The Lost Things Club

by J. S. Puller

  Sir Staples the Brave.

  Michelle had brushed him off and filled up his round, little body with lint. Not a puppet anymore. Just a stuffed friend.

  The silver heart gleamed on his chest.

  TJ took him from her and held him against his own heart.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  I visited Oak Lake once more, near the end of the summer. My mom had some paperwork she wanted to go over with Uncle Toby, and I asked if I could tag along to see TJ. The second she said yes, I sent a couple of texts to Violet and Michelle. Both of them immediately agreed to meet up one last time.

  The Lost Things Club couldn’t really make any new videos when I was all the way in Deerwood Park and the rest of them were in the city. Well, we could. But they wouldn’t be the same. Still, the three of us had kept in touch. And in our time apart, somehow, we managed to come up with an idea for our best project yet, better than any of our other videos. All we needed was the opportunity to see one another.

  An opportunity I finally managed to wrangle, about a week before school was going to start again.

  My mom and I arrived in the early morning and were pleasantly surprised to find a nice, wide parking space waiting for us, right in front of Uncle Toby and Aunt Lisa’s apartment building.

  As if someone had saved it for us.

  Out of politeness, we let Aunt Lisa buzz us up. She was waiting at the top of the stairs when we got there. “Good morning, Hannah. Good morning, Leah.”

  “Hello, Lisa,” my mom said.

  “Leah! Leah!” TJ came bowling into the living room before I’d even had the chance to walk into the apartment. He threw himself into my arms, giving me such a powerful hug that I thought I might fall over.

  “Easy does it, TJ,” Aunt Lisa said. “You don’t want to throw her down the stairs.”

  “Sorry,” TJ said, pulling back just enough so I could breathe.

  I ruffled his hair. “Hi, Hedgehog.”

  “Is that my baby sister and my favorite Illinois niece?” Uncle Toby came bounding into the room, carrying something bulky under his arm.

  “Hi, Toby,” my mom said.

  “Hi, Uncle Toby,” I echoed.

  He gave each of us a kiss. “Look what I have, favorite Illinois niece,” he said. From under his arm, he produced the drone. It was finally finished, all of the pieces in place.

  “It looks great, Uncle Toby.”

  He looked so proud of himself, I didn’t have the heart to tell him that a couple of the props looked like they were upside down. He handed the drone to TJ. “Come back to my study, Hannah. Let’s take a look at the mess we have on our hands.” He gave me a little wink. “And you, why don’t you take your little cousin for a walk?”

  “Take him for a walk?” Aunt Lisa said, shaking her head. “He’s not a puppy, Toby!”

  “No, bubbeleh,” Uncle Toby said. “You heard what Leah said. He’s a hedgehog.”

  She groaned, but seemed to be smiling.

  Really smiling. In a way I hadn’t seen all summer.

  As the grown-ups disappeared into the study, TJ stood up on his tiptoes and whispered into my ear, “The drone won’t fly. I really, really don’t think Daddy was ever in the CIA, Leah.”

  I covered my mouth to stop myself from giggling.

  The late August trees were still full and thick, although a few of the leaves had started to lose that perfect, vibrant shade of green. They’d be yellow and orange and red in a few weeks.

  The summer was over.

  “Ms. Weinstein makes me write in my journal every night, before I go to bed,” TJ was telling me. It didn’t sound like his time with her was a whole lot of fun, but he wasn’t running away anymore. And he wasn’t quite so quiet. I knew those were both good things. “She says I’m the best writer she’s ever had.”

  “Probably because of all that practice your mommy makes you do,” I told him, swinging our arms, our fingers interlaced as we crossed the street. “You’re lucky you have a teacher for a mommy.”

  TJ rolled his eyes. “Lucky.”

  I smiled slightly. “What do you write about?”

  “Ms. Weinstein tells me to write about how I feel about different things,” he said. “Like, what makes me happy and what makes me sad each day. She calls it the ‘story of the day.’ Although it’s not always a very interesting story.”

