Chapter Five

"So, where do you guys usually get clothes?" Dan asked, regretting immediately the way he'd phrased the question.

Isaac sighed. "From the Good Will."

Zac nodded, smiling broadly. "Tay gets Ike's clothes," he explained. "I get Tay's clothes. But we get our own underwears, though. I wears underwears now."

"Zac!" Isaac, at eight, was old enough to be embarrassed at the very mention of underwear. "That's not nice!"

"Dan, do you wears underwears?" Zac continued, ignoring his brother. "Do you wears underwears every day?"

"I wears underwears," Dan agreed. "Everyday."

They were in the car and driving aimlessly. Dan had realized that the kids had no clothes but what they were wearing, and he didn't think he was allowed to drive them to their apartment so that they could pick up a few changes of clothing. He'd decided it wouldn't hurt to take them somewhere and get them some pajamas and stuff.

Still, where did you go to shop for little kids' clothes? It had been ages since Dan had been to a mall, and he'd never been anywhere with the express purpose of buying little boys' pajamas and socks. Hopefully, he thought, Isaac or Zac would know.

"Who wears underwears?" Zac sang to himself. "I wears underwears. Ike wears underwears. . ." This last part, for his older brother's benefit, was added at the top of his lungs, joyously.

"Be quiet!" Isaac yelled, blushing.

"Okay, Zac," Dan told him. "I guess we'd better talk about something else now. Ike, do you know where we can go to get clothes?"

Isaac's eyes were wary. He didn't know why Dan would buy him clothes. No one had ever done anything like that for him before. "I don't know," he replied, because he really didn't. He expected Dan to turn the car around and say 'Okay, then, we don't have to get anything.' Isaac was slowly beginning to realize, however, that many of his expectations were not turning out as he'd imagined. Dan pulled into the parking lot of the first store he saw, a massive K-Mart whose windows, the week before Thanksgiving, were already plastered with Santa Claus.

"I seen this place before!" Zac grinned. "What's going to happen now?"

Some little kids asked "Why?" all the time. Other little kids asked "Are we there yet?" Zac (and Isaac, though he didn't often voice it) just wanted to know what was going to happen next. Dan took the keys out of the ignition and reached to unbuckle Zac's seatbelt. "We're going to go in."

"In!" Zac yelled, smiling. "Into the store!"

Making a mental note to keep Zac away from caffeine, sugar and other stimulants, Dan took a deep breath and steeled himself for what was to come. "C'mon, you two. Time to go to. . . K-Mart!" He turned to Isaac. "Do they have clothes at K-Mart?"

Isaac rolled his eyes. "Don't you know where they have clothes? Don't you buy your own clothes?"

Dan's grin was sheepish. "Actually, Nora takes me to the mall, and she holds my hand, and we go from store to store, and she says 'try this on,' and so I try it on, and she says 'do you like it?' and I say, 'I don't know,' and she says 'well, I do.' And so then she buys it, and I put something else on and we buy that, too. But I get most of my t-shirts at concerts, though."

"Is that a band?" Isaac gazed up at Dan's faded Grateful Dead t-shirt. "I thought it was about. . . grateful dead people or something."

"So you aren't a Deadhead?" Dan asked.

Isaac raised an eyebrow. "What's that?"

"I take it you aren't." Dan noted that both Isaac and Zac jumped back at the automatic doors, obviously unused to them.

"Kind of like at the grocery store, only bigger," Zac observed.

"You want a sticker?" The teenage girl in the blue K-Mart vest popped her gum and rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. She held a roll of happy face stickers in her hand.

"Yeah!" Zac grinned. She tried to stick one to his shirt. "Uh uh. I don't want it there."

"Where do you want it?" The teenager ran a hand through her permed hair, sighing hugely.

"Here." Zac pointed to his forehead. The girl sighed again, plastering it to his face.

Zac's smile was charming. "Thank you, ma'am!"

The girl blinked, taken aback at being called "ma'am." She looked at Isaac. "You want one, too?"

Isaac looked at her as if she were crazy. He was eight years old, for crying out loud! It wasn't like he was a baby! Of course he didn't want a sticker. Worried that she might put one on him anyway, he fell back, a little bit closer to Dan. "No," he said. "No thanks."

"Okay." The girl moved in toward the next group of shoppers. "You want a sticker?"

"We are in K-Mart!" Zac sang. "K-Mart! K-Mart!"

"Zac, act normal," Isaac groaned. "Be quiet." He glanced around, hoping no one was staring.

A few people were smiling bemusedly, however. One elderly lady bent and patted Zac on the head. "Aren't you adorable," she remarked. "Where did you come from?"

