* * *
On the outskirts of Lost, the expanse of houses stretches farther than I’d thought. Mile after mile of house after house, many packed close together and others spread far apart. All of them look as if they were blown here by Dorothy’s tornado. A few are damaged so badly that they look as if they’d collapse if I blew on them. Others are pristine, freshly built with cheery paint and flowers in the window boxes, the kind of flowers that shouldn’t be able to grow in the desert. I imagine primly dressed little old ladies tottering onto the porches to water their geraniums or fetch their mail from cute duck-shaped mailboxes, but I see no one.
The houses are so silent and still that it’s like walking through a cemetery. I walk faster, trying not to look in the windows, trying not to feel as if the windows are watching me. But the curtains in the windows are motionless, and the lights are off.
Peter and Claire bypass several dozen houses without pause. They scamper over junk piles and climb over fences and race through the spaces between the abandoned buildings. I try to memorize which way the little yellow house is, which way the center of town is, which way is out of town—but it’s hard enough to keep up with the two of them. Often, they turn a corner, and I lose them for a few seconds as I race to catch up and I think, What if they’re gone? What if I turn the corner and I don’t see them and I’m alone and it’s all a trick to lure me away and abandon me where the feral pigs will savage me as if I’m an errant ear of corn, or whatever pigs eat...
But they’re there.
And I don’t see any feral pigs or dogs or people.
Waiting for me, Peter stands on a fence post on one foot. He balances with his other foot on his knee like a crane in the water. So still and silent, he looks not quite human. I can’t read the expression in his eyes as he watches me. Claire crouches on the ground beside him. Her nose twitches like she’s a fox as her gaze darts right, left, and up, looking for...I don’t know what. Whatever we’re hunting, I guess. Or whatever’s hunting us.
I catch up, and we go on.
At last, the two of them halt. Hidden by a half-dead bush, they crouch in front of a ranch house with wind chimes on the wraparound porch and a pile of newspapers on the front stoop. The chimes clink discordantly. Peter opens the mailbox. It’s stuffed with letters and magazines and flyers. He checks the postmark on a few. “Recent. Very recent.” His face lights up as he looks at me. “Ready to break and enter?”
“How do we know there’s no one inside?” I don’t think there is. There’s been no one anywhere. But we can’t be the only ones in this weird, silent world. I peer at the windows. The shades are drawn. I don’t see any lights.
Claire darts across the lawn and onto the porch. She presses the doorbell and then she runs back, her plump legs pumping. She skids to a halt and hides with us behind the shrubbery that chokes the mailbox.
No one comes to the door.
“Someone could still be home,” I point out. I don’t always answer the door if I think it’s someone selling something or wanting a signature on a petition. And then of course I worry that I’ve just alerted a burglar that my apartment is empty, and someone will break in while I’m home and then panic because they didn’t expect anyone, which is how most thefts-turned-murders are reported, so statistically...
Claire and Peter are already jogging toward the house. I lag behind as they veer left at the porch and circle the house. In the backyard, there’s a barbecue grill on the patio and a swing set with three faded plastic swings and a slide.
Even in the wind, the swings don’t move.
I feel goose bumps prickle up and down my arms, even though the air is as hot as someone’s breath. Weeks, months, or years ago, a family had a barbecue here. Kids swung on the swings, played catch, chased each other around, while the adults gossiped and ate burnt burgers and drank lukewarm beers that had been sitting in the sun. I don’t know how they lost their house, or why they left their things behind. But I decide that abandoned playgrounds score high for spookiness, even considering the fierce competition in this place for Most Spooky. I hurry after Peter and Claire.
The sliding glass door on the back patio is broken. Peter steps over the shards and ducks through the hole. His coat brushes against the broken edges but doesn’t catch. Claire shoots looks left and right and then darts through the hole in the door. I hesitate for a moment, but then the wind blows harder and one of the swings squeaks as it swings back and forth, as if a ghost child were pumping her legs. I step over the broken glass into the house.
“Don’t look at the couch,” Peter says.
Of course, I look at the couch.
