The Train of Lost Things

by Ammi-Joan Paquette

  Star sighed. “So, yeah. Lately it’s been getting harder. It’s like it knows I’m not actually in charge, you know? I’m trying to do what I can, but . . .” Star swallowed. “When the driver left, that’s when things started getting a lot worse. The train was mostly okay before. A bit messy, but she kept it in line.”

  “Why did the driver go?” asked Dina.

  “I don’t know,” Star said. “She was here for years and years, but it was her time to move on, I guess. She wished she could stay longer, but there was somebody else ready, she said, and I’d find out when the time was right.” Star sighed long and deep. “It’s good having you guys here. For a bit, anyway.”

  When Star looked up, Marty was shocked to see her eyes were teary.

  “If things don’t get fixed, I don’t know what will happen. What if the train gets so full, it overflows? Or the engine burns out or just stops running? Or crashes? The Train of Lost Things is broken, and I don’t know how to fix it.”

  16

  PLOT TWIST WHEN YOU LEAST EXPECT IT

  They pondered that in silence for a few minutes. Then Dina said, “Maybe we can help you out.”

  Star looked up.

  “Right!” Marty said. “I mean, you said the stuff starts flashing when the, um, ghosts are around. We’re searching anyway. We can be on the lookout for those at least, right? Would that help a bit?”

  “I guess.” Star didn’t sound too sure, though her face looked more hopeful. Maybe sometimes making a difference wasn’t even about doing some huge task to help someone or change their life.

  Sometimes it was enough to help them not feel alone.

  “There!” said Dina. Across the room, a Raggedy Ann doll pulsed with a faint light. It was nearest to Marty, so he walked over and picked it up. The light flickered in his hands. On. Off. On. Off. It was mesmerizing.

  Then Star whispered, “There you are,” and he looked toward the window. A plump woman with a lined face took shape out of the mist. She was easily as old as Marty’s grandma—and yet. And yet, some bit of her still held the air of magic, an inner spark of belief. She was on the other side of the train, and Marty raised his hand to toss the doll to Star, who was closest (and also the most experienced; Marty wasn’t sure how he’d feel handing a lost object to an actual ghost). In the split second before the doll left his hands, the Echo pop opened up, and he saw the briefest flash of an image: a tiny toddler girl, with chubby cheeks and pillowy arms, clinging to the Raggedy Ann doll that was nearly half her size. He passed the doll into Star’s hands, then it was through the train wall and into the arms of the happiest-looking grandma Marty had ever seen. For a second, that spark of magic flared up in her eyes like a real live flame. Then she whirled up toward the stars overhead. And was gone.

  “Whoa,” said Dina.

  What else was there to say?

  All of the revelations of the last hour had crowded the jacket out of Marty’s mind, just a little. Now, though, it all came back to him in full force. The look on that woman’s face when she got her heart’s possession back! That—that—was the magic he was seeking. The magic he needed.

  Pulling out his phone, Marty swiped the screen. The clock said 2:33 A.M. Who knew how long this magical train would let them stay on? A tiny corner of his mind also wondered how he was going to get home, but he pushed that thought away. One worry at a time. Right now: the jacket.

  As he dove back into his search, though, he felt a weight in the pit of his stomach. He wanted to help Star with the train, he did. But if they kept getting distracted returning lost stuff, how would they find their own objects? Would they even get to the end of the train? Thankfully, there didn’t seem to be any other flashing objects around them. The three searched in silence for a while—hunting, sorting, tossing. They didn’t find anything, but they’d gotten near to the end of the car when Dina called his name.

  “Over here,” she said, with a quiver of excitement in her voice.

  Marty shot to her side. There was no jacket anywhere nearby, and he felt his hopes flag.

  Then she held out her hand, and he saw something small nestled on her palm. “Didn’t you say there were pins on your jacket? Pins with pictures on them?”

