by J. S. Puller
Standing on one foot, beside the table, was a girl.
If you just let your eyes graze over her, there was nothing all that different about her. It was only if you were paying attention that you realized she was…
Well.
She was special.
It was like she was a shining light of special. It radiated out of her. Everything I kind of wanted to be but couldn’t be.
She was shorter than Violet, but taller than me. Her skin was a smooth, dark brown, and she had eyes like marbles. Pure black. So dark you could see your reflection in them. She wore her dark hair in what looked like hundreds, maybe thousands of little braids, thinner than my littlest finger. There were shocks of gold woven into the braids. At first I thought they were beads, but when I looked again, I saw I was wrong. They weren’t beads. They were keys. Threaded along her braids were dozens of keys, all of them a dull, gold-colored metal, with jagged edges and diamond-shaped tops. When the girl pivoted—balancing on one foot—to look at me and Violet, the keys in her hair jangled, making her sound like some kind of human wind chime. What was it like for her to hear that every time she moved?
I couldn’t imagine.
She wore a long button-down shirt. The kind the men in my mom’s office wore. Except this one was stained pink, unevenly, sometimes light and sometimes dark. Like someone left a wet red sock on top of it, in a pile of laundry. The sleeves had been cut off, but roughly, so there were loose threads falling down her arms. Her jeans were normal enough, at first glance. But on second glance, I noticed there were stickers all over them. Wrinkled, faded stickers. Some of superheroes. Some enchanted creatures. And some of them the sort of stickers that you found on a banana peel.
“You brought friends,” the girl said to TJ. Her voice was surprisingly high. She had to be at least twelve, but she sounded like a little kid. “That’s lovely. It’s always so nice to have friends.”
“Not really,” TJ said. He made a vague gesture in my direction. “This is my cousin Leah.”
That one stung a little.
I swallowed it.
“A pleasure to make your acquaintance,” the girl said. She set her foot down and reached out, offering me her hand. I noticed that she was wearing a ring on each finger. They weren’t fancy rings of gold or silver. Certainly, there were no precious stones on them. Actually, they looked like they were made out of plastic. They had spiders and neon shamrocks and footballs on them. The sort of rings that you might find decorating cupcakes from the grocery store.
“Hi,” I said.
She continued to hold her hand out, staring at me without blinking, filled with expectation. I felt Violet give me a nudge. She was probably feeling a little triumphant right about now. She was big on handshakes, after all.
Frowning, I took the girl’s hand, giving it a shake.
Firm, like Violet said.
But not too firm.
The rings clacked against each other when she shook back.
TJ gestured to Violet. “And this is—”
“Violet Kowalski,” the girl said, raising her foot again, bent at the knee. She went up on her tiptoes on the other foot so that she was nearly Violet’s height.
Violet tilted her head. “I know you,” she said. “You’re in my grade. You’re Michelle Green, right?”
The girl—Michelle—smiled. “Yes, indeed. Michelle Olivia Green.” Out of nowhere, she put on a fancy English accent. Like someone in a movie about elves and dragon slaying. “Of the Oak Lake Greens, of course. Charmed, I’m sure.”
Violet smiled slightly. “Of course.”
“Violet’s my neighbor,” TJ said flatly.
“How wonderful. Well, I’m glad you’re here,” Michelle said, going back to her normal voice.
“You are?” TJ asked, looking the slightest bit betrayed.
“I love surprises,” she said. “They’re little gifts that you get to keep for a second or two.” She sounded so dreamy when she said it.
“Uh, sure?” Violet said.
Michelle turned to TJ. “Did you give Morgan the bottle cap?”
“Uh-huh,” he said.
“Great. Why don’t you go eat a protein bar?” she said, nodding to a box of them on the counter to one side. Her hair jingled brightly. “Then we can get to work.”
“Wait.” Violet whipped out her notebook. “Work?”
“Put that away,” TJ said, batting at Violet’s notebook. “You’re not a feelings doctor.”
A feelings doctor?
Like a counselor?
I remembered Ms. Weinstein. And how Uncle Toby said that TJ didn’t like her.
“Put the notebook away, Violet,” I said softly.
Violet sighed. “Oh, fine,” she said. And she slipped her pen into the spiral of her notebook, setting it down on the floor, holding both hands up like she was surrendering.
The second it was out of her hands, TJ walked over to the box of protein bars on the counter and pulled one out. Right before our eyes, he ripped the top of the wrapper off with his teeth and then took a big bite.
A strange sense of relief flooded my chest.
He was eating something after all.
Well, of course, he had to be. He’d be in the hospital by now if he wasn’t eating anything. But it was such a relief to see it with my own eyes.
“That works out well,” Michelle said to Violet. “You going hands-free. I could use a couple extra sets of hands tonight, as it happens.”
“What do you have?” TJ asked, swallowing loudly.
She nodded to the pile of laundry on the table. “My absolute, all-time favorites, of course: socks.”
I looked over and that’s when I realized it: The stacks and stacks of laundry piled up on the table were all socks. Every single piece. Socks with little pink hearts. Socks with stripes. Socks with moose antlers sewn along either side. Socks with holes in the toes. Socks with holes in the heels.
