Unclaimed Baggage

by Jen Doll

  “Wait a minute,” she says, pressing in different spots. We all hear it, then: There’s a snap and a pop and maybe even a little bit of a crackle. “Y’all,” she says. “There’s a false back! I found a secret compartment!”

  We rush over as she pulls out a cloth bag that clanks when she shakes it. Like money. Real money.

  “That’s not bitcoins I hear,” I say.

  “Um, we’re definitely going to have to tell Red about this one,” Doris says. She unties the bag, reaches in, and holds up what looks like a gold coin. We pass it around. On the front there’s the head of a woman; she’s wearing a crown that says LIBERTY. The back has the picture of an eagle and an embossed TWENTY D., but it’s gotta be worth more. The date is 1859. There are more where that came from.

  “You think this would pay for Brown?” asks Doris.

  “At the very least you can get an essay out of it for your college applications,” I say. “You should include some of that stuff about squirrels, too. I hear admissions boards really go nuts over a good metaphor.”

  “Grant,” says Nell.

  “You didn’t,” adds Doris.

  “I did,” I say, and I smile extra big, because when you’re with your friends sometimes the coolest thing is being not even remotely cool.

  * * *

  I’ve never been interviewed for anything other than football, but because I’m one of the kids who found the mysterious bag of old gold and silver coins in a piece of luggage at Unclaimed, local news is interested in Grant Collins in an entirely new way. After we tell Red, he places a call to a journalist friend, who sends over a cameraman and a reporter to investigate our find. Everyone at the store is really excited. It’s almost how it feels after winning a game. There’s a swirl of energy in the room, but without the spiraling feeling that makes me want to reach for some booze to help me calm down.

  The store is busier than ever. The town’s rumor mill has sprung into action, and there are a bunch of regulars and plenty of newbies wandering around, too, trying to get the scoop. Cat and Nell are taking pictures of the coins for Instagram, and Heather and Red are Googling, estimating what they think the money might be worth and debating what they should do with it. “We’ll have to have it appraised,” Heather says. Red goes to dig up his contract with the Tucson airport, where the Daphne was shipped from, to see if there’s any information about what happens when you uncover buried treasure in a suitcase. The TV crew is setting up in the middle of the store.

  Of course, Doris is the star of the show—she’s the one who suspected there was something in the bag the whole time, even when I didn’t believe her—and everyone is congratulating her on her greatest discovery yet.

  “You were right,” I tell her. “How does it feel?”

  “It’s funny,” she says. “I’ve realized, it’s not finding things that makes me feel good. It’s when people and things—or people and people—come together. Since I don’t know who lost this, I don’t even know if it matters at all! What if it’s smuggled coins? What if there’s some terrible story to it, and someone wanted to just be rid of the money, but by finding it we’ve brought it back?”

  “It’s such a fascinating mystery, though,” says Nell, joining us. “Don’t you want answers, either way? Did someone lose the coins or try to hide them? Was this all an accident, or did someone do it on purpose? Why would there be a secret compartment in a suitcase?”

  “Are the coins even real?” asks Doris. “I mean, sure, I’m intrigued. But in the end, it’s still just money, you know? It’s not … people.”

  “Hey, kids, Maria is ready for you now,” the cameraman tells us, ushering us over to the velvet couch, where they’ll film us chatting with Maria Lopez, host at the nearest local news channel. We settle into our places, Doris between me and Nell.

  “OK, rolling!”

  “I’m here now at Unclaimed Baggage with the three teens who found a mysterious bag of gold and silver coins dated from the 1800s,” she begins breathlessly. “Tell us, what was it like to open that suitcase?”

  “Well, you really never know what to expect when you open a bag,” begins Doris, and we look at each other and try not to laugh. I know we’re all thinking of the dildo, still buried out back. In its own very special way, it counts as treasure, too. After all, it was the start of something great for the three of us.

