The Train of Lost Things

by Ammi-Joan Paquette

  After that, everything started changing really fast. The doctor trips (way too many of them). The hospital stays (though Dad always came home after a couple of days). The special metal-frame bed and piles of equipment set up in the den downstairs (that was when Dad started calling it the Sick Room, which Marty hated), rows and rows of pill bottles lining the fireplace mantel, and Nurse Carla coming to help out during the days when Mom was at work.

  Marty found himself changing, too. He stopped answering his friends’ texts. His soccer ball got dusty. He spent most of his time in one of his online game worlds, which Mom hated but she put up with, because Marty thought maybe she got how sometimes a kid needed to lose himself inside a world he understood, a world he could control, where the only surprise that was going to change everything around was a Supersonic Vortex or a Megathonus jumping out at you from a dark corner.

  Because every time Marty ventured back into the real world, he saw the changes, saw them with his own eyes. And by far the biggest change of all was in Dad himself. It didn’t seem right that in less than half a year, a guy could go from being the kind of father who could pick up a nearly grown boy and toss him right up in the air, to someone who had to struggle to get a full sentence out without losing his breath.

  It didn’t seem right at all. None of it.

  But that was just how things were.

  3

  WHEN THE WORST DAY COMES IN THE MORNING

  That night they got back from Mom’s business trip, Marty tossed and turned in his bed for hours. He couldn’t stop thinking about his missing jacket. Kids lost stuff all the time; everybody knew that.

  Marty didn’t lose things, though. He always put his stuff back where it went, retraced his steps till he found what he’d dropped, and basically was the best finder ever to exist anywhere. Or that’s what his buddy Jax had always said. But now there was something Marty couldn’t find. And of all things, it had to be his priceless, can’t-be-replaced jacket.

  Did that mean it was gone forever? Could stuff really just disappear like that?

  Finally, Marty got up for good, even though the too-early sky looked like old bathwater, and padded downstairs. He wouldn’t have been sure it even was morning except he could smell the sharp brown burn of coffee on the air. When he came into the kitchen, the coffeemaker started doing that pick-me-up beeping that drove Mom nutty—she usually prided herself in catching it before the first beep; her sense of timing was that good, she said. But not today.

  Mom was facing away from the machine. She was hunched nearly double, bent over the kitchen island with a cheek on the marble counter and her arms up over her head. Her shoulders were shaking.

  She didn’t seem to even hear the beeping.

  “Mom?” Marty said, suddenly unsure. Was it too late to sneak back upstairs? His voice was barely over a whisper, but Mom’s head jerked up. Her eyes were puffy and her face kind of blotchy, like maybe she hadn’t slept well last night, either. And the look on her face made Marty get suddenly really, really scared. So he started talking quick, before anything weird could happen. “Did you look some more for my jacket? You know how important it is, Mom, and I looked all through—”

  Mom sighed. She reached behind her and clicked off the coffeemaker, but she didn’t pour herself a cup. Instead, she pulled out one of the tall stools at the counter and sat down. She patted the one next to her. “Come here,” she said.

  It was like there were jet packs strapped to Marty’s feet, and the jet packs were trying super hard to pull him away from the room now. He had to force himself to stumble across the floor to the counter. He sat down on the stool, but right at the edge, his butt barely touching the farthest corner. He could feel the jet packs in his feet revving up, ready to zip him away to safety the first chance he got.

  “I need to talk to you about something,” Mom said.

  “The jacket,” said Marty.

  “Something important.”

  “But Dad gave me—”

  “Your dad is sick,” Mom said, folding her lips tightly together.

  Marty frowned. “I know. That’s why he’s got Nurse Carla. That’s why we came rushing back from your meetings. Is he doing better today?”

  Mom brought both hands up to cover her face. “Look, I’m no good at this. I just—you’re not a little kid anymore. And I think—I think you need to know what’s going on.”