Socks.
Socks.
Socks.
I had never seen so many in my life. I wanted to reach into my pocket for my phone, to take a picture of them.
“Wow,” TJ said, popping the rest of the protein bar into his mouth and walking over to the table. “That’s a really great haul.”
I noticed that his eyes were different. In the apartment, they were drained and lifeless. But looking at the pile of socks, they took on a silvery sheen.
TJ used to look at me with those eyes.
“Every one I’ve found over the last week or two,” Michelle said. “Shall we play a game?”
TJ nodded. “Yes, yes!”
“Wait,” Violet said. “A game? What game?”
“The greatest game in the whole universe. The sock game,” Michelle said.
“Match-the-sock,” TJ said.
Violet raised both eyebrows.
“These are all the socks that get left behind in the dryers,” Michelle explained, setting her foot down and drifting over to the pile. She moved like an exotic bird, a flamingo or something. But with the lightest of treads. “I used to play this game with my little brother all the time. The game is to see if any of them are matching.”
“And if they are?” Violet asked.
“Then we donate them to the YWCA.”
“And if they aren’t?”
Michelle leaned over, raising her jeans at the knees. She wasn’t wearing shoes! On her left foot, she was wearing a neon pink sock with white bands around the toe and heel, a pattern of gold birds crisscrossing the sides. On her right foot, she had a pale blue sock with purple dots of different sizes.
“Well,” Violet said. “That’s quite the fashion statement.”
“Thank you very much,” Michelle said, dipping into a curtsy. I don’t think I’d ever seen anyone curtsy before. Not in real life. That was what they did in the past, wasn’t it? I remembered from movies. When lords and ladies greeted royalty, they curtsied just like Michelle.
It was the kind of thing you only did if you wer
e wearing the cone-shaped hat Nicole was wearing at camp.
Weird.
“Michelle is the best at finding things,” TJ said.
I looked over at him, but he was happily elbow-deep in a pile of socks, pulling one after another out, holding them together to see how they looked.
He seemed so different.
So, well, the same. The same as the little boy I remembered from back before March. The boy who had clumsy fingers but tried his hardest to fit together pieces of the same puzzle every time. The boy who smiled. The boy who begged me to read picture books with him. Who wowed me with the stories he wrote as part of his hundred words a day. The little hedgehog with twitchy ears. Who practically cooed when you gave him a hug. The cousin in all my photos from last year.
The boy who’d vanished.
I’d wanted to find him and bring him back.
I’d found him.
But I hadn’t done anything to bring him back.
Michelle had.
Somehow.
“What sort of things does she find?” I asked, unable to take my eyes off him. What sort of things, other than my long-lost cousin, that was.
“All kinds of things,” TJ said.
“That’s specific,” Violet droned.
TJ looked up at Michelle. “Show her.”
Michelle shrugged. “Well, you can see the pile-o-socks for yourself,” she said, gesturing to the table.
“But there’s so much more,” TJ said.
“True.” Michelle skipped over to a counter on the other side of the room. There was a large mason jar filled with loose coins. “This is all the change that people leave behind in the washers and dryers,” she said. “We really aren’t a coin-op anymore. Not really. You don’t put coins in the machine. You just add cash to a plastic card and use that to do your laundry. The coins are all just… leftovers.”
“What do you do with them?” Violet asked. I could see her eyes cut over to her notebook, longing for it.
“Anything I want,” Michelle replied. “Finders keepers. Sometimes, we give it to charity. Sometimes, I use it to accessorize.”
“Accessorize?”
Michelle slipped her thumb through one of the many necklaces around her neck. They were all on cloth strings. The one she lifted was a piece of black twine, threaded through a purple plastic charm shaped like a top hat. There were others, in every possible color. A bird. A lily pad. A ballet slipper. A soccer ball. A fried egg. “I get them from the gumball machines at the hot dog place next door.”
“And the keys?” Violet continued, gesturing to Michelle’s hair.
“They get caught in the machines. No one ever comes to claim them. Guess they don’t realize they’ve lost them. Or it’s just easier to get new keys. Or they’re never going back to wherever they came from.”
“I told you,” TJ said, balling up a pair of nearly matching blue socks. “Michelle is the best at finding things.”
Michelle walked to the line of cabinets along the back of the room. She opened all the doors, slipping her pinky finger through the white handles. I’d been expecting to see the same sort of junk as at my mom’s office: coffee cups, pads of paper, pens and pencils, staplers, those bear-shaped bottles of honey. Instead, the cabinets were full of shoeboxes.
“Shoes?” Violet asked, sounding hopeful.
“Better than that,” TJ said.
Michelle struck a pose, like a model on an old game show, pulling back a sequined curtain to reveal a brand-new car. Except, instead of a car, she pulled out one of the boxes and took off the lid. There was an explosion of color inside. Curled like snakes, there were dozens and dozens of ribbons, most of them with fraying edges.
“Okay, then,” Violet said, her forehead crinkling.
Glad to know we were both confused.
