The Lost & Found by Katrina Leno Page A

A 410 area code.
    I saved it under
Frances.
    Then I googled the name Hephaestus, and found out he was a Greek god, the son of Zeus and Hera. So I read about Greek mythology for an hour and then I went to see if Willa felt like going to the bookstore.
    â€œThe bookstore?” she said. She was watching TV, sans prostheses, her skirt pulled up on her thighs to expose where her legs ended. She had the window fan blaring and a Ziploc bag full of ice positioned on the back of her neck.
    â€œWhat do you know about Greek mythology?” I asked her.
    â€œNot much. I mean, Zeus and whatever. Why?”
    â€œShe told me her name.”
    â€œWho?”
    â€œThat girl I talk to.”
    â€œStabbing girl?”
    â€œWell, technically I think she would be
stabbed
girl.”
    â€œThat’s a big step,” she said, winking.
    â€œDon’t wink.”
    â€œI didn’t. So what is it?”
    â€œWhat’s what?”
    â€œHer
name
, Louis.”
    â€œFrances Hephaestus Jameson.”
    â€œShe sounds like a weirdo.”
    â€œHephaestus is the Greek god of metalworking. Do you want to go to the bookstore or not?”
    â€œI guess so. Can you push me? Can we get some ice cream?”
    â€œYou don’t want to walk?”
    â€œI’m tired, Louis. The bookstore is four blocks away. It’s hot out. Please push me.”
    â€œIt’s not that hot,” I said, but what I meant was it wasn’t really that hotter than it always was. It was always boiling downtown. So yeah, it was hot, but I could tell I wasn’t going to get her to come with me unless I pushed her. I went to get her wheelchair and put it next to the couch. She transferred herself with all the grace of nine years of practice (not that much grace, actually). Then she smoothed her skirt and pulled her hair up into a ponytail and threw the bag of ice on the coffee table (where my mother would find it later and scream about condensation and wood damage for hours) and gestured toward the front door.
    We lived in a nice apartment. There were three big bedrooms and a big living room and a big kitchen and lots of sunlight. We probably wouldn’t have been able to afford itnow, but my parents had bought it during a housing slump before we were born. They were always planning ahead. Now it was worth about six times what they’d paid for it. The neighborhood had only gotten better over the years. It was, as my father often reminded my mother (because it was his idea), the best investment they’d ever made.
    I rolled Willa out the front door and to the elevator. We lived on the sixth floor. There was nothing above us except a garden roof. No swimming pool. We might have been the only midrise in Los Angeles without one, but I didn’t like swimming and Willa had resigned herself to a body-of-water-less life. On occasion I could convince her to bob around in an inner tube, but she didn’t like getting wet and we were fair, for half-Indian kids, and the water made her sunburn too quickly.
    Willa hit the call button for the elevator, and it whirred to life. The building used to have an actual doorman and an actual elevator man, but they’d both been gone for about a decade. I’d never understood the need for elevator help, anyway.
    When the door opened, I pushed Willa inside. She had her phone in her lap, so I reached over her and pressed the button for the lobby. I was thinking about Frances, about why she’d decided to reveal her identity now. About how saying it that way made her seem like a superhero. Revealing her identity.
    â€œAw, she’s cute,” Willa said.
    I leaned over her shoulder and tried to grab her phone away. She was on Frances’s Facebook profile, scrolling through her photos.
    â€œHands off!” she said. “You’re the one who told me her name. What did you think I was going to do?”
    â€œWell, you could have asked. I would have showed