  * * *

  Later that night, after the camera crew has gone home and so have we, I call Doris. We talk for two hours. About everything. She tells me about her aunt Stella, and how much she misses her, how she wishes Stella were here for the story of the gold coins. “She’d have so many theories!” Doris exclaims. I tell her about my dad. How it felt when he left us, how I missed him so much at first that it was physically painful. I cried night after night and told my mom she had to make him come back. Why did you let him go? I demanded. But when Dad eventually decided to return, by way of the occasional phone call or speculative summer vacation, I wasn’t sure I wanted him anymore. The truth was, I was mad. I wanted him to feel the way I did: rejected and lonely; I wanted to punish him for not choosing us. And now he keeps calling me, and I’m not ready to answer.

  She urges me to do it. “Talking helps,” she says.

  “I just feel like he’s already gone,” I tell her.

  “But he’s your dad,” she says. “You don’t want to give up on your dad. Even when I’ve been angriest at my parents, when they feel less like me than just about anyone, I still want them to be my parents.”

  I change the subject. “I can’t believe school’s starting so soon,” I say, and she says, “Yeah,” and kind of sighs. We don’t mention what will happen with us. I’m not sure what “us” is, exactly—but I know whatever it is, I don’t want it to end.

  “You’re a good person, Grant,” she tells me.

  “How do you know that?” I ask.

  “I just do,” she says. “I know you. Bad people don’t help find little brothers at water parks or stand up for their friends. Bad people don’t try to stop drinking. Bad people don’t care.”

  “Bad people might accidentally do good things sometimes. Especially if it’s in their own interest,” I say.

  “But the good people are the ones who know that.”

  “A bad person gets drunk and crashes the car with his girlfriend in it. And then runs,” I say. She has no answer to that.

  “I better go to sleep,” I tell her. “I’m beat. Today was wild!”

  “It was,” she says. “And fun, too. I can’t wait till we find out what the coins are worth.”

  “Same.”

  Then she says, “Grant?” and I say, “Yeah?” and she says, “Don’t drink.”

  Those are the words that play on repeat in my head during the hardest part of the night, when I toss and turn and stare at the ceiling in the dark and think about tacos and how easy it would be to give in and go over to Brod’s and do what I’ve done for so long. But I don’t.

  PART III

  August

  39

  Nell

  There’s a heat wave on, which means it’s even hot in the stockroom. The AC is cranked to the limit but it’s barely puffing out cool air. Doris is up working the register again because Byron’s on his lunch break, and we’re short-staffed with Cat gone, so it’s just Grant and me in the back together. The store is busier than ever after all the news coverage—people keep coming in and wanting to buy the coins, or at least see or touch them, but they’re still with the appraisers. We use the opportunity to try to sell them something else, which usually works. We’re unpacking as fast as we can to keep things on the shelves.

  Grant’s untangling a mess of cords from a laptop computer that we found in a bag I’ve dubbed the Nigel. When we finally get the plug into the socket, the computer powers on—but it’s been wiped clean. Grant and I are debating what turn of events would have led to this, and from that we get deep into the logistics of witness protection—how do you just start responding to a
new name, for instance? Don’t you miss your old friends and family members, or do they get to come along with you? Is there really a town in Hawaii that has the greatest concentration of people enrolled in the Federal Witness Protection Program? Yes, says Grant, it’s Puna, on the Big Island.

  “How did you know that?” I ask.

  “Google,” he says. “Let’s just say there’ve been some times in my life when I’ve wondered if what I really needed was to get away from everything and everybody I knew, too.”

  “But no more?” I ask.

  “Not at the moment,” he says, smiling.

  I hear my phone from inside the locker where I’ve stashed it. It’s Ashton’s ringtone, so I can’t resist pulling it back out.

  I walk to the back of the inventory racks for privacy.

  “Hi, baby,” I answer.

  “Hey, Pony,” says Ashton. “I can’t wait to see your face! I’m going to kiss it all over.”

  I close my eyes and wish him here already.

  “I get into Huntsville airport at four p.m. on Friday. Can you still pick me up?”

  “I’ll be there! Doris and Grant are coming, too!”

