The Lost Things Club

by J. S. Puller

  “She may be right, bubbeleh,” Uncle Toby said. “You listen to Leah. She’s good at organizing things.”

  “Oh, she’s absolutely the best,” Aunt Lisa said. “But it’s too much. Everyone on the planning committee is overwhelmed as it is.”

  “I could do it,” I said. “I mean, I’m going to be here for a few weeks. I’d be happy to help out.”

  “Absolutely not,” she said. “It’s the summer. I won’t be putting any niece of mine to work in the middle of summer.”

  “But—”

  “Besides, you spend too much time online, as it is.” She sounded just like my mom. “The crafts fair will be fine,” she said. “Don’t you worry about it.”

  “I just want to help.”

  She reached across the table, putting her hand over mine, giving it a light squeeze. “You’re a sweetheart, Leah. But please. It’s the summer. While you’re here, I want you having fun.”

  In all honesty, it sounded fun to me. But I knew better than to argue with Aunt Lisa. And, I supposed, now wasn’t the time to get distracted. I really had been close to something with TJ. I knew that. Maybe I just had to try again.

  I looked over at him, sitting in his enormous chair, staring at his plate, without touching any of the brontosaurus meat. “Hey, Hedgehog?” I said.

  He didn’t look up.

  “Do you want to go for a walk again tomorrow?”

  I didn’t have expectations. So it was a surprise when he just barely nodded.

  If I hadn’t been paying close attention, I would have missed it.

  Across the table, I thought I heard Aunt Lisa gasp a little. But when I looked at her, she was focused on her own plate, neatly cutting up her turkey burger into little squares. “There we go,” she said. “You’ll get in some quality time with your cousin.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  Quality time with TJ. And hopefully, Michelle and Violet, too.

  And Sir Staples.

  I really wanted that part of TJ to come back.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Michelle kept busy after we left Squeaky Green. And when we arrived the next morning, we saw all of her hard work. Every single one of her boxes of lost treasures was open, sitting on the table, on the counters, and on the floor. Besides the usual buttons and ribbons and candy-bar wrappers, she’d produced a weird assortment of objects from the miscellany box, including a couple of white feathers, a string of dingy yellow lace, and a wad of gray-and-brown dryer lint, about the size of TJ’s head.

  “What’s this?” TJ asked, bounding over to the table to inspect the new finds.

  He was talking again, apparently.

  “More lost things,” Michelle said, balancing on one foot. Today, she was wearing a sleeveless pink plaid, button-down shirt, tied at her waist, and a pair of jean shorts. One sock was green, with giant white eyes on either side. The other was striped red, orange, and purple. “For Queenie and Staples and Francis.”

  I ran my finger along the spine of one of the feathers. “These would make decent bumblebee wings,” I said, remembering the way we’d diagrammed insect wings in our science class the year before.

  Was it exactly the same? No.

  But it would work.

  They had the feel of the wings.

  “I was thinking that,” Michelle replied. “And this”—she held up the lace—“could be a collar. Like that picture of Queen Elizabeth in Mr. Rosenzweig’s classroom, the one with the big dress.”

  “Oooh, I like that,” Violet said.

  “I love looking at that dress.” Michelle sighed. “I sometimes imagine what it would be like to wear it.”

  Violet smirked. “Why am I not surprised?”

  “I’ll bet the big skirt has all kinds of secret compartments in it. Like an inner pocket filled with grapes.”

  “Why grapes?” Violet asked.

  “In case the queen gets hungry.” Michelle giggled. “That’s what I’d do if I were Queen Elizabeth.”

  “Queen Elizabeth?” I said. I remembered the name from the news. “The lady from England with the funny hats?”

  “No, no. That’s Queen Elizabeth the Second,” Michelle said. “I mean Queen Elizabeth the First. This ancient British queen who wore big, puffy dresses.”

