Lost in the Moment and Found by Seanan McGuire
Antoinette, Antsy, was five years old when she lost her father. It was daddy-daughter day and they were shopping at Target, looking at toys, when Antsy looked to the end of the aisle and noticed her father's shoes on the ground, toes pointed to the ceiling. She knew that was wrong, that's not what shoes were supposed to look like, and then other adults rushed in to help. That same day, Antsy lost her ability to cry. She cried all her tears when she lost her father. She also lost her sense of safety and security. Losing three things in one day was a lot.
Shortly after the funeral, Antsy’s mother started dating a guy, Tyler, that Antsy didn't like for a reason she couldn't place, but time went on as time often does. Things weren't the same and they weren't so bad, but only six months later, he proposed. Antsy's mother asked her permission and, even though she said she didn't like him, three months later, they got married. Not much longer after that, Antsy's mother told her she was pregnant. Tyler goes into Antsy’s room that night and demands she sit on the bed next to him and rests his hand on her leg, which increases Antsy's revulsion of him. She sleeps in the top bunk of her bed after that.
About a month before Antsy's baby sibling is born, Tyler begins to gaslight her. He cooks dinner one night and asks her to set the table but to use the “good plates” instead of the plastic ones. Antsy knows she's not allowed to touch those plates because she's six and might drop them, but she does it anyway because Tyler told her to. Antsy's mom, heavily pregnant, gets mad and doesn't believe Antsy when she explains, which gets worse when Tyler says he never told her to get the good plates EVEN THOUGH HE LITERALLY ALSO JUST TOLD HER TO GET GLASSES INSTEAD OF CUPS IN FRONT OF ANTSY'S MOM. Antsy fakes a headache and asks to be excused.
Things get worse after that, but not in the same way. Instead of the gaslighting, Tyler stares and sits too close and touches Antsy and she can't explain why all of these things make her like Tyler less. Soon, the baby comes and Antsy's mother tells Antsy that they are moving to a bigger house. Antsy doesn't want to move, but she's just a kid, and so they move. The house is big which means she can get away from Tyler more easily, but he can also corner her in places out of her mother's reach. Like her bedroom.
In the middle of the night, Tyler goes into Antsy's room. She tells him he can't be there because it's her room, but he says it's his house. He tells her that if she tells her mother anything, he will say she's lying and her mother will believe him, and Antsy knows this to be true. He also says they don't have to be enemies and then unbuttons the top button of her pajamas. That's all, but that's enough. After he leaves the room, Antsy gets dressed, packs up her backpack with food and some money, and she runs away.
Antsy plans to go to a store and call her grandmother, her father's mother, and ask for help, but she can't go to the liquor store and the grocery store reminds her too much of Target where her dad died, but she spots a small thrift store she's never noticed before. Above the door is written Be Sure and Antsy knows she's sure that she never wants to be alone with Tyler again, so she steps inside.
Instead of a regular shopkeeper, Antsy is greeted by a huge bird wearing glasses and she starts crying. The bird tells her he doesn't deal in children's tears and that she's wasting them, but that's weird and so she cries more, but finally stops when the bird summons a lady to help. The lady, Vineta, realizes that Antsy has come through the door because she ran away, which technically means they own her. Antsy disagrees with that of course and says she wants to go home. Vineta tells her she can leave whenever she wants to, as long as she finds the right door. Assuming it's the door she just came through, Antsy tries it, but instead of opening to the parking lot she was expecting, the door opens on a jungle.
Antsy plucks a flower and closes the door and then tries again and this time, the door opens on a market run by cat people. The bird, called Hudson, calls for Vineta who brings baskets. She and Antsy are going to go shopping in the market for new supplies to fill their bellies and to fill the shelves in the thrift store. Vineta gives Antsy money and tells her the rules of shopping with the people who look like cats and sends her on her way. This is a test to see what Antsy finds value in, and she passes swimmingly.
Antsy and Vineta finish their shopping and return to the thrift shop where they sort through everything they purchased. Vineta and Hudson are pleased with Antsy and then begin to explain what is going on. They are in the Shop Where the Lost Things Go and anything that is lost ends up there. They will give items back if the owner comes looking or sell them if they don't. They also try to explain the doors, how they open to different worlds, even though Antsy argues about that, and that they will eventually stop opening for you. Most doors don't open for Vineta anymore, but they will open for Antsy. They go through the doors that appear and buy or trade or take things for their shop. Antsy says she wants to go back home, but Vineta questions her about the things she ran from still being there when she goes back, making Antsy decide she can't go home right then. After all this, Hudson shows Antsy a bedroom where she can sleep. Everything she needs seems to magically appear, like a toothbrush and a nightgown, and she finally rests.
Two years pass, but after the first six months, Antsy realized she wasn't going home again until she wasn't lost anymore. Antsy learns a lot of things about running the Shop and one day, a girl comes in, her door materializing out of nowhere, looking for her lost kitten. Hudson takes Antsy and the girl to the menagerie, (which, what? There are live animals just hanging out here? How did Antsy miss that?), she retrieves her kitten, and is able to go right back through her door.
