The Lost Things Club

by J. S. Puller

  The video after that was devoted to the secret tunnel entrance to the Land of Lost Things, in one of Squeaky Green’s dryers.

  We had to film that one early in the morning, before any customers stopped by to do their laundry.

  “All right,” I said, sitting on top of one of the washing machines to line up the shot. “Puppets up.”

  Violet, TJ, and Michelle were all lying on their backs in front of the open door to dryer number five. In unison, they raised their arms and the puppets appeared on-screen.

  “Great,” I said. “Just great. Queenie, move in a little closer.”

  “You’re being very picky about the shots, Leah,” Violet said.

  “It has to be perfect.”

  “If I move in much closer, I’m going to be lying on top of them,” she replied. But she still managed to maneuver her arm a little bit closer. Without lying on top of TJ and Michelle, thankfully.

  I adjusted the angle of the phone, careful to cut out any hint of Violet’s slender wrist, the bracelets that had fallen around Michelle’s elbow, TJ’s wrinkled blue sleeve. “Let’s run through the opening,” I said.

  “We know the opening,” Violet whined.

  “Fine. How about the middle, then? The story about the entrance?”

  “Better.”

  “Start us off, Leah,” TJ said. “But only for pretend. Like we’re doing it for real, but not yet. Rehearsing.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Lights! Camera! Action!”

  The characters came to life on the screen.

  “Today, we’re going to show you one of the secret entrances to the Land of Lost Things,” Queenie said.

  “There are so many secret entrances out there,” Francis said. “But this is one of our favorites.”

  “It’s in Squeaky Green Coin-Op Laundromat,” Staples said. There was no sense in hiding where we were. The world had already seen. And seemed to like knowing that there were adventures to be had in Oak Lake.

  Queenie nodded her head, which was really most of her body. “That’s right, Sir Staples the Brave. Dozens of people walk past this entrance every day, and they don’t even know it’s there.”

  “But that’s life,” Francis said. “So many people never notice what’s right in front of them.”

  “Which is really kind of sad, when you think about it,” Staples said.

  I hadn’t really thought about it. Not while we were coming up with what each of the characters would say. But something about the way TJ spoke through Sir Staples made me feel a sort of pang of emotion I hadn’t expected. I had no name for it. Other than a sort of rush of truth.

  My eyes started to sting. But I blinked them hard. I had to keep paying attention.

  “The entrance to my Land of Lost Things is in the most ordinary of places,” Queenie said.

  “It’s a dryer!” Staples said.

  Francis turned his beak to the camera. “Have you ever noticed that sometimes a sock disappears after being tumbled dry? Maybe you thought it just got caught somewhere or dropped or misplaced. But today you’re going to learn the truth. And the truth is simply that the sock slipped through a secret portal to the Land of Lost Things, a portal right here in the back of the dryer!”

  “It’s not the only entrance, of course,” Queenie said. “There are lots of entrances, all over the planet.”

  “But this is the busiest!”

  “And now you know the truth,” Staples said.

  “So the next time you lose a sock after laundry day,” Francis said, “don’t blame your mommy or daddy.”

  “Just know that your sock has come to reside in my kingdom.” Queenie buzzed with pride. “And that it’s in good hands.”

  Michelle let out a peal of laughter. One that definitely wasn’t planned.

  “Michelle!” TJ said, sitting up.

  “What was that?” Violet asked, propping herself up on her elbow.

  I dropped my arms.

  “Sorry, sorry.” Michelle wiped her eyes with her free hand, scooting herself up against the bank of dryers. “It’s just that it was funny.”

  “What?”

  “Good hands.” She waved Francis, wiggling her fingers in his beak. “And our hands are in the socks right now.”

  Violet raised both eyebrows.

  “Quit messing around,” TJ said. “This is important.”

  “Sorry, TJ.” She shook her head. “I was just thinking. What if someone’s missing sock was on-screen right now? Maybe someone was looking at Francis and going, ‘Hey, that’s mine!’”

  “‘Those kids are thieves!’” Violet said.

  “That won’t happen,” TJ replied. “We aren’t thieves. The other socks are in the Land of Lost Things.”

  “Of course, of course.”

  He gave Violet a stern look, before turning to me. “Let’s start again from the beginning. Give us a ‘Lights! Camera! Action!’”

  “Okay, Hedgehog,” I said, shaking out my arms before I raised the camera to frame them again.

  The three of them neatly arranged themselves on the floor.

  “Lights! Camera! Action!”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  By the last week of my visit in Chicago, HannahCantor777 had gained a lot more attention. When we began posting, my mom’s account had only five followers. Two professors she was friends with and three cousins, who lived in New York City. But with each video, the following went up. It wasn’t just people we knew anymore. Now strangers were hopping on, eager to see the next Land of Lost Things video.

  Our videos got lots of comments. Of course, there were plenty of trolls out there, making fun of our “cheap” puppets and lousy video quality. I’m not going to lie, that kind of stung a little. Maybe a lot. I was feeling kind of raw after I had my cry. But, seriously, what were they expecting? A three-camera setup with puppets fresh from the Jim Henson workshop? We were just students, after all.

