The Lost Days (2 page)

Anyway, I went there and sat on the bench to think about what happened. I thought back to that moment—coming out of a muddled kind of daydream and realizing I didn’t have a clue where I was, or WHO I was. Looking down, seeing the notebook in my hands, flipping through it searching for clues. Not even a name written inside. Feeling like I needed to document everything in case there are clues that I’m not able to recognize yet. Feeling the slingshot in my pocket. A slingshot?? I mean—random! Not knowing ANYTHING. I mean, I knew the sky is blue and cats don’t fly—but I didn’t (DON’T) know the first thing about myself.

As I sat there remembering yesterday, I started to sort of space out just staring at my arms and my hands, which might as well
have belonged to someone else. The tiny scars. The little hairs. All those details must have been so familiar to me just a day ago and are now so completely foreign.

The park—first thing I remember.

Sat there feeling depressed and frightened and sorry for myself for a while, then cheered up by thinking maybe my life had been really terrible and worth forgetting.

Anyway. Did some detective work around the minipark. The only semi-interesting items were under the bench: a candy wrapper, a couple of bottle caps, some ABC gum, a lot of round rocks that would be very nice for slingshotting, a pencil stub full of bite marks, 7 cigarette butts, a soda can, 27 cents in change, and yesterday’s newspaper. From which I have learned that they really need to clean up their public
parks
park in this town. Litterbugs.

I pocketed the change (OK, yes, and some of the rocks, and also the newspaper) and headed back to the El Dungeon for lunch.

Later

Still hanging out at the El Dump. I mean, where else am I supposed to go? At least here no one stares.

Swept the floor, sorted junk mail, ate sandwiches, fixed broken cash register, eavesdropped on not-too-scintillating conversations, rescued six spiders from being stepped on, and found them homes in the corners of my lean-to. Told the local cats not to eat them. Found a broken Polaroid camera in the Dumpster. It looks newish, full of film, even. Fixed it within minutes. I am
pretty sure this is not something most young people can do. I guess I know SOMETHING interesting about myself.

Hung out in the café for a while using up my film and making customers nervous. Meanwhile, people were coming in off the street for coffee to go, and Raven kept getting asked where Rachel was. She kept answering things like “Gone away.” “Not here.” “Iono.” I guess Rachel used to work here. And Raven’s apparently the brand-new girl, since everyone was asking her name. Man, the owner must have been desperate—I mean, she makes some pretty delicious espresso, but she can barely talk.

One of these friends of Rachel’s asked who I was, and Raven said I was her assistant. The girl was all, “What are you, thirteen? Why aren’t you in school?”

“Oh, I’m IN school,” I told her, and Raven blushed and went to steam a bunch of milk no one had ordered. Hey, at least now I know how old I might be.

Later

Have read the Blackrock newspaper (all sixteen pages of it). From which I have learned that a town this small really DOESN’T need to have a newspaper.

Was also surprised to learn that a town this small has a museum. The Old Museum, to be exact. Will check it out later if I am in need of entertainment.

Later

Quite an exciting evening it turned out to be at the El Dungeon thanks to this fancy-pants named Ümlaut. He was nothing but trouble for Raven. At first I thought they had crushes on each other, but it turns out they are terrible enemies. But I don’t think Ümlaut knows that.

He walked in around midnight. He was the most carefully dressed person in the El Dungeon, by a long shot. Lots of styling product in the hair. His accessories and grooming spoke of hours spent getting ready. Same with his eleven friends who piled in behind him. They were loud and had terrible vocabularies. It was all like:

“Snakebite, I pinked.”

“Gor. We shoulda never grammed like that.”

“What you get from a iceblink, huh.” and so on. After pestering Raven for quite a while with their espresso orders, they sat at the biggest table and totally dominated the place with some complicated card play, cackling laughs, and backdrafts of cologne. And then some of them started having this sort of dance contest, which mostly took place on top of the table; and some of them kind of ended up under the table, kicking the furniture with their fancy boots and making a ruckus about hamhocks and ravens, which clearly wasn’t too welcomed by Raven. She was all hunched up under her cape, pretending to ignore them and looking blue.

A peek at the El Dungeon.

After a few more espressos they got rowdy and threw a bunch of furniture, broke some windows, did some violence to one another, and handed out stacks of cash to the police and to Raven. Then they all settled down again for another game of Calamity Poker.

I had been spying on them from behind the counter through a knothole that I had sort of helped along with a drill I found yesterday, all lonely and forlorn in the alley. It made a top-notch spyhole. I was all kind of hunkered down under the counter near Raven’s knees. I’d been shooting coffee beans through the spyhole at the Ümlaut pack for a while. (Note to self: Coffee beans make excellent small-caliber ammo.)

Turns out I’m pretty good with a slingshot, but winging fashionistas on the ears and cuff links had gotten boring, so I started to talk to Raven.

GuH! That Raven. It would take forever to write down our conversation, so let me just say that eventually I got it out of her (mostly through charades, and a LOT of fact-checking from customers) that Ümlaut runs a traveling medicine show called Professor Ümlaut’s Prophylactery and Revue, and his old friend Attikol (who is, I guess, the only one of the inner posse not here tonight) runs the gun and doll show that travels with them, and that’s called Uncle Attikol’s Deadly Dollhouse. They just rolled into town two days ago, but they’ve been coming to Blackrock every year for at least ten years. And right now they are camped just outside town in the dust plains, putting on their lurid shows and selling their dubious potions to the townspeople. Also, they’re rich. Good stuff. Will have to go out there tomorrow.

ÜMLAUT

Wily

Day 3

Seems I’m not bad at cat talk. All the spiders are still alive. Am being slept on by cats whenever it’s nippy. The four black ones in particular like me a lot, and have pretty much banned the other cats from the fridge box.

What a pack of characters they are! One is an old lady with a white star around her eye. I think she’s the leader. One of the boys has a missing eye, one has extra toes and white stripes on his tail, and one has a bandaged ear. Who would have bothered to bandage up an alley cat?

I went and gave them names: McFreely, Wily, Nitzer, and Cabbage. Which they don’t answer to.

Later

This town is insane! I just got a $37 ticket for Unauthorized Photography of Historical Landmark. Guhh!! I’d looked up the address of the Old Museum, more accurately the Former Museum, although it is also probably the Ancient Museum, as well as the Startlingly Ugly Museum. What do you know—it’s upstairs from the El Dungeon. Man, this town is small.
Also, unfortunately, there is nothing going on there. Not sure what I was hoping for. Some really weird art would be good. Maybe even some kind of exotic insect exhibit. Underwear from Around the World. Tattoos of the Aborigines. I don’t know. I would’ve even settled for Filthy Cobweb Land. Instead, the staircase leads to a pretty normal-looking hallway with a door that says OLD MUSEUM over it. (Um, also, just to kind of ruin any entertainingly spooky feeling I might have been able to muster up, there’s also a door that says SCHNEIDER.) No one answered my knocks. The calendar of events taped to the door lists an exhibit called “The Art of Direct Mail Advertising,” a private party for Blackrock’s government officials (how much government does a town this size need, anyway?), and some lady’s slide show of her trip to Palm Springs. And five screenings of
Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot
—because the Old Museum is also the movie theater.