The Lost & Found (7 page)

I
got Nib's next message sitting in Sally's parking lot, working up the courage to leave the air-conditioned car for the hot walk to the entrance.

Bucky, I know I've told you before that I lose things, but I'm worried it's getting worse. I lost the letters my mother wrote to me and a picture of her I took from my aunt's photo album. I lost a handkerchief from a boy named Hank Whitney who runs track with my cousin. And maybe that's part of the reason I want to go to Austin? I mean, I haven't decided. But what if Wallace Green is my
father? Then maybe I would have found something pretty big. —Nib

It was getting worse for me too. It had been getting worse since I was eight years old.

It was little things, mostly. Like my parents would ask me to make a delivery, and they would load up the back of my car with swatches of fabric or reams of lace or buckets of buttons. They would count everything and I would count everything because at least two people had to count everything to make sure it was right. That was my mom's policy. And then they would put it in my car and I would drive it to the client's office, and when I got there, inevitably, something was missing.

My mother had accused me once of selling it on the side for drugs. I couldn't even properly defend myself against her allegations because I was laughing too hard imagining me bringing a yard of tulle to the corner and exchanging it for an ounce of weed. Apparently the drug dealers in her imagination moonlighted as seamstresses.

I wasn't selling it, of course. I had no idea what happened to it. It was there and then it wasn't.

It wasn't just fabric. Last school year, I lost my history textbook three times. After that, Mr. Steinbeck would only let me use his spare book in class. I had to borrow Willa's to do any homework (she didn't mind because, like I said, she put her textbooks in a pile in her room at the beginning of
the school year and there they stayed, untouched, till June).

Socks. Pens. Tennis balls. T-shirts.

It had been happening since I was a little kid.

Packs of gum. Sunglasses. My wallet. My car keys. Cups of coffee.

Two days after Willa got her new legs, I went to Sally's by myself to pick up grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch. Willa was at the store, my father was in Dubai, and my mother was at a client meeting in Marina del Rey. I wasn't supposed to leave Willa in the store by herself because it was a big store and if we got a rush, she wouldn't be able to help everyone. (This had nothing to do with her legs and everything to do with how needy our customers could be.) But it had been slow all day and we were starving. Mom was supposed to bring back pizza, but her meeting was running hours over because some wedding shop wanted a ridiculous amount of lace, I don't know. She sent me a text full of dollar-sign emojis and then a pizza and then a broken heart and then a little yellow face, crying. My mom was surprisingly well versed in emoji speak. I went to Sally's to get food. Willa had called ahead so it would be ready when I got there.

Benson was manning the host stand as usual. And as usual, he looked behind me when he saw me.

“She's at the store,” I said, pulling out my wallet.

“Oh, I wasn't . . .” He stopped, shrugging. “Nothing. Hey, Louis.”

“Hey. Just picking up.”

“Yeah, I have you.” He went over to the counter and grabbed our bag of food, then placed it in front of the register. “Fourteen forty.”

I took my wallet out of my front pocket. I don't know if this is interesting to anyone except me, but I kept my wallet in my front pocket instead of my back pocket. I just never liked how it felt in the back pocket, and plus I kept losing it, so I thought I would try something different. And I hadn't lost my wallet for over a year, so things were going pretty well. Until I opened said wallet to remove my twenty-dollar bill from its depths, and there was no twenty-dollar bill.

“Uh,” I said.

There was also no debit card, because I'd left that in front of my computer last night (I bought an album, nothing weird). But there should have been a twenty-dollar bill. I had a twenty-dollar bill. I knew I had a twenty-dollar bill because Willa had just given it to me about ten minutes ago. We had transferred it from Willa's purse to my wallet. I could picture it perfectly. It had happened.

“Get me later,” Benson offered, handing me the bag.

“This is embarrassing.”

“I know where you live,” he said, smiling. “Seriously, don't worry about it. Get me later.”

“I must have lost, the, um . . .”

“Louis. Chill.”

I took the bag from Benson and mumbled thanks.

Willa was going to kill me, not only because I didn't have change for her, but because our fourteen-dollar lunch was now, essentially, thirty-four dollars and forty cents.

