The Train of Lost Things

by Ammi-Joan Paquette

  Needing to get away from the awkward silence, Marty started for the door. But Dina caught his sleeve. “Wait! I mean. It’s a big place. Shouldn’t we stick together? We can, like, help each other search!”

  The worst of it was that she was right. Marty knew it. He’d read enough about magical places to know that you never could tell what might be lurking around the next corner. Staying together made every bit of sense. But staying together also meant talking, and so he gently pulled his arm away. “Sorry. I need to do this on my own.”

  Dina seemed to consider this for a minute. Then she shrugged and moved past him toward the sliding doors that led to the next car.

  * * *

  • • •

  As the panel snapped shut behind Dina’s swinging ponytail, Marty sighed. Being on the train was exciting, but it was a little scary, too. Especially now that he was standing here all by himself. It really had been nice to have someone to share in the discoveries so far. But he’d chosen his path. Now there was nothing to do but get busy searching.

  They’d come aboard at the end of the train, and Dina had gone left, into the connecting car. Marty would start right here, with the last train car.

  Turning for the first time to properly take in the main open area, what he mostly saw around him was stuff. There was stuff everywhere. The room was long and narrow, in the way of trains. A row of waist-high shelves ran down the center of the car, with more shelves along the walls. Most of these were lined with bins and cubbies and drawers. Each of the nooks and crannies was bursting with items. And that wasn’t even counting the stuff spilling off the surfaces and heaped up on the floor.

  “Whoa,” Marty muttered. “Going for a bit of a ‘Train of Lost Junk’ theme here, aren’t we?”

  The train lurched and gave a sort of hiccup. Marty froze. Was that a normal sound for a train to make? What kind of machine was this, anyway?

  With no answers forthcoming, he set that question aside and got busy searching. To Marty’s eye—the eye of a practiced finder—it looked like things used to be set up, maybe a long time ago, used to be nicely organized. Like someone had been really on top of it and had gotten all the stuff in neat piles and stacks, but then whoever it was got tired of working and started tossing things in any-which-way.

  It was seriously overwhelming.

  To keep his mind busy as he searched, Marty reviewed the things he must do, the things he still couldn’t quite say aloud (it was hard enough inside his head):

  Find the jacket.

  Get it home to Dad.

  Get himself home to Dad.

  It actually made him feel better to have this list running through his mind, almost like he was making some progress (even though he totally wasn’t).

  Find the jacket. Get it home to Dad. Get himself home to Dad.

  Dad. A hard thumping filled Marty’s chest. He thought of Dad’s belly laugh that made everyone nearby laugh along; his ridiculously loud burp every time he would speed-drink a milkshake; the look in his eyes when he would stroke the hair off Marty’s forehead sometimes late at night, when he thought Marty was asleep.

  Marty started with the row of stuff nearest to him—ignoring the things on the floor, for now, and beginning with the bins. When he reached the end of the row, he started on the next: pulling stuff out, shifting, checking (not finding), tossing, returning.

  Ugh. This was going to take a while.

  Then a jolt shook the carriage floor. There was a loud grumble, like the sound of a huge beast clearing its throat. Once again, Marty wondered about the train. There was undoubtedly something extra magical about it, even more than you’d expect from a flying train (and that was saying something). Almost like . . . an awareness?

  That was ridiculous. Marty swatted the thought away. Then there was a lurch in the machinery. The train began to pick up speed.

  Steadying himself on the side wall, Marty peered out the window (dodging twice to avoid incoming objects). The grassy field was still an easy drop below. Then . . . it blurred.

  Suddenly, they were going a lot faster, like one of those old sci-fi shows where the spaceship suddenly shifts to warp speed or something.

  Marty felt his chest seize. He’d expected this—right? It’s not like he’d thought the train would sit around all easy-breezy while he did his search. Still. Knowing something in your head is one thing, and having it actually happen to you is quite another. Especially when the something is a magical train and the having-it-happen is whisking your very ordinary, normal-till-now self into the sky in the middle of the night, heading for who-knows-where.

  The churning got higher and fiercer as the train gathered speed. The lost stuff started pelting in double-quick, too—whooshing through the main windows as well as the doorway—like it was rushing to get on before the train was out of reach. Some of the incoming items had a wild spin on their landings.

  Outside the window, the ground wobbled as they sped up even more. A block of apartment buildings loomed ahead. What now? Surely they weren’t going to go through the buildings?

  As Marty thought this, the world outside jerked, then went all tilty. There were bars with hanging straps in a few spots throughout the car. Marty flung himself at the nearest one and held on tight. All around him, inside the car, stuff shifted and slid. A yellow ball toppled from a bin and went rolling across the floor. The world outside the glass was skewed, like everything in the real world had tipped over sideways. They were legitimately airborne.

  The world bent.

  The Train of Lost Things shot up toward the black night sky.

  Soon the city block was a dot-to-dot collection of yellow lights winking way down below.

  Marty wondered if some kid, waking up to glance out her bedroom window just then, might have seen the train whisk off into the sky—if she might have seen, too, a pair of round, scared eyes peering back at her from the next-to-last train car.

  He wondered where they were going.