After Antsy helps the girl with her kitten, she feels very accomplished, and when she wakes the next day, she finds that she's lost two teeth. She and Vineta go through a couple of doors, one that is instantly recognizable with a looming castle and a blood red moon in the sky. Vineta sees sisters we know very well and insists she and Antsy leave immediately. She knows the sisters are Door-touched and that they traveled from another world. If they realized she and Antsy came through a Door, especially theirs that leads to a Nexus, a place to travel between worlds, they could use it if they were so inclined, and Antsy and Vineta might accidentally have two extra people with them. That doesn't happen though.
When Antsy gets back and wakes the next day, her calves feel very sore and she realizes the holes in her mouth where her baby teeth were have been completely filled in with her adult teeth. Overnight. Under her pillow, she finds two chocolate coins and an unsigned note reading Nothing comes free; ask them what it costs you. That seems ominous. Antsy loses the note almost immediately and forgets about it even quicker. She doesn't remember that she lost anything for almost two more years when all her baby teeth are gone.
When she wakes those two years later, instead of almost ten, she appears to be older than sixteen. She remembers that she forgot something and looks around and finds the nothing comes free note. It also has a shelf number written on it. Antsy goes off in search of the shelf and finds it, surrounded by many many others that are very similar. On the shelf, she sees the backpack she had with her when she came through the Door and a few other things she's lost over the years, ending with a jar containing all her baby teeth. She suddenly realizes that she has lost way more than two years of her life.
Antsy spends some time being upset and frustrated and then she realizes that she's lost in the shelves. She asks the Shop, which has provided everything she's needed so far in her long and short time there, what it wants, and suddenly a young girl appears. She's translucent, so not really a girl at all but a memory of one? a ghost? and she tells Antsy that her name is Elodina and she started the Shop. She ran away from a horribly horrible life and ended up here, in a pile of junk and doors, and made it into what it is now. She tells Antsy that she should have been told what it meant to live in the Shop and go through the doors but she wasn't. She gives her a notebook and disappears.
Antsy begins to read and learns of Elodina’s life. It was awful and involved being beaten and disfigured essentially because she was a girl instead of a boy. She lost her sisters as well for the same reason. Antsy skips through the pages and reads about Elodina building the Shop and meeting the birds that live there, like Hudson, and they tell her where she is, the Land Where Lost Things Go, and that it is a Nexus that draws all things into it, including Doors. Elodina realizes, many pages later, after being injured, that going through a Door healed her injury, or it seemed to, but really it was just time passing. She estimates that going through a Door costs two days of time. Two days every time she goes through a Door adds up quickly and she realizes she's made a mistake.
Soon enough, another child comes through a Door into the Shop. His name is Eider, and Elodina, now much much older, tells him everything about the Doors and what they cost. They work together going through Doors and they realize that the time toll only affects the person who opens the Doors, not anyone else who follows through, so Elodina is able to visit different worlds again. Eventually Elodina's time runs out and Eider takes up the journal. He is sad to have lost his only friend but will continue the work that Elodina started, sorting things and helping anyone who comes through the Doors and, most importantly of all, teaching those who come through what the Doors cost.
After reading, Antsy rushes back to Hudson and Vineta and yells at them for not explaining to her the rules of the Doors. Vineta stops her from telling at Hudson and he explains that when Elodina came 200 years ago and made Eider and everyone who came after her promise to explain the cost of the Doors, she ignored the birds that lived there as if they were brainless creatures, so when the people who came through stopped telling the truth, the birds decided they didn't need to adhere to the promise either.
Antsy is still mad that she didn't know, but Vineta and Hudson tell her that she should've known because nothing in life is free. If she had known the cost, Antsy might've gone through with using the doors and done great things like Elodina and Eider, but she'll never know. What she does know is that she can't go home because she should be 10 but is 16 and her mother will not understand. She makes Vineta and Hudson promise that it will never happen again, that they will tell the truth to anyone who comes after her. They promise, but when Antsy leaves them, Vineta says that promises are only binding if we agree to keep them, which is disgusting. Antsy goes to her room, but doesn't go to her room, she goes back to the street she came from.
Antsy tries to get back to the Shop, but it's no use. She feels her same staticky hum that she felt in the Shop when locating lost things and follows it along, all the way down the streets and back to her old home. Just as Antsy arrives, her mother walks out the front door, and for a small moment, Antsy hopes her mother will recognize her even though she looks like she's sixteen instead of the nine or so that she should actually be. Her mother says she looks like what she thought her daughter would look like, and then she explains that her daughter is gone but the man responsible is now in jail. Thank goodness! Antsy thinks about coming back in a few years to try to connect with her mother again, but for now, she has another staticky feeling.
Antsy follows again and this time, she finds an injured kitten. After picking it up, she suddenly knows exactly where to take it and returns it to its owner who has been frantically searching for her missing pet. The woman offers a reward and Antsy accepts it, knowing she can't go home or back to the shop and that she'll need money. She sees a picture on the woman's refrigerator and feels her tingle again. She asks about the photo and learns that one of the girls in the picture is her daughter and that she's at a special school. Antsy immediately knows she's supposed to go to this school too. She hops on a bus and ends up at Eleanor West’s School for Wayward Children, which is exactly where she's supposed to be.
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