chapter fifteen #2
She throws her arms around my neck and squeezes, and I’m sure I said the right thing.
At least I think I’m sure. We can make it work.
Mom would like having a little girl around.
And maybe we can find Claire’s family. In the time since Claire was lost, the police could have located them.
They could miss her as much as I miss my mother.
Leaving her could have been a mistake they regret, or an accident.
They could be mourning her, and her return would be a miracle.
I look at her, and I swear I see a soft white glow framing her face. If I look directly at her, it vanishes, but it teases
the corners of my eyes. My heart beats faster. “Claire—”
Outside, I hear the clatter of tin cans.
Our alarm.
Claire and I look at each other. We don’t speak. We each know our roles. Keeping low, I scoot into the kitchen, and I take
one of the knives from the kitchen drawer. There are plenty of lost guns around Lost, but we don’t have any of them. I can’t
practice with them—they’re too loud, and they’d draw attention—so at best they could only be used against me. Knives, though . . .
we have knives. Knife in hand, I creep to the dining room window.
The tin cans were strung over the front gate. It could have been something as simple as a squirrel that set them off, or it
could have been a feral dog. Or it could have been a person. Claire scrambles out the back window. She’ll climb up on the
roof. If necessary, she has a brace of knives up there by the chimney, as well as slingshots and a few miniature catapults
that she and Peter built out of scraps. She can attack from above while I handle the ground.
There’s a knock on the front door.
That’s . . . odd, I think. I peer out the window. Victoria and Sean are on the porch, waiting by the door. Using oven mitts, Sean carries a
Crock-Pot.
“Oh, hi!” Claire calls from the roof.
I march over to the front door and yank it open. “Seriously? Do you know how many people could have followed you? Did anyone
follow you? What do you want?”
Sean holds out the pot. “Breakfast!”
“Glad you’re home.” Victoria sweeps inside, oblivious to the knife in my hand, perhaps because she has a gun in her Gucci purse or something. I flinch at the word home.
Claire drops onto the porch. “Please say that’s hot oatmeal!”
“It is,” Sean says gravely.
“With brown sugar?”
“And honey.”
Claire drags him inside and into the dining room. She then fetches bowls and spoons for everyone. I hang back by the door.
“What do you want?” I repeat. “Did anyone follow you?” I think of telling them that Peter is out looking for the Missing Man,
but I don’t.
“You’re a suspicious one,” Victoria says. “I like that.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“Guess you’ll just have to trust us.”
“Or I could leave.”
“Lauren!” Claire whines. “Brown sugar and honey!”
“And fresh fruit,” Sean says.
I don’t know why I can’t make myself feel friendly. I’m the one who said I wanted allies, and here they are with breakfast,
a clear peace offering. But Victoria is smiling too brightly, and Sean’s face is flushed.
“We may have told a few people about you,” Sean says. I feel my heart thud faster. “But you can trust them. They know what
you did for us.”
Every muscle in me is tense, ready to run. My feet want to scramble out the door. But Claire is happily scooping oatmeal into
a bowl. “Oh?” I say.
“We wanted to, you know, give you a heads-up,” Sean says. “Also, oatmeal.”
“Uh, thanks. Claire, pack what you need.”
“No!” Victoria says. “Please. Stay. That’s why we came—to tell you not to run.”
I stare at her as if she has three heads or sprouted feathers or just said something shockingly absurd like not to run when homicidal townspeople could be on their way to visit me with scythes and pitchforks and a shitload of lost guns.
“Look, we’re on your side now. Our plan worked! The void retreated!” Victoria gestures wildly. “You saw it, right?”
I nod. It had withdrawn by over a mile.
“So please, trust us. Stay here. Make new friends.” I think of Claire and the ridiculous balloon animal and wonder if I can
trust them. “Tell me what you would have scavenged for today. We will fetch it for you.”
“Um . . . more toothpaste? A decent amount of shampoo?”
“All right, then. We’ll see what we can do. Come on, Sean. Leave the oatmeal.”
He snaps to attention as if on a leash and trots after her. I follow them as far as the porch and watch them leave, and then
I restring the warning cans.
I want to flee to the art barn. But I make myself walk into the house and sit down at the dining room table with Claire.
“It’s good oatmeal,” Claire says.
I nod.
“Are we going to run?”
I want to. But if I’m going to be safe here, I need friends. Or at least allies. Peter can’t protect me every second, especially
if he’s out looking for the Missing Man. “No,” I say, and I scoop up a spoonful of oatmeal. Listening for the cans, I watch
the window.