  Marty felt like he did the first time he’d watched a horror movie at Jax’s house: trapped, frozen, unable to move or even open his mouth to scream.

  “You know my business trip was supposed to go into next week. And yes, we had to rush back. Because of your dad. He’s been getting sicker, but yesterday we found out his condition has gotten worse. A lot worse. The cancer has metastasized again.” She shook her head. “You don’t know what all that means, but the doctors are saying it’s bad. Really bad.”

  “He’s getting better,” said Marty. “There’s that new medicine. We’re gonna ride the scenic railroad together someday, him and me.”

  “He’s not getting better,” Mom said, swallowing hard. “Marty, I’ve got no other way to put this. The last tests came back. It’s all over, honey. Your dad’s— He’s— Just. There’s nothing more they can do.”

  “Nothing more they can do?” There was a roaring in Marty’s ears, or in the kitchen, or in the sky outside—somewhere something was roaring so loud, it was taking over his whole mind. The room around him started to flicker.

  “Days, hon. At the most, we’ve got days left.” Mom stretched her hand out toward him, and suddenly Marty knew that if she touched him, that was it. It would all be true, it would all be over, Dad would leave them and be gone for good. Marty yanked his hands behind him. The invisible jet packs on his feet fired up and he shot toward the door without a backward glance.

  “Marty, wait!” He could hear his mom jump to her feet and call after him. “Come on, let’s talk about this.”

  As he stamped past the door to the Sick Room, he heard shifting around inside there and knew they must have woken Dad up, too. He didn’t care. It wasn’t true. None of it was true.

  A tornado was building inside his chest, a whirl of all his angry-sad-fear all stormed up together. Words were not enough. But words were all he had. “Leave me alone, can’t you?” he yelled. “I just want to be by myself for a while!”

  Clearing the last step, Marty dove into the safe zone of his room. Pressing his back flat against the closed door, he took a minute to look around. He took one gulping breath after another. Books stood in a row on the shelf, clothes hung neat and straight, everything was just right. Everything in its place.

  It didn’t calm him. However safe and familiar his room seemed, it wasn’t. Not really—not anymore. When the very biggest and most important thing in your life is thrown out of order, how can anything feel in the right place ever again? Marty flopped onto his bed, pulled the pillow over his face, and burst into tears.

  * * *

  • • •

  The next thing Marty knew, a hand was stroking his hair. It took a second for everything to come back to him—the rushed trip home; Mom’s horrible words in the early-morning kitchen; even his lost jacket, though how could that matter anymore? He almost shoved the hand away, but then there was a low cough and his eyes flew all the way open.

  “Dad?!” Marty scrabbled up, every bit of sleepiness flung from his mind. “What are you doing up here?”

  Dad looked bad. Like an extra from a zombie movie, if Marty was being honest; so bad, he almost would have looked cool if it weren’t Dad, but it was. He hadn’t left his room in weeks, maybe longer. Coming all the way up to the second floor?! Marty’s heart pounded so loud, he could hear it in his ears. He leaped to his feet, hastily smoothing his covers and scrunching up his pillows to make room.

  “Don’t you—worry—about me,” said Dad. He always spoke slowly the
se days, often pausing to catch his breath. But now it was like the words were coming through a distortion machine. Climbing all those stairs, in his state! Dad’s breath was the sharp wheeze of a saw on wood.

  Marty gave Dad his arm for support and helped him settle onto the bed. He propped and fluffed the pillows till Dad gave him a thumbs-up. “Had to—get away—for a bit.” He flapped his hands in front of his face. “All that—hovering! I’m—a grown man—you know. I’ll catch my—breath. In a second.”

  The clatter of dishes rang from the kitchen, and Marty knew what that meant. “Mom’s making your morning smoothie?”

  “You—know it,” said Dad. “But—afternoon.”

  Marty’s eyes shot to the clock. “It’s four?” He’d slept away most of the day. “Wait. Mom’s not at work?” It was Saturday, but Mom’s schedule was wonky these days.

