The Lost Gate (9 page)

Even ignoring the Christmas stuff, Danny was in awe. So many things that the Family had never provided for the cousins. Foods that didn't look edible, but plenty that did. Drinks whose flavor he had no idea of. Labels that meant nothing to him. Implements whose purpose he couldn't guess.

But flip-flops he knew. Even in the winter, they had some. He walked up to them, pulled them off a rod without even pausing, dodged around a corner and again into the next aisle, and by then they were apart and he was wearing them.

By now, though, there was a man following him around. Wherever Danny stopped to look at something, there was the man nearby, pretending to look at something else.

Danny knew everybody in the Family, but not the drowther spies that Thor worked with. Still, Danny imagined that Thor's informants would be a little more subtle. A pedophile? Danny had read about them, but he didn't think he was young enough, and even if he was, the guy would be chatting him up, making friends.

Store detective, that's what he was. And now that Danny thought about it, he was probably acting like a shoplifter—looking around at stuff, seeming to have no purpose.

Well, my purpose is to get clothes that fit me and then get out of the store with them, without spending money. That means you've tagged the right kid to watch.

Danny stopped looking at the array of things for sale and started paying more attention to the people. How did regular shoppers act?

First, they weren't thirteen. Danny realized that kids by themselves had to look suspicious to the store employees. Serious purchasers were older than thirteen—anybody who wasn't old enough to have a driver's license would have to have come with a parent or adult or older sibling. Since there was no such person in Danny's vicinity—and hadn't been from the moment he walked into the store—they had to assume he had no money. Especially the way he was dressed. He might as well have hung a sign around his neck that said “Thief.”

Second, most regular shoppers had shopping carts and put stuff into them. If you put stuff into your basket, you weren't going to steal it, right? You were going to push it around and get more and more stuff, and then take it to the front of the store and pay. As long as you had a basket, you weren't sneaking stuff into your pockets.

So Danny walked to the front of the store to get a cart.
Not
near the entrance where he'd lied to the old man about having a little brother. He didn't want to have to produce the little brother.

The trouble was that the detective was right behind him, and as Danny went into the recessed area where the carts were waiting, the detective stopped him. “Come with me,” he said.

“Why?” asked Danny.

“Just come with me.”

Danny spoke loudly. “I don't go anywhere with a strange man.”

The old woman who greeted people at the door stepped into the space. The detective flashed some kind of i.d. and the old woman relaxed, but Danny said, “I don't care what he shows you, I don't want to go anywhere with this man.”

The detective sighed elaborately and turned to face Danny. “Turn out your pockets.”

Danny turned them out. There was nothing in them.

“Lift up your shirt.”

“You like to look at the naked bodies of little boys?” asked Danny.

“You're not that little, and I want to see what you've been stuffing up under your shirt.”

Danny pulled his whole shirt over his head, then stepped out of the flip-flops and dropped his pants. One of the Family's concessions to modernity was that they bought their underwear at drowther stores, so Danny was wearing tighty-whities.

“Good heavens,” said the old woman. “How far do you need to go with this? He hasn't stolen anything.”

“He's going to, even if he hasn't yet,” said the detective.

Why don't you check out the flip-flops? thought Danny. Out loud he said, “I'm
going
to pick out clothes and put them in a basket and when my mom gets here, she'll pay for them. And I can't wait to tell her about the Wal-Mart guy who had to look at me in my underwear.”

“I didn't ask you to drop your pants.”

“Yes you did,” said Danny.

“I did not,” said the detective.

Danny looked at the old woman. “You heard him.”

She looked confused. “I don't remember…”

“Oh, come on, what kind of witness
are
you?” asked Danny.

“He's playing you,” the detective said to the old woman.

“May I get a cart now?” asked Danny.

“You can get out of the store,” said the detective. “When your mother gets here,
if
she gets here, then you can come back in with her.”

“Whatever you say,” said Danny. Carrying his pants and shirt, Danny headed out of the recess into the main store.

“Put your damn pants back on!” said the detective sharply.

Danny was out in the open now, and people were already staring at him, there in his underwear. “You made me take my clothes off, and now you're throwing me out of the store,” he said loudly. “Wal-Mart must hate poor people. My mom's coming and she's got a little money, and we thought she could buy me my Christmas clothes at Wal-Mart because you sell things cheap, but no, I'm too poor, you accuse me of stealing and make me strip and then you throw me out into the cold! My mom's going to buy me a coat, but you're going to make me wait outside with no coat at all!”

It was quite a speech, Danny knew, but the detective was completely helpless and they both knew it. Even the old woman knew it—she was giving him a twisted half-smile and she even winked at him. And the people entering the store had stopped near the carts and were looking at him and listening to him and then looking at the detective, and they looked a little hostile now.

For a moment Danny thought of talking directly to the onlookers and talking about how lucky
they
were that they weren't getting thrown out of Wal-Mart into the cold, but he decided that would be pushing too hard. Instead he started for the doors, awkwardly stepping into his pants as he went. “I'm getting out, I'm getting out.” Then he deliberately tripped over his own pants and fell to the floor.

That did it. Immediately there were people helping him up, holding the shirt he had dropped, and standing between him and the detective.

“What are you doing to this boy?” a woman demanded.

“He's a shoplifter,” said the detective.

“He didn't steal anything,” said the greeter, with a shrug. “You proved
that.
”

“I was just trying to get a cart,” said Danny.

“You can shop with us,” said a man. “We'll vouch for you.”

“If you throw him out,” said the demanding woman, “you're throwing us all out.”

The detective made a dismissive gesture and walked away. But Danny knew he hadn't given up. It was a tactical retreat—Danny had done the same thing himself, when he was little and the cousins played war. You pretend to run away, but then you lay an ambush for the guys chasing you.