The next box Michelle took out was filled with key chains. They came in every possible shape, advertising every possible place, from the Ferris wheel at Navy Pier to the hot dog place next door to the renaissance fair my social studies class visited for a field trip, just over the border in Wisconsin.
Each box was filled with similar treasures.
Candy-bar wrappers.
Single mittens.
Broken necklace chains.
Buttons.
Left-behind things.
Lost things.
Honestly, things that I wouldn’t have even noticed were missing, for the most part.
But TJ, oh, TJ was just amazed by the collection. He grinned at each box, as the top came off. He oohed and aahed at Michelle’s entire collection.
“Come on,” Michelle said, as she put away the shoebox filled with paper clips. “Help us match up socks.”
It wasn’t really my idea of fun, but when Violet looked at me, I just shrugged and headed over to the table. She followed me. And the four of us started pulling out socks, trying to match them together.
On the other side of the door, someone slammed the lid on a machine. It was as abrupt and as uncomfortable a sound as the car backfiring the night before, but when I looked over at TJ, my heart jumping into my throat, he just barely flinched his shoulders. I would almost have guessed he didn’t hear the sound at all.
No wailing.
No hiding under the table.
That had been a completely different person.
“What do you think, Michelle?” TJ asked after a few minutes, holding up two brown socks.
“I think that no one should ever wear brown socks,” Violet said.
“Close,” Michelle said. “But that one on the left is a little bit darker, you see? Hold it in the light, buddy.”
TJ frowned at them for a moment, shifting slightly to the left, under the fluorescent light. And then nodded. “I guess you’re right,” he said. And he dropped the darker one back on the pile, still on the hunt for a match for the lighter sock.
None of it made any sense.
It was less than that.
It was completely senseless.
But there was my cousin. Out of his shell and happily talking with Michelle about socks, of all things. He was so completely determined to find the missing sock. All of his focus and energy was on the piles.
And after a while, he found it.
Or something near enough.
“Good job!” Michelle said.
TJ beamed as he folded the matching socks together and set them aside.
“Sooooo,” Violet said. I noticed that her fingers twitched, like she was trying to reach for her pen again but stopped herself. “Michelle. TJ. How do you two know each other?”
“We met outside of the land of feelings,” Michelle said. “The building that scrapes the sky and overlooks the water.”
A moment of silence passed. Violet caught my eye, before turning back to Michelle. “Meaning?”
“Ms. Weinstein’s office,” she said. “It’s in the Plaza 550 building, by the lake. I was at the vending machine. My little brother was in the ‘feelings room’ with my mama. That’s what they call the little room with the blue couch, which I think is a much better name than ‘the little room with the blue couch.’ My brother didn’t want me to go in with him. He thinks he’s too old to hang out with his big sister now. So I was getting a snack. And I was lonely, until I found TJ.”
“Found him?” Violet said.
“He was lost.”
“Or he ran away,” I said, remembering what Uncle Toby told me.
TJ ducked his head, looking a little embarrassed.
“I think I was meant to find him,” Michelle said.
“Meant to?” Violet said.
Michelle shrugged. “I like being a big sister. And if my brother is too old for me now, I guess fate decided to send me a new little brother to take care of.”
I thought maybe Michelle was joking. But she didn’t laugh.
If anything, she seemed even more serene than before.
It wasn’t fair. If such a thing as fate existed—and I wasn’t sure it did—shouldn’t it
have been my fate to take care of TJ?
What was it about Michelle that brought him back to us? Finding lost things? Socks and keys and quarters?
No.
No, I refused to believe it.
There had to be something more about her. Something that made her special. Something she possessed that…
Well. Something that I didn’t have. That Uncle Toby didn’t have. And Aunt Lisa. And anyone else.
I tried not to be jealous, but it was hard.
Maybe it was my job to figure out what made Michelle special. If I found it, maybe I could duplicate it. I could do it myself. Teach Uncle Toby and Aunt Lisa. I just had to discover what it was, give it a name. Which meant I was going to be spending a lot more time at Squeaky Green.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I expected to get the full rundown about Michelle Green the next morning, when I met up with Violet in her dad’s parking spot. What clubs she belonged to. Who she was friends with. Her teachers. Her grades. Her shoe size. Even the number of bugs that she’d swallowed as a kid. I don’t know. All of the details that Violet so carefully collected about everyone else in that busy, buzzy brain of hers.
But she surprised me.
“There’s nothing to tell,” she said, as she carefully made a couple of notes in her notebook. She was working on her holiday gift list.
You know, in July.
“Nothing to tell?” I felt like the road map had just been snatched out of my hands, leaving me lost again.
Violet shrugged. “Not really. No one really knows much of anything about Michelle Green,” she said. “She sort of keeps to herself. Her older brother, Willy, is a superstar basketball player at a high school on the North Side. And her little brother, Jamal, is freakishly smart. He’s already in middle school math. He sheltered in place with my class during the…” She trailed off a moment, before she shook her head and cleared her throat. “But Michelle is just kind of lost in the middle, I guess. I don’t know, really.”