  Dad gave a twist of a smile, like a sad lemon. “She’s taking a little—time off.”

  Marty concentrated on the pattern on his bedspread, noticing how the blue and yellow overlapped each other in neat, predictable ways.

  “She told me—you talked.”

  Marty scowled. “She talked. I don’t believe any of it. I mean, look at you. You’re fine. Right? Don’t you feel fine? Or okay, at least? I mean, you haven’t been upstairs in ages.”

  Dad considered this as he studied Marty’s cork headboard. Then (was he avoiding the question?) Dad pointed to a strip of photo booth pictures. “That friend of yours—he hasn’t come around in a while. He used to be over all the time.”

  “Jax. Yeah.” Marty shifted uncomfortably. He did not want to talk about Jax. Or his old group of friends. The truth was, he hadn’t seen much of any of them since school had started this year.

  They were quiet for a bit, then Dad suddenly perked up. He reached a hand into the front pocket of his ratty old sweatshirt. “I almost forgot! I got something—for you. I meant to give it to you—last night, but . . .” He rolled his eyes dramatically, and Marty let himself relax the tiniest bit. Dad’s breath seemed to be coming back, too. He put out his hand to Marty, his fist clenched tightly shut.

  Marty sat up straighter. There weren’t many things that could be hidden inside a closed fist, even one as big as Dad’s. “Is it a new pin?”

  With a flourish Dad unfurled his fingers, and Marty picked up the button. “Whoa! This is incredible.”

  The pin was star-shaped and huge, nearly the size of his palm. It showed three little heads crowded along the bottom, and it was easy to see they were meant to be Dad, Mom, and Marty. “Hey!” Marty said. “Did you have this made specially? Is it a custom thing?”

  Dad silently twinkled.

  Marty went back to the pin. The tiny faces were all smiles, and above their heads swirled a gauzy sort of cloud. In the cloud was a scattering of images: a green-faced witch and a gingerbread man and a jolly red-and-white Santa. There was a long silvery train and what was clearly meant to be a dancing banana. The last one made Marty laugh out loud. “Those are all your stories, aren’t they? Is this a button about our story times?”

  Dad clapped his hands in delight. “Do you love it?”

  “Oh, Dad.” The rush of joy he felt building in his chest suddenly turned ice-cold. The button was perfect. But he no longer had the jacket to put it on. His dad’s face looked so bright, so proud, so purely happy. Days, his mom had said. What if she was right? What if that was all the time Dad had left? How could Marty tell him the truth—that he’d taken their most special link and lost it? Marty swallowed. “It’s the best thing ever. Seriously. Thank you so much.”

  They sat in silence for a few minutes. Marty ran his thumb over the button. His gaze settled on the image of the train. He hadn’t thought about that story in a long time. He tapped it with his fingernail. “It’s the Train of Lost Things!”

  “Ah,” Dad breathed out a long sigh. “That was your favorite story of all, once upon a time.”

  “You used to tell me it was a true story.” Marty could hear the accusing note in his voice, but there was something else in there, too. Something that sounded like an odd ping of hope. That was ridiculous, right?

  “I sure did,” said Dad.

  Marty laughed softly. When he was younger, he really had believed that story was true. He’d believed it with all his heart. But when you grew up, when you got old enough to be in the double digits, you had to leave all that believing-in-magic stuff behind.

  Didn’t you?

  On the bed beside him, Dad looked as serious as Marty had ever seen him.

  Inside Marty, something said: What if . . . ?

  * * *

  • • •

  There are some moments that are small enough to be instantly forgotten. Blink once and they’re gone, never to cross the mind again. Only later, much later, can you look back and see those moments for what they were: pivots. Enormous, life-changing crossroads where life itself hangs trembling in the balance. Then the starting shot fires and the race kicks off, catapulting everyone and everything into full motion. After that it’s a blur of movement and action and adventure, but . . . look back.

  It all starts from that one little moment.