  We each claimed a seat around the table. Violet slipped Queenie back on her arm, and Michelle and I got down to business, gluing the wings in place. I took out my phone with my free hand to look up a picture of Queen Elizabeth I. And Michelle was right. The lace matched the picture perfectly, on a slightly smaller scale. I helped her glue the dress ruffle in place around Queenie’s neck. TJ put Staples on his hand but set his chin on the table, mostly watching the two of us work. It was hard to believe that Queenie was made out of junk. She looked pretty great. After she was dressed, Michelle had Violet stuff some of the dryer lint inside the sock. Queenie’s body filled out nicely. She really did look like a round, fluffy bee. Violet buzzed her around the room experimentally.

  “What do you think, buddy?” Michelle asked TJ.

  “She’s great!” he said. “Is it my turn now?”

  “I found the perfect nose for a hedgehog,” she replied.

  And she really had, too. It was a bead that had come off someone’s clothes and gotten lodged in the lint trap of one of the dryers. It was shiny and black, just like a real hedgehog nose. We stuffed lint into Staples’s snout, then glued the bead to the tip.

  “Hold it in place, TJ,” Violet said. “The last thing you want is for your hedgehog to have a runny nose.”

  “Runny nose?” TJ said.

  “A nose that runs away. After it falls off.”

  He laughed at that.

  Violet looked pleased.

  It seemed like the two of them were getting along much better, now that Violet wasn’t taking obsessive notes.

  I slipped my phone off the table and tried to angle it up, so I could get a quick snippet of video, but it wasn’t working. The table’s edge kept blocking the shot.

  And I was pretty sure I could feel Violet giving me a pointed look.

  I was being rude.

  But she didn’t get it. She didn’t know how much I needed the proof of life from TJ. How much Aunt Lisa and Uncle Toby needed it.

  “He needs something to make him a knight, though,” TJ said, examining Staples critically.

  “What makes someone a knight?” I asked, closing the camera app and setting the phone back on the table in defeat.

  Michelle gave us a dreamy smile. “A brave heart.”

  Another candy-bar wrapper was turned inside out. We cut the shiny, silver paper into the shape of a big heart, then glued it to Staples’s chest, like a badge of honor.

  TJ beamed.

  “What about Francis?” I asked.

  “I had an idea about him,” Michelle said. She opened a drawer and pulled out a couple of wadded-up, used dryer sheets. “We could color these pink and tear them into strips to be feathers.”

  “A few on top of his head,” Violet said. “He is a hairdresser, after all. You can’t have a bald hairdresser.”

  Michelle nodded. “Exactly.”

  There were four sheets and four of us. So we sat around the table, and Michelle gave us each a marker. She had what seemed like an endless supply of different shades of pink, since it was her favorite color. “Jamal and I used to draw together all the time.”

  “Sounds like you used to do a lot of things together,” Violet said.

  Michelle sighed. “I used to be his favorite person in the whole world.”

  It wasn’t quite as easy as drawing on paper. There were all sorts of little dips and crevices in the surface of the sheets. But we were determined, and it was oddly peaceful to just sit and color.

  I scrolled through the Wikipedia page on Queen Elizabeth I as I worked, my curiosity getting the better of me. Her royal motto—apparently, old kings and queens had their own mottos—was “I see but say nothing.” Sounded like TJ.

  One click l
ed to another.

  The way it always did.

  And as I was scrolling through an article about the Shelby Gem Factory (after clicking on Tower of London, Crown Jewels of England, Black Prince’s Ruby, and rubies), TJ looked up at Michelle.

  “Hey, Michelle?” he said. There was a trip of hesitation in his voice.

  Michelle looked at him. “Yeah?”

  “Do you think…”

  “What?”

  “Do you think that you could… maybe…”

  “Maybe what?” She paused. “Buddy, I can’t do anything unless you tell me what it is. I don’t have my psychic license yet.”

  TJ shrugged one shoulder up to his ear, squirming in his seat. “Do you think you could maybe tell Violet and Leah the story?” he asked.

  “The story?” I said, my fingers hesitating.

  Violet raised both eyebrows. “What story?”