  Still, most of the feedback we got was pretty great.

  I love all three characters! Will there be any more?

  Thank you for helping us remember that there are lost people among us. It’s important we pay attention so they don’t end up in the Land of Lost Things again. <3

  Francis is so funny!

  You go, Oak Lake! Represent!

  Where did you come up with such an amazing story?

  That last one upset TJ.

  “It’s not a story!” he said.

  “I know, Hedgehog,” I said, rubbing his shoulder.

  “It’s not!”

  I decided after that to be more careful when I showed the others all the comments we were getting.

  But we saw the Land of Lost Things taking off in other ways.

  After we posted the dryer episode, Michelle’s mom came to us to thank us for mentioning Squeaky Green. Business was picking up.

  We saw it, too.

  Since our faces were never on-screen, we could walk anonymously through the laundromat, watching as strangers slipped inside, taking pictures of dryer number five, where we’d been filming.

  The regulars griped a little bit:

  “All these people wandering around. It’s hard to get work done.”

  “I have to wait ten minutes to get a washer!”

  “Who are all these people?”

  But Michelle’s mom was so happy she even put a sign out in front, announcing Squeaky Green had been a filming location for several Land of Lost Things stories.

  “They’re not stories!” TJ said.

  It was such a sore point that Michelle got her mom to change the wording on the sign from “stories” to “videos.”

  Maybe the most amazing part of it all, though, was what we saw happening with Morgan. We’d promised Uncle Toby and Aunt Lisa again and again that we wouldn’t film with him anymore. But what was already out in the world was out in the world. And we still walked the same route to and from Squeaky Green every day.

  Now, when we passed under the tracks, we’d spot people who’d just gotte
n off the train, flocking to Morgan’s little shop. Sometimes, they’d ask him if they could take a picture with him. He always said no. But they also bought boxes and boxes of doughnuts. And some of them asked about his missing daughters: What were their names? How old were they? Did he think they could have seen the video? It was more attention than I’d ever seen him receive, and I was glad for it. His life had seemed so silent and hopeless before, sitting alone in his shop with nothing to talk about except doughnuts. But now he had company.

  Life was changing for everyone and everything that our videos touched.

  Except for TJ.

  TJ was the same.

  Wednesday night, I walked into the bathroom to brush my teeth before bed.

  I was trapped in the sorrow

  Surrendered to despair

  Went looking for myself

  But couldn’t find “me” anywhere

  I was singing softly, so the upstairs neighbors wouldn’t start beating on the ceiling, demanding that we turn off the garbage disposal, which is, I was sure, exactly what my voice sounded like. I would absolutely never admit it to Violet, but I was starting to really get into Dina and the Starlights.

  Finally wrote my own story

  And I found my own sound

  Learned you can’t really lose

  What was meant to be found

  I opened my mouth to start the next verse, but instead, a tuneless “Gah!” escaped my throat, when I looked in the mirror. I spun around. Behind me was the bathtub, and the curtain was drawn back at the moment. TJ was sitting in the tub. It was empty, and he was wearing his Kermit the Frog pj’s, covered in googly eyes, rainbows, and little banjos.

  Just sitting there.

  His arms around his knees.

  It had been a hard day. Instead of going to Squeaky Green with me, he had to go to Ms. Weinstein’s office with Aunt Lisa. Both of them returned tight-lipped and unhappy. And each disappeared into their own room. Neither one came out again until Uncle Toby got home, carrying two heavy bags of takeout. Dinner was both of them staring down at their plates of broccoli chicken while Uncle Toby made up a bizarre story about how he invented a time machine to travel back to ancient China to get our food.

  His version of the CIA was truly capable of anything.

  Of course, TJ hadn’t said a word the whole meal. But something told me that he was ready to talk now.

  “What are you doing, Hedgehog?” I asked breathlessly, walking over to the ledge of the tub and perching near him.

  “I was just thinking,” he said, in a faraway kind of voice.

  “Thinking about what?”

  “About how I could turn the tub into a flying machine.”

  “Like Morgan?”

  He nodded.

  “Why would you want to do that?”

  “Well,” he said, “I figure that if Morgan could use it to fly back from the Land of Lost Things, maybe I could use it to fly there.”

  “I think you’d need a lot of hair spray.”

  “Mommy uses a lot,” he said.

  I had to stifle a laugh. Aunt Lisa used more hair spray than anyone I knew. First thing in the morning, she always seemed to carry a cloud of it with her to the breakfast table. Over the day, it would diffuse a little bit. But even in a stiff wind, her hair never seemed to move all that much.

  “True,” I said, swinging my legs over the ledge, so I could fall down in the tub beside TJ. I pulled him up against my side. He let me hold him. “And what would you use to steer?”

  “Morgan used an old encyclopedia.”

  “We don’t have any encyclopedias. Only Wikipedias.”

  TJ shrugged. “I’m sure any book would work.”

  “Maybe.”

  “And we have a lot of them.”

  “Oh, but it would be way too scary,” I said.

  “Sir Staples is Sir Staples the Brave. I can be, too.”

  “Can be what?”

  “Brave.”

