel, in addition to a new dress. I feel strangely proud, even though I’ve stolen from a dead man and failed to find a way home. There’s an odd thrill to scavenging. I bask in Peter’s approval as if it’s warm sunlight.

  “Now you don’t need me anymore,” he declares.

  And like that, the feel of sunlight vanishes. “Yes! Yes, I do. I found a few pretzels, a towel, but no way home, and the townspeople still want me dead. If any had caught me—”

  “Shh.” He puts his fingers to my lips. “You don’t need me—you’re merely needy.”

  I swallow. Don’t speak.

  “Others need me more,” he says. “Lost people wander into the void every day. If I don’t bring them out, they give into their despair and fade away. As much as I enjoyed spending the day with you—” His fingers move from my lips and brush my cheek. For an instant, I see something in his eyes—sadness? Longing? Need? “I have responsibilities.”

  Never mind other lost people, I want to say. I want to beg him to stay, to keep me safe, to keep me distracted from realizing how trapped I am. “Are you coming back?”

  “You and Claire will do fine on your own.”

  “But...” I search for an excuse. “What about your vendetta?”

  “You know the basics. You’ll survive fine without me.”

  I am not nearly as confident. “I don’t even know how to find home—the house, I mean, the yellow house. And it’s nearly dark—”

  He points over my shoulder, and I turn.

  Dusk has washed away the distinction between shadows, I see the yellow house. “Oh.” Looking back at him, I try to think of another reason for him to stay. Before I can, I see his expression change, darker and harder. He catches my arm and pulls me down behind an overturned wheelbarrow. “What...” I begin.

  He places a finger on my lips again. He’s close, inches away. I hear his breath, and I feel the warmth of his body. His muscles are tense.

  The front door is wide-open.

  Claire draws her knife and darts forward. She scampers around the junk pile, and she creeps onto the porch. I remember she’s just a kid. It’s easy to forget. “Are you sure we should let—”

  “I’m sure you talk too much,” Peter says in my ear. I feel his breath on my neck.

  Claire disappears into the house.

  I stare at the house as if I could force my eyes to see through walls.

  I don’t hear any sounds, except for the sound of Peter’s breath and the wind across the desert. Beyond our house, the darkening desert is empty except for scrub brush, cacti, and tumbleweeds that skitter across the dirt until they are impaled on a bush or cactus. I’d thought there were more houses in that direction. Maybe not. Maybe I have a bad memory. Or maybe the houses vanished back into the void. Peter had said the void was like quicksand or a black hole. I want to ask him if it can suck away houses, but I don’t want him to shush me again.

  Several minutes pass. Claire doesn’t return.

  What if someone’s inside? What if they’ve hurt her? What if they’re hurting her right now? I stand, not sure if I should sneak inside or charge to her rescue. Peter grabs my shoulder and forces me down.

  Claire bursts out the front door and barrels across the yard. “He’s gone!”

  Peter catches her as she slams into him. Sobbing, she sinks onto the ground. He strokes her hair and holds her against his chest.

  I kneel next to her and look her over for signs that she’s been hurt. “Are you okay? What happened? Who’s gone?”

  She wails. “Prince Fluffernutter!”

  “Hey, hush, hush, don’t say a word, I’m going to buy you a mockingbird,” Peter croons. “Remember what I am? I’m the Finder. I’ll find you a new one, a better one.”

  “I don’t want a new one! I want Prince Fluffernutter!”

  He scoops her up and carries her toward the house. “Then no new one. Let’s look for him, okay? He can’t have gone far.” Arms wrapped around his neck, she blubbers into his shoulder. He’s gentle with her, like the kindest big brother in the world. I follow behind and wonder if whoever took the bear, whoever left the front door open, is still here. It’s already dusk. The shadows have lengthened and are darkening, and the house looks dark inside. He carries her through the front door. “You take the bedrooms,” he says to me. “I’ll search the rest.” He carries Claire into the dining room.

  I’m alone in the hallway, the door open behind me.

  I close it, lock it. Then I wonder how we’ll escape if someone else is here. I unlock it. Then I lock it again and step back. I wish I’d found a knife like Claire’s instead of a summer dress. I shed the backpack and use it to block the door, most likely ineffectively.

  Stepping as softly as I can, I cross to Claire’s bedroom first, and I halt in the doorway. Someone has been here. The drawers have been yanked out. The closet is open. All the sheets are off the bed in a tangle. Taking a deep breath, I check the closet.

  Empty.

  Under the bed.

  Empty.

  Behind the door.

  Also clear.

  I repair the bed, stretching out the sheet, fluffing the pillow, and laying down the blanket. I find her old bear Teddy tangled in the blanket, but the new bear doesn’t miraculously appear. I place Teddy on the pillow. I then check behind the bedside table and in its drawer. I look in every drawer and again in the closet. Tucked in one drawer I find a photo album. I open it. Smiling faces of a family—a mother, a father, a girl about Claire’s age but with strawberry-blond hair and freckles. In the first photo, they’re posing in front of a white house with red shutters. The house has a green lawn, as well as a neatly trimmed hedge of bushes in front of the porch. There are wind chimes and a potted plant with red flowers—geraniums, I think. Mom would have known. Another photo has the mother and daughter hugging in front of the ocean. Foamy waves swirl over their bare feet. The mother’s flesh sags around her bathing suit, but her smile lifts her face up so that she looks as full of life as the daughter who holds a broken seashell in one hand. The seashell is on the shelf over the desk. I cross to it and pick it up.

