One day at the café with my artist friends...I simply couldn’t be there anymore, knowing Mom’s medical bills were piling up. I went home and typed up my résumé. It was pitifully short, but I was creative. I didn’t lie, but I embellished with the most forceful verbs I could think of. I bought a pencil skirt and a blouse with buttons, and I bought a pair of sensible black heels, if heels could ever be considered sensible. I tried not to feel like a tightrope walker as I walked in them and missed my flip-flops, my standard footwear. I didn’t tell my mom until after I’d gotten my first job offer, three more months later. By then, the bills were more than Mom could pay, even with her insurance. I quietly started to pay them, and that was that. That was how my world changed. One conversation. And everything that followed.

The boy waiting for me in the living room had traced his moment to one day, too.

I think again about what he told me about his one conversation.

And that’s when I see the photograph. It’s in a Popsicle-stick frame, the kind you make in elementary school. Dried glue is clumped all over it, and stray bits of construction paper and googly eyes are covering it. It’s a picture of two boys, one of them clearly Colin, the other a younger version of him with ears that stick out like Dumbo. “Thanks,” I say out loud. The dust swallows my words. I feel giddy as I hug the photo.

I turn around and walk—though I don’t know why I bother since every direction looks the same, but it feels right so I do it. It’s faster to reach the edge of the void than it should have been, and I walk out into the desert. I’m not far from my ocean.

I walk to the nearest junk pile. It has all the usual lost clothes: kids’ sweatshirts, a few coats, umbrella, newspapers, hats, mittens. I select a raincoat. It’s the lightest of the choices, and I throw it over my bathing-suited self. I then trudge back to the yellow house.

Lounging on the junk pile and draped over the porch, the people are still there. Waiting for me. Waiting for a miracle. I clutch the Popsicle-stick photo to my chest and try not to make eye contact as I walk past the junk piles and up the steps to the porch. Claire flings open the door as I arrive. She sees I’m holding something. I hear whispers behind me; they’ve seen, too.

In the living room, Colin slowly rises from the couch. His hand is shaking as I hand him the photograph. He looks at it and frowns. “That’s my brother.” He looks at me. “I don’t understand. I mean, yes, I lost this years ago. We’d made it together for Mother’s Day. One of those stupid crafts projects, you know?” He sits down heavily with the photo in his hands. “You couldn’t find her? ’Course not. She’s dead.”

Claire is close to my elbow. “He’s not glowing,” she whispers.

He lifts his head. He’s heard her. “This isn’t what I need.”

“Then why did I find it?” I ask.

He doesn’t have an answer to that.

“Maybe it isn’t what you need. Maybe it’s someone who needs you.” I feel proud of myself for saying that. I sound wise. I have no clue if it’s true.

His eyes bug and I see him look at the photo fresh.

“There,” Claire says, satisfaction filling her voice.

Squinting at him, I see what she sees: a soft glow that surrounds him, a match to Claire’s own glow.

“You did it!” Claire throws her arms around my neck and hugs me hard. I hug her back, elated. I really did it! Twice! Three times, if you count the ring, but I don’t know if that counts since I had to be rescued then.

Happily, Claire ushers him out of the room, and I scoot into the bedroom to change out of my swimsuit into the dress Claire chose for me. It occurs to me that if this continues, I’ll have to change right back into it. All those people would expect me to go into the void for them and come back with some item that would make them magically see the light.

I wonder if I can do it.

I wonder why I can do it.

I tug my dress into place and tie my wet hair back with a ribbon. I listen as Claire guides the next “visitor” into our living room. When I hear the squeak of the couch, I walk out of the bedroom. A woman in sequins and diamonds is seated on the couch. She turns as I enter, and I plaster a smile on my face. “Do you know what you’ve lost?” I ask.

Poem

Things I found:

shoes

a fake Rolex

a dead cat named Treacle, stuffed in a shoe box

two tickets to a Red Sox game

an apology note, never sent

greasepaint for a circus clown

a microphone

a report card, not mine, 3 F’s

a few memories I didn’t want

a few memories I did

leg warmers

a baby blanket, pink

my purpose, maybe

Chapter Eighteen

I have lost track of time. It’s been several weeks, or months, since I first arrived in Lost, and while I appreciate the appropriateness of my inability to calculate the amount of time (given where I am), it also scares me. I wish I’d marked days on the wall of the kitchen, but I didn’t think I would be here so long.

I stare out the window of our house and watch the dying sun play over the variations in the land, the brambles and the cacti. It then catches the curve of the waves in the ocean, a mile away today. Low tide, in its own peculiar way. I don’t see the dolphin.

Claire is upstairs. She discovered a violin in one of the junk piles. It’s only a little warped, but neither of us has any clue how to play it. She has been experimenting with it. I listen to her coax out a melancholy cry that blends into other off-key notes. I kind of like it. It fits this place. Colin is conked out on the living room couch behind me. I don’t know how he can sleep through the screech of the violin, but he does. He’s been here every day since I helped him find what he’d lost—and since I failed to help the two people after him.

The woman in the sequins and diamonds... I brought a clock out of the void for her. She threw it at the wall and ran screaming out of the house. A blond-haired boy in a starched shirt tried to attack me when I emerged from the void with a set of keys for him. After that, I had more successes, and then more failures. But those, the sequin woman and the blond boy, were enough to convince Peter, who convinced Colin, that I needed protection. He shows up every day after Peter leaves to hunt for the Missing Man.

Every night, Peter checks the traps, the alarms, and the locks, before he climbs into bed with me. He sleeps with one arm tight around my waist, as if keeping me from falling off the side of a mountain. Often, in the mornings before he leaves to search for the Missing Man, he kisses me or I kiss him. He doesn’t press for more, and neither do I. We don’t talk about what will happen when he finds the Missing Man.

After a while, I leave the window. In the kitchen, I cook us some pasta and sauce. I still don’t switch the light on, though at least a couple dozen people know I’m here. Anyway, I’m used to the shadows.

I am setting the table for three when I hear a knock on the door.

Claire has heard it, too. The violin stops.

Peter, I think. But no, he wouldn’t knock. And the lost people always come in the morning. They don’t want to risk being in the outskirts of town at night—we’re too close to the void, and no one has forgotten how quickly it contracted.

I pick up the fire extinguisher as I pass through the kitchen, and I meet Claire by the stairs. She has her two teddy bears. I don’t need to look to know she also has her knife. I also don’t need to look to know Colin is with me. He has a gun. I adjust my grip on the fire extinguisher and call, “Who is it?”

“I have come back,” a man’s voice says.