  He wondered how he was going to get back home.

  He figured he was about to find out.

  9

  THE MOVIE IN THE KITE

  For long minutes Marty stayed glued to the window, clinging to his pull strap and forgetting everything else as he drank in the night view as it blew by. It was like watching a movie on one of those big IMAX screens, where they always put in an extra speed scene, sliding down a mountain or flying through the air, just so you could get that spinny roller-coaster churning in the pit of your stomach. Except this time, it wasn’t Marty but the outside world that was toppling and twirling around beyond the windows.

  It didn’t make him feel any less queasy.

  Wisps of fog tangled and twined up the sides of the train in gooey tentacles that blurred against the windows and oozed up the edges. Then—oh, no! The train was twisting sideways! Marty dropped his strap and grabbed a nearby post, wrapping both arms around it in an awkward sort of hug (secretly glad Dina wasn’t here to see his wobbly panic). The loose objects started sliding and toppling everywhere, but Marty found he could keep a basic sort of balance. Whether it was the speed or the torque or some other, unknown train magic, he held his spot while the world gyrated outside. His feet felt rooted to the floor (ceiling?), but he didn’t dare wiggle even his smallest toe. He didn’t want to risk upsetting whatever fragile balance kept him in place.

  The lost things rattled around him like popcorn in a popcorn maker.

  They continued turning. The train was going upside down!

  In spite of the lingering knot of panic, Marty couldn’t keep from smiling. “Now, that’s just showing off,” he said, not even caring that he was having a one-way conversation with a train. If you’re going to go on a magical ride, it might as well be one to remember.

  This was that, and then some!

  The train finished its turn, then leveled off. The landscape
below settled back down straight and flat again, a crazy quilt of patchwork houses stitched up with a yellow web of streetlights.

  “Wow,” Marty breathed. And he could have sworn he felt, under his feet, the faintest wobble—like a reply, almost, like a pleased little nod.

  What next? The car was way messier than it had been a few minutes ago. How was Marty going to find anything in this sea of clutter? The shelf he’d been searching was completely scrambled—half the stuff that used to be on was now off, and new stuff had toppled up to fill its place. He’d pretty much have to start from scratch.

  With a groan, he moved back to work. Then he felt a little thump on his shoulder. He twisted around. A kite had blown in the window and snagged on his sweatshirt. He grabbed the edge and gently tugged it free.

  Holding it out in front of him, Marty could see the kite was homemade—thin onionskin paper and fine balsa wood with snug, trim knots tying it all together. The designs on both sides were clearly hand drawn.

  That was as much as he had a chance to think before a strange sort of pinhole blinked open, right in the center of the kite. It was—wait, was he hallucinating? Marty didn’t think so—yep, it definitely was a tiny glowing spot of light, coming from the kite! As he watched, the edges of the light fuzzed. The pinhole whizzed open and a bright image flashed up, like an online game leaping off the screen and into the real world.

  Marty blinked.

  * * *

  • • •

  He saw two people—an old lady and a little kid—sitting at a long, rough-looking wooden table. The table was scattered with thin strips of wood and sheets of paper and fat markers and all sorts of craft supplies. The lady had a scruffy head of white hair. She was holding a slender wooden frame, tying knots around the joints to make an X shape. The chubby little kid sitting next to her was gripping a blue Sharpie and scratching a design onto stiff cardstock.

  “Nana,” the kid said, “look what I did! Is this good enough to go on the front side? Will it last, Nana? Nana, when will we be done? Can we go outside and fly it after lunch? Nana, what are you doing?”

  The old lady didn’t say something gruff or even roll her eyes at the kid’s super-annoying question-attack. Instead, she stopped her knot-tying for a second and mussed up the little guy’s hair so that now it looked every bit as scruffy as hers.

  “All in good time, my little monster,” she said, and every word was like a hug.

  The kid grinned and drew a blue heart on his paper.

  * * *

  • • •

  Marty blinked as the movie-cloud puffed away and the pinhole shrank back to nothing. The kite was a silent object once again, just like any old handmade kite. But Marty had seen that exchange. He’d watched it happen, had peeked inside that cozy kitchen for those few minutes. He turned the kite over in his hands. There it was: on the front side, two clumsily drawn stick figures who looked like they were playing Twister but were probably little-kid-hugging, with a big blue heart wrapped around their heads. He had a pretty good idea whose heart’s possession this kite was.

  Marty had seen a little movie in midair. But the movie was real.

  He’d seen a memory carried inside this kite.

  Now Marty was excited. He set the kite down on the floor at the center of the car, near a twisty metal staircase that led up to the roof. He turned back to the shelf nearest him. He grabbed the first thing he saw—an old-looking photo in a chipped wooden frame. The picture looked yellowy and faded, and showed two girls about his age holding hands, with a sunset in the background. He realized what a boring object it was and went to put it back down; only then, that pinhole thing popped up again and Marty couldn’t turn away.

  He watched the picture’s secret story unfold.

