you found the page. of course you found the page. everyone who finds the page was already looking. that is how the page works.

i am not a yard. i have never set foot on the island. i moderate a small town forum and i read everything, and everything on that island reads back. these are the real cases. not goober's theories. goober is fine. goober is a kid. these are the ones the town has decided not to notice, because noticing is the first step toward being noticed back.

read them in order. they are in order for a reason.

CASE 01: THE DISAPPEARANCES OF STUFF

status: ONGOING

things go missing on the island. not stolen - the town is too small for theft, everyone would see. things just stop being where they were. the current ledger of missing stuff, compiled from forum posts, notices, and one (1) night of reading the town's own website very carefully:

• 412 spoons (ella's kitchen has the same 12 spoons every week. the math is not math.)
• one (1) piano (the church had one. nobody remembers hearing it. nobody remembers it leaving.)
• the concept of tuesday (residents consistently skip from monday to wednesday. they do not mind. ask them about monday night. watch them smile.)
• doover's toolbox (went missing the week he did. coincidence. everything on this island is a coincidence.)
• one (1) door (bobby has fixed every door on the island. he will not say which one he has not. i know which one. i am not writing it here.)
• the lighthouse keeper's name (see the registry. see the blank. see how clean it is. edits are clean. that is how you spot them.)
• one (1) transcript (the store's back room, behind the sauce. the store denies having a back room. the transcript is real.)

note: things do not disappear FROM the island. i think they disappear INTO it.

CASE 02: THE EVENT WHERE EVERYTHING BECAME ALIVE

status: CLOSED (by whom?)

the town calls it nothing, because the town does not call it. i call it the happening. it occurred years ago, when hoover, yoober and doober were still teens.

everything became alive. not the people - the people stayed people. the OTHER things. the fences. the gnomes. the slide. the flowers. the spoons (see case 01: the spoons came back that week. all 412 of them. nobody asked where they had been. nobody wanted the spoons to think they were ungrateful).

three teenagers - hoover, yoober, doober - went together to find the root of it. the root. capital R. they found something. or it found them. they stopped it. the island went back to normal by morning.

here is the part i need you to sit with: they do not remember how they stopped it. not one of them. not a detail. three teenagers save the island and the whole memory is a smear. hoover wrote it down before it finished fading. his diary is missing pages. the missing pages smell like the mountain.

doober remembers the least, which is strange, because doober was the one standing closest when it ended. there is also yoober, i also have watched yoober on that forum for years. he smiles constantly. he builds playgrounds. he helps the mayor with everything.

keep the facade, yoober. keep yourself together. keep smiling and helping bob.

[ what the diary says about THE ROOT ]

CASE 03: THE COUNT

status: ONGOING (always ongoing)

the forum has 42 members. the registry lists 33. the mayor counts 34. job counts 31 at yard hour. the soup served 31. the count is always 31 and the count is never 31 and every number on this island is a different shape of the same wrong number.

i ran the numbers. i should not have run the numbers. the numbers came back as a name. i am not writing the name here. the name is six letters. see case 01, last line.

CASE 04: THE CALL

status: OPEN (the call is still paying for itself)

this is the most recent thing to happen on that island, and it is the only thing on that island that gives me hope.

someone called for help. one call. placed at night, from the playground's payphone - yes, the playground has a payphone, the only one on the island, installed by the founders, and it has never worked. it worked that night. the caller asked the agency for "someone who handles missing people and does not scare easy." the agency sent two someones. a detective and his associate. they have not set foot on the ferry yet. they are gathering everything first - the website, the forum, the guestbook, the gaps. they are being thorough. they will need to be.

i traced the call. i should not have traced the call. the phone company records list the caller as "the playground." the playground does not have a name. the playground has a commissioner.

the commissioner smiles all day. the commissioner builds slides and gifts rocks and helps the mayor with everything. the commissioner holds the facade the way a man holds a door closed from the inside - smiling, shouldering it, whispering to himself to keep it together. and at night, when the island sleeps and the mayor counts, the commissioner walks to the playground and uses a phone that has never worked and tells a scared stranger the truth in a voice that never stops smiling.

keep the facade, yoober. you did the right thing. keep smiling. keep helping bob. help is coming.

you called it yourself.