chapter thirty
The dust is beautiful.
It cocoons me, and I revel in it. Stretching out my arms, I feel the dust coat my body like a thin layer of mist. It pours
into my mouth and soothes my raw throat, easing my thirst. I walk faster and faster until I am running.
The ground beneath my feet shifts to pavement.
Ahead, I see the carved wood sign:
Welcome to Lost
Leaning against the sign post, Peter watches me approach. His arms are crossed over his tattooed chest. His coat rustles in
the breeze. I can’t read his expression, and I am reminded, like a punch, of the first moment I saw him. Before I knew him.
Before he knew me.
Before I loved him.
And I am gripped by the terrible fear that he doesn’t know me, doesn’t remember me, doesn’t want me here.
I slow and then stop before him. I’m breathing heavily, so hard it hurts my throat and my ribs and my sides.
My feet ache in a pounding pulse, as if the memory of every step is rushing into them all at once.
I swallow, my tongue thick. “I’m back,” I say, my voice raspy.
I try again, clearer. “I came back. I said I would.”
His expression doesn’t change.
Cold.
Unwelcoming. Unreadable. Un-Peter. Or perhaps very Peter.
“‘Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has
always got there first, and is waiting for it.’” He pushes off against the sign and strolls toward me. “You’re late, Ms. Rabbit,
for a very important date.”
I could explain. Tell him about the hospital, about my mother, about the coma. But I don’t. I lick my parched lips and say,
“I’m here now.”
“Are you staying?” His voice is casual, as if he doesn’t care what my answer is.
“Yes.”
“Truly?”
I say again, with no doubt in my voice, mind, or heart, “Yes.”
In one swift step, he crosses the remaining distance between us, and then his lips are on mine. I fold my arms around him
underneath his coat, my hands on his bare back. His breath is sweet, warm, real. He kisses me as if afraid I’ll vanish, as
if his kiss can anchor me here. I kiss him back, wanting my kiss to say everything words can’t say, wanting to say “yes” louder
than any single syllable ever could. He runs his hands through my hair, around my neck, down my back. And then he lifts me
up. I wrap my legs around his waist as he spins in a circle. Wind whistles around me, the backpack bounces on my back, and
I’m laughing and he’s laughing. And then I’m crying, and he cradles me against his chest and strokes my hair until I quiet.
At last, he lowers me to the ground, but he doesn’t stop touching me. His hand caresses my cheek, and his fingers tangle in
my hair. He’s smiling at me, his lopsided smile.
“I’m home,” I tell him.
“Good.” His smile is everything.
I think of how I drove into nowhere and walked into nothing, like before. But before, my body stayed behind in a coma in a
hospital, because I was lucky enough that someone found my car. This time . . . “I could be dead.”
“Or not.”
True. I don’t know. I might never know. “Or not.”
“Does it matter?” he asks.
I consider it for the space of a heartbeat, if I still have a heartbeat and it isn’t all illusory. “No.” The word feels like
a release, like truth. “No, it doesn’t.”
We begin to walk, hand in hand, toward the town. The sun is high, bleaching the sky around it a matte white, and it’s hot
on my shoulders and scalp.
“Out of curiosity,” I ask, “anyone want to kill me?”
“Maybe. Don’t know. We’ll see.”
This doesn’t reassure me. As the outline of the town shimmers ahead of us, I say, “Should we use the rooftops? Check out the
situation first, maybe make contact with Victoria and Sean?” It feels wonderful to say their names. They’re real, whatever that means here. They’re real enough. “And then after we reconnect with them, we could—”
I break off as the town comes fully into view: the diner, the motel, half the main strip with the post office. A single red
balloon floats overhead.
But that’s all there is.
Beyond the post office, there’s a wall of dust. It cuts the street off halfway, before what should have been the apartments
and the many houses. My house.
What’s left of the town is crammed with the displaced: men and women mill in the street, kids huddle in the doorways.
Some are perched on the rooftops, pressed together like birds in the winter who need one another for warmth.
Others shuffle as they walk aimlessly, murmuring to themselves.
As we pass, the nearest look up dully then look down again.
I open my mouth to ask what happened . . .
I know what happened.
The Missing Man left.
I left.
Silently, with Peter, I walk deeper into what’s left of the town. The motel parking lot has become a refugee camp. In each
of the parking spots, there are tents set up made of cardboard and clothes. Peter leads me past them toward the diner.
The neon still blinks bright, but I have to step over people sprawled on the stairs to reach the door. None of them move out
of the way. None of them look at me.
