All the Lost Things Read online

  Inside the store, there was a lady behind the counter with long lovely braids and orange lipstick. She was reading the gossip magazine that Mom likes to buy so she can see which famous actresses are getting fat and old. She likes best the pictures that say HORROR BODY or SUMMER BLUBBER.

  The lady didn’t say hello to us even though being friendly is probably part of her job.

  I stood at the top of the aisle. “We can’t get lunch here,” I said. “It’s just snacks and junk.”

  “Well,” Dad said. “I’m sure we’ll find something.” He walked around and picked out a bag of beef jerky and held it up.

  I shook my head. “Yuck. I hate that stuff.”

  “What about pretzels?”

  “Yeah. But not the spicy ones. Just the ones that are a little bit salty-flavored.”

  “You like cookies?”

  “Yeah,” I said. Dad picked out chocolate chip which is my third favorite flavor after oats and then peanut butter, but I didn’t remind him of these important and interesting DOLLY FACTS.

  I took a Twix off the shelf, and Peanut Butter Cups for Clemesta.

  “Can I get these too?”

  Dad nodded.

  “But they’re also JUNK.”

  “Mm,” Dad said.

  “I won’t tell Mom,” I whispered.

  Dad poured coffee from the machine and stirred in three packets of sugar. He got a couple of sodas from the refrigerator and also bottled water and two Red Bulls which are FORBIDDEN for kids because they will get too much energy and fly away.

  “Do you want a soda?” Dad said.

  I shook my head. “I’m holding in a pee.”

  Dad scrunched up his eyes at me. “Don’t do that,” he said. “Go on and use the restroom. We won’t stop again for a while.”

  “Will you guard outside?”

  Dad nodded. He balanced everything in his arms and kept one hand free to drink his coffee.

  The smell inside the restroom burned my nostrils. Whoever had cleaned it had used BUCKETS of disinfectant, but at least all the germs were good and dead so they wouldn’t be able to jump on me.

  I sat down and waited until I was empty. It took forever. I remembered to wash my hands with two squirts of the soap, and I dried them on the hot-air machine on the wall.

  Dad wasn’t waiting right exactly outside the door, but he was still close enough to run and grab me if any bad guys tried to get me. I went over to him, and we walked to the counter.

  Dad handed his credit card to the checkout lady to swipe through the machine. She had earrings going all the way up her ears, plus one sparkly stud pierced into the bony parts. I bet she cried when she got that one. I cried the day Mom took me to get my ears pierced because the lady shoots you with a real gun and doesn’t even say sorry afterward.

  “Thank you, sir.” The checkout lady handed Dad his credit card and his receipt. He looked at the card and mumbled something to himself which might have been a curse word that rhymes with DUCK.

  “Hang on a minute,” he told me. He went to the machine that gives you piles of money if you know the SECRET PASSCODE. I saw him give the machine a fat WHACK with his hand. “It’s broken,” he called to the lady in his VERY IRRITATED voice.

  She shrugged. “Guess so.”

  Dad walked back over to the counter and grabbed his coffee and the bags. He glared at the lady, who was back to looking at all the SIZZLING SUMMER BODIES.

  “Fix your goddamn machine,” he told her, and he stormed out. Some of the coffee spilled.

  I followed him but I didn’t take his hand. “What a stupid woman,” I said, when we climbed into the car.

  Dad didn’t say anything, he just gulped his coffee down and then drove to the next gas station. He pulled up the car like he was mad at it. He slammed the door when he got out, and the whole car wobbled.

  While he stood at the second cash machine I concentrated on laying all the snacks out on the back seat. I put them in neat rows, like I was running a store and you could choose whatever you wanted.

  I ate one finger of my Twix and Clemesta ate one of her Peanut Butter Cups. Peanut butter is very healthy for horses. It helps their teeth stay strong for chewing grass and biting bad guys. Dad came back to the car and opened his Red Bull. He drank it down in two great thirsty gulps and then we set off again.

  “How’s that Twix?” he said.

