The Train of Lost Things

by Ammi-Joan Paquette

  “Don’t worry,” Dina said. “You can’t fall off.”

  “What? You mean the . . . suction thing?” He lifted one foot, then the other. He was getting better at this.

  “Not just that,” she said. “I mean the whole edge of the train. Go on. Try and, like, punch at the air a bit. Off the railing.”

  Marty frowned. Cautiously, he reached an arm out over the rail. The air there felt puffy, like an extra-thick pillow. Huh.

  Right then, the train lurched and made a sharp right turn. Marty lost his balance, felt his feet scudder across the platform. His whole body followed his arm and he felt himself toppling over the railing . . . losing his footing and . . .

  He bounced.

  He literally bounced off a puffy air current and was tossed back toward the walkway. Fully out of control, he spiraled clear across the platform and hit the other side of the airflow and bounced again, then went back and forth a couple more times, like an uncertain bowling ball hugging first one gutter, then the other.

  On her bench in the sitting area, Dina doubled over laughing. “Oh my gosh, best thing I’ve seen all day!” She paused. “And that’s saying something.”

  His face steaming hot, Marty finally managed to catch the rail and drag himself to his feet—stomping a little, hoping the train could feel it—and plopped on the bench next to her. His heart was beating way too fast. “That was not cool,” he said. “I’ve got nothing against roller coasters, but this whole ‘freefall with an uncertain ending’ is not my style. Not even a bit.”

  “Yet here you are, sitting on the roof of a magical train.” Dina grinned. “If this whole adventure isn’t like a movie trailer for ‘uncertain ending,’ I don’t know what is.”

  They were quiet for a bit after that.

  The train felt different up here. A lot different. Even without being in freefall, the whole concept of tearing through the dark on a train’s roof, with only a low guardrail and a cushion of air for protection, took some getting used to. At first Marty stayed clenched and stiff, his back pressed into the railing, eyes on the floor in front of him. As the minutes passed, his breaths slowed. Soon he was able to look up and out—and down, even!—and start taking in everything around him.

  The view, for one. Whoo-ey! It was like nothing Marty had ever seen.

  The fog had rolled away completely after they’d left the ground—or, wait. Had it? Because they seemed to be zooming along over, on top of, or maybe along with a giant puffy white cloud. It sat below the train wheels, cushioning them, so Marty couldn’t see a thing directly below them. They were in the middle of the last train car, which ended in a stubby little tail behind them, while the main train body snaked off ahead in a long twist of cars: ten or twelve of them, maybe more.

  It was a very long train.

  And out below them spread the city: tiny box houses, dark puffs of trees, cheerful yellow-button streetlights, and bright flares of white and red and hot-pink electric signs, all zinging and zipping below them as the train zoomed past. Talk about the ultimate gaming experience!

  Finally, Marty’s thoughts settled enough that he could home back in on why he’d followed Dina. “I’m sorry for what I said down there,” he said sheepishly. He was afraid she’d give him a blank look and then he’d feel like an idiot, or make him sweat it out some other way. But he didn’t like leaving stuff unsaid.

  “Yeah,” said Dina. “You were kind of a jerk. But, you know, I get it. Losing a heart’s possession can be like that. Can mess us up sometimes.”

  Marty smiled. He didn’t know what else to say, and somehow that seemed okay, too. Down below them, beyond the cloud-cushions, the city streets twisted and turned. Stoplights flashed green, then red, then green again. He had no idea how high up the train was—below them, the rooftops and trees looked like projections on a massive, fluid, never-ending screen.

  As they sped along, objects continued to shoot up from the houses below into the train: popping out of chimneys, spiraling from upstairs windows. A pair of pink ballet shoes came shooting out of a tree below their cloud.

  “Hey—is that the downtown library there?” said Dina.

  “It looks like it,” said Marty. “I’ve never seen it from the sky before.”

  “There’s no books coming from there. C’mon—not even one?”

  “Are you kidding? Those librarians are too organized. They’re not going to let even one get lost!”

  Dina laughed, and Marty joined her. Then he said, “I really am sorry I ran away before. It’s just—when you asked what I’m here looking for, I guess I panicked. I haven’t talked to anybody about . . . It’s . . .” His thoughts were a tangled ball of gunk inside his mouth. No matter how he tried, he couldn’t get them to come out right. He thought about Dad, about the jacket. Instead, what came out was, “I have a—had a friend. My best friend since kindergarten. Jax. We did everything together. Over the summer, my dad got sick. Really sick. And I stopped talking to everybody. Jax kept texting me and wanting to come over and I just—I just couldn’t.”

  “Saying stuff is the worst,” said Dina.

  “Yeah. I needed to be alone, I guess. I couldn’t be with people who would ask me what was going on. Not even him. Because then I’d have to talk about it, and that would make it real, you know? More real, I guess.” He shrugged. “After a while, everyone stopped talking to me and I guess even that was easier. I could just sort of be invisible.”

  Dina took a breath. “I get that. You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to. Seriously. Do you want me to tell you mine, though?”

  Marty nodded. He had wondered.

  Dina leaned in so that even though her voice was low, he could hear her clearly over the rushing train-top wind. “I’m on the train to find my mother.”