Zac beamed. "Heaven," he told her, beaming. Dan had to wonder.

A little while later, (after being lost in the Home & Garden section for the better part of ten minutes) Dan took a look around him and decided they were in the boys department. "Does this look right to you?" he asked Isaac and Zac.

"Yeah." Isaac stuck his hands into the back pockets of his jeans and waited. He didn't know why Dan was doing this. He didn't want anything. He wished he knew how Taylor was, where they'd all be tomorrow at this time.

"What sizes are you guys?" Dan asked. He realized that he had no idea how little boy's sizing charts were situated. Did he have to go find a tape measure and measure them? Did he have to weigh them? Did he have to go find someone with little boys of the same size and ask?

"Umm. . ." Isaac shifted. "About medium?"

"No," Zac shook his head. "You're biggest, and I'm littlest, so Tay's mediumest!" He rolled his eyes at his brother's ignorance.

"Um, I don't think that's the way it works." Dan turned to Isaac. "C'mere, I'm going to check the tag on your shirt."

Isaac looked up at him. "I don't have a tag on my shirt."

"Why?" Dan asked, feeling desperate and slipping into sarcasm. "Did you make it yourself?" Instantly, his stomach clenched. Shoot, what if the kid had? What if he was one of those sweat shop workers or something? What if they got their clothes off the black market?

Isaac shrugged. "It was itchy, so I tore it out."

"Oh." Dan nodded, more than a small bit relieved. That could be it, too. "Does size go by age, do you know? Is Zac a size three? Are you a size eight?"

Isaac shook his head. "I think maybe, but I wouldn't bet on it."

Dan sighed. "Let's just find things that look about the right size, and you can try them on to see if they fit."

Zac had pulled a pair of bright orange and red plaid pants from a nearby rack and was holding them up. "I think I like these."

Dan swallowed hard. "Those? Those, Zac?"

Zac giggled. "No! I's just kidding." He glanced over at Isaac and giggled. This Dan guy did not know how to take a joke.

Dan was picking through pairs of jeans that were hanging on a nearby rod. "Come over here a second, I want to see how long they are."

It was a start. Dan took the two of them into the changing room armed with eight pairs of jeans. "Ike," he said, "if you want to have your own place to change, you can."

Isaac bit his lip. "He needs help, though," he said, shifting uncomfortably in his battered sneakers.

"It's okay," Dan met Zac's eyes and the two of them grinned. "I can help him."

"Okay, thanks." Isaac was only too glad to escape into the calm solitude of a private changing room. He'd never been in one before, and wasn't sure if you were actually supposed to take your clothes off, or how many clothes you were supposed to take off. He stood still for awhile, not wanting to do something wrong, but not wanting to ask a stupid question, either.

Dan sensed that something was up when he looked over and Isaac hadn't moved. "You just have to try the jeans on," he said. "Don't worry, no one can see you in there."

"Okay." Isaac had been in changing rooms before, but only at the Good-Will. He had wondered if changing rooms in stores that dealt with new clothes were different. He thought K-Mart was probably more careful with their merchandise and had imagined a number of security cameras watching him from the ceiling. If he did something wrong, he was sure someone would know.

Maybe if he was arrested, though, they'd have to call his mother. Isaac bit his lower lip. He'd never thought about that before.

He struggled to untie the knots in his shoelaces and carefully stepped out of his jeans. Someone, somewhere, knew where his mother was. And God, he wanted to see her.

"Do those fit?" Dan yelled, over the partition.

Isaac shook his head. "They keep coming down!"

"Those, too?" This was the fourth pair of pants Isaac had tried on. Dan shook his head.

"They're a little better than the other ones, but they still keep coming down," Isaac told him.

"Come out a second, and let me see," Dan told him. "Yeah, the legs are long enough on those ones, but the waist doesn't fit. Are they made for, like, big kids? What's this 's' mean?"

"Slim," called a female voice, from a few partitions away.

"Thanks!" Dan called, then turned to Isaac. "Slim? These are the ones for skinny kids?"

Isaac blushed. "I can't help it."

"I know." Dan knelt down, brushing the hair out of his eyes. "What size are your other ones?"

"They don't really fit, either." Isaac looked away, embarrassed.

Dan put his hands on Isaac's shoulders, feeling the sharp ridges of bone just beneath the skin. "It's okay, Ike. We'll figure something out." He paused. "Is there such thing as extra-extra slim?"

"No. . ." The door to the other partition opened and a tall black woman stepped into the hallway. "Do you need some help?"

"I think so." Dan was grateful. "He's eight, I don't know how tall he is and how much he weighs, or even