Read Online Tom Finder by Martine Leavitt - Free Book Online Page B

about Tom who-might-be-a-mugger.
    â€œBy William Wordsworth,” he said. He looked at Tom for a long moment, then dismissed him with a gesture. “Go write something for me.”
    The next day, in the train station, he found an address book. He wondered what it would be like to have so many friends that you couldn’t remember where they were. Or maybe the person just wrote them down so she could flip through the pages and feel lucky.
    That night in the shelter a kid with a Betty Boop tattoo on his arm saw Tom’s lipstick and told the supervisor that Tom wasn’t a boy. Tom left, and threw the lipstick away on his way out.
    The day after that Tom found a grocery list. At first he thought it was a poem in a foreign language, until he got to a part of the list he recognized as food: chicken, tomatoes, onions. But what were cumin, pesto, hoisin, and gingerroot? He wrote the strange words in his notebook so he wouldn’t forget.
    He felt like an archeologist trying to decipher the garbage of a lost people. The whole world seemed to understand something that Tom was trying to figure out. That was the worst thing about forgetting. The best thing was that anyone could be his mom. When people got off the trains, he picked the prettiest woman or the rich-looking one or the one with lots of kids, to imagine that she was his mother. He tried to catch the eye of the ones that looked smart. Proof that his mother was smart: he could spell. None of them saw him. He figured he wouldn’t be invisible to his own mother.
    Tom tried different LRT stations, looking for Daniel. When he found good cigarettes, he saved them, put them beside him on the bench. Only white kids tried to bum them. Sometimes he gave them out and said, “If you see a guy named Daniel Wolflegs, tell him I have to talk to him about something.”
    When the office-worker people were gone home and the station was empty except for the ghosts of smells, Tom would look for things and find them. Someone lost a book called How to Improve Your Memory. Tom read it cover to cover, but it didn’t help.
    The best thing he found was an entire purse. He studied it for hours before he turned it in. The wallet was stuffed with business cards, credit cards—one with the hologram of an eagle—and plastic-covered photos. There was a makeup case, a bag of lemon drops (Tom ate four), and a daytimer. The daytimer was full of the ordinary secrets of a good and invisible life, the life of someone that might have been his mother. He resolved that, being from an honest family, he would turn it in, though minus the $8.51 in the wallet which he would keep as a reward.
    He decided to leave the purse on the doorstep of the police station. He walked back and forth on the street across from the station. Once, twice, three times. Every time he went to do it, he felt his bones go weak. Stepping off the curb to cross the street made him feel like he was going to fall. He told himself he would do it on the seventh try. Maybe seven had been his lucky number. The seventh time he told himself all the reasons why he could do it, why he could do anything he put his mind to. He was strong, up for a fight, able to swim and spell. On the seventh try he crossed the street halfway, chucked the purse at the steps, and ran.
    He found a trash can in an alley and threw up the four lemon drops. Then he went to his locker at the Greyhound station and deposited eight dollars. He kept fifty-one cents for spending money.
    Tom had been hanging out at LRT stations for over a week when the space poet showed up.
    â€œHey,” she said, sitting down beside him. “Any luck finding Daniel?”
    Tom shook his head. “How’s the poetry?”
    â€œThat depends,” she said.
    â€œOn what?”
    â€œOn what color the paper is.”
    She laughed. Tom cleared his throat. “So. Where’s Pam?”
    â€œNew boyfriend.”
    â€œOh.” Tom looked down at the