by J. S. Puller
“Hey, Hedgehog?” I said.
He looked up at me. “Yeah?”
“Are you okay?”
He shrugged.
“You know, if something’s making you sad, you could tell me.”
TJ looked away.
At first, I didn’t think I’d get a reply. We were close to home. His step was heavier. And his focus drifting. The shine was gone from his eyes now. They were colorless again.
But right before we climbed the stairs, he shook his head, ever so slightly. “I just want to visit the Land of Lost Things,” he said. “Soon.”
That was the end of it.
He didn’t say a single word the rest of the night.
But after TJ and Uncle Toby and Aunt Lisa went to bed for the night, I sat on the sleeper sofa in the study, playing the video we’d made again and again. Just to hear his voice.
And trying to see something more.
A bigger picture.
A puzzle.
One I couldn’t put together yet.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The funny thing was, it turned out that I wasn’t the only person watching the video. When I woke up the next morning, I had fifteen text messages waiting for me. The first was from Nicole:
That video is crazy cute. Shared it with everyone at camp!
It was sweet. I thanked her with two heart emojis: one purple, because that was my favorite color, and one orange, because that was her favorite color.
Then, I quickly realized that Nicole must have shown it to more than just her camp friends, because the other fourteen texts were from our classmates. No one I was especially close to: kids who were in the school play with Nicole, Nicole’s next-door neighbor, even David, the boy Nicole had a crush on. All of them said more or less the same thing:
So cute!
I love it!
More please!
Francis is my hero!
Leah, you should totally join the film and theatre club!
Honestly, I didn’t know what to do with all that attention. I was just glad none of them could see me. I was blushing uncontrollably.
I thanked all of them.
After that, I went to YouTube and saw that over a thousand people had viewed the video already. In less than sixteen hours. That was more than any video of mine. Probably more than all of them combined. We had thirty-six thumbs-up and zero thumbs-down, so far. It was unbelievable. Like all my classmates had sent it to their friends, who had sent it on to their friends. I let out a tiny squeal of delight.
There were even comments, too:
How did you make those puppets?
Are the puppets actual lost things?
Someone should put this on cable access!
Is that Squeaky Green in Oak Lake?
That last comment made my heart jump. We’d been so careful not to let anyone know who we were. But peering into the corner of the screen, I realized that there was an old Squeaky Green sign up on the wall in the back room.
I was going to have to pay more attention to the bigger picture. That one was on me.
The comment went on:
That neighborhood’s had a rough couple of months. Great to see something so sweet coming out of it! Yay!
Uncle Toby had the day off and said he wanted to join us for our walk. TJ gave me a look, so fast that Uncle Toby missed it. It was a look of panic. A look of fear. And a look that said he needed me. He needed me desperately.
And he needed to keep Squeaky Green our secret.
I suggested we go to the park.
The three of us ended up sitting side by side by side on a wooden bench, watching the neighborhood kids play a game of pickup basketball.
“Did I ever tell you about the time the CIA had to play a winner-takes-all game of basketball with a team of aliens from the planet Cattatoon Eight?” Uncle Toby asked us, taking a sly sip of his pop. “The fate of the entire human race was at stake.”
I smiled absently and refreshed YouTube to see that the video was up to forty-one thumbs-up.
Saturday was more of the same. But on Sunday, I woke up to a silent house. Uncle Toby had to take the car into the garage, and Aunt Lisa went to church. They left me a note saying they’d be back in the afternoon and told me to watch over TJ.
By this point, the video had climbed up to three thousand views. We had fifty-eight thumbs-up and only one thumbs-down. New comments popped up, all of them excited and encouraging, from people I didn’t know, with avatars I’d never even seen before. I showed TJ when he crept out of his room, wiping sleep away from his eyes.
“Is that good?” he asked me softly.
“That’s incredible.”
And you know what was even more incredible? Hearing him talk in the apartment!
“You know what that means?” he said.
“I’m ten steps ahead of you, Hedgehog,” I told him.
I was already texting Violet.
Meet us at Squeaky Green. We have work to do.
I texted Uncle Toby and Aunt Lisa to let them know we were going for another walk. And within an hour, Violet, TJ, and I were heading to the train tracks. Just as we were about to pass under, though, Michelle came trotting down the sidewalk, holding a canvas bag that was suspiciously lumpy.
Today’s outfit was the most lost of lost things yet.
A ratty, old T-shirt for a Grateful Dead concert. Whatever that was. A pair of scruffy jeans, with one leg cut off at the knee. A knee-high argyle sock on one foot. A short, dainty pink ankle sock with lace around the top on the other.
“Hi there,” she said.
“Hi.”
“Hey.”
“Hiya, Michelle!”
“What are you doing out here?” Violet asked.
Michelle turned her face up to the sky. The sunlight streamed down on her skin, lighting her silhouette a delicate white-gold. My fingers itched to take a picture; it was such a gorgeous moment. “It’s such a beautiful day!” she said. And she went up on one leg, spinning around in a lopsided circle, the bag beating against her shoulder. “If you looked up the phrase ‘beautiful day’ on your phone, you’d see a picture of today!”