  “And what makes you happy?”

  “Mommy’s sticky buns.”

  I laughed. “And?”

  “My library books.”

  “Makes sense. And sad? What makes you sad?”

  He shrugged. “Thinking about Jeremiah.”

  “Yeah.” I nodded. “It’s good that you understand that,” I said.

  “That’s what Ms. Weinstein says.”

  “Well, if she says it and I say it, then it must be right.”

  He laughed.

  We crossed under the train tracks. I was surprised when I didn’t see Morgan there, sitting on his milk crate, waiting for customers. Instead, there was a young woman in his apron and visor, absently scrolling through her phone as she leaned against the wall, behind the register. She didn’t notice us.

  “Hey, Hedgehog. Where’d Morgan go?” I asked, nodding toward the shop.

  “I don’t know,” TJ said. “He stopped being around a little while after you left.”

  “Excuse me?” I said to the woman on her phone.

  She glanced up at us from beneath heavy eyelashes. “Yeah?”

  “Where’s Morgan?”

  “Who?”

  I gestured to the shop. “The guy who usually works here.”

  The woman shrugged. “I don’t know. On vacation. Something about visiting family, somewhere. Or something.”

  She obviously didn’t care.

  I put my hand on TJ’s shoulder. As we continued to walk, I leaned in close so only he could hear. “Maybe he found his flying bathtub and flew away,” I said.

  TJ wrinkled his nose at me. “Flying bathtubs aren’t real,” he pointed out.

  “I know,” I said. “But maybe he found a real way home.”

  We might never know for sure. But it was a pleasant thought.

  The rest of the walk to Squeaky Green was quiet, both of us probably imagining the very best possible ending for Morgan’s story. The little bell over the door rang as we walked in. But neither of us heard it ring again as the door closed behind us, because we were suddenly attacked from all sides.

  “TJ!”

  “And Leah!”

  “Hi, you guys!”

  “What took you so long?”

  Violet and Michelle swooped in on us in a flurry of hugs, and the four of us quickly became a tangled knot of limbs. When we finally managed to break free, I smiled at the two of them. Violet, if it was even possible, seemed to have grown an extra inch in the weeks apart. And Michelle had taken the keys out of her hair, replacing them with buttons from her collection. Not quite as shiny, but definitely a lot less noisy.

  I knew they’d been spending a lot of time together since I left for Deerwood Park. Michelle was helping Violet write down the story of our summer together. And Violet was helping Michelle to pull together all the materials she would need for her high school applications next year. It was strange to think of Violet—her eyes forever on the future—taking some time to reflect on the past. And Michelle, always dreamy about the past, putting some thought into her future. They were good for each other, that way.

  We’d all brought something out of one another.

  “Come on, come on!” Violet said. “We don’t have a minute to lose!” She grabbed TJ by the hand and tugged him in the direction of the wall of dryers.

  “What are you talking about?” TJ asked, stumbling along after her.

  “Our video,” Michelle said, trotting behind them.

  “What video?”

  “The final one,” Violet said.

  “At least for now,” Michelle added.

  “We need a season finale,”
I said, hopping up on one of the washing machines, my phone out and ready.

  TJ looked over his shoulder, his eyes scrunching in suspicion. “Why are we doing a video?”

  I gave him a tiny smile. “It’s what we do.”

  “I left Staples at home.”

  “That’s all right,” Violet said. “You won’t need him for this.”

  “How do you know?” he asked.

  “Because someone”—she gave me a tiny smirk—“finally realized that everything would go much better if we had an actual script. Instead of just making it up in the moment.”

  “There’s a script?”

  Michelle reached into the pocket of her oversized magenta overalls and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. “Here it is.”

  “And everyone has seen it except for me?”

  “I rehearsed my lines with Jamal last night,” Michelle said. “He says it’s the best episode yet.”

  I liked knowing that. Knowing that Jamal had been watching this whole time.

  “We’ve been memorizing our lines all week,” Violet told TJ.