  “Should I be nervous? These are the people I’ve been hearing about all summer. The people who have replaced me in your life!” He laughs. “Or maybe I should be more nervous that I’m about to be way below the Mason-Dixon Line for an entire weekend.”

  “You are irreplaceable,” I tell him. “And you’re going to love them! And everybody will love you! We have a going-away party to go to Friday night. A woman we work with is leaving to get her MFA and business degree—”

  “Sounds fun,” he says. “But I want to spend some time with just you, too. And I can’t wait to see Jack! How’s my little buddy?”

  “He’s been talking about you nonstop since he heard you were coming.” This is true, though I don’t tell Ashton I only just got around to telling my family about the visit. “He wants to show you all of his new video games.”

  “I’m so ready,” says Ashton.

  Part of me is impatient to get back to the suitcase I’ve been unpacking, and I’m aware of slacking my responsibilities. “Hey, I’m at work. Let’s talk tonight, OK?”

  “You’re always there!” he answers. “Do you ever get tired of it?”

  “No,” I tell him. “Weirdly, I really don’t. It’s so much fun. Especially since Doris found the bag of old coins in a suitcase. They might really be worth something!”

  “Selling lacrosse sticks and bike helmets to people at the mall just doesn’t compare to finding buried treasure, I guess.”

  “Wait till you see the stockroom. You’ll understand.”

  “I can’t wait.”

  “Bye, Ash.”

  “Bye, Pony. For now.”

  I walk back out to Grant. I can’t hide the giant grin on my face.

  “Excited, huh?” he says. He’s holding a pair of rhinestone-studded jeans against his legs, as if to see if they’ll fit him. They came in a rhinestone-studded duffel bag, not even kidding.

  “I’ve been trying to name the bag these were in, but it’s impossible without you,” he says.

  I close my eyes for a second and think. “Velma. That bag is most definitely a Velma.”

  “You’re too good at this.” He smiles and folds the jeans and puts them in the for-sale pile. “Hey,” he says. “I have a question.”

  “Yeah?”

  “There’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while,” he says. “Do you think Doris would ever go out with me?”

  My grin gets even bigger than I ever thought possible.

  “Don’t tell her, though, OK?” he asks. “I need to think about how to approach it, and really do it right—really do something right, for once.”

  I nod. Keeping this secret from my best friend is going to be so hard, but I think it will be worth it.

  40

  Doris

  I’m up at the register with Mr. Diamanti, the high school chorus teacher, who’s buying a keyboard that came in from Los Angeles the other day. Nell posted it on the Instagram account, and the phone started ringing immediately. After we found the gold coins, the store has been one big fire emoji. Red keeps walking around saying, “It’s lit!” I don’t know who taught him that, but it’s cringeworthy in the best way.

  The keyboard has the initials SW written on it on a piece of tape, so I’ve been imagining the keyboard once belonged to Stevie Wonder, even though surely Stevie Wonder doesn’t check his keyboard, or fly commercial, and does Stevie Wonder even live in LA? I have no idea.

  Mr. Diamanti is amped about the new school year, telling me about his big plans for the fall concert. I think about music and Billy Pickens and his trombone, still in my closet. Will he ask for it back? I think about Maya, who will be home soon. According to her last postcard, she and Hannah were getting ready to go to the camp dance together, and Maya was deciding if she wanted to wear a sundress or her favorite jeans and vintage tee. I wrote back that I might be thinking about making a move, too, but I didn’t say with who. Maya’s got to hear about that in person. She’s not going to believe it.

  Something’s bugging me a little, though. Grant and Nell and I bonded because we were all misfits, alone in our own ways. Come September, will that still be the case? I really hope that our friendships can continue past the store.

  I think back to the balloon festival, when Grant and I were alone and he kissed my hand. He’s been looking at me differently lately, like he’s seeing me not just as the Number One liberal agnostic in this town, or the weird girl in the hallways at school, but as a friend. Maybe even as something more. If I do make a move, what would it even be? I need to talk to Nell about this.