It was, in fact, one of those rare summer days in Chicago. When it was neither too hot nor too sticky. It was kind of perfect. Sunny, but with a breeze. We weren’t sweating or steaming. The kind of day you wished you could have forever.
“But we have to do another video!” TJ said. “Our charter, remember? It’s our duty! We have to tell the story.”
Michelle smiled at him. “Who says we have to tell the story only from one place?” she asked.
With that, she opened up the bag and pulled out Staples, his silver heart gleaming in the sun.
“What?” TJ said. “Out here?”
“Why not?”
“But the Land of Lost Things. You get there through a dryer.”
“That’s only the most obvious entrance,” Michelle said. “There are entrances everywhere. Which means, we really ought to be everywhere.”
I could see that Michelle was thinking on her feet. She was good. Really, really good.
TJ didn’t look like he was entirely convinced, though. “Like where?” he asked.
Violet jumped in. “Like there.” She pointed to a sewer grate, sunken into the curb by the sidewalk.
“Really?”
“Sure!” Michelle said.
TJ turned, immediately rushing over to the grate. He wrapped his tiny fists around two of the metal bars and gave them a sharp tug. Of course, the grate didn’t budge.
“You can’t get in through there, buddy,” Michelle said. “That thing is way too heavy.”
“Oh,” he said, looking a little disappointed.
“Let’s make a video, okay?”
“All right…”
Once Violet, TJ, and Michelle slipped on their puppets, they all turned to look at me. “Where’s the best place to film?” Violet asked.
Because, of course, a decision like that fell to me.
/> That was how I fit in.
That was my place.
“Good question,” I said, nibbling on the tip of my tongue. Definitely not at the sewer grate. There was no way to hide their faces there. “If we’re telling stories about the Land of Lost Things, then we should probably try to find a lost…”
It hit me without warning, like inspiration always does.
Without saying a word, I moved past them all, marching into the cool shade under the tracks.
“Leah?” Michelle called.
“Where are you going?” Violet asked.
But they followed me. Followed me as I went right for the old, rusty bike. The one I’d taken shelter behind when I was spying on TJ. It was still there. Twisted and rotted, with a spiderweb glittering like silver thread.
“This is it,” I said.
“This is a tetanus shot waiting to happen,” Violet replied, giving the bike a look, as though it was about to spring like a snake and bite her.
“Trust me, this’ll work perfectly.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course.”
“It’s perfect,” Michelle said.
TJ bobbed his head in agreement. “Yeah.”
I started experimenting with ways to line up the shot. The bike wasn’t as solid and sturdy as the table. I knew I had to find a way to angle the camera so that I saw the puppets but not the puppeteers. So I had the others try a lot of different postures and poses. And just when we were on the verge of giving up, the idea hit me.
“How about I put the bag between the handlebars?” I said, pointing to Michelle’s canvas bag. “Then, the puppets can come up, out of it. Like they’re in the basket!” I was pretty sure I could frame it just so.
“Let’s give it a try,” Violet said.
And it worked. Somehow, I saw what wasn’t there and made it so. It was a little bit of a tight squeeze for the three of them, huddling down around the front wheel. But if I stood on the bottom bar of the next-door bike rack and angled the camera down, zooming in good and close, I could just get all the puppets in the shot, without anyone’s arms or faces showing up.
Of course, it was only a momentary victory.
“What are we going to say this time?” TJ asked.
Violet, Michelle, and I each looked at the other.
That was the hardest part.
“Is that my little man, over there?”
The four of us whipped around to spot Morgan. He was hidden in the shade of the doughnut shop, carefully laying out rows of shiny, fresh doughnuts with his gloved hands. The frosting gleamed jewel-bright under the little shop’s lights.
“Hi, Morgan,” TJ said.
“You bring any bottle caps for me today?” He was extremely precise, I noticed, with his work. Each doughnut was lovingly lifted out of its pink box, carefully placed. They were evenly spaced, the rows perfectly lined up.
I wanted to take a picture of them.
“No,” TJ admitted.
“I’ll check for any later today,” Michelle said. “Are those the triple chocolate specials?”
“You bet. Hey. What’s that you got there?” Morgan asked, pointing to Francis on her arm, as she trotted over to get a better look at the doughnuts.
“That’s Francis the flamingo,” TJ said, trailing behind Michelle. “And this is Sir Staples! Knight to Queen Queenie. The bravest hedgehog in the whole universe!” Proudly, he pranced Staples across the line of Michelle’s shoulders, nuzzling against her neck.
Michelle giggled and raised one leg.
“Queen Queenie?” Morgan said, carefully placing the last doughnut. “What’s she queen of?”
“The Land of Lost Things,” TJ said.
“Land of Lost Things?”
“Yup.”
“Where’s that?”
“It’s a secret world,” he said. “It’s where lost things go.”
Morgan made a little harrumph. “Lost things, huh?”
“Yup.”
“Guess that makes me one of the escapees,” Morgan said.
Michelle frowned thoughtfully, tilting her head so her keys jingled against her shoulder. “What’s an escapee?”
“It’s someone who got away from something,” Violet said, walking over.