  Marty blinked. Now, that was something he hadn’t expected. “Your—mother? You think she’s on the train . . . you mean, in person?”

  “No, not in person.” Dina frowned. “I wasn’t born in this country. I came over when I was like five, but—without my mom. She sent me to live here with my dad.”

  Marty’s eyes went wide. His mom had been crazy busy since his dad had gotten sick, and honestly, between her taking care of Dad and keeping up with her work, Marty could go days barely seeing or talking to her at all. But at least she was always around somewhere, always sort of nearby. Who would send their kid away forever?

  Dina waved away his unvoiced questions. “It was complicated. She wasn’t able to get into the country, so she couldn’t just come and live here. But I could. She wanted me to have a better life, blah blah. So she sent me and my dad to live here, near my grandma and the rest of his family. We never saw her again.”

  “Wow. And your dad . . . ?”

  “Oh, he’s fine. My grandma, too. I love them, they love me. But—I don’t know.” She shrugged. “It’s not the same, is it? They’re not my mom.”

  Marty thought about connections. He thought about the way he could sit side by side with his dad for hours, neither of them needing to say a word. Or they could exchange a look—just raise one eyebrow—and it would make them laugh for ten minutes at a time. His mom was great, and she loved him, and he loved her, but . . . it wasn’t exactly the same. Some bonds were special.

  “Yeah,” he whispered. “I get it.”

  “Anyway,” Dina said. “The only thing I have from her—I mean, I’m sure she sent me with my suitcase full of little-kid stuff, clothes or whatever. But that’s all long gone. The only thing I had left from her was a locket.” She raised her thumb and forefinger into a round shape. “About this big. It had a little photo of my mom and me.”

  Marty tilted his head. Something in Dina’s face said she had more to say, and sure enough, a moment later she went on.

  “It’s—the locket is shaped like a train. I told you I don’t remember my mom, and it’s true. I have
almost no memories of her. One of the few things I remember is her telling me a story about a magical train. I think I only remember that because the locket always made me think of it.”

  “Then you lost it.” Marty felt his shoulders wilt in sympathy.

  Dina nodded. “When I realized the locket was missing, I guess I knew it would be here. On the Train of Lost Things. I don’t remember much of her stories, but that bit stuck.”

  “Don’t you ever hear from her?”

  “Never.” Dina shook her head, and something pinched in her face. Like a door slamming shut. “So you see why I had to come find it. That locket is the only thing of hers I have left. I want to have some bit of her, you know? I need to. The train is my only hope.”

  Marty let his gaze stretch out the length of the long, long train. “I know the feeling,” he whispered.

  “I’m sorry about your dad,” Dina said.

  Marty sat up straighter. “He’s going to be okay. I mean, as long as I can find my lost object. That’s why I’m here.”

  Dina raised a pair of tell-me-all-about-it eyebrows, and so he did. He’d gone this far, after all. It was the first time he’d put his whole story out in words, and hearing it hang in space against the night sky made it sound horribly, inescapably real. Dad and cancer and dying and jacket and last hope. As he neared the end of his tale, he noticed that the roar of the wind wasn’t the only sound he was hearing. There was a low, strangely high-pitched hum in the background.

  “What is that?” Dina asked.

  The keening stopped suddenly, bleated once, then stopped again. And Marty knew.

  “It’s the train,” he said.

  “The horn?” said Dina. “That sounds way different than before.”

  “Yeah.” What he didn’t say was that it sounded a bit like sadness, like sorrow and sympathy all mixed up together. That would be too much, even for a way magical train.

  Wouldn’t it?

  Dina stood, reached out a hand, and yanked Marty to his feet. “So. A jean jacket covered in pins, and a train-shaped locket. We’ve got a lot hanging on our search, so we’d better get started. There’s a whole lot of ground to cover.”

  11

  THE WORST MESS IS A LOST-STUFF MESS

  As they scrambled back down the twisty stairs into the train car, Marty took a second to appreciate the quiet inside, away from the billowing wind up top. Then he thought of something. When he’d held those objects earlier, he’d seen images from their pasts, memories of the special moments that linked the lost things to their owners. He wondered if Dina had already discovered that trick.

  “Hey, look at this!” he called, then stopped. He was sure he’d left the kite at the bottom of the stairway. “Wait—where did that kite go? I put it down right here.”

  Dina laughed. “Are you kidding me? Do you even see this junk pile of a room? It probably got buried in a landslide.”

  “I guess,” said Marty. But he knew he had put the kite down right there. He’d noted it specially, because the color of the floor looked like the table in the memory clip he’d seen. Still, where else could it have gone?

  He frowned. Had there been other stuff scattered along the ground next to the staircase? He thought there might have been, but he couldn’t say for sure, especially after all that loop-de-loop train action earlier. This patch of floor was super bare now. Suspiciously bare, he thought.

  Was there someone else on this train with them?

  “All right,” said Dina. “You take the left side of the car and I’ll take the right. We’ll each look for both things—my locket and your jacket. If either of us sees something that could be it, we’ll show each other. Double the search power, right?”