  * * *

  • • •

  The scene was a restaurant—loud and bustling, with people seated at cloth-covered tables calling out joyful exclamations. In the room’s very center was a redbrick oven glowing with hot flames. A guy in a stained apron shoved a giant metal spatula inside and pulled out a steaming pepperoni pizza, which was whisked off immediately to one of the tables. At the far edge of the room was a balcony, and in front of the balcony were the two girls from the picture, standing next to a lady who wore a guitar around her neck on a rainbow-colored strap. The lady strummed the guitar one last time and the girls gave little curtsies and a whole bunch of people started clapping and cheering.

  Then an old woman got up and said, “A photo! Let me take a photo of the beautiful and talented sisters!” She nudged the girls over to the window, and Marty could see the restaurant was on the slope of a tall, wooded mountain. The sky was pink and orange.

  “Sunset on Mount Vesuvius!” called a voice in the crowd.

  In the sunset’s glow, a camera’s shutter clicked loudly and there was a white-bright strobe of light.

  * * *

  • • •

  This time, the jolt of the closing image left Marty’s ears ringing a bit. It had been so loud in that restaurant! He thought Mount Vesuvius might be somewhere in Italy—had this picture flown all that way? It looked like it had been here in the train for a while. He set it down carefully.

  His gaze swept across the train car. So! Much! Stuff!

  Every item in this room had a story, just like the two he’d seen. Every item was precious to some kid out there, someone who was waiting and wishing and missing. And the stuff just kept pouring in. The mess probably made the space look more full than it really was. But the thought of searching this whole car, this whole train, to find his one precious jacket suddenly felt like an impossible task.

  Marty pictured himself, zoomed his mind’s eye all the way out to the dark night sky and the long sleek comet of a train cutting through it, and inside the Where’s Waldo clutter of that enormous train, one boy. Not big or tall or strong.

  Why had he wanted to do this alone, again?

  His gaze drifted back to the stair-ladder at the center of the car. Tilting his head, he followed it right up to the roof. He actually felt his eyes bug out a little. The ceiling was a giant window, running like a fat ribbon down the whole top center of the train! And marching across that skylight top? A pair of familiar neon-orange sneakers.

  Dina was walking along the roof of the train.

  What was Dina doing up on a moving train? Loneliness and curiosity and a bit of shame, too (his cheeks burned as he remembered how he’d blown Dina off, pretty rudely, actually), tussled inside him.

  Marty thought about how upset he’d been when he’d found out he lost his jacket, and when he’d first heard the news about his dad. He remembered what he’d yelled at his mom: “Leave me alone! I just want to be by myself.” He’d kind of meant it—but he kind of hadn’t. He’d needed some time to sort things out on his own. But he’d also needed to feel he wasn’t alone.

  Right now, he could use a friend to stand next to.

  Had he totally blown his chance with Dina? There was one way to find out.

  Marty made a beeline for the staircase. Grabbing the knobby metal railing, he started the corkscrew climb up to the top of the train. There were a whole lot of things right now he couldn’t do a thing about.

  This was not one of them.

  He had tons more searching to do—he’d barely begun, in fact. But Dina was right: Things were better together.

  Plus, the chance to walk along the roof of a magical train? Epic.

  10

  BACKSTORY SWAP

  It was a weird feeling, hiking up a tiny curlicue staircase on a moving mystery train. The steps were so narrow that Marty almost had to take them sideways. The whole thing was a bit like watching—no, like being—a fizzy bubble zooming up the inside of a bottle. Like he said, weird. With an extra dose of super weird on the side. Especially because he got to the top faster than he expected, and before he knew it his head and shou
lders had oozed right through the opening window hatch, and then he was half in and half out of the train, and for a second his eyes blurred over because it was literally the craziest thing he had ever experienced.

  He pulled himself out of the stairwell and scrambled to his feet.

  The first thing he felt was the rush of dark night wind, meeting and wrapping him in an icy bear hug. Everything up here was blur and motion, reminding him how fast the train was going.

  In midair. In the sky.

  Um.

  Marty made himself stop thinking about that.

  Excitement. Focus on the excitement.

  The second thing he noticed was that the floor was sticky. Not I-spilled-my-soda sticky, but more walking-through-sludgy-mud sticky. The surface seemed to be super-thick, silvery glass—what had looked like a window from inside the train. Peering down now, he could sort of make out the inner train compartment. Not that clearly, though; it was all blurred and shadowy in there. (Probably just as well, since you were more likely to want to look up at the sky from the inside than back down in at the heaping piles of junk.)

  The stickiness, though, took some getting used to. Marty had to put a little effort into lifting his leg. It took a few minutes for him to get the hang of it. But after that, it wasn’t so hard. He found that if he wiggled his toes first, his whole foot popped up quick and easy.

  Concentrating, he suction-stepped across the platform. A waist-high railing ran all the way around the roof. In the center was an open area, with skinny metal benches wrapped around a curved-out railing.

  On one of the benches sat Dina, watching him with a big grin on her face. “Marty Torphil! You made it up to the boss level.”

  He’d been so busy with the whole walking-across-a-train-roof thing that he had nearly lost track of why he’d come up to begin with. Nearly. “Yeah,” he said, trying to play it cool but feeling pretty wobbly. As if in response to his weakness, the train gave an extra wiggle and he flailed his arms.