  I licked my chocolatey fingers. “It’s very delicious.”

  Dad opened the window and let his arm hang out in the breeze.

  “Isn’t this the most fun?” I said to Clemesta. She smelled of peanut butter and I wanted to lick her but I didn’t.

  “I guess so,” she said.

  “Why aren’t you more excited?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know where we’re going. Maybe I won’t like it.”

  “It’s the best place. Obviously you’ll love it.”

  Out the window, we passed lots and lots of fields and trees with pretty pinky-purple blossoms. The sky was very blue and very high, like it stretched all the way to outer space.

  “Dad,” I said, “probably this is the best day of my whole entire life. And Clemesta’s. Is it yours too?” He smiled at me and his eyes crinkled at the corners.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Mine too.”

  That made me warm inside my heart.

  I ate a handful of chips and one of the chocolate chip cookies.

  “That’s enough,” Clemesta said, “or your stomach might burst.”

  “Yeah.” I ate one more cookie. Then I laid my head back against the seat and used my fingers to comb through Clemesta’s silky mane. On days when I braid my hair, I like to braid hers too. That way people can tell immediately that we are twins and sisters.

  “But they don’t know we are magical,” Clemesta said. “That’s our special secret.”

  “Yeah. But a good secret. Not a bad one.”

  “Yeah. I don’t like the bad ones either.”

  “I like Pennsylvania,” I said. I slipped Clemesta’s second Peanut Butter Cup into my mouth and let it melt away on my tongue. I knew she wouldn’t mind because we always share everything and my stomach is bigger than hers anyway.

  PENNSYLVANIA I said inside my head. I tried to remember the spelling from the billboard but I hadn’t concentrated hard enough. There were MILLIONS of trees everywhere, maybe more than I ever saw before in my life all at once. I bet all the kids around here had their own private tree houses.

  “Oh, isn’t Dracula from Pennsylvania?” I said.

  “I don’t think so,” Clemesta said.

  “He is.”

  Clemesta scratched her head. She does that when she thinks very hard. She uses her front hoof. “No, he’s from the other place. Transylvania.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Well, you’re very good at geography.”

  “Yeah, but you’re excellent at words and Math and millions of other things.”

  “Yeah.”

  We rubbed our noses together, which is a special kind of secret kiss just for us two twins.

  Dad switched on the radio and turned it up to listen when the news came on. I don’t like listening to the news because it’s only ever talking and BLAH BLAH BLAH and boring like when Principal Hanson at school gives her lecture on how all of us are the same even if some of us are Hindus or Muslims or Catholics and especially if we are like Alex in the class below mine who was born a girl but is actually a boy and wears boy clothes.

  I watched the back of Dad’s head. I shifted my legs to try and stretch them out. I pointed my foot like a ballet dancer and I lifted my leg like I was going to do a pirouette, which I can do for real anytime but not in a car sitting down. All the other girls in my class go to after-school ballet but I can’t go because of the BILLS BILLS BILLS. It’s very unfair because even Shira goes to classes and she doesn’t like ballet one bit, she just has to go because her big sister takes the class after hers and she has to KILL TIME with dance steps.

  Anyway, Clemesta and
I practice our own private ballet every day for HOURS and one day we will probably be so good that someone will walk past the window of the living room and spot us dancing and make us the leading dancers for Swan Lake, which has the best and most beautiful costumes of all the ballets in the world. All the girls from my class will come and watch me and they’ll feel pretty silly for wasting so much money on dance classes for no good reason. Afterward, they will throw roses onto the stage while I curtsy and they will give me a standing elation. Verity won’t stand and clap, because she will be too green with jealousy to get up from her seat.

  Dad will be there too. He’ll be clapping the loudest because he hasn’t seen me dance ballet in a long time and he will get a big surprise and a gigantic burst of PROUDNESS to have such a graceful and talented daughter called ME.