From the store to the diner, I had not removed my wallet from my pocket.

Which basically proved my theory that the shit I lost, I didn't actually lose.

The shit I lost disappeared.

On my tenth birthday, just over two years after Willa had fallen off the fire escape, my parents bought me my first nice tennis racket. A Babolat. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever held in my hands.

My father took me to our local courts to play. It was nearing sunset and the city had taken on an otherworldly, mystical quality. I was ten years old and I had the most beautiful tennis racket that any ten-year-old had ever owned. My father cracked open a new, pressurized container of tennis balls, and we listened to the sound it made in the darkness—
whoosh
. We were the only ones on the courts. Three courts lined up next to one another and we were the only ones there, just my father and me. And my new tennis racket, buzzing in my hand. Like an extension of my body. Like a thing alive.

We played for hours. We played until the lights came on and the moths started to gather and the sky darkened to a light gray. There were never stars in Los Angeles. There
was never the pitch-blackness of the desert, which I'd seen only once before. The city towered around us, and I beat my father, again and again, and this racket and I became a unit. We became one thing. And I was so grateful that my father was home, because he was such a good father and I admired him so much, but he was just too often not here, he was too often on the opposite side of the world picking through muslin or taffeta or cotton.

And Willa was always getting everything she wanted and now I had gotten what I wanted. This tennis racket.

When we were done, I put my racket into my case and then placed it in the trunk beside my father's racket. My father was holding up the trunk and he watched me put my racket beside his and so he couldn't even yell at me when we got back home and we pulled into the parking garage and he popped the trunk and we walked around to the back of the car and the Babolat was gone. My racket was gone but my father's, of course, was still there, and the balls were still there. Just my racket was gone because everything I touched was disappearing into the void. I knew this at ten, but I was too scared to articulate it.

“What happened to your racket?” my father asked. He held the door to the trunk because it was broken and would crash down on us if he let it go.

“I put it here,” I said, and placed my palm on the coarse carpeting. I imagined it, I'm sure, but the place I had put the racket was warm to the touch.

“I saw you put it there,” my father confirmed. “And then I closed the trunk. And then we drove home. And then I opened the trunk. And now there's no racket here.”

I was already losing things. Matchbox cars. Video games. Shoes.

And I had loved that tennis racket so much already, but I was almost glad it was gone. Because my father was a very level-headed person, and he had seen the racket go into the car and he himself had closed and then opened the trunk, so now he would have to believe me that I wasn't careless with my things. I took good care of my things, but they vanished anyway. Now he would have to believe me.

“The racket is gone,” my father said. He moved a few things in the trunk, but the trunk was empty aside from his racket and the container of tennis balls. It was very clear that my racket was gone.

“This is how it happens,” I said.

“I saw the racket go into the trunk,” he whispered. He wasn't talking to me anymore. I could see the lines on his forehead. I knew he was deciding whether to yell at me or believe me. There were repercussions to both choices.

Finally, I saw his shoulders sag a bit. He ran his hand through his hair.

“That was a really nice racket,” he said.

“I know, Dad.”

“I guess we left it at the courts? We should probably go back and see, huh?”

“We didn't leave it at the courts, Dad. I put it in the trunk. We both saw.”

“Yeah. I guess you're right.”

“Now you believe me?”

He looked down at me. He shook his head a little, but then he sighed and nodded. “Of course I believe you, Louis. I saw it myself.”

“What are you gonna tell Mom?”

“I don't know.”

“But you believe me, right? You have to believe me, because you saw me put it in the trunk. So you have to believe me, right?”

He was freaked out. I knew he was freaked out because of the way his jaw worked. He was grinding his teeth. I was disappointed the racket was gone, but I wasn't surprised. I was used to it.

“I do believe you,” he said. “I saw the racket.”

“And now it's gone, but I didn't lose it.”

“You didn't lose it.”

After that, it was my mom who always got mad at me when the things I owned kept vanishing. It was my dad who stuck up for me. He defended me because he'd seen it himself.

I told Willa I'd lost her change. She was irritated, but she didn't say anything.