  TJ pouted. “But how am I supposed to memorize mine?” he asked.

  “Don’t worry,” Violet told him. “You only have one written line. But it’s the most important one. So we should probably practice before we start.”

  Michelle and Violet sat down on either side of dryer number five, its door hanging open. They left a space between them, and Violet patted it eagerly, but TJ stood where he was, his hands on his hips, looking so much like Aunt Lisa that I nearly started giggling. “But where’s Queenie? And Francis?”

  “No Queenie,” Michelle said. “No Francis.” She held out the folded script to him. “Take a look, buddy.”

  He took the paper from her and unfolded it. He read only a couple lines before he whirled around to face me. “This says no puppets. This says our real faces.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “But we’re not supposed to show our real faces.”

  “It’s all right, TJ,” I said. “I talked to your mommy and daddy, and they said it was all right to show real faces for this. Remember? Your mommy was going to let us show real faces for the interview for WGN.”

  Violet sighed wistfully.

  Michelle nudged her.

  TJ opened his mouth. Then closed it. “Oh.”

  “Now, go sit with Michelle and Violet,” I told him. “I have to get you all in the shot.”

  Studying the script, TJ walked over and plopped down between them.

  I tried to remember some of the fancy tricks that Jorge, the WGN cameraman, showed me for setting up a shot. But none of them really made a lot of sense when we were inside and the light wasn’t really changing all that much. I would definitely remember his tricks when I got back to school, though. I was kind of thinking about joining our film and theatre club. I wasn’t exactly ready to give up being a director just yet. I liked it. And maybe I was even good at it.

  If nothing else, it had given me a taste of being special.

  Maybe not to the world. But special to the people who mattered to me.

  Which seemed like a good start.

  “What’s this part, here at the end?” TJ asked, pointing down at the bottom of the script. “Where it says ‘TJ tells his story’?”

  Violet’s idea. Well, mine, but only because of something she’d said to me: Every person has some kind of story.

  “Right, so,” Michelle said. “That’s kind of up to you. We wanted to give you the chance to tell your story. About the day of the shooting.”

  “But only if you want to,” Violet added.

  “Oh.”

  The three of us watched him, all thinking the same thing, wondering how he would feel about it. I was the one brave enough to ask. “Do you want to, Hedgehog?”

  TJ bit down on his lower lip. And then he nodded. Only slightly. But he nodded. “Yeah, I think so.”

  “No pressure,” Violet said.

  “Let’s practice the first part, okay?”

  “Sounds good,” Michelle said.

  “Get that right before I…” He trailed off.

  “Tell your story? Remember, you don’t have to.”

  “I’m ready,” he said.

  I wiggled back on the washer just slightly, steadied the phone, and nodded to them to begin.

  “Hello, everyone!” Michelle said, waving her hand at the camera. “This is the Lost Things Club.”

  “School’s about to start up again, which means that this is the end of the first season of the Land of Lost Things,” Violet said. “But don’t think that you won’t be hearing from us again. Season two is just a summer away.”

  “Before we wrap up, we wanted to take a second to thank you all for following us,” Michelle continued. “You watched. You commented. You shared. And the Land of Lost Things would be nothing without all of you.”

  They both turned to look at TJ. Suddenly shy again, I worried that TJ wouldn’t speak. But after a second or two of hesitation, he swallowed hard and looked up at the camera. “We want to dedicate our first season to the memory of Jeremiah Jamison,” he said. His voice was soft at first, but it started to grow. He looked down at the script, and then up again. “Jeremiah was a special person in our lives, and he brought us all together. He was killed in the shooting at Chancelor Elementary School. We’ll miss him every day. But we hope that his memory will stay alive forever.”

  My arms came down, resting the camera in my lap. It was so important to have real faces on-screen for this. The three of them were survivors of something terrible. People needed to see them. Not just to remember. Not just in the hope that something so awful would never happen to kids like them again. But also to understand that there was a life to live after surviving. And the three of them were figuring out how to do just that.