  Marty took the button from Dina with trembling fingers. It was square, showing a little red car. But what made it special was that it had been wrapped in a very fine black mesh that looked like a tiny window screen. He remembered finding that very pin—showing a car that looked so much like Dad’s—and Dad bringing out a scrap of mesh to cover it.

  “Remember when you were two or three, and you would sit at the screened window for hours, waiting for me to get home from work?” Dad had said.

  Marty had remembered then and he did now, too. He remembered the scratchy bulk of the screen, remembered his own panting anticipation, remembered the rush of raw joy every time he saw Dad’s car turn into the driveway.

  “As soon as you saw me get out, you’d run shrieking out the door, yelling, ‘Daddy, Daddy!’ And then you’d jump into my arms.”

  Marty swallowed a lump in his throat.

  “You okay?” Dina asked. “Is it—you know. One of them?”

  Marty swallowed thickly. “Yeah. It is.” He squared his shoulders, stowing the pin safely in his pocket. “This is proof: The jacket’s in here somewhere. We’ve just gotta keep looking. As long as it takes, right? We’ll search until we find it.”

  “Uh,” said Star.

  Dina and Marty exchanged a worried glance. What now?

  “There was something more you started to tell us earlier, but you stopped,” Marty said, his mind suddenly racing.

  “Right,” said Dina. “You said, ‘if you find your lost object in time.’ Then you shut down on us. What is it about time and how long stuff takes? What aren’t you telling us?”

  Star turned to face them, crossing her skinny arms across her chest. “Kids who find the train get on around midnight, because that’s when the train breaks through the fogbank to become visible for that super-short time. But there’s a catch. A timeline. The finders always leave at sunrise. The sun comes up and they get pulled right off.”

  “What?” said Marty. “What are you talking about? Sunrise?”

  Dina pulled out her phone and goggled at the screen. “That’s in like four hours!”

  “Yup,” said Star. “Sunrise today is at 7:09 A.M. That’s why I said you gotta be good with your time. You don’t got much more of it.”

  “And you’re just telling us this now?” Dina shrieked.

  “I shouldn’t be telling you at all!” Star snapped back. “That’s what the driver said—the kids who get on are supposed to do it all themselves. It’s not supposed to be some kind of guided tour. I’m breaking the rules for you here, so stop yelling at me!”

  Marty turned the new information over in his mind. Something didn’t quite fit. “You said that kids get on at midnight, and they’re gone by sunrise. But . . . you have been here for ages, you said. How’s that even possible?”

  “I,” said Star, “am a special case.”

  “And what do you mean by ‘pulled off,’ anyway? We’re like a billion feet up in the sky.”

  “Train magic,” said Star, and pointedly turned away.

  It was clear there was quite a bit that she still wasn’t telling them. What else was new? Dina was obviously steaming mad, but Marty just wanted to get busy. The clock was counting down, and they’d already wasted enough time in idle wonder.

  It was time to stop searching and start finding.

  * * *

  • • •

  After that, things went both really fast and almost too slowly to be borne. Knowing their deadline gave them a feverish energy that they used to whip through boxes, riffle through bins, and pick through drawers like methodical magpies. They couldn’t totally abandon the Lonely Ghosts (the name didn’t m
ake sense, but Dina started calling them that, and it stuck), so they developed a quick and efficient system for handling them. Star wasn’t very observant, and almost never saw the flashing objects; it was obvious why she hadn’t returned many of the lost things. But Marty and Dina were super good at spotting, and as soon as they saw one, they tossed it Star’s way. Star did the rest.

  They made their way through two more cars in record time. But the farther they got—in spite of the pin in his pocket giving him hope, in spite of the thrill each time a Lonely Ghost recovered a lost object—the more Marty felt his spirits sink. Every passing box, every train car left behind them, was one more place they had not found Marty’s jacket or Dina’s locket. Every so often Star would say something that should have been reassuring or encouraging. Marty barely listened. And after a while, Star stopped bothering. They all knew how worthless words were.