I don’t put away the knife. Neither does Claire.
A few hours later, we have our first visitor: the girl from the motel.
Her name tag reminds me that her name is Tiffany.
She’s in Goth clothes and has a fake tattoo drawn on her neck with a black marker.
I think it’s supposed to be a sword piercing a human heart.
Or a deflated red volleyball. Either way, it’s been smudged by her shirt collar.
She’s carrying a suitcase that she drops on the porch.
It lands with a thunk. “Dude, you have to do something about the landscaping.”
“It’s supposed to keep away unwanted visitors.”
“Yeah, that’s not working so well, is it?” She smacks her gum, then blows a bubble. It pops. “Brought you some trinkets.”
She unsnaps the suitcase. Inside is a wealth of travel-size toiletries, including the toothpaste and shampoo that I’d wanted,
as well as a toothbrush still in its package. An unused toothbrush!
I pounce on the toothbrush and cradle it to my chest as if it’s a beloved family heirloom. “I think I have a granola bar to
trade—”
She’s shaking her head. “I don’t want that.” She takes a breath, and I see her veneer of coolness flicker for a second. I
picture her putting it on each morning: shirt, check; shoes, check; makeup, check; permanent sneer, check. “I want you to
help me. Like you helped Victoria and Sean.”
Oh.
Of course.
Gently, I say, “I don’t mean to disappoint you, but I don’t even know what I did.”
Tiffany plants her hands on her hips. “You went into the void, and you found what they needed. I want you to do the same for
me. Or no toothbrush.”
It’s such an absurd threat that I have to resist laughing. She’s intensely serious. “Can’t you find whatever you need outside
the void? I’m happy to help you look—”
Tiffany shakes her head vigorously. “I’ve looked everywhere in Lost. The answers aren’t here. They’re in the void. Someone
needs to go in and bring them out. If the Missing Man were here, I’d ask him. But he’s not, so I’m asking you.”
Claire hops up and down. “You can do it, Lauren! I know you can!”
I shoot her a look. She can’t be serious. I barely escaped last time. It took Peter and a train that is still embedded in the living room wall.
Swinging on my arm, Claire looks up at me with her bright eyes. “You can! You entered and left before. In your car. I saw
you!” Her eyes are wide and earnest. She believes every word she’s saying.
She is right. I did drive into and out of the void, and I did find the star sapphire ring. But still, I’m not the Missing
Man, or even a poor knockoff of him. I kneel beside Claire. I want her to understand this is serious. “Claire, if I go in
there again, I might not come back.”
“Then I’ll send Peter in after you again!”
“Peter’s not here.”
“He’ll be back tonight. He comes back to you every night,” Claire says confidently. “He thinks you’re beautiful and clever and everything.” I feel myself blush, as if I’m back
in high school and Claire has told me that the head of the basketball team thinks I’m the cat’s meow, which would never have
happened because I was “artsy” and he wasn’t. His name was David, and the girls in my class used to call him “Dreamy David,”
one of the stupidest and most apt nicknames I’d ever heard. His locker was next to mine senior year, and he said hi to me
every day, but that was the extent of our relationship. Wish I could have told my high school self to suck it up and talk
to him—worst that could have happened was a total rebuff and public humiliation, which would have ended with graduation anyway,
and then I could have consoled myself with the knowledge that anyone who peaks in high school is doomed to have a miserable
adulthood . . . unlike my oh-so-stellar one. I think of how Peter slept in my bed last night—and how he left again to search
for the Missing Man.
Tiffany crosses her arms, clearly trying to look tough. “If you refuse to help me . . . I know a lot of people who’d like to know where you are.”
Standing, I raise my eyebrows and look at her. It’s easier to face her than to think about Claire’s assessment of Peter’s
feelings, which may or may not be true, and my old high school insecurities, which I wish I’d left behind in high school.
Ah, emotional baggage—the only kind of luggage I bet no one ever lost. “Blackmail? Really?”
“Just making a deal.” Tiffany drops her arms. “It’s what we do in Lost. You scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours. Barter
system.”
“If you turn me over to the mob, then I can’t ever help you,” I point out.
“I could bribe you,” Tiffany says.
I shake my head. “I don’t need anything that’s worth—”
“I know where Claire’s parents are.”
Words die in my throat. I look at Claire. She’s paled. Her tiny hands clutch each other, balling up the hot pink satin skirt.
Her lower lip quivers. The white glow skitters over her skin. “Where?” I ask.
Tiffany smiles. “Go into the void, find me what I lost, and I’ll tell you.”
“How do I know you know?”