I don't know if she believed me, about the things I lost,
but she never really questioned me. And that counted for a lot, since my mom assumed I was selling chenille for drugs.

I wrote Nib back:

Maybe we're letting these things leave. Maybe we're complacent. I don't know. I don't know anything.

Willa and I ate the grilled cheese sandwiches at the cash register.

Someone came in and bought two thousand dollars' worth of lampas.

I texted my mom dollar signs and a trophy.

She texted me back fourteen thumbs up.

I
tried to draw my mother's hands.

I remembered them better than I remembered almost every other part of her: their length and boniness and the skinny fingers paired with cartoonishly large knuckles. I wanted to recreate the photograph I'd lost, my mother's hands wrapped up in someone else's, my mother laughing and throwing her head back, every inch of her body glowing with absolute joy.

But the paper in front of me remained blank.

Arrow was wrong. I couldn't draw.

I used to be able to.

I used to be the high school's star artist; my paintings
and sketches were hung up in the art wing, my signature sticking out in gold. (Why did I sign my name in gold? Was I that materialistic, that full of myself?)

I didn't draw anymore.

One day, toward the end of junior year, I showed up to art class. There was an apple on my teacher's desk. We were between projects, and just about to start our final piece, which would count for 60 percent of our grade. But until then: still life. Our teacher was giving us a break, she explained. A chance to center ourselves. A chance to relax before the piece that would make or break our final grade.

Except I couldn't draw the fucking apple.

I tried.

I mean, at first we all kind of laughed and made fun of the whole apple exercise. We were in advanced art, and we didn't want to draw apples anymore. That was something we had done as freshmen.

So first we laughed and then, after we'd gotten it out of our systems, we started to draw.

We put pen to paper. (Or—everybody else put pen to paper. I put charcoal to paper, because I could never quite get over the twist in my gut every time I held a pen.)

Everyone drew an apple, and everyone's apples were perfect examples of how an apple should be.

Everyone except me.

My charcoal connected to the sheet of clear, clean paper in front of me, and then my hand froze.

Nothing.

I couldn't make myself draw an apple. I couldn't even make myself draw a line. I sat there watching my hand not move and the bit of charcoal not move, and it was like I had forgotten how to tell my brain to make my hand move. It was like I had lost the connection.

Just a couple months before the end of my junior year.

“Draw an apple,” our teacher said.

We laughed. We drew.

Except me.

I didn't draw.

I tried to draw, but I couldn't make so much as a single smudge.

“I'll have to give you a zero for the day,” my teacher told me when everyone had left. It was just her and me. The paper was still pristine, still white on my desk.

“I understand.”

“It was only an apple. Are you feeling all right?”

“Maybe I'm getting sick.”

“A zero won't affect your grade at all. It's just for class participation. It will average out. Obviously I expect big things from your final piece.”

“I understand.”

“You could have drawn something. A circle with a stem on it. Did you see Evan's apple? It's nothing to write home about.”

“I tried,” I said.

“I'm not looking for Van Gogh here.”

“I know.”

“Well. We all have our off days.”

It was the beginning of many, many off days.

Months of off days.

I couldn't draw anymore. I'd lost that too.

“Do you know Mrs. Tate already has a waiting list? For college recommendations. She's taking names,” Arrow said.

Arrow wore a necklace that said
fuck
. But the font was so curvy and elaborate that everyone thought it said
luck
, and she didn't usually correct them. She'd even convinced her mom to buy it for her. She said Aunt Florence had looked at it for a really long time, then looked at Arrow for a really long time.

“Mom,” Arrow had told her. “It says
luck
.”

“Of course, of course,” Aunt Florence had said.

She bought the necklace.

Arrow was playing with it now, pulling the charm back and forth along the silver chain. She was lying on her back on my bed, her feet propped up on my headboard. She had her eyes closed. She was wearing bright-pink eyeliner, expertly applied in a perfect cat eye. It would have looked terrible on me, but Arrow's skin was tan and smooth and she could wear bright colors and they wouldn't wear her, if that made any sense.

“I didn't have Mrs. Tate,” I said.

“She's AP American History,” Arrow said. “So obviously you didn't have her, because you suck at history. I mean, I'm not even technically American, and I know more about American history than you do.”

