by J. S. Puller
TJ looked at her. “What’s our charter?”
“It’s our sacred honor and duty to tell the story of the Land of Lost Things,” Michelle said, touching a hand solemnly to her heart. “So the story itself doesn’t get lost.”
“Oh, yes.” Violet copied her, putting a hand to her heart as well. “Yes, of course. It’s an important job. For the future of history itself.” She looked at TJ. “What do you think?”
“I don’t know,” TJ said, scrunching up his face a little bit.
Michelle tilted her head, the keys in her hair clacking against one another. “You don’t want to be in a club?”
“Of course I do!” TJ said.
“So what’s the problem?”
“How do we… how do we follow our charter?” he asked. “How do we tell people about the Land of Lost Things? They won’t believe us, will they?”
Violet and Michelle looked at each other. And I could tell that neither of them were sure how to answer. The story and the conversation and the club. We all knew why it was happening. It was for TJ. TJ, who only seemed to come alive in the presence of lost things. There was no question that he was troubled. We’d all seen the way he acted when he wasn’t at Squeaky Green. Even Michelle. She probably knew best of all. She’d seen when he ran away from Ms. Weinstein.
She took such good care of him. Like a big sister.
Now I understood. Everything Michelle did, everything she said, and the way she looked after him. It was all about TJ. She had somehow realized that TJ needed this, needed the Land of Lost Things.
And if that’s what he needed, that’s what he would get.
“I think I know,” I said, rippling my fingers.
All at once, I knew a lot of things. Including my role in all of this.
I guess that’s just how inspiration comes. Without warning. It just hits you. Like lightning or pigeon droppings.
TJ looked at me eagerly. “You do?”
“Of course,” I said. “I know exactly how we share the story of the Land of Lost Things with the world.”
“How?”
I picked up my phone.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
We added pink dryer sheet feathers to Francis. Two elegant plumes on top of his head and more down the length of his neck. And used lint to extend his beak, running an orange ribbon around the back of it to give it that flamingo ombré, from orange to black. Someone had left a plastic comb in their pocket, sending it through a washing machine. We pulled off the long, black teeth, curling them with our fingers and gluing them over Francis’s eyes one at a time, giving him thick, luxurious lashes.
Sir Staples received buckteeth, made out of two pieces of gum. To soften the look of his quills, we wrapped loose pieces of yarn in black and brown and gray around the pens. It made him fuller and fuzzier. More like something you’d want to cuddle. Less like an office-supply store had exploded.
I donated my blond hair extensions to Queenie. Michelle carefully looped them under her crown.
Michelle’s mom came in around noon, the sound of the door opening startling us all, especially TJ. But Michelle’s mom was no less startled to see so many kids hanging out with Michelle.
“Hi, Mama,” Michelle said.
“What’s all this?” she asked.
“Just hanging out with my friends.”
“Your friends?” Michelle’s mom grinned. “That’s wonderful. About time you brought some friends around!”
“Is Jamal here?”
Her mom shook her head. “You know I can’t get that boy to come out of his room. I don’t know what I’m going to do about him.”
Michelle’s shoulders sagged. But she didn’t say anything.
“Listen, I need to drive Willy to his basketball thing in Skokie, so I just came back to grab my purse. Are you kids hungry?”
We were. And she offered to order a pizza. Unfortunately, we couldn’t agree on a topping.
Violet wanted green peppers and olives.
Michelle wanted pineapple and spinach.
I wanted sausage and onion.
TJ wanted pepperoni.
We settled on plain cheese.
And, as luck would have it, we decided that the plastic table, the one used to keep the top of the delivery box from touching the cheese, would be perfect for the inside of Queenie’s crown, which had started to collapse in on itself. The white spokes of it towered over the silver teeth of the crown. Michelle found a couple of brightly colored beads and glued them to the tops. They looked like precious jewels.
“You’re so good at seeing how things can work together,” Violet said. It was a rare compliment.
Michelle shrugged. “When we were little, I had to keep Jamal entertained. It’s all about adapting. You’d be amazed how just a ring of keys can keep a toddler happy for hours.”
By the time we were ready, the table was covered with Michelle’s boxes and socks. It was messy, but I wanted it that way. I wanted a jumble of confused shapes and colors. A swimming sea of lost things, so mixed and matched that it was hard to tell where one thing ended and the next one began. All part of the bigger picture forming in my mind. “Go to the other side of the table,” I told them, once we were sure the glue on the puppets was dry.
The three of them obeyed.
“Now,” I continued, “you have to squat down, so that your heads are all under the edge of the table.”
“Like this?” TJ asked, dropping down to his haunches.
“Perfect,” I said.
“Easy for him to do,” Violet said, crouching. “He’s a little pip-squeak. Some of us are over four feet tall.”
It took her a bit of maneuvering before she was able to get it so the top of her head didn’t show.
“All right,” I said. “Now, all of you, hold up your puppets.”
Queenie, Francis, and Sir Staples appeared, like they’d risen out of the sea on the table itself.
The lost things had come alive.