  Marty’s jacket and Dina’s locket were here on the train. But the chances of finding them were looking slimmer and slimmer. They’d almost finished searching the whole train, and all they’d found was one lousy pin.

  What if their time ran out and they hadn’t found their objects at all? Sunrise would come and they’d have to leave, and that would be that. His one chance to get the jacket back, gone. He thought again of Dad’s pale face, his look of hope and love and pride when he’d first given Marty the jacket and explained how it would store their memories. If there was anything that would keep Dad alive, zap his bad cancer cells, and get him back on the road to good health, that jacket was it. Marty had to find it. And he would.

  In that split second, Marty decided.

  Sunrise or not, he’d find a way to stay on. Star had done that. Why couldn’t he? He wasn’t going to fail Dad.

  Marty wasn’t leaving this train without the jacket.

  * * *

  • • •

  Bolstered by his new resolve, Marty marched toward the connector tunnel that led to the next car (only two left till the engine!). Just then, the train gave a shudder. Before Marty could brace himself, there was a violent lurch. It was stronger than usual, and next to him Star grabbed onto a nearby bar. Marty had been mid-step, and he went skidding into the side of the car. The floor tilted and buckled under him. Dina dropped and rolled across the ground like a ball.

  The jarring movement stopped, but Marty’s breath still came in quick pants. “That was—” he gasped. “Wow.”

  Star shot toward the door. “That darned engine! I’ve been out of the cab for too long. I’d better go see what I can do from up front.”

  “Should we”—started Dina, but the door slammed shut behind Star—“help?” Dina groaned aloud. “How can she even know what to do? Do you ever feel like she’s bluffing with all of this? I mean, she’s a kid! She can’t run the train.”

  Marty struggled to his feet, stepping over a piece of clothing that lay wadded on the floor. “She’s been here a while. I’m sure she’s learned stuff. Or maybe the driver taught her before she left?” He frowned and bent over the thing on the ground. It was woolen and orange. But right next to it, something else caught his eye. Could that be . . .

  He picked the scarf up slowly, with the small item caught underneath.

  “Or maybe the train didn’t break until Star took over. Didn’t she kind of say that? That it’s been getting worse since the driver left? Maybe Star’s the one breaking it.” Dina stayed flopped on the ground, her head in her hands. “I’m so tired of all this. Part of me wants to stay here and search and search forever till I find my locket. The other part is like, Who am I kidding? I mean, you’ve got a chance to find your jacket. It’s big, right? It’s a proper-sized thing! A jacket! But with this huge old train? And all these mountains of stuff? Like, literal mountains, right? Do you actually think I’m going to find one tiny—”

  “Hey!” Marty said. His hands trembled as he held the scarf up.

  Dina frowned. “Star’s scarf. It must have come off her neck when we all fell.”

  “No. The scarf was what made me notice, but it had fallen onto something on the ground. Something else. Look.” He tugged at the scarf and worked the item loose from its threads, then held his hand out to Dina. Resting on his palm was an ornate silver locket. It looked super old, the silver dull and tarnished. The locket hung on a fine double-linked chain that looked exactly like a railway track.

  The locket was in the shape of a train’s engine.

  Marty would have bet his life on it.

  This was Dina’s missing locket.

  17

  A WINDOW ON THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD

  Dina froze. Her eyes bulged.

  With trembling hands, she untangled the locket the rest of the way from the scarf. She clicked open the latch and spent long seconds staring at it, her eyes as bright as Christmas lights. They actually shimmered, Marty thought with amazement. Then she gave a deep, happy sigh, and looked in his direction.

  “It is, isn’t it?” he said.

  Dina closed her eyes. Then she threw her head back and shrieked, “YESSSS!” She laughed aloud. “Boy, was that a long time coming.” Then her voice went soft and she held the necklace out to him. “Do you want to . . . have a look?”

  Marty reached one finger out and stroked the etched top. It was warm from Dina’s palm as she placed it in his. The panel was open to show a tiny image of a smiling lady with a baby’s face held up next to hers. The lady’s lips were puckered into a kissy face at the baby’s cheek.