Wide-eyed, TJ turned to look at Morgan again. “You escaped from the Land of Lost Things?”
Morgan nodded, collapsing the empty box and stashing it somewhere behind the register counter in front of him. “Sure did. After all, old Morgan is a genuine lost thing myself.”
He was smiling as he said it. An eerie half smile, front tooth jagged and chipped. I felt something rise up from deep inside me. A swell of emotion that I quickly had to force back down. I wasn’t going to let myself cry. But I realized that I was, in fact, kind of sad. For Morgan. I didn’t know where he came from. But obviously, it wasn’t anyplace good. If it were, he wouldn’t say he was lost.
He wouldn’t look so lonely all the time.
That was no way for a person to live at all.
“Hey, hey!” TJ said. “I think I have an idea for what our next video could be.”
“What?” Michelle asked.
“We should talk to Morgan!”
“TJ…” Violet started.
“No, really!” TJ hopped Staples over the air, coming up to Morgan’s side. “He could tell us the story about how he escaped from the Land of Lost Things.”
“Oh, it’s quite the story,” Morgan said. He opened a door in the counter, coming out around it with his milk crate, which he set in front of the shop. “Let me tell you.”
“Please!” TJ turned to look at me and Michelle. “What do you think? Wouldn’t that be a great video?”
I didn’t know what to say.
“Sure,” Michelle said, deciding for us. “That could be interesting. Queen Queenie could hear the tale of his adventure. And maybe make him a knight.”
“Sir Morgan of the Maple Glaze?” Violet said.
“Something like that.”
I looked at Morgan. “Morgan, do you want to do this? You don’t have to.”
He looked over at me, with a softness I hadn’t seen in him before. “I’d love to tell a story,” he said, his voice quivering just slightly.
Like no one had ever asked him to before.
Like he had been waiting all his life for someone to ask.
Normally, I would have made a face at a grown-up who sounded like he was going to cry. But not this time.
“Well, that settles it,” Michelle said. “Let’s figure out how we want to film this.”
We remembered the lessons we’d learned from our first video. Immediately, we broke the story down into three parts: the beginning, middle, and end. The beginning, I decided, should stay more or less the same as last time. “In case someone only sees the second video, but not the first.” Things were always out of order on YouTube. The middle would be the story of Morgan’s daring escape. And then the end would be similar to the first video, with a promise of further adventures to come. But first, Queen Queenie would take a moment to knight Sir Morgan (of the Maple Glaze).
Morgan patiently watched us rehearse our opening, the puppets popping out of the canvas bag on the bike. He actually seemed to enjoy it. Between customers buying doughnut holes and crullers, he laughed at the funny voices Violet, TJ, and Michelle made. And each time, without fail, even if they messed up, he gave them a round of applause at the end.
Nicole would have called it a “standing ovation.”
In fifteen minutes, we had the opening down.
Next was the hard part. Or, at least, what I thought would be hard. The telling of Morgan’s tale.
“Okay,” I said, taking charge, “so I think what we should start with is Francis telling Queenie and Staples that they’re going to have a very special visitor.”
“Your Majesty, Your Majesty!” Michelle said, going into her Francis voice. “I have magnifisome news! A wandering hero has a tale to tell!”
“
Good,” I said. “Let’s do something like that.”
“Okay.”
“‘Magnifisome’ isn’t a word,” Violet said under her breath.
Michelle stuck out her tongue.
I pointed to TJ. “And you can introduce him.”
“How should I do that?” he asked.
“Say something like ‘He once was a citizen of our land but braved many dangers to return home.’”
TJ considered it a moment. And then nodded. In his Staples voice, he said, “He was lost in our land. But then he found a way back h-home.”
It wasn’t word-for-word, but it was close enough.
“Okay,” I said. “And then Queenie can say—”
“Bzzzz,” Violet interrupted. “Bzzzz. I should very much like to hear the tale of his heroics and name him a knight of my realm!”
“Perfect.”
They practiced it three times through. TJ stumbled a little with his wording. Something about the word “home” kept tripping him up. But he knew what he was doing, more or less. He’d get it right.
“What’s next?” Violet asked.
“Next is Morgan’s story,” I said. I looked over at Morgan, who was smoothing down his rumpled, wrinkled apron. “You can tell them the story of how you escaped the Land of Lost Things. How you got back here.” I paused. “Do you have any ideas about how—”
“In a flying machine,” Morgan said.
TJ looked up at him. “A flying machine?”
“A flying machine I built myself.” Morgan settled down on his milk crate, pulling one of his knees up against his chest with his crooked fingers. I noticed one of his fingers had a pale band of skin around it, like he usually wore a ring, when he wasn’t busy selling doughnuts. “You see, I used to be a knight of another land. This land. Our land. A soldier. They said I was a hero. I was the best at building things. Quickly. Sometimes out of nothing at all. Give me the carburetor off a four-by-four truck, a wire hanger, and a piece of gum, and I could whip up something that made toast, hummed ‘Baby I Need Your Loving,’ and polished your boots at the same time. In a minute or two. Throw in a bottle cap and it would also pick up radio from as far as Abu Dhabi.