  I wonder if this album reminds Claire of her mom—or if she only wishes that it did.

  “Any luck?” Peter says from the doorway.

  My fingers close around the seashell and then I force myself to put it back on the shelf. I shut the album and lay it on the dresser. I don’t look at Peter. There are tears in my eyes, heating the corners of my eyes, but I don’t want him to see. I shake my head.

  I don’t have any mementoes or photos with me of Mom.

  “Lunch boxes are gone, too. As are a bunch of utensils, like the can opener.” This is the first time I’ve seen him actually annoyed. His forehead crinkles, marring the perfection of his handsome face. “Damn scavengers.” He doesn’t seem to notice the hypocrisy in his words, given our day’s activities.

  Claire appears behind Peter. She’s holding Mr. Rabbit. Solemnly, she delivers it to me. “He’s safe.” Her voice catches a little.

  I take the rabbit and nod toward her bed. “So’s he.”

  “Guess they were too old to take.”

&nbs
p; “Guess so.” She’s not crying anymore, but her cheeks are stained with dried tears. I lift Mr. Rabbit up to my ear. “What’s that? You want to belong to Claire? No, I’m not offended. Yes, I think that’s a good idea.” I put the rabbit in Claire’s arms. “He’s sorry about your other bear and wants to be yours now.”

  Claire tucks the rabbit under one arm and then throws her other arm around my neck. I feel the hilt of her knife digging into my ribs as she squeezes me tight. “What if they take him tomorrow?” she asks. Her grip around my neck is tighter than a turtleneck.

  Peter pats her shoulder, but I notice he’s watching me. I can’t tell what he’s thinking. “They won’t. I know the type. This is a one-strike kind of hit. Just grazing through. He or she won’t be back. And I’ll make sure of it.”

  She sniffs. “You will? You said you were leaving. I heard you tell her.”

  “I’ll be back,” he promises, “with your bear.” And then he runs out the door and off the porch so fast that he looks as if he’s flying. Claire and I watch him disappear into the darkness.

  I break the silence. “Come on. We’ll find Mr. Rabbit a hiding place,” I say as I ease her grip off of me. “Lift up a floorboard or tape him to the underside of the mattress. Or we just take him with us.”

  She nods and at last releases me.

  I smile at her. “That’s better. Let’s see if we have any dinner in those backpacks. I’m pretty sure I found a can of delectably slimy string beans.”

  She sticks out her tongue.

  “I can mush them up more and we can eat through a straw.”

  She laughs. “Bleck! Lucky for me, we have no can opener.”

  I shut the front door and double-check the locks. I know I should feel even more scared now that someone has found our house, but I don’t. Peter will come back.

  * * *

  I don’t sleep at all.

  Or maybe in brief stretches. My night is full of imagined sounds in the darkness, creaks and thuds and cracks and...I dream that I am in the living room of the little yellow house. Moonlight pours in through the windows and bathes the couches and chairs covered with white sheets in soft light so that they look like ghosts. The dead man sits in one of the chairs. “You can’t leave,” he says. “Even if you die, you can’t leave. Not without the Missing Man.”

  He starts to bleed.

  I wake in a sweat.

  The sheets are tangled around my legs. I sit up and untangle them, and I look around the room, trying to make sense of the shadows—that’s the shadow from the footboard, that stretch is from the wardrobe, that is my backpack in the corner, those are my shoes and pants. I stare at the closet door for a while.

  Obviously, there’s no one in there. I checked the closet thoroughly when I hunted for Claire’s bear. Also, I locked the front door and dragged an end table to block it, in case the intruder came back. Peter is not in the closet.

  Unless he is.

  “Peter?” I call softly.

  Just paranoia. It’s the darkness and the unknown and the weirdness and everything. I force my muscles to relax. Close my eyes. Breathe evenly. Crap, I think. Still can’t sleep.

  I call a little more loudly. “Peter, are you there?”

  I’ll laugh at myself in the morning. It’s not as if I’m a kid that needs a night-light. Even as a little kid, I never needed one, though I liked the bedroom door cracked and the bathroom light on, but that was more for practical reasons. If I had to get up, I didn’t want to trip on the cat and break either myself or the cat. I didn’t need the reassurance that—

  “You talk too damn much.” Peter’s voice from somewhere in the darkness. “Go to sleep, Little Red.”

  Clutching the sheets, I freeze. “Are you in my closet?”

  “Maybe.”

  I consider screaming, but who would come? I take a deep breath. Let it out. If Peter wanted to hurt me, he could have done so a hundred times already. I keep my voice nice and calm. “Why are you in my closet?”

