The Department of Lost & Found by Allison Winn Scotch Read Free Book Online Page B

nice for me to find someone on whom to lean. You know, so I didn’t have to bear my burdens all alone. I told her that I liked living as a solitary being, and that really, at the end of the day, I was the only person I trusted enough to rely on. (No offense. I do find you to be a fantastic listener.) She nodded and said she understood, so she suggested taking baby steps, that I shouldn’t be afraid to also look for small gifts, for people who outstretched their hands, even if they weren’t offering a full shoulder. I remembered Sal y running my errands for me last weekend when I couldn’t find the energy to restock my toilet paper, and Lila blowing off her afternoon of work after our walk to sit in a tea shop and regale me with all the latest gossip from our group of friends. Still though, Diary, if I’m going to be honest—which is really the point of this whole thing, isn’t it?—it all felt flat.
    So anyway, Diary. I know that it’s only my second entry and I’ve already lost track of the purpose of this damn thing in the first place, which namely was to provide a diversion from my The Department of Lost & Found
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    wal owing and self-pity parties. So this week, honestly, I’m going to shovel myself out and stop Googling Jake and move on to Colin, from high school, and then to Brandon. That should be fun. (Note heavy sarcasm.)
    i h e a r d t h e latch turn before I actually saw it. I was flattened on the couch, staring up at the ceiling and mentally calculating how many square feet someone could live in without officially going crazy. The 650 feet of my one-bedroom apartment had me choking with claustrophobia, my daily walks be damned. I remembered the room that I’d shared with Lila back in college—it couldn’t have been more than thirteen by thirteen—and yet I never felt suffocated there. But inside my apartment, I truly felt as if I might crawl the walls. I was debating how the view might appear from a Spiderman-esque perch on the ceiling when I heard the click-click of the door, and I shot straight up, my butt sinking into the down pillows. I ran through a mental checklist of who had access to my keys. Sally .
    But she was working this morning; she’d already e-mailed me.
    My parents . But they were safe in Philly. My doorman . But he always called before he came up. And then my stomach dropped. Ned. That rat-bastard, skunk-smel ing, motherf — ing Ned .
    He poked his head through the door and muttered, “Shit,” as he dropped his keys. I stared at him the way that a rabid dog might size up a postman’s shin, and when he straightened up, I pelted him with the fluffy angora pillow that he’d insisted on buying because he’d seen something similar in Metropolitan Home .
    “Holy shit,” he yelped, as the pillow smacked him on the side of the head, and he jumped two feet in the air, coming dangerously close to the door frame. Damn, I thought. Nearly fifty points for a 52
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    concussion . “What are you doing here?” he asked, cautiously taking a step in. “You’re never home from work on a weekday.”
    I crossed my arms across my chest. “Need I remind you, oh valiant one? I’m in the middle of chemo. I’m working from home.”
    I reached out my hand. “I guess it goes without saying that I want my keys back.”
    “Look, Nat, I’m sorry. I didn’t think you’d be here.” He squeezed the bridge of his nose like he was getting a migraine.
    “But I left . . . well, you didn’t pack up . . . anyway, some of my work files are here. I just wanted to grab them.”
    “Get out,” I said, raising another pillow as ammunition.
    “C’mon, Nat. Be reasonable. I just need to find this stuff, and I’ll be gone.” He shuffled over and dropped the keys on my coffee table.
    I reached for the remote and flicked on All My Children, increasing the volume until the entire block could surely catch wind of Erica Kane’s latest romantic embroilment. Out of the corner