  “Right,” said Marty, starting to get excited. He’d gone through some of this car already, but with all the mess, it was hard to tell what. Two people looking would go twice as fast. This could really work!

  “This could really work,” Dina said.

  Marty met her grin and matched it.

  * * *

  • • •

  They dove in. Marty showed Dina the memory-movie trick, and she went nuts for it. They learned that holding a lost object for more than a few seconds would activate the movie blast—but the object had to be held long enough against their skin for that to happen. Marty liked dipping into these clips (it was like watching movie trailers, only way, way better). But they soon realized it would take a lot longer if they spent all their time watching the origin stories for every single thing they touched.

  “Do this,” said Dina. She pulled her sleeve up over her palm and wiggled her fingers until her whole hand disappeared inside the opening. Then, using the fabric like a glove, she started sifting through a deep square box on her side of the car.

  Marty nodded. He yanked his sleeves up over his hands and began sorting through the container nearest him. There was so much stuff! He saw beaded plastic hair clips and jeweled dog collars; charm bracelets and Matchbox cars; a pale green mesh pouch packed with a whole collection of sparkly earrings; a metal hourglass charm—small but intricate, with a moving bit so that it looked like the sand dropped through when the train jogged it from side to side.

  They were going too slowly. Now that he’d gotten properly into this, Marty saw it could take even longer than he’d thought. What if their time on the train ran out before they found their stuff? How long even was their time on the train?

  Along the sides and down the center of the car were long, low shelves, stuffed with baskets and boxes and bins. Every one of these was filled with a jumble of stuff, things in all shapes and sizes. Not to mention the objects that had rolled out and around during the train’s last escapade: a brightly painted harmonica, a stuffed walrus hugging a chubby plastic cow, and a whole unbroken circle of hand-drawn paper dolls. Across the car, Dina worked like a bulldozer on full power.

  Marty was thinking hard. “There has to be some kind of order to the train. Stuff wouldn’t be tossed inside here totally randomly.” He swallowed. “Would it?”

  Dina looked at him. Then she looked at the mess. Then she looked at him again. It was the sort of deadpan stare you see in cartoons, that says, Seriously?! Marty groaned. This train car was 100% junk pile. There was no order.

  Marty remembered his first instinct, how it felt like the train had used to be organized before it got all wild and weedy. “Doesn’t it seem like the Train of Lost Things should be less messed up? I mean, it’s a magical train. Why would something magical be such a wreck? That can’t be on purpose.” He paused. “I wonder if the train is working properly.”

  Dina whistled low. “You think the train is broken?”

  “I don’t know. It seems like it’s driving around just fine. But if stuff keeps coming in all topsy-turvy like this—that can’t be good. Can it? I mean, look at this car—it’s packed! What if the whole train gets overloaded? What happens if there’s no more space for all the lost stuff to go?”

  Marty thought about all the hearts’ possessions here on this train, waiting for kids to find them. (Or whatever happened to the lost stuff after it got on the train.) It was hard to imagine anyone finding anything in this disaster.

  No. Marty wouldn’t let himself think like that. He couldn’t.

  “You’re right. This can’t be the way the train is supposed to be,” said Dina. “Something’s messed up here. Something’s broken.”

  “But what?” Marty scuffed the nearest pile of stuff with his foot.

  “Maybe we can figure it out as we go,” said Dina. “Do something to help the train, too.”

  Turning to the nearest pile, Marty watched as a pair of bowling shoes (laces knotted and heels clacking together) came careening through the window and settled on top of the nearest drift of stuff.

  Wait. On top of the drift. “How long ago did you lose your locket?”

  Dina l
ooked up. “I saw it was missing like a week ago. No idea how long it’s actually been gone.”

  “Mine was the day before yesterday. But check how the stuff is piling up here. Our missing things should be near the top of the mess, right? We just have to find out what cars they came into.” He stared doubtfully as the drifts of items shifted from side to side when the train gave a jaunty wobble.

  Dina shook her head, and Marty pictured her tiny locket landing in this heap of stuff—trickling into tiny drops and cracks, down and down and down. Before he could say anything, she squared her jaw and looked him right in the eye. “I’m not gonna lie—this could take ages,” she said. “Like you said, the train’s obviously been messed up for a while.”

  “But?” Marty said.

  “But I think we’re up for it. Don’t you?”

  He looked at her in silence for a few seconds. Then he felt a smile break over his face. “Yes! We so are.”

  Dina swung around and sank her arms up to the elbow in the nearest stack. “We’ll go through the whole train if that’s what it takes. Every car. I’m in no hurry.”

  Marty grinned as he tossed the bowling shoes aside. “You aren’t?”

  “Okay, I am. But you know what I mean. We keep looking, as long as we need to. We’ll find our stuff sooner or later. Right?”

  Deep down, Marty wasn’t entirely sure he agreed. It’s not that he didn’t think they’d find their stuff. He really, really hoped they would. But that was the thing about being a great finder: You had to have realistic expectations. And what Marty’s realistic expectations said when he looked around at the mountain of rubble and raw clutter was: You’d be lucky if you didn’t lose your own two feet in a mess like this.

  Still. They had to keep looking.

  Game on.