  But Michelle didn’t look at either of us. She widened her eyes, staring at TJ. “The story?” she said.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Whaaaaaaaat stooooooory?” Violet repeated.

  “Really, TJ?” Michelle said, ignoring her. “You want me to tell them the story?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “I don’t know.” She pursed her lips together. I could tell that she was just teasing TJ, but he thought she was being very serious. “Do you think they’d believe it?”

  “Yes,” he said. No hitch in his voice. He was certain. In a way I hadn’t seen him be certain about anything, all week.

  “And you think they’re worthy of hearing it?”

  He nodded. “I think so.”

  Michelle took a deep breath, then let it out slowly, giving him a solemn nod. “Well, all right. But only because you trust them.”

  “What’s the story?” Violet asked.

  “It’s a secret,” Michelle said. “Passed down from laundromat owner to laundromat owner, since the beginning of time.”

  “Which was a long, long time ago,” TJ said.

  “I would never have guessed,” Violet said dryly.

  I kicked her under the table.

  “Ow!”

  “It’s about another world,” Michelle continued. “A world that most people don’t even know about.”

  “Tell them what it’s called,” TJ said.

  She glanced sideways at him. “I’m getting there, I’m getting there.” I got the sense that she was kind of enjoying his impatience.

  Violet set her chin in her palm, elbow resting on the table. “Oh, I am all ears for this,” she said.

  Ever the journalist. Ever ready to hear the scoop. Even without her notebook.

  “Another world?” I asked.

  “A parallel universe to ours,” Michelle said. She held out both of her hands, her palms just centimeters apart. “Touching in places, but only just touching. It’s called…” She paused. It was the same sort of dramatic pause that Uncle Toby used in the middle of one of his CIA stories. The kind of pause that made everyone listening eager for the story to continue. “The Land of Lost Things.”

  “Well, that’s a mouthful,” Violet said.

  “The Land of Lost Things.” I looked at TJ as I said it.

  He was staring up at Michelle, with an expression I didn’t entirely understand. It was equal parts awe and excitement. And a sort of longing. There was a need, a desire in his shining eyes.

  “There are gateways to it in this very building,” Michelle continued. “You see, the best way to reach the Land of Lost Things is through the back wall of a dryer.”

  The word fell like a thud in the middle of the room.

  I turned to her. “A dryer?”

  “Of course,” she said. “Haven’t you ever noticed how things sometimes just disappear from the laundry?”

  As she said it, I turned to look at the piles and piles of socks on the table. All of them lost, without a partner. “I guess so,” I said.

  “They don’t just”—she snapped her fingers—“vanish into thin air, you know. They go somewhere. They’re transported.”

  “To the Land of Lost Things,” Violet said.

  “Exactly! And socks are only the beginning of it. There are so many things that people just lose. Because they’re careless or thoughtless or just not paying attention.”

  “Or because they’re mean,” TJ added.

  I looked at him. “Mean?”

  Michelle kept going. “If you visit the Land of Lost Things, you’ll find an entire ocean, filled with nothing but pens and earrings and buttons and half-used lipsticks.”

  “And socks,” Violet said.

  “Of course! Socks, too. Keys. Homework assignments.”

  “Mittens,” Violet added. “My sister loses at least one every winter.”

  Michelle snapped her fingers again and pointed at Violet. “Yes!”

  “Tell them about the castle,” TJ said.

  “I’m getting to it. Just a second.” Michelle grinned at us. “But yes. He’s right. There’s a palace in the Land of Lost Things. A beautiful palace, made of white marble and gold, with columns as big as trees. And a courtyard blooming with a thousand flowers that were given to girls for school dances and accidentally left behind in the bathroom.”

  “Tell them where it comes from! The castle! That’s the most important part!”

  She looked down at TJ. “Do you want to tell the story?” she asked.

  TJ shook his head. “No. I can’t tell stories like you do.”