  As Marty’s hand lingered on the silvery surface, the Echo popped up. He watched along with Dina as a youngish, smiling lady—the same one in the tiny photo—held a hand out in front of her. In that hand she held the locket and, as they watched, the lady reached up and fastened it around the neck of a tiny, stick-skinny toddler. The kid couldn’t have been more than two or three, but it was unmistakably Dina. Her face showed the same fierce pride and had the identical stubborn chin. Now, though, her look was radiant with love. Her smile ate up her face.

  Dina pulled her hand back and the image disappeared.

  “Your mom,” Marty said quietly. “Wow.”

  “Yeah,” said Dina. Then she sighed. “It’s weird seeing her again—after so long.”

  There was a silence. Then Marty said, “I guess we’d better get back to searching.” He frowned. “Well, I guess I need to. Since you, um, found yours.”

  Dina shook her head. She’d fastened the locket around her neck and it seemed to put a sort of shine onto her face. Or maybe that was just what happy looked like. “We’re in this together. We found my lost thing, now we’re gonna find yours.”

  “What about Star and the engine?”

  “We’ll make our way to her. There’s not many more cars to go, and now that we’re not searching for a tiny locket, we can go a lot faster. And we can’t help the Lonely Ghosts without Star, anyway. Come on, Marty! Let’s do this.”

  * * *

  • • •

  In the end, though they started with mounds of enthusiasm, it was a depressingly short search. Dina was right: It was a lot quicker to only be looking for a jacket. Especially a jacket that, car after car, just wasn’t there. On the slightly bright side, Marty did find another pin, one that showed a cheeky-looking duck (in honor of one of his and Dad's favorite YouTube songs, the one that started “A duck went down to the lemonade stand,” and that Marty could still sing all the way through).

  The find should have made Marty feel better, but it actually made him feel worse. He was glad for it, sure. But two pins do not a jacket make, and—truthfully—the more bits of his past he found scattered in nooks and corners, the more he felt himself cracking into tiny pieces. The more his life, all of it, intact as it used to be, started to feel broken beyond repair.

  Maybe it was hopeless, what he was trying to do.

  By the time a half hour had passed, they’d cleared the final car and moved int
o the hallway passage leading to the engine. Marty felt his heart pooling down around his sneakers.

  He was the best finder of anyone he knew. He always had been. Why now, when so much was at stake, why was this practically the only time he couldn’t find what he was looking for?

  “It’s in here somewhere,” said Dina stubbornly. “It’s got to be. Where else would those pins have come from? We just missed it somehow. We’ll go back and start again.”

  Marty sighed. He was trying to hold on to his hope, but it was so hard. The floor wobbled again, though at least it wasn’t going all herky-jerky like before. “I guess. We should check on Star first. Make sure she’s okay with the engine.”

  Dina took the lead this time, and Marty wafted dispiritedly behind her. But as he stepped through the heavy door into the engine room, he felt his eyes widen. “Wow!”

  The front cab of the train was small, but high-tech fancy. There were two shiny leather swivel seats set in front of a whole countertop jam-packed full of buttons, switches, and knobs. Lights flashed. Doodads hummed. Red blinked and orange purred and green glowed and everything whirled with activity and purpose. It was like an enormous gaming console, but instead of moving little pixel-people across a screen, it took a huge magical train across the sky and around the world.

  Whoa.

  The whole front of the train was one giant window that wrapped around the edges of the cab and stretched like a bubble up over their heads. Looking out, Marty could see the star-studded night sky on all sides. Far, far below glowed the lights of whatever city they were passing. Dina shuffled toward the right-side window, her eyes wide and wondering.

  In one of the swiveling seats sat Star, hunched forward over the panel, her fingers flying across a touch screen. Every few seconds she twisted to one side or another, poking a button or pulling a lever. She did not seem to be having a good time.