“Thanks,” Danny said to the people who had helped him—but he kept his eyes down, as if he was ashamed to have needed help. Hadn't he used the same technique to deflect attention a thousand times before? And it worked even better with these strangers than it did with the Aunts and Uncles. “Just want a cart.”

“Stick with us,” said the man. He had three children with him.

Danny took note of his face, in case he needed to run to him for help later. But for now, he didn't need someone watching him closely. “Thanks,” he said, “but my mom's going to get here soon and I'm supposed to pick out the clothes I like the best. She got her Christmas check from Dad today and she just went to cash it.”

That was a good story, Danny knew. Single mom, raising a kid alone—and not doing too well, from the fact that he was barefoot in winter and had no coat. And Dad was such a cheapskate he didn't even send the Christmas check until the day before Christmas. But it also meant that this man really didn't want to be near Danny when the purported mom arrived—needy single women were not part of this man's plans for friend-making, not even at Christmastime.

I'm pretty good at this, thought Danny. Fooling people by telling them stories that make sense in their view of the world—they had no reason to doubt you, and so they didn't. And it helped that Danny never looked like he was lying. He had perfected that during years of playing pranks on the cousins and getting away with it most of the time.

And now that he thought of it, of
course
he was good at tricks and pranks and lies—he was a gatemage, wasn't he? The first loki since
the
Loki who wrecked everything by pulling off the biggest prank in history and closing all the gates. Deception was part of the talent with gates—that's why Hermes and Mercury and Loki and the gatemages from all the other Families were the ones most likely to have dealings with drowthers. That's why they went by so many names—Eros and Cupid could always get into any bedroom. God of Love indeed! As if there were any such thing!

But even as he gloated a little, Danny made sure that his face showed no sign of anything but a poor boy who had just been through an ordeal. He walked to the carts and someone pulled one free from the stack and offered it to him. “Thanks,” he said again, with downcast eyes.

As he passed the old woman greeter, her hand clamped down on his shoulder. He looked at her—she wasn't much taller than he was—and saw that she was smiling. “You're the smoothest I've ever seen,” she said softly, right in his face. “Just try not to take too much—nobody should lose their job over you, not at Christmastime.” Then she winked.

Danny showed nothing on his face, and said nothing. He just pushed the cart onward. But he felt a great deal less pleased with himself. The old woman had seen through his lies. He wasn't as clever and talented at deception as he had thought.

And yet she had also backed him up with the detective, making sure everybody else heard her bear witness that Danny hadn't been caught stealing anything. And she let him go with a warning not to take too much—not a warning that he shouldn't steal anything at all. Apparently Wal-Mart could hire her to be a figurehead representing their compassion for the elderly, but they couldn't buy her loyalty.

Drowthers were more complicated than anybody in the Family thought. They always lumped them together as if drowthers all thought alike. But she was smart enough to see through him, yet lenient enough to help him get away with at least a small amount of theft. And her grip on his shoulder had been almost as strong as Great-uncle Zog's, and
he
was beastfriend with the eagles!

Peril is everywhere, but there are also allies in places least expected. Sometimes even the people who know you're lying will help you and trust you a little. The things he had learned in his first hour of freedom.

Pushing his cart, he went back to the boys' clothing section. Danny soon learned that he was exactly the wrong size for everything. Too tall for most of the boys' clothing, and too short and skinny for most of the men's. He stripped off his shirt and pants again, not caring who stared, so he could try things on right out in the open—he figured it would be pushing his luck to try to get permission to use a dressing room. There was the detective again, watching him from afar—let him see how Danny carefully hung things back up when they didn't fit, or put them neatly in the cart, so his mom could decide which ones to buy.

It was getting so Danny was almost disappointed to remember that she didn't exist, and no one would ever come to pay for anything he took.

Getting shoes that fit was the hardest, because he couldn't tell anything about the fit unless he had socks on, and he couldn't buy any socks. He ended up taking two pairs of socks, each clipped together at the top, and then put on one from each pair, slipped the shoes on and tied them, and then walked around with the extra socks flopping around his ankles. Then he took off the shoes and socks, tossed them in the cart, and put the flip-flops back on his feet. Then he set out to get the rest of his drowther wardrobe.

Don't be greedy, he told himself. The detective won't believe the story if I overload the cart—or put in any toys. A package of three tee-shirts, a package of three more tighty-whities, four pairs of socks, one pair of shoes, a pair of jeans and a pair of nicer pants maybe for church, two long-sleeve button-up shirts, a small backpack, and a nice winter jacket. Exactly what Danny imagined a mother might buy for her son, if the Christmas check had to go entirely for clothes and other useful things.

Then, just to gild the lily, he went to the Christmas card section and stood there reading cards in the “to Mother” section. Every now and then he'd look toward the entrance as if looking for his mom.

Time to go.

As he looked toward the door, he suddenly brightened, stood taller, waved. Then he began to push the cart at a run, weaving among people heading for the checkout counters. But—as if his mother had gone up one of the aisles—he suddenly cut to the left and started racing up an aisle. Let's give Mr. Detective some exercise, Danny thought. At the end of that aisle, Danny dodged down one of the central corridors, with narrow aisles going off to either side. As soon as he reached one that contained no shoppers—an office-supply aisle—he called out, “Mom!” and whirled and raced into the space …

And then he was in the woods behind the store, shopping cart and all.

It was such a relief to know that he could bring the cart with him. He had almost stopped in the aisle to load up his purchases in his arms, but then he thought, why not hold tight to the cart and see if I can bring the whole thing with me through the gate? And it worked.

Danny stripped off his old clothes and discarded them, including the now-useless flip-flops. He put on the jeans, a tee-shirt, and one of the button-up shirts over it. Then he pulled the jacket on over everything, and stuffed the other stolen clothes into the backpack.