“You
are
technically American, idiot.”

“I wasn't for three years,” she argued. “How much do you know about the Vietnamese culture?”

“I know they have a history of making really annoying cousins.”

“Rude. Have you asked anyone to write yours?”

“Write my what?”

“Your college recommendations!”

“It's the summer,” I said weakly.

“But I said there are already waiting lists! Are you even listening to me?”

I wasn't, to be fair.

I was thinking about my fathers, as I'd taken to calling them.

I hadn't heard from my real father (fake father? Mother's husband?) in years and years and years. When I googled his name, I was really googling my name. So a bunch of websites came back flashing JPEGs of my own artwork.

We were both Frances Jameson, only he was doing a much better job of covering his tracks.

When I googled Wallace Green (real father? Birth father?) I was met with thousands and thousands of websites and fan blogs and image hits and article headers all calling
him the “voice of the American people” and “best living American actor” and “super certifiable hunk machine!”

Neither searches were getting me anywhere.

“Frannie. What the hell?” Arrow said, sitting up. She crossed her legs and glared at me.

“What?”

“You aren't listening to me at all. I refuse to be taken for granted. I'm going home. Come over later if you want to watch a movie.”

“Arrow, you don't have to go.”

“I am removing myself from the situation.”

“What's the situation?”

“Being ignored.” She hopped off my bed and gave me a quick hug. I was at my desk, my laptop open in front of me.

“I'm sorry,” I said.

“Do what you have to do. I'll see you later.”

“Arrow,” I said. She stopped at the door and turned around. “I'm going to go to my mother's wake. I decided. I mean, you don't have to go if you don't want to, but I think I should. I think I have to.”

“I'll need to borrow something black,” she said. She smiled and was gone.

I wished I had a better memory. I wished I could remember my mother's letters. But they were long and rambling and incoherent, endless messages scrawled on cheap lined paper.

They detailed the life we could have had, if only she had chosen the movie star over the pen stabber.

I checked the Wikipedia page for Wallace Green. He was famous when my mother claimed to have slept with him, one of those movie stars who are timeless in their reign. His first movie was twenty-five years ago. He was thirty then; he was fifty-five now. He was getting gray hairs. People called him the perpetual bachelor. He was always dating a beautiful woman, but he kept breaking it off just when the marriage buzz kicked in.

My mother was not a beautiful woman, not even when she was younger. She was plain, like me. You don't notice us in crowds. You don't pay particular attention to us. You don't see our bodies or our faces. We don't have pretty eyes or pretty hair. Movie stars don't sleep with us. Not even if they are very drunk. Not even if they are very lonely. It just doesn't happen.

I logged in to TILTgroup.

I had a message from Bucker.

It said:

Nib. Have you decided yet whether you're going to go to your mother's wake? I was thinking about you last night as I was falling asleep. Not in a weird way. I lost a twenty-dollar bill and I remember you saying that your
mother used to think you were hiding things from her but they were really gone, just vanished from this plane of existence. I remember you said that: plane of existence. It made me think of other planes of existence, like maybe there are other versions of ourselves in a parallel universe and these versions are getting the things we lose. I wonder what the other versions of myself look like. I wonder what you look like. Sorry, I know that goes against TILT policy. Totally Ineffective Laboratory Test. —Bucker

I pressed Reply and started typing.

My grandparents spent five years pretending my mother was someone she wasn't. I don't want to pretend I am anyone other than who I am. You're one of my closest friends, and I don't even know your name. I'm Frances Hephaestus Jameson. You should be able to find me on Facebook. There are pictures and everything. This version of me isn't anything special, but it's better than being called Nib by someone I've known for years. —Frances

P.S. I really hope you are not a forty-year-old internet predator. Or in prison. But if you are either, you have shown truly excellent perseverance in your stalking of me, and I think you deserve this anyway. Take Insane Liberating Trustfalls.

I closed my computer.

I felt weird. But a good weird. Like a releasing sort of weird.

Like I had spent long enough in the dark. Surrounded by lies and dishonesty.

I just wanted to tell the truth.