  That one little what if.

  * * *

  • • •

  “Will you tell me the story again?” Marty swallowed hard. “Now?”

  “I was hoping you’d say that.” Dad patted the bed next to him, and Marty scooted close, tucking himself under Dad’s bony arm. “Listen close, then. Because this kind of story—and this kind of magic—doesn’t come along every day.”

  Dad took a deep breath, and as he started the familiar opening, his voice seemed to grow stronger with every word. “This is the story of the Train of Lost Things—and how I almost caught it.”

  4

  THE TRAIN OF LOST THINGS

  I was just about your age the first time I heard the story of the train,” Dad said.

  Marty held his breath. He didn’t want to miss a single word. Sunbeams slanted in through the bedroom window, filtering through the fat maple’s red and yellow leaves to paint everything in the room a shiny gold.

  “I had this whistle.” Dad laughed a little. “Man, I loved that thing! It was all shimmery, shaped like an egg. I called it my eggwhistle. It had this goofy little rim that you put in your mouth, and when you blew on it, it made the nuttiest squeaking noise. I’d run around everywhere making the most ridiculous sounds you could imagine. I took that thing everywhere.”

  Marty could picture the eggwhistle in his mind. He grinned, even though he knew what came next.

  Dad went on, “We were downtown one weekend—I can remember that night so clearly! It was the Fourth of July and we’d gone into the city to watch the fireworks. So it all finished up and we were packed into a crowd on our way home. Someone bumped me and I dropped the whistle. I was so upset! I looked and looked for it, but there were just too many people. We had to go home. I never saw it again.”

  Like my jacket, thought Marty dully. Here one day and gone the next.

  Dad’s mind was still far away. “You might think this is ridiculous for an eleven-year-old kid, but I was inconsolable at losing that whistle. My dad said it was no big deal. My mom, though, she got it. That night, she told me the story of the train.”

  “The Train of Lost Things.” Every time Marty said those words, he got a thrill—a literal rushing thrill—all the way down to the tips of his toes. He had when he was tiny, and he did now. The name itself crackled with magic.

  Dad smiled at Marty. “Yes. It’s where things go when they get lost. It’s a train—a magical one—and every precious thing that’s lost by a child is gathered into its cars.”

  “What things go there?” The question came naturally, even though Marty knew the answer well.

  “Every true heart’s possession that is lost by a child. The train c
ollects them all. But—”

  “But?” Marty could barely breathe. It had been years since he’d heard this story. Now it felt both comfortably familiar and brand-new.

  “It’s secret. The train could go right by our house and we’d never even know it. Never see. It shoots across the night sky in a swirl of fog—a fog as thick as a quilt, keeping it hidden from everyone down below. But sometimes, in the very dead of night, if you listen carefully . . . you can hear the train’s horn.”

  “Not everyone can,” Marty whispered.

  “Almost no one,” Dad whispered back. “Only someone who has lost a heart’s possession. Someone like that—well, they might. They just might.”

  Someone like me, Marty thought. A quiver started in his chest. “Dad, this is . . . this is only a story, right? I mean, it couldn’t really be—” The last word wouldn’t come out into the air. True, he wanted to finish. Could it? But his throat was frozen up.

  Instead of answering, Dad continued his tale. Where his and Marty’s hands linked, though, Dad’s trembled a little. “After my mom told me that story, I stayed up late for days. I even got an alarm clock and put it next to my bed, set it to go off every night at midnight. And then, finally, one night—I heard it.”

  “The horn? You really heard the Train of Lost Things?” Marty felt a sense of hanging suspended within a single moment, this moment, this story, the two of them right here, right now.

  And the Train of Lost Things.

  Dad nodded. “I really heard it.”

  * * *

  • • •

  They can be small, those moments where a newly born belief balances on a pin’s edge of uncertainty. Which way goes the tipping point—ah, well.

  That’s what determines the story, isn’t it?

  * * *

  • • •