As I reach the top step, fingers wraps around my ankle. “I know you,” a raspy voice says from the steps below me. His beard
pokes out in all angles from his face. It’s knotted and coated in grease, sweat, and dirt. I don’t recognize him. No, I do.
He’s the man who searched for pennies, who came on a boat.
He still has his glow.
Peter begins to say, “Don’t—”
But I am already kneeling on the diner steps. I place my hands on his shoulders, feel the bones through his filthy coat, and
say, “You were lost; you are found.”
Half of me expects it to fail. I’m not special or magic or even interesting.
But he fades, smiling at me.
A ripple of whispers spreads through the people on the steps down to those in the streets. Heads turn toward me, one after
another, until more and more are looking at me. Straightening, I think, They have wolf eyes. And I am their rabbit, visible in the grasses.
“Inside. Quickly.” Peter puts his hands on my shoulders and propels me inside the diner as the crowd’s murmurs begin to swell, and they swarm closer.
The bell rings as we enter.
He slides into a booth, pushing me in first, and then picks up a menu and opens it, shielding us from view. It’s the menu
I saw in the Greek restaurant on my date with William. For all I know, it could be the exact same one. Marveling at it, I
trace the curve of the crescent moon with my fingertip.
Victoria saunters over to our table. She has a pencil behind her ear. She takes it out and holds her order pad ready, as if
this is an ordinary day in an ordinary diner, as if her world hasn’t dissolved around her. I notice she still has her glow.
“Do you want me to send you back?” I ask, my voice soft, unsure if I should be making the offer or if I’ve made some kind
of mistake in coming into town and using the Missing Man’s power. The penny man’s smile, though . . . It didn’t feel like
a mistake.
Glancing out at the street, Victoria presses her lips together then shakes her head. “Soon. But not yet. You stirred them
up out there but good. You save me for later, after you’ve figured that mess out.”
I peek around the menu. Outside, people are shuffling zombie-like toward the diner. Faces are pressed against the windows,
eyes wide. Sean in his apron leans against the diner door, arms crossed, casually blocking it. He waves cheerfully at me.
“Welcome back, mystery girl.”
“Uh, thanks.”
“You know, you’re the first to ever come back, far as I know. Except Peter and the—”
Victoria cut him off. “We’re not talking about him.” To me, she says, “Don’t worry, honey. If anyone tries to hurt you, Sean will whack them with his frying pan. But I suggest
coming up with a plan for handling all those people long-term. They’ll use you up and spit you out, if you’re not careful.”
Outside, the crowd is an odd mix of restless and listless. Beyond them, the dust lurks, an ever-present beast, as hungry as the people it corrals. Not much is left of the town. “How did this happen so quickly?” I hadn’t been gone long.
Peter shrugs. “After you left, word spread.”
This is my fault.
“Despair is the hungriest monster of all,” he says, and I cannot tell if it’s a quote or simply truth.
Victoria taps her pad with her pencil.
My eyes are glued to the window, and I estimate about two hundred people fill the streets. It’s a lot, but not as many as
there should be—I think of the apartment buildings and wonder if the void took all the people within. I feel sick. “I’ll start
with whoever has found what they’ve lost, and the rest . . .”
Peter begins singing the alphabet.
I smile. It’s as good a system as any. “I’ll see the rest alphabetically.”
Sean opens the door and bellows outside, “Listen up! If you’ve found what you lost, line up here, alphabetical order by last
name. If you haven’t, line up by the motel, also alphabetical. If you don’t remember your last name, make one up.”
Shuffling, the crowd obeys. Sean has that kind of voice. I watch them jostle for position.
Victoria disappears for a moment and reappears with a McDonald’s milkshake and a slice of peach pie. She sticks a straw into
the milkshake. I drink in gulps.
“Are you ready?” Peter asks me.
Am I?
He wraps his arm around my shoulders, and he kisses my neck below my ear, softly, like a breath of wind. I lean against him
and feel the warmth of his chest through the back of my shirt. I want more time in Lost with Peter, with myself, to readjust,
to revel in being here, in being home . . . but I’ll have time later.
Forever, maybe.
I smile. “Yes, I’m ready.”
“Send them in one at a time,” Victoria calls to Sean.
He beckons in the first person.
I don’t recognize the woman, but I can see the glow teasing her hair and tickling her arms. She’s middle-aged, in leopard-print
leggings, with jelly bracelets from the eighties running up both arms. I put my hands on her shoulders and say the words.