  “Of course.”

  I leaned my head against his, his soft curls tickling my cheek. We sat there quietly for a moment. I was still missing part of the story. TJ seemed so unhappy. In spite of the fact that things were amazing right now.

  He let out a long sigh.

  “What is it, Hedgehog?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s just…”

  “Tell me.”

  “I keep asking Michelle when we can actually go to the Land of Lost Things,” he said. “Instead of just talking about it.”

  Almost every day now, in fact. We could never really leave Squeaky Green without the question coming up.

  “And she keeps saying the same thing, over and over and over again.”

  “‘Soon,’” I said.

  “Soon.” He pulled away from me, turning his face up to look me in the eye. “When is ‘soon’ going to happen?”

  “I don’t know, Hedgehog.”

  “Is it going to happen?”

  I stared at him. Long and hard. And wondered how to answer. What was I supposed to tell him? No, of course “soon” wasn’t going to happen. There was no Land of Lost Things. Not really. It was just a story. But any time someone used the word “story,” he got so upset.

  Did he not understand?

  It wasn’t the first time I’d wondered.

  It was just a story.

  TJ had to know that, deep down. He was a smart kid. He’d grown up understanding that any time Uncle Toby started talking about the CIA or other planets or dragons, the only response was to groan and roll your eyes. And Aunt Lisa. She’d read to him every night since he was little. His room was filled with picture books. When she started insisting he write a hundred words a day, he even wrote his own fairy tales.

  He was literally surrounded by stories.

  He had to know what one was, when he saw it.

  “Leah?” he asked.

  I realized I’d gone silent. My nose had that funny, tickly feeling that came with tears. Once I’d allowed myself to cry, it was harder to control than before.

  I had changed.

  “When are we going to go to the Land of Lost Things?”

  Never.

  But looking down at his little face, intense and full of hope.

  How could I say that to him?

  I was beginning to understand why Michelle always used the word “soon.” It was an easier answer.

  Easier than the truth.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  It wasn’t “soon.” But all the same, TJ accepted it. Not happily. But willingly. He nodded a little and settled against my side again. “I hope it’s soon-soon,” he said.

  “Me too, Hedgehog.”

  I hoped it was soon. I hoped it was always “soon.” Because any other answer and I didn’t know what would happen.

  But it scared me.

  I was just getting my cousin back. The Land of Lost Things was bringing him back from being lost.

  I didn’t want to lose him again.

  And I saw now how very easy that might be.

  After everyone was asleep that night, I made a decision. As quietly as possible, I opened the study door and crept into the hallway, trying to avoid the creakiest of floorboards, as I tiptoed into the front room. Beyond the table, with all of Aunt Lisa’s plans for the fair, was the cabinet, where she’d hidden away her binder and the book. I’d been thinking about it, off and on, for what felt like forever. Now I knew I needed to see what she was hiding.

  If she caught me, I would be in so much trouble.

  But it had to be worth it.

  I opened one of the cabinet doors and found the book, Psychological Trauma and Recovery, right on top. The binder was beside it. When I pulled it out, it seemed thicker than before. Like she’d been adding more lists.

  I sat down on the floor and opened it to the first page. “Children with acute stress reactions,” it read on top, followed by a thick block of text, filled with words that I couldn’t even begin to understand. “Hypope
rfusion”? “PTSD”? What were those? I jabbed my finger at one of them, as if it were a link that would magically open to a new page with a definition. But paper didn’t work that way. You had to read it in a straight line, without taking side trips to new pages. I gave up on scanning the page after a minute, turning to the next one. “Healing after a school shooting,” it read. And more blocks of text. I decided to read it out loud, under my breath, to force myself to understand it.

  “Fear, rage, anxiety, detachment, depression, and difficulty sleeping are just a few of the symptoms associated with the months following an acute trauma, such as surviving a school shooting.”

  Fear? Well, TJ did flinch at loud noises.

  Rage? I still couldn’t explain how he got so angry at his parents.

  Anxiety? I wasn’t sure about that one. But I thought about him sitting in the bathtub. There was something anxious about him.

  I kept flipping through the pages, reading them as best I could, but I started to see more of the same things, over and over again.

  Psychological damage.

  Trauma.

  Symptoms.

  Survivor’s guilt.

  Stimuli.

  Social anxiety.

  Isolation.

  Selective mutism.

  I got back to the lists, offering suggestions of how to help kids after a school shooting: listen, be reassuring, make them feel safe, don’t let them watch the news, promise them the world is really a good place, give them healthy food, take care of yourself.

  Be there for them.

  Show empathy.

  I knew that word: “empathy.” It meant feeling what someone else was feeling.

  Something I guess I wasn’t too good at doing, considering the way I always bottled up my emotions. You couldn’t feel what someone else was feeling when you didn’t allow yourself to feel anything at all.

  Except that something inside me had shifted, when I let myself cry for the first time in four years. I was different now. A door had opened.

  I was sad, I realized, because TJ was sad.

  I really could feel what he was feeling.

  But empathy wasn’t enough. I still didn’t have the answers. I didn’t know why he was sad. And I didn’t know how to cure that sadness, either.