“Oh, that’s perfect!” I said. I took out my phone, opening up the video app. When I held the camera up, I saw an awesome picture. Staples and Francis were evenly centered. “Violet, move Queenie a little closer to Francis.”
Grumbling, Violet scooted closer to Michelle on the floor.
In the frame, Queenie came into focus.
“That looks great!”
“Wonderful!” Violet said. “Now what?”
“Now, I guess we begin filming.”
“We need something to say,” she replied.
“Oh.” I frowned. “Uh, I don’t know.” How did these things usually begin? I quickly thought through all the YouTube channels I watched, with all their gimmicks and hooks. When I thought about it, they all really began the exact same way. There was a formula they followed. And I’d watched so many, I kind of knew it by heart. “I guess you can start by introducing yourselves,” I said. “Or, at least, your puppets.”
“Don’t forget the charter, Leah,” TJ chimed in.
“What?”
“The charter! We have to tell the story.”
“Oh, right!” I said. “That should come next.” The way all the YouTubers introduced their channels.
“Should Staples tell it?” Michelle asked.
“No,” TJ said. “I think Francis should.”
“Why Francis?” Violet asked.
“I like his funny voice.”
“What voice?” Michelle asked. And then she immediately went into her over-the-top accent. “Blimey! Do you mean this voice here, me old chum?”
“Yes.”
She giggled. “All right.”
“And then what?” Violet asked.
“And then…” Michelle paused. I couldn’t see her under the table, but my guess was that she was twisting her mouth up to one side.
“The charter,” I said. “And then we ask everyone watching to spread the story. That’s how it gains power. From being told.”
“Really?” TJ asked.
“Really. And a
ll good videos end with the people in them asking the people watching to look out for more,” I said.
“Well, I think that sounds like a job for Queen Queenie,” Violet said.
TJ made Staples dance in the air. “Yes, yes, yes!” he said.
“All right.” I held up my camera. “Let’s do this.”
“How do we know when to start?” Michelle asked.
“In the movies,” TJ said, “they always go ‘Lights! Camera! Action!’”
I nodded. “I’ll do that, then. Okay?”
“Yup.”
“Okay!”
“Sounds good!”
My finger hovered eagerly over the record button. With a smile, I stared into the screen. “Lights! Camera! Action!”
We thought it would be easy, but, of course, we were so very wrong. Even figuring out who would say which part was difficult. Without a script, Francis, Queenie, and Staples kept talking over each other. I had to stop the camera every time. In fact, the first few takes lasted five seconds at most before two people tried to talk at the same time.
“Let’s take a step back,” I said, after nearly ten mess-ups. “Before we film, let’s try to rehearse it a little bit.”
“What’s rehearse?” TJ asked.
“Practice.” How many times had I heard Nicole talking about the theatre? Clearly enough that it had sunk in, at least a little.
And rehearsing turned out to be a wise decision. It definitely helped smooth out some of the bumps, anyway.
“Greetings from the Land of Lost Things!” the three of them all said, speaking together as one, after we agreed that was how to start.
“I’m Queen Queenie the Fifth!”
“I’m Sir Staples!”
“And I’m Francis the flamingo.”
Just that little bit, those opening moments, took us about an hour to figure out. We rehearsed and rehearsed until it was perfect. And then realized that we had a whole lot more of the video to go.
We couldn’t be perfect. Not if we wanted to finish it before dinner.
We’d have to settle for “good enough.”
After that, things got easier. We broke the video down into three different pieces. The beginning, middle, and end.
“Timeless classics,” as Violet called them with a glimmer of amusement.
We practiced each part on its own.
And then started trying to string them all together.
The hardest part was learning how to keep going, even when someone said something wrong or silly or out of place. TJ was particularly bothered by that.
Once, while Francis was in the middle of explaining the Land of Lost Things, Violet chuckled and said, “There’s also a hand lost up my spine!”
“Quit goofing around,” TJ snapped, in his own voice, not as Staples.
Another time, when Queenie was encouraging people to follow our adventures, she threw in: “And if you don’t want to join us, you can just get lost.”
“Don’t be mean!” TJ said. “If you’re mean, you’ll pay for it.”
“Calm down, TJ,” Michelle said. “She was only playing with words.”
I couldn’t exactly see him, but I was pretty sure that he was pouting. I’d have to talk to him about that. Pouting never worked. I’d learned that the hard way, back when I was a little kid. It was almost as bad as crying.
We got through it once. And then again. And looking at the clock, we saw that we’d lost track of time.
“It’s now or never,” Violet said, lowering her arm to shake out the stiffness in her elbow.
“We got this,” Michelle said.
And she was right.
I filmed the whole thing. One straight shot. No one slipped up. No one coughed or sneezed. When someone stumbled over what they were saying, they kept going, without apologizing or “breaking character,” another term I’d picked up from Nicole.
Michelle was by far the best.
When Francis started to tell the story, it almost carried me away. In spite of his funny voice and the way he bounced around on screen, his words were hypnotic.