And I scream.
There’s a dead man, white T-shirt, briefs, stomach exposed with hair curled around his belly button. He has a rifle in one hand, resting against the couch. His other hand is coated in reddish-brown. It rests over a stain of more red-brown-rust...blood. Oh, God, he’s covered in dried blood. His eyes are open and sightless.
Peter claps his hand over my mouth. “Shh.” His breath is warm and soft as a feather against my ear. I feel my body shake. He holds me tight against him, stilling me. His warmth comforts me, even if I shouldn’t feel comforted looking at a dead man. Peter lowers his hand. “Food will be in the kitchen.”
I’m not screaming anymore. I force myself to stop looking. “We should...” I try to think. I can’t think. There’s a dead man on the couch. What do you do when there’s a dead man on a couch? “Call the police.” Yes, that’s it. I feel as though I have had an epiphany, the thoughts stirring up through the murk of my mind. “Get out and call the police. We don’t know...who did this. Or why. Or if they’re still here.”
“Hence the ‘shh.’ Come on.”
He tugs my arm, and I follow him numbly through the house. I think the death must be recent, or the house would smell. Oh, God, what a horrible practical thought: the smell. But the house only smells a little like Lysol, a little like potato chips.
Claire is already in the kitchen, standing on a stool, an array of food spread out on the counter in front of her: cans of tomato sauce, black beans, peas, tuna fish. There’s a box of Uncle Ben’s rice. “Jackpot!” she crows.
I feel stuck in the doorway. “Shh!” To Peter, I say, “Does she know? Did she see?”
Claire looks up from her treasures. “It’s been more than a few hours but not more than a day. You can tell because the blood has dried but it doesn’t stink yet.”
She sounds so nonchalant that I can’t even process her words. “But there could be... Whoever killed...” The words feel caught in my throat. I go back to the first thing I said. “We need to call the police.”
“There aren’t any,” Claire says.
“But the killer...”
“Probably isn’t lost, either,” she says.
“How do you know?”
“No one can leave without the Missing Man,” Claire says as if this is a perfectly clear explanation. “If that man had been killed in Lost, he wouldn’t be only a dead body. He’d still be here. And he wouldn’t like us taking his stuff. So someone must have killed him somewhere else and then lost the body. Silly thing to lose.” She opens another cabinet. “Ooh, raisins!”
“You mean...you can’t die here?”
“Noo.” Claire rolls her eyes. “Of course you can die. You just can’t leave. Not without the Missing Man.” She enunciates each word, as if I’m hard of hearing. “If you die here, you can’t ever go back to the world. You can only go...wherever dead people go. Also, I’m told that it hurts a lot. Other than that, it’s kind of hard to tell the dead people from the not-dead people.”
Peter swings open the refrigerator and begins tossing out items. Salsa. Ketchup. Containers of Chinese food. “Fetch a bag, newbie.”
Mechanically, I check a few drawers. Under the sink I find a box of trashbags, the stu
rdy black kind. I pull out one, and Claire and Peter begin stuffing it with their finds. I feel numb.
“Can we leave now?” I ask.
“You don’t want to check the bathroom? Toothpaste? Mouthwash? Shampoo?” Peter asks. “Rare to find a recent, intact house like this. Usually they’re empty or old.”
“I don’t want to use a dead man’s toothpaste.”
Claire tilts her head quizzically. It’s an endearing expression. It would be even cuter if we weren’t talking about a dead man. “He doesn’t need it anymore.”
“Please, let’s leave. I promise I’ll...loot another house more successfully.”
Claire and Peter exchange glances. He shrugs and then hefts the garbage bag over his shoulder. “Your loss.” He walks past me back into the living room...back where the dead man is.
“Is that supposed to be a joke?” I trail after him. “My ‘loss’?” Claire scampers past me. I try not to look at the man on the couch, and I climb through the hole in the glass door and then nearly bump into Peter’s back. He spins, grabs my arm, and forces me down.
