Where the Lost Things Are Read Online Free

it like a kid on a merry-go-round—but the crow forestalled her, snatching up the jangly earring with his beak.
    â€œHey!” squealed Darly.
    â€œ Kaw!! ” answered the crow from the deep in his throat, holding tight to the earring in his beak. Some of the other crows had noticed our crow’s score, and they were swooping towards him, as if wanting to steal his cargo, or wanting to tag along.
    With the grace of a trained athlete, our crow arced up into the apricot-colored heavens. He did a loop, an Immelman turn, and a barrel roll. We held on for dear life. And now we’d shaken the pursuing crows.
    â€œWhat’s happening?” I shouted to Jack.
    â€œHang on!” he cried. Far from steering the crow with his knees, he was clinging to a feather with his legs trailing behind him like pennants.
    Pale peach mist surrounded us. Amara was screaming and Darly was whining and I was about to throw up. Like a stunt flyer at an airshow, the crow executed a wrenching screwball loop. I closed my eyes in terror. I felt electricity in the clouds.
    I saw a flash of light. And all went dark. And all was still.
    I opened my eyes. Darly, Amara and I were still clutching each other. The crow’s wings were outstretched like a vulture’s and we were gliding out of the clouds. Jack was smiling.
    â€œWhat the hell was that?” I asked.
    â€œAerobatics,” he said. “Climaxing with the most difficult maneuver of all, the Mobius Twist. Designed by the legendary barnstormer Lincoln Beachey, but never publically performed. The Mobius Twist is thought to be what caused Amelia Earhardt to disappear. It must be what the crows use to get from our universe to the alsoverse and back.”
    â€œThey do?” I said. “We’re home?”
    Jack pointed down. Below, I saw lights, a stream of lights like stars. I saw the familiar shape of the London Earl’s shabby roofs. The crow lighted on our porch slab and, with a fluff of feathers—rather rudely, I thought—deposited us and our recovered cargo on the concrete. He flew off with Darly’s golden earring jingling in his beak.
    â€œThief!” screamed Darly.
    â€œWe’re home,” I said. “Was that by design, Jack, or dumb luck?”
    â€œBoth,” said Jack. “I suspected the crows could somehow fly back and forth between our world and the alsoverse—without changing their size. So I steered the crow to Darly’s shining earring, it awakened his thieving soul, and voila…”
    â€œBut how did you know he would stash it right here, in Goshen, Kentucky?”
    â€œThat part was the dumb luck,” said Jack.
    â€œThere’s still a problem,” Amara reminded us. She pointed at the corner of the porch where her cat was eyeing us hungrily from the shadows.
    We four humans hadn’t grown back to normal size at all. We were so small that, compared to us, Jack’s bluegene pill was the size of a turkey, Amara’s pick the size of a surfboard, and my hearing aid the size of shipping box.
    â€œShit,” said Jack. “We’re in the wrong position on the space-time-scale continuum.” I nodded in solemn agreement.
    â€œKaring Kate has a product that could help,” said Darly, opening her pink leather case. “ Supersize Me . It’s experimental. Hold onto your loot while I rub this stuff on.”
    And that’s the end of the story, more or less.
    The girls slept over with Jack and me for a change, and we woke up happy—all of us smelling faintly of Karing Kate Supersize Me. Not only had the ointment grown us back to proper size, it had amplified the bluegene pill, the guitar pick, and the hearing aid along with us
    So ever since then, Jack chips his daily bluegene dose off his turkey-sized pill. No more grubbing for tiny pills on the bathroom floor. I hooked my oversized hearing aid to my squid phone and we use it for a boom box, and so what if I’m