  Once I ring up Mr. Diamanti’s purchase and send him on his way—he makes a pitch as he always does to try to get me to sing in the choir, and I politely remind him that I only sing-shout the Pixies—the store is quiet again. Byron’s still on break. Then one person who definitely does not make me smile comes walking in, the doorbell tinkling gently as she enters. It’s a sound that doesn’t match her persona. It’s not that she looks scary, exactly. She’s got on a floral dress with a lace collar and ballet flats, the most delicate of Southern lady attire. But the whole feeling in the store changes as if a storm’s a-coming, and I wish I weren’t alone at the register, because this is Priscilla Stokes, the church youth-group director who shamed me at the water park, the woman I told off at the balloon festival.

  “Hello, Doris,” she says. She leans over the counter where I’m standing, so close I can smell her antiseptic perfume, and she says, “I saw on Instagram y’all had some cute new shoes that came in the other day. Are they still for sale?”

  I smile and pretend that everything is peachy keen while I also marvel that even Mrs. Stokes uses Instagram. “If so, they’ll be back that way,” I say, pointing her in the right direction.

  “Thank you,” she says.

  “Of course,” I answer, sweeping my hand out grandly as if this is my manor, and I’m giving her consent to walk the gardens. “Let me know if you need help with anything.”

  Thankfully, Byron steps into the front door with a takeout bag from Ruby’s, my favorite of the three barbecue joints in town. There are diehard fans of each around here, and the question of who’s best is almost as controversial as who you root for in football.

  “Hey, Doris, I brought you a snack,” says Byron, who puts the bag next to me. It smells so good my stomach growls loudly in response. I open the bag to peer in and see three flaky golden biscuits, a tub of pulled pork, a tub of pulled chicken, a tub of potato salad, and a tub of coleslaw.

  “You’re my hero,” I say. “This is more than a snack!”

  “I thought you and Grant and Nell might be hungry,” he says. “And, the truth is, Shana hooked me up now that she’s one of the managers over there.” He pats his stomach with satisfaction. “I’m going to get so fat, and I don’t mind it a bit.”

  �
��You and Shana are both my heroes,” I say, and he grins.

  “I’ll let her know.” Byron takes a long look at Mrs. Stokes, who’s now rummaging through the stack of suitcases we have against one wall.

  “If you want to take your break in the back with the team and dig in, go for it,” he says. “I can handle the front for a while. It’s a sin not to eat those biscuits while they’re still warm.”

  I carry the bag of food back to the stockroom. Just as I get there, out pops Nell.

  “Hi!” I say. “Are y’all hungry?”

  “Yes!” she says. “I was just coming up to find you and see if you wanted lunch.”

  “Perfect. Byron brought us a ton of food,” I tell her, walking into the stockroom. “By the way, guess who’s out front?”

  “Not Ms. Bunce again?” asks Grant.

  “No, worse. Mrs. Stokes.”

  “Ew,” says Nell. “Why?”

  “I have no idea, but we shouldn’t let her affect our appetites.” I pull out a stash of fragrant barbecue and start passing stuff around, along with paper plates and napkins and plastic knives and forks. My mouth is watering.

  “Ruby’s?” Nell asks, and I nod.

  “My favorite!” she says.

  “You’re such a local now,” I tell her.

  “I’ve always been more of a Big Bob guy myself,” says Grant as he loads his plate full of food. “But barbecue is barbecue, and barbecue is good no matter what.”

  Byron pokes his head in the door just as I’m biting into my biscuit. “Hey, Doris, Mrs. Stokes wants to talk to you.”

  “What does she want?” whispers Nell.

  Byron shrugs. “No clue. I told her you were on break, but that lady is pushy. She said it was very important.”

  I chew slowly, wondering what I should do. I admit, I’m curious.

  “We’ll go with you,” says Grant.

  “Yeah, there’s no way we’re leaving you to that woman on your own,” says Nell. So the three of us grudgingly step away from our feast and walk to the front of the store, where Mrs. Stokes is waiting at the cash register, a pile of merchandise in front of her.