We crouch on the patio behind the barbecue. Beyond the swing set, three teenagers laugh and shove each other as they saunter by. They’re dressed in cut-up camouflage jackets and pants, covered in safety pins and buttons. One of them has a tinfoil crown on his head. Another has a shotgun casually over his shoulder. I think of the Lost Boys from Peter Pan. But older. Scarier. And not friends with my Peter.
I don’t scream. I don’t breathe.
One of them points to the house. There’s laughter. I imagine them laughing as they shot the man on the couch. The one with the shotgun swings it into position. He tilts his head to line up a shot, and he squeezes the trigger.
Behind us, the bathroom window explodes.
I bite my sleeve to keep from screaming.
The boy then saunters on as his friends joke and point out his next shot, a mailbox farther away. He shoots that, too, the echo of the shot reverberating across my skin, or maybe it’s just that I’m shaking and can’t seem to stop.
We wait until we can’t hear them anymore, and then we creep across the lawn and away from the house. Loudly, far more loudly than I’d like, Peter says, “Well, that was a productive stop. Still need breakfast food, though. Ready for our next target?”
He sounds so cheery. I point behind us. “There’s a dead man back there.”
He pauses, puts down the trash bag, and puts his hands on my shoulders. I feel the strength in his hands. I don’t know how his hands continue to have such calming power. It’s as if he’s cupped his hands around my heart, soothing it. “You can’t save everyone. Consider that your next lesson. That man died before he came here.” He’s earnest in a way I’ve never seen him, eyes intent on mine. I imagine I see a flicker of...what? Sadness? All the childlike play is gone, and I see a man who looks as though he’s lost more than I can imagine.
“How do you know? Those kids had guns. They could have—”
Claire answers. “If he’d died here without the Missing Man, he wouldn’t have been able to leave.” She mimes a bird flying away with her hands.
I try to make sense of that statement, turn it around in my head, twist it upside down and sideways as if it were a Rubik’s Cube that will resolve itself if I turn the sides correctly. It matches what she said earlier about the man’s death, but it still doesn’t make sense. If Claire is telling the truth...even death isn’t an escape from this place. “I don’t—”
“And now we hide again.” Peter yanks my arm and pulls me behind the nearest junk pile. We crouch while Claire scampers silently to the top of the heap. She peeks around an open, torn umbrella. She holds up three fingers for us to see and then points to the left.
“Three people, to the left,” Peter whispers in my ear.
“You know I’m not an idiot, right?”
“All evidence disagrees with you.” His breath flutters on my skin, and I tell myself not to react to his nearness, not to even notice.
“All evidence says you’re insane, but you don’t see me condescending to you, do you?”
His mouth twists as if he wants to laugh. He glances up at Claire. She scrambles down from the heap and lands lightly beside us. “Lots of scavengers today,” she reports. “Another group of six that way. And I think I saw three go into a blue house.”
“All right then,” Peter says. “It’s time for intensive training. First, keep your hands free.” He combs over the trash heap and extracts a backpack. It’s black with lacrosse team patches sewn on. “There’s never a shortage of bags here. Always check them for holes. Also, for scorpions.” He unzips and upends it. Notebook and textbooks fall out. Claire squats and sorts through it but comes up empty, except for a soccer-ball key chain, which she pockets. Peter fills the bag with the canned goods and other food items from the dead man’s house. He slings the pack over his shoulders. “Second, keep moving. Scavengers are interested in what’s stationary and easy, not in what’s tough to catch or hard to see.” He strides toward the nearest building. It’s a boarded-up storefront, formerly a Laundromat. A row of rusted washing machines lines the window. “Third, when possible, go up.” He climbs onto a trash can, grabs the Laundromat sign, and swings onto the roof. He then flattens onto his stomach, leans over and holds out his arms. Claire climbs like a spider monkey up the window and onto the roof without his help. He’s waiting for me.
I step onto the trash can and grab his hand. His muscles flex as he pulls me up. I try to help by clinging to the gutter and swinging my leg, but it’s mostly him hoisting me onto the roof.
He continues as if he weren’t hefting me up with one arm, “Scavengers are looking down most of the time, not up. You can pass within feet of them without notice if you’re above them.”