“Nothing’s really gone forever. Only misplaced. Lost. And lost things have a whole world of their own, our world. The Land of Lost Things. Remember that blanket you lost on the bus when you were three? Or that book you never meant to leave behind on the train? And that favorite pair of socks, the one that started as two before being separated in the wash? They’re all here with us. A part of us. And when your world touches ours, those things touch yours. So fear not for that missing pen, that misplaced retainer, that old, forgotten key chain. They’ve found their way home.”
Home.
If only lost things really did have a home.
When we finished, I called, “Cut!” And all three of them let out a whoop.
“We did it!” Michelle said, jumping up to her feet.
“That was so cool!” TJ said.
Violet stood up, putting her hands on her hips and bending her back over, stretching out the cricks in her spine. “Of course,” she said, “you realize this means we’re going to have to film more. I mean, we promised our viewers more adventures.”
“If we actually get any viewers,” Michelle said.
“I know how to get to work on that, at least,” I said.
“Where are you going to put it?”
“YouTube,” I said.
You couldn’t have a YouTube account if you were under thirteen. Since I was only twelve, I didn’t have my own. But my mom had an account: HannahCantor777. One she almost never used, so I logged in to that. In the past, she’d let me post some videos from trips we’d taken. Sweeping panoramas of New York City and Aspen and Los Angeles. I was allowed to post anything I wanted, as long as it didn’t have my face in it. Or TJ’s face.
Sir Staples didn’t count.
So I uploaded the video.
“‘The Land of Lost Things. Part One’?” I looked at the others as I filled in the title.
“Part one,” Violet said. She looked at Michelle.
Michelle nodded. “Part one.”
Part one it would be. With a few keystrokes, I put it out into the world. And then I texted the link to Nicole. I owed her a picture for the day, and this was even better than a picture.
“That was so much fun, you guys!” TJ said. His eyes were shining.
Violet ruffled his hair. “Glad you enjoyed it.”
“But we’re running out of time,” I added. “We need to be back for dinner in twenty minutes.”
“Help me pack up some of this stuff,” Michelle said. “Don’t worry about the socks, though. I’ll take care of that.”
We put away the extra buttons and beads and ribbons. Well, Michelle, TJ, and I did. Violet decided to start alphabetizing the shoeboxes, so she kept taking them out when we put them in, rearranging the order, muttering under her breath about how we needed to have a list to find things in the future.
“Hey, Michelle?” TJ said, as he carefully set Staples down on the table, like he was putting a baby to sleep in a crib.
She looked over at him. “Yeah?”
“When are we going to get to go to the Land of Lost Things?”
“Go there?” Violet said.
“Michelle told me we could go there sometime.”
“Why would you want to?”
He turned his eyes away from her, and I thought I could see a little color rise in his chubby cheeks.
“Soon, TJ,” Michelle said, tossing her hair and the keys over one shoulder, with a lovely jingle.
“When?”
“I said, ‘soon.’”
“But what does that mean?”
“When the time is right.”
“How do we know when that is?”
“If I had something more specific, I’d say it.”
TJ scowled. “Before school starts again?”
“Oh, definitely,” she replied.
“Good.” He nodded. “We have to go before school starts. I need to go before school
starts.”
“Of course,” Michelle said.
I glanced at the clock in the corner of my phone screen, then held a hand out to TJ. “Come on, Hedgehog, we have to get home.”
He walked over to me. Slowly. Reluctantly.
“Violet?” I said. “You coming?”
“You go ahead without me,” Violet said. “I want to finish organizing these boxes.”
Behind her, Michelle rolled her eyes.
“Okay,” I said, taking TJ by the hand.
We left Squeaky Green together, the regular customers smiling at TJ.
He smiled back.
At first.
But the smile thinned. And by the time we’d stepped outside into the warm and wet evening air, the smile had faded completely.
I knew what was going to happen.
He was going to slip away. Bit by bit. Until we got back to Uncle Toby and Aunt Lisa’s apartment. And there would be nothing left of the sunny boy I’d spent the day with.
Well. Nothing but the video, anyway.
“Hey, little man!” Morgan called to us, as we crossed under the bridge. He was wiping down the counter in front of the doughnut shop.
“Hi, Morgan,” TJ replied.
“How are you, Cousin?” he asked.
I felt a little heat rise in my cheeks. I didn’t think I’d ever feel comfortable talking to a stranger, even if TJ did. “Fine,” I mumbled, staring straight ahead.
“It’s okay,” TJ whispered to me, once we passed under the tracks and out of earshot. “Morgan’s safe.”
I looked down at him. “Yeah?”
“Promise.”
“You seem to like him. Why is that, Hedgehog?”
TJ shrugged. “I just do.”
“There has to be a reason.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I guess he’s the only grown-up who doesn’t ask me how I’m feeling all the time.”
“Oh.”
I didn’t know what to make of that. Then again, I’d caught a glimpse of Aunt Lisa’s articles, all those lists about taking care of a child and listening to him and asking him questions. Aunt Lisa was always hovering around TJ. Uncle Toby, too. I guess I could see how that might get exhausting after a while.
I wondered if I counted as a “grown-up.”
I hoped not.
And that was kind of funny. Usually, I was sick of people treating me like a kid. But just this once, I guess I needed to be one.
