Sarah Durst - The Lost

He was Mom’s older brother, and he’d talk to her that way sometimes, too. He’d notice what she hadn’t cleaned—the dust on top of the refrigerator, the eggs inside that had expired a week ago, the mail that hadn’t been sorted, the shoes that were scuffed, and he’d gently remark about how it was such a shame she was so busy, or how his wife miraculously juggled it all, even though they were married and childless and she didn’t work, unlike Mom. Mom always tolerated it. She let it roll off her back like water off a plastic tablecloth. Or at least she seemed to. It was one of those things we didn’t talk about, like my father, like her father, like why she never went home for Thanksgiving, like why I broke up with that boyfriend that everyone thought was better than sliced bread. He wasn’t. But he thought he was, too. And he took my best pair of sunglasses when he left. He didn’t respect me. Certainly didn’t respect my dreams. He might have respected my sunglasses.

Claire hugs me. “I trust you, too.” She releases me and skips out the door.

The dress that Claire picked out for me has a pocket, and I slide a knife into it. The weight makes me feel marginally better, even though I can’t imagine stabbing anyone with it. Following her, I head toward the front door.

I hear the crowd before I see it, a low buzz like a hornet’s nest, and I contemplate jumping out a window and swimming away. I could do it. I’m a strong swimmer. Or I used to be. I can find a new house, scavenge for new things. Claire would be fine, and eventually I could sneak back and fetch her and Peter. I’ve learned enough about how to survive here that I think I could make it on my own, at least for a little while. But Claire has a grip on my hand.

She flings open the front door. In a dramatic voice, she says, “She was lost, and she suffered. But she has forgiven you and is here to heal your soul!” I hear voices, rising in excitement—they’ve seen Claire’s glow.

Pulling my wrist, Claire yanks me outside.

I plaster a smile on my face and hope it looks more like a kind, benevolent smile, rather than maniacal, which is what it feels like. This is a terrible idea, I think. I’m no savior. I’m glad that Peter is watching from the roof. I force myself not to look up and give him away as I walk onto the porch. At least a dozen men, women, and kids are perched and lounging on the porch and junk pile. They’re rattier-looking than either Victoria or Sean. One man is dressed in a coat sewn entirely from socks. One of the boys is wearing rags with so many holes and stains that it looks as if a stiff breeze will blow it off his body. Another woman is in a sequin dress and draped with diamond or rhinestone necklaces. Every finger is covered with enormous rings, three on each finger so that her knuckles cannot even bend. Seeing me, all of them unwind from where they lay, and they rush forward.

Claire steps in front of me, at the top of the porch steps, and puts her hands on her hips. “One at a time!” She claps her hands for attention. “You know she can’t work a dozen miracles at once! Go in the order you arrived. I’ll give you numbers.” She marches off the porch. The crowd breaks. Some are glaring at her, some are glaring at me. A few look at me in what looks like awe. One lies on his back and counts, clouds I assume, except the sky is clear. He could be counting dust particles.

A young woman shoulders her way to the front. She wears a lacy hippie shirt, a bandana around her head, and Mardi Gras beads. Her eyes are sunken in with deep bruiselike circles under them, as if she hasn’t slept in aeons. Or as if she is on drugs. “I first.” She glares at me, and I shrink back.

Claire marches down the step and puts her hands on her hips. “You aren’t ready,” she announces. I stifle a smile. As my new self-appointed manager, Claire is acting more like a forty-year-old diva than a six-year-old little girl. Granted, she is older than she looks, and being on her own has aged her... My urge to smile fades. This place is robbing her of her childhood. How long has she been here? A year? Two? Three?

The woman switches her glare to Claire. “You don’t know anything. Just because you have the glow—”

“Come back later.” Claire points instead to a boy with a backward baseball cap and shorts that ride three inches lower than the waistband of his boxers, which are bright red with blue rocketships. “You first.”

The kid shrugs and saunters up to the steps. “I’m ready.”

I don’t know what he expects me to do. Everyone is watching me. I clear my throat. Claire is beaming up at me, her eyes wide and face expectant, lit by her glow. I wonder what Peter is thinking from his perch above me. “What did you lose?” I ask.

He shoots a look over his shoulder.

I think of Victoria, how she said no one asks about the past. “How about you come inside?” Stepping aside, I indicate the door. “Claire, let me know if...” I trail off, not certain how to communicate that she should let me know if any of the crowd shows homicidal tendencies. I’m also tempted to take her inside with me, my six-year-old bodyguard.

The boy peers into each of the rooms as I lead him inside. I take him to the living room and point to one of the chairs opposite the face of the steam engine. I sit nervously on the edge of the couch. I can see the ocean out of the window, also the void.

He nods at the water. “What’s up with the ocean?”

“I think it’s mine.”

“Sweet.”

“Thanks.” I look out at it, more for a safe place to look than anything else. How exactly did I get myself into this? Oh, yeah, I trusted a six-year-old. “Do you know what you lost?”

“Yeah. It was after school. A Thursday. Not that that matters. Girlfriend just broke up with me. Rightfully so. She wasn’t what I lost. Cheated on her. Totally deserved it. I was a douche-bag boyfriend.” He talks fast, clipped, the words popping out of him as if they’re shooting out of his mouth.

“That’s...good of you to realize.”

“Ran across some guys from school. Just hanging out, you know? Anyway, there was this pack of girls. You know the type. Pretty girls. Perfect hair. Swish when they walk. Not sure how they do that without falling over. The kind that want you to look at them but then yell when you look, you know? As if you don’t have the right to have eyes?”

I nod. I do know the type. I wasn’t one of them, but they never really bothered me. I ran with the artsy crowd. We considered ourselves superior because we’d mastered the art of publicly angsting over cultural decay, even if we were privately angsting over the basketball team.

“I was sick of them looking down at me. Sick of all of it. The guys were joking... Long story short, I singled one out, one that looked a lot like my ex, one with the superior smile and that look in her eyes, and I started talking about her. Lies. But detailed lies. And it spread. Got back to her. She denied it, but no one believed her. And so I thought I’d hit on a great way to bring them down to our level. Stop them from looking so superior, or something. It was stupid. It was petty. I knew it at the time. But I was the Robin Hood of the social order, you know? Restoring fairness to the high school hallways.”

He’s flushing fiercely as he talks. His neck is bright red.

“How did you wind up here?” I ask.

“That girl, the first girl, the one that I started with telling lies. She killed herself. And after that...I didn’t go to the funeral. Didn’t think I had the right. Stood outside the church, though, and when the family came out, I...took a walk. And kept walking until I was in this part of town I didn’t recognize. Turns out it wasn’t a part of my town at all. It was here.” He shrugs. “And that’s pretty much it.”