  After I finished stretching my legs, I checked my teeth with my tongue. They are very busy at the moment. My front tooth has been missing since before Christmas, my back molar tooth is poking through, and my bottom tooth on the left side is loose. I like to wiggle it. If I poke it in far enough I can feel the slippy slimy gum part underneath and the sharp parts of the tooth’s roots where it’s still trying to stay attached. I bet it’s going to fall out soon, maybe even on the adventure.

  “Dad,” I said, “can the tooth fairy visit you even when you’re in another state?”

  “What?”

  “The tooth fairy.”

  “The tooth fairy,” Dad said. “Huh. Well. I guess if she’s a fairy she can go anywhere.”

  “That’s what I thought,” I said. “Are we still in Pennsylvania?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How much further is the adventure?”

  “Uh, we have a way to go still,” Dad said. He peeked at something on his phone.

  “Are you sure I’ll like the place?” I said.

  “Yeah, I’m sure, Doll.”

  I smiled. I love it when Dad calls me Doll, which isn’t my real name but a name you make up for someone you love very much. Dolly isn’t really my name either, but it’s what everyone calls me because Adaline is a funny name for a child and Mom only chose it because she liked an actress once who was called Adaline, and then she decided she didn’t like her anymore after all and I became just Dolly, or Doll when Dad loves me especially much and wants to tell me in one special CODE WORD that we both understand.

  Dad’s real name is Joseph Rust and Mom’s name is Anna Rust but her name before she married Dad was Anna Kalina and that’s the name she uses when she’s being a famous actress. I like her name a lot because it stays the same even if you write it backward. My name backward is just a nonsense word.

  Probably I am very lucky to have a famous and beautiful Mom instead of an ordinary and boring one like everyone else has, but sometimes I don’t feel lucky at all. I just feel FED UP to my eyeballs.

  Outside the window, the sun had gone to bed and the sky was turning blurry.

  “How many hours have we been driving?” I said.

  Dad sighed. “A lot. We’ll stop soon.”

  “The adventure is very far away.”

  “The good ones are.” Dad smiled.

  At the next exit, he turned off the interstate and I read the sign on the side of the road that said WELCOME TO CHAMBERSBURG.

  “Is this where we’re stopping?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is it the place for the adventure?”

  “No, but it’s getting late,” Dad said. “And we need a place to sleep.”

  We drove by an Arby’s and a Burger King and a Taco Bell all in a row and I really hoped that Dad would say something about stopping for dinner but instead he drove a little further and pulled up in the parking lot of a CVS. He checked his phone and typed something into it. Clemesta tugged at my shirt.

  “We never spent a night away from Mom before,” she said.

  I shrugged. “She’s on her girl weekend. And anyway I’m still mad at her so actually it’s GOOD LUCK and GOOD NEWS not to have to see her right now.”

  Clemesta scratched her head. “I guess so.”

  “I absolutely know so.”

  I breathed my breath-steam onto the window and made a nose print in the glass. “Did you see that fox in the trees?”

  “Where?”

  “Over that way, before we took the exit. She waved to me. Like this.” I showed her with my arm, pretending it was the fox paw.

  “I didn’t see anything,” Clemesta said.

  “Probably it means excellent luck.”

  “I hope so.”

  Dad started up the car again and we drove a few minutes more. Then we pulled up outside a hotel called the CHAMBERSBURG COMFORT LODGE and Dad grabbed his duffel bag off the seat.

  “Come on,” he said.

  I took Clemesta and we all went inside a bright and sparkling lobby with a big arrangement of plastic flowers sitting on a table. It was very glamorous, like a ballroom in a movie with very shiny floors and music playing out of the walls.

  The woman at the front desk smiled at us.

  “Welcome to the Chambersburg,” she said, in a loud voice that sounded like she was singing instead of talking.

  She had a pretty face with blue glassy eyes like a doll, and her skin was creamy and smooth like it was made from butter. Dad asked if there was a room for two and she said the only available one she had was a JUNIOR SUITE, which she could give us for a special price, since it was already so late.

