Chapter Six

“Food, water, shelter.” Peter ticks off the items on his fingers as he hops from Dumpster lid to Dumpster lid. Claire scampers behind him as if she were part-squirrel. She has her old teddy and Prince Fluffernutter stuffed in a sequined purse that matches her shoes. I follow along on the ground, trying to step gingerly over the muck.

“If you can get me home, we can skip all of that,” I say.

“He can’t,” Claire said. “He’s the Finder.”

“I find lost people. Like you.” He doffs an imaginary cap at me. “Bring them out of the void to Lost. Save them from disintegration.”

“Once you’re here, only the Missing Man can send you home,” Claire says. “Everyone knows that.” She skips across cardboard boxes as if she weighs zero pounds. “But first, you have to find what you lost. The Missing Man helps with that, too. If you can’t find what you need here, he can go into the void and it will come to him. That’s his power.”

“I didn’t lose anything,” I say.

“They all say that,” Claire says.

“What did you lose?” I ask her.

“My front tooth. And my parents. They left me in a shopping cart in the grocery store.” She says it calmly, as if it’s old news. “The police couldn’t find them, and so I went to look for them myself. That’s when Peter found me and brought me here. I’ve been here ever since.”

“How long ago was that?” I ask softly, gently.

“Long enough,” Peter interrupts. “But first, home, home, sweet, sweet home!” Crouching on top of a Dumpster, he points down the alley. It leads to bright desert sun.

Claire hops from the boxes and lands beside me. She sinks with a squish into the muck but doesn’t seem to mind. She slips her hand into my hand. “We can play house. Teddy will be the mommy. Prince Fluffernutter is the baby. He needs to nap.”

I’m not good with kids. I never babysat, except for one disastrous evening that was supposed to be a favor for one of Mom’s library friends wherein I nearly called 9-1-1 because I thought the three-year-old had locked herself in the bathroom. She hadn’t. The door was just stuck. But she did squeeze every bit of toothpaste into the toilet and then cram it full of toilet paper. I was in tears by the end of an hour. Still, it’s not so difficult to squeeze Claire’s hand and say, “Sure. He looks sleepy.”

“I know a lullaby,” she declares. In a sweet lilting voice, she sings as we walk toward the light, “Rock-a-bye baby on the treetop. When the wind blows, the cradle will rock. When the bough breaks...” I hear padded footsteps behind us and a low growl. Looking over my shoulder, I see yellow eyes in the shadows. One of the feral dogs. “...the cradle will fall.”

I catch Peter’s eye and jerk my chin backward.

He holds up three fingers. There are three dogs. My heart pounds faster, and I sneak another look. All three are large and muscled with yellowed fangs and fur in patches. In the bare patches, their skin is scarred.

“And down will come baby, cradle and all...” Claire trails off. I am gripping her hand hard as the three dogs trail after us. “Ow.”

I loosen my grip. “You have a lovely voice.”

“It’s not a nice song, is it? Babies shouldn’t fall.”

“It’s not nice,” I agree.

“Wonder why it was written that way. Much better, ‘When the bough breaks, the cradle will fly, and up will go baby, into the sky.’”

“He’d still have to land,” I point out.

“Possibly,” Peter says. “Or he could sprout wings and fly.”

“That’s silly,” Claire says.

The end of the alley is only a few yards ahead. I can see the wide stretch of desert before us. The blue sky gleams like a jewel, the brightest color that I’ve seen here. For some reason, I feel like if we reach the desert, we’ll be safe from the dogs. I know it’s not a rational belief.

Walking faster, I ask in as even a voice as I can, “Should we run?”

“They’ll chase if you do,” Peter says, equally conversationally. He walks faster, too.

“Do you have special Finder powers you can use on them?” I wiggle my fingers to indicate magic. I am half-serious. I wouldn’t be surprised if he were magic. He reminds me of light on the water, flashing and changing and unpredictable and beautiful.

Peter snorts. “Nothing relevant for this situation. I can enter and leave the void safely, like the Missing Man, and I can find lost people inside it. I sense the kernel of hope within them. Now, if I had the power to conjure up bacon...”

I begin to feel my heart beat faster, my palms sweat, my muscles tense.

I look at Claire. She has her knife in her free hand. I hadn’t seen her pull it out. Her lips are pressed tight together so that they’re pinched white around the edges, and I suddenly want to protect this scared little girl who guided me through the mob with no fear in her eyes. Even though I never wore a princess dress in my life, even though I played with paints and not stuffed animals, even though I never held a knife or helped a stranger through an alley, she reminds me of me.

I don’t decide to act.

I don’t think at all.

I drop her hand, spin around, and shriek with every bit of air in my lungs. Scooping a trash can lid off the ground like the boy who held one as a shield, I run at the three dogs.

The dogs hesitate for a moment. And then they spin and flee. I skid to a stop, and I hurl the trash can lid in their wake. It clatters against the brick wall of an abandoned building.

Panting, I head back to Claire and Peter. Peter is staring at me, but all he says is, “Huh. Interesting.” He climbs off the Dumpster to join us on the alley floor. I take Claire’s hand. She smiles at me. And we walk into the desert.

I had seen the decrepit houses on my walk into town: Capes, Colonials, ranches, mobile homes. I see them now for what they are, homes that people lost. The foreclosure signs are proof. Once, they were loved, and there are memories within the peeling paint and chipped wood and warped aluminum and cracked shingles.

Peter stops, apparently to chat. “Tell me about your dream house.”

Claire and I stop, too. It’s hot but not unbearable. Just enough breeze to toss the red dust into the air. I breathe in air that isn’t thick with feces and dead animals and rotted food and unidentifiable garbage. The abandoned houses are an improvement over the alleys, which once again are invisible, blocked from view by houses and junk piles. I don’t understand why I can’t at least see the tops of the apartment buildings. A two-story house shouldn’t be able to block a twenty-story high-rise.

“Your dream house,” he prompts. “One house that you always wished were yours.”

I’m not sure why he wants to know this. All I need is a safe place to hide until I figure out how to get home, but I humor him. “I never wanted the white picket fence. Or a mansion.”

“Then what did you dream of?”

“A house with stairs I could climb up to an open room, a sunlit studio.”

“Dance studio? Art studio? Photography studio?”

Art, of course. I used to imagine a wide, sun-filled art studio where I’d have easels with works-in-progress and finished work on the wall. I’d have a potter’s wheel in one corner, and another section with fabrics and beads. But I don’t say this. “Why are we stopped?”

He stretches his arms out expansively. “I want you to choose your dream home.” He looks, for a moment, like he can grant wishes. He’s smiling, but his eyes are serious, as if they hold a thousand secrets. He has magical eyes.

I shake my head. “I want someplace that’s safe. A house that the townspeople won’t notice I’m in. And that won’t crash on my head if the wind blows. The rest doesn’t matter. I’m not planning to stay, remember?” I look at Claire, away from Peter and his captivating eyes. “You want to choose for me?”