  “To sleep, perchance to Dream.”

  “You have an apartment. I assume it has a bed. You could be sleeping in your own nice bed with your own pillows and blanket.” But as I say this, I’m thinking, He came back.

  “Closets are comfortable.” I hear a laugh in his voice. He has a low, musical voice that rolls through the room. He’s almost whispering but not quite. I wonder if Claire is listening.

  “Did you find the intruder?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Prince Fluffernutter?”

  “No.”

  I want to ask him why he came back if he didn’t find them, but I don’t want him to leave again. The nightmares are too fresh. Still, though, why is he in my closet? I hit on an explanation that doesn’t freak me out...or at least doesn’t for the same reasons. “Are you staying in here to guard me?”

  “Sure. Let’s go with that.”

  I’m not reassured. “Really?”

  “I thought no one would find this place. I was wrong. So here I am, guarding you, in case I’m wrong again.”

  That, oddly, does reassure me. “Why me and not Claire?”

  He’s silent for a moment. “The Missing Man refused you,” he says at last, and for once, I don’t hear the mocking tone to his voice. “I’d rather no one kills you until I figure out why. If this is what it takes to keep you safe, then this is what I’ll do.”

  “Oh. Good. That’s good.”

  “So far, you don’t seem any different from any other lost person.” His voice is louder, less muffled. I turn my head. He’s left the closet and is standing next to my bed, silhouetted against the window. “You aren’t overwhelmingly clever or witty or funny or strong or fast or...”

  “I get it. You don’t like me. Thanks for keeping me alive anyway.”

  He shrugs. I see the movement of his shoulders, though I can’t see the expression on his face. “Claire likes you.”

  “That’s because I gave her a rabbit.”

  “You did do that.” He falls silent, and I don’t know what to say. I wonder how long he plans to stand there, looking down at me.

  A few minutes pass.

  A few more.

  Strangely, I don’t feel afraid. In fact, I feel tired for the first time since I lay in bed. My limbs feel heavy, and my eyes feel thick. As weird and freaky as it is that a strange, overly handsome man is sleeping in my closet, I feel...oddly better that he’s here. I’m not alone, even if he doesn’t think much of me. I’m a tool, or at least a potential tool, in his personal vendetta. It helps that I now understand why he’s helping me. My muscles are finally unknotting. My eyelids feel like cement sealing shut. “Maybe that makes me like you more, too.” His voice is soft, and I’m not certain that I hear him correctly.

  After a minute, the closet door opens and shuts.

  I don’t dream this time.

  Chapter Ten

  The closet door is open when I wake.

  I sit up and squint at the window. Blurred by the dirt and dust that streaks the panes, sunlight glares into the bedroom. Definitely morning. I feel caked in dust, and my lungs feel constricted and clogged. I know I slept, but still I ache in every muscle. My legs feel as though they’ve been stretched and pulled like dough.

  There are voices outside my room, and I suddenly remember the thief. Pushing away my sheets, I creep to the door and press my ear against it. Peter and Claire. I can’t hear their words, but I think they’re in the dining room. From the tone, it sounds like an ordinary conversation. It should be okay if I shower before I face today.

  I fetch the summer dress I found—it’s still in its dry cleaner plastic wrap, and it’s nearly my size. I also have fresh underwear and sandals, courtesy of a lost gym bag that Claire discovered in a junk heap. I carry them with me to the ba
throom and drape the clothes over the towel racks next to a mismatched set of hotel towels that Peter found. As I turn on the shower and step in, I think that Mom would like the sandals.

  It’s a casual thought, but it hits me with such force that I can’t breathe. I sag against the shower wall. I feel the slick soapy tile on my side. Home. Mom. Sinking to the floor of the shower, I let the water fall over me. It cascades down my face and off my chin. I can’t tell if I’m crying or not, but my shoulders are shaking, and I’m hiccupping in air and droplets as water sprays in my face.

  After a while, I reach up and turn the water off. “Enough,” I say.

  I say it again just to hear my voice. “Enough.”

  Stepping out of the shower, I dry myself with the (nonmoldy) towel and dress in the (clean) summer dress and wish that I hadn’t spent the time hunting for either when I should have been finding my way home. Today, that will change. I drag a half-broken brush through my wet hair. Today, no lessons. No scavenging. It doesn’t help me to balance on a roof better or to learn to ignore a dead man on a couch.

  I think about yesterday’s shower. I’d been so certain I’d find a way home quickly. I’d said my affirmations, like Mom—and I’d failed to come any closer to a way out.

  I won’t fail today. But I also won’t delude myself. It might not be quick or easy to find a way home. So from now on, I will have only two goals: don’t die, and develop a plan to find a way home.

  Squaring my shoulders, I walk into the dining room. Peter and Claire are both perched on chairs—one foot on the back of the chair, the other on the front of the seat. The chairs are tilted to balance on the back legs only. Whatever I was going to say dies in my throat.

  “I’m not going to ask what you’re doing.” I walk to the backpacks. I carry mine over to the table, unzip it, and pull out a can of pineapple. “Knife?”