  We sat in silence. And I figured they were all thinking the same thing. Or something like it, anyway.

  My empathy told me that.

  “What do you think, Leah?” Michelle asked. “Good rehearsal?”

  “I think it’s perfect,” I said.

  “Then we should roll,” Violet said.

  “Hang on a second,” TJ said. He got to his feet and turned to face the dryer. After a moment of hesitation, he closed the door with a snap. “That’s better,” he said, sitting down again. “Now, you have to give us a ‘Lights! Camera! Action!’ this time, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said with a smile.

  “So we know that it’s for real.”

  “I will,” I said.

  “Good.”

  True to my word, I raised the camera again and gave them the “Lights! Camera! Action!”

  And I started to record the end of our story.

  I guess I’d predicted my future after all, staring at that grid of letters in the back seat of my mom’s car: “Journey.” “Surprises.” “Story.” Those were my three words. And each of them had somehow managed to come true. I’d gone on a journey full of surprises and lived to tell the story.

  Or maybe we’d written that story ourselves.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  First I need to thank my mother. If you’ve read Captain Superlative, you already know why.

  Writing a book might look, on the surface, like a solo endeavor, but there are so many people involved, and each of them brings something critical, vital, and exciting to every draft. A big thank-you to my agent, Brianne Johnson, and the team at Writers House, for continuing to believe in me and the stories I have to tell. This book would never have happened without Tracey Keevan and her early enthusiasm and editorial thoughts, and Samantha Gentry at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, who passionately drove the story home. Thank you to Erica Ferguson for the incredible and thorough copyedit, which included repeating all my gnarly Google and Wikipedia searches! Additional thanks to copy chief Jen Graham and proofreader Lori Lewis for a thorough polish of the text. James Gulliver Hancock, your cover amazes me every time I look at it.

  This nov
el was guided along by my support network of friends. Stephanie Kaplan and Meg Bullock, without you calming me down every time I freaked out about what my second novel was going to be, I would never have found the peace of mind to actually sit down and write it! Thank you to Carly Ho and her whole NaNoWriMo Discord group for being an occasional sounding board. Nicole Keating, you continue to be my muse.

  I want to thank all my colleagues at the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research. Their continued dedication to improving educational outcomes for students in Chicago and beyond is inspiring. And their research guided me along every single draft. A special thanks to Camille A. Farrington, Joseph Maurer, Meredith R., Aska McBride, Jenny Nagaoka, Steve Shewfelt, Elizabeth M. Weiss, and Lindsay Wright for letting me take part in the arts education project. Arts Education and Social-Emotional Learning Outcomes Among K–12 Students became an unexpected backbone of this story.

  I want to thank LeVar Burton. I’ve never actually met him and I probably never will, but I thought it would be cool to include someone as awesome and awe-inspiring, who has done more for childhood literacy than any Starfleet officer I can think of. And I’m the author, so I get to thank whomever I want.

  Ana Maria Garcia, gracias por tu amor y amabilidad.

  And finally, a big thanks to my parents: to my father, Neil Puller, for taking such a profound interest in every step of this journey and always getting so excited when it was time to take another one; and to my mother, Deborah Goldberg, who I promised to thank first and last when I win my first Tony Award. Still working on it, Mom!

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  Robert E. Potter III

  J. S. PULLER is a playwright and author. She has a master’s degree in elementary education and a bachelor’s degree in theatre from Northwestern University. She is an award-winning member of the American Alliance for Theatre and Education and has done research on the social-emotional benefits of arts education, with the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research. In addition to The Lost Things Club, she is the author of Captain Superlative, her debut novel, and several published plays, including Women Who Weave, Perseus and Medusa—It’s All Greek to Me!, and The Death of Robin Hood. When not writing, she can usually be found in the theatre. She lives in Chicago. She invites you to visit her at pullerwrites.wordpress.com, on Facebook @puller.writes, and on Twitter @pullerwrites.