I flop onto the flat roof like a fish, and I roll onto my back. He doesn’t look winded. In fact, he smiles at me. “There has to be a better way to do that,” I say.
“You’ll learn,” he promises.
“I don’t want to learn. I want to go home.” His smile fades, and I wish I could suck the words back in. “I’m sorry. I know you’re trying to help.”
“I’ve told you already—I can’t send you home.” I hear coldness in his voice, and I shrink from it. “How many times must I say it?”
“I know. I’m sorry. Only the Missing Man can. I get it, really. Please...continue the lessons. I’ll shut up.” I mentally slap myself. Last thing I need is to offend him so badly that he strands me on a roof.
Peter looks at Claire. “Are you sure she’s different?”
Claire nods. “Maybe she just doesn’t know it yet?”
“All right. I’ll accept that. For now.” Peter spins, and his coat swirls around him like a cape. He springs across the rooftop. Claire runs after him, and I follow, determined not to risk alienating him again. If I want to find my way home to Mom, I have to stay alive long enough to do it.
He lifts up a plank of wood that lies near the gutter, and he lays it from one roof to the next. He then walks across it with his arms outstretched for balance. Claire follows behind him like a little acrobat.
Clearly, they expect me to follow them.
Just as clearly, I have to.
Stopping at the edge of the plank, I look down. It’s only one story. People can’t die from a one-story fall, can they? Peter and Claire wait on the other side. I kneel on the board, focus on them, and crawl across. I don’t look down.
Peter picks up the board, carries it across the roof, and lays it down again. This time it reaches to the sloped roof of a house, not a storefront. I don’t know why the plank doesn’t slide, but it stays in place as Peter again crosses it. I grit my teeth and follow, crawling again. On the other side, I see there’s a notch in the roof that holds the board. “You’ve done this before.”
He flashes me a smile, lifts up the board, and walks across the roof. I spread my legs for balance on the slope, and I waddle after him, awkward as a flightless bird. Claire dances along the peak.
Climbing from roof to roof, I try not to think about how badly I need to go home, about how I don’t know if my two saviors can save me, about the absent Missing Man or about the other scavengers or about Lost. Instead, I focus only on step after step across the shingles and roof tiles as they warm beneath the desert sun.
Chapter Nine
On a roof, we split a stale loaf of bread and eat as furtively as squirrels. Claire rifles through the bags in search of additional snacks, while Peter checks in each direction to be certain we haven’t been spotted. We don’t talk. I am so tense that when a seagull lands on the chimney, I slide down three shingles. After I catch myself, I toss the gull a bit of crust.
I wonder if this is what my life will be like if I fail to find a way home.
Hiding.
Scavenging.
Barely surviving.
More likely, the mob will catch me. Or Peter will grow bored with me, Claire will return to whatever life she had before I arrived, and I will be eaten by feral dogs. Or feral pigs. Or cows.
I have to find a way home.
After we eat, we hit several more houses and junk piles around the outskirts of Lost, and I begin to get the hang of scavenging, at least at a basic level. Certain items are easy to find, I learn: socks, hats, mittens, coats, keys, sunglasses, umbrellas, cell phones, balls. I locate a summer dress in dry cleaner’s plastic, which is a respectable find, but I don’t find a toothbrush or a decent pair of jeans or an entire sandwich. Bits of sandwich are easy, as are stray pretzels, crackers, chips...Most of them are coated in dust or mold. It’s quickly obvious that the loaf of bread was a lucky find. Claire had pounced on it like a cat on a mouse. And it’s equally obvious that the dead man’s house was a treasure trove, though I don’t want to return.
We scurry from house to house, pile to pile. Claire darts out first—a practice I object to until I see the rationale. Of all three of us, she’s the least likely for anyone to want to hurt. Plus she’s little, harder to see. Once she reaches the next bit of shelter, she beckons, and we dart after her. In my case, it’s more like lumbering than darting. Clearly, I shouldn’t have cancelled my gym membership.
The Lost Page 11