  Michelle’s smile got so big I figured it had to be hurting her cheeks. “The palace is ancient. Older than the oldest castle in England or France or China. It wasn’t built in the Land of Lost Things, you see. The reason why it came to be there is because the palace itself was lost.”

  Violet raised both her eyebrows. “How do you lose a castle? I mean, they’re big.” She gestured to her face with her marker. “Most people have eyes.”

  “It’s the castle from Atlantis,” Michelle said.

  We both fell silent for a moment. Violet blinked. And then, as I watched, a slow smile spread across her face. “Atlantis,” she said. “The lost continent.”

  “Yup.”

  “I get it,” she said.

  “The Land of Lost Things is a mysterious place.”

  “An immortal place,” I said suddenly. I don’t know why. I guess I just wanted to be part of it. “After all, you know what we lose way too often?”

  “What?” Violet asked.

  “Time. We’re always losing time.”

  I had heard the expression before. “Lost time.” And “losing track of time,” too. I did it constantly, whenever an internet search started to spiral out of control. But I’d never really thought of it as something concrete. Not until I was suddenly invited into Michelle’s imaginary world.

  “I guess,” Violet said.

  “Time doesn’t move in the Land of Lost Things,” I said. “It’s always both day and night. The sun and moon sharing the sky.”

  TJ’s eyes widened. “So you know about the Land of Lost Things?” he asked.

  “Sure,” Violet said. “Of course she does.” She gestured around the table. “All three of us do. In fact, all seventh graders know about the Land of Lost Things.”

  “Really?”

  Violet seemed to be having fun. “Yeah. Tell him about it, Leah.”

  Michelle and Violet both turned to me. The words came to me effortlessly, like they’d been waiting for me my whole life. “You know, you can never get lost in the Land of Lost Things,” I said. “You always find your way to whatever you want to see; you don’t even need a map. Because people only lose their way here. In fact, every time someone here gets lost, their sense of direction just flies over to the Land of Lost Things, and someone there is able to find their way.”

  TJ was staring, his little mouth hanging open.

  “And the Titanic is there,” I said. “It sank through the bottom of the ocean and out of our world. It sails the seas of the Land of
Lost Things.”

  “With Amelia Earhart at the ship’s helm,” Michelle said. “She was lost hundreds of years ago.”

  “Who?” TJ asked.

  “Amelia Earhart,” Michelle said. “The famous aviator.”

  Violet tilted her head to one side. “What’s an aviator?”

  “An airplane pilot,” TJ said.

  “Right!” Michelle said with a grin. “She tried to fly all the way around the world, but one day, her plane completely vanished. Poof!”

  “Because it slipped into the Land of Lost Things,” Violet said.

  “Exactly!”

  TJ’s eyes danced from Michelle to Violet to me and back again.

  “But, of course,” Violet said, “Amelia sails her ship under the flag of the queen of the Land of Lost Things.”

  “Who’s that?” TJ asked.

  “Why, Queen Queenie the bumblebee.”

  TJ wrinkled his nose. “But she’s just a puppet.”

  “A puppet based on the actual queen,” Michelle said. “Violet only had one sock to make her. The other’s off in the Land of Lost Things. Sitting on the throne.”

  He considered it a moment and then slowly nodded, accepting the explanation, even though it seemed flimsy to me. “I guess that makes sense,” he said. “Does that mean there’s a Sir Staples there, too? And Francis the royal hairdresser?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “You know,” Michelle said, “since we’re all in on the secret, I think that maybe we should start a club.”

  “A club?” I asked.

  She nodded. “A special club.”

  I shivered with delight at the word.

  Special.

  “What do we call ourselves?” TJ asked.

  “The Lost Things Club.”

  There was no better name. We all found ourselves nodding in silent agreement. “But a club needs to be more than just a club,” Violet said. “We have to have a charter.”

  “A charter?” Michelle said. “What’s that?”

  “A reason for existing,” she said. “Something that makes us special.”

  That word again. Special.

  “Maybe some kind of shared mission.”

  Violet was on a roll. “Well,” Michelle said, “that should be obvious.”