  “To the right and up the elevator to the fourteenth floor,” she said. “It’s actually the thirteenth floor, but we call it the fourteenth on account of thirteen being unlucky.”

  “Got it,” Dad said, and he took the key which was really a plastic card.

  Inside the elevator I pressed the number 14 button and frowned.

  “How can you just pretend something is something else?” I said. “It’s lying.”

  Dad shrugged. He looked like all the air was running out of him, like balloons the week after your birthday.

  “Is this the end of the adventure?”

  “No, Doll.”

  “That’s good.”

  The elevator opened and we found our room. I was feeling sleepy too, but as soon as Dad opened the door, I jumped WIDE AWAKE.

  “It’s so fancy,” I said. Dad gave my shoulders a squeeze. The room was huge and beautiful and there were a MILLION different wonderful things to explore. Like two giant beds next to each other with a wooden table and a white lamp in between, and an enormous TV and a bathroom that had a hair dryer stuck on the wall and two bars of soap that were wrapped in plastic like tiny presents. There were lots of white towels in all different sizes and also a refrigerator hidden inside a cabinet and a desk with writing paper and a small pencil in a green leather folder in case you needed to write someone an important letter from the CHAMBERSBURG COMFORT LODGE.

  But the best part was the real-life bathtub in the middle of the room, just stuck right there on the carpet opposite the bed. It was a round tub and very deep, and there were lots of nozzles and taps and Dad said those were for different kinds of water to spray you while you soaked. I BEGGED him to have a bath and he rubbed his head and said, “Sure, Dolly, you go ahead.”

  I jumped up and down and Clemesta squealed and reared up on her horse hind legs and danced her happy dance, which she only does when she is extremely delighted about something. I tied my hair back into a ponytail and I threw off my clothes in split seconds of speediness. Dad was figuring out the knobs and running the water, which could come in either a soft trickle or a great powerful whoosh like a fire hose. There were three little bottles of bubble bath on the side and we poured them in until the tub was full up with foamy white water. I jumped in and grabbed at the bubbles.

  “Get in,” I said to Dad. “It’s so much fun in here, you’ll love it.”

  He looked at me and made a face.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I won’t look at your private parts.” That made him laugh.

  “Dolly, y
ou are such a great kid,” he said.

  I did see Dad naked once, coming out of the shower with his PRIVATE PART very pink, and Mom was in the bathroom still and when she came out later her cheeks were very rosy and she was being FLOATING MOM which is when she is so happy and smiley it’s as though she is dancing on air and there is music playing that only she can hear. That must have been a long time ago because she hasn’t been like that with Dad for a while.

  “Come on,” I said, “get in!”

  Dad shook his head. “You have fun,” he said. He sat on the bed and switched on the TV.

  I watched him flick through the channels until he found what he was looking for. He took the remote and used it to scratch his back.

  I sighed. “Probably he’s a little bit shy in front of me,” I said to Clemesta. “That’s what it is. That’s why he isn’t playing.”

  “Grown-ups are ridiculous sometimes,” she said.

  “Never mind,” I said, “I’ve invented a brilliant fun game.”

  We used the glass cups from the bathroom and pretended that I was a grown-up lady with creamy-colored skin who worked in an ice-cream parlor that was inside a hotel. There were ONE THOUSAND flavors to choose from and also hundreds of toppings like sprinkles and caramel chunks and M&Ms, but also crazy stuff like snail shell crumble and cockroach confetti. Clemesta had to order and then I scooped up the bubbles and she ate it.

  Savannah says we are too old to still be playing games like this, but she was at home in her boring old house in Astoria and I was in the state of Pennsylvania at the CHAMBERSBURG COMFORT LODGE on a private DAD AND DOLLY ADVENTURE so I decided I could do whatever I wanted. Even pee in the water. Clemesta peed too but it wasn’t gross or unhygienic because of us being twins and pee being like water anyway. Once I peed into a cup so I could smell it and feel how warm it is when it comes out of your body. Also once I tried to pee standing up but it doesn’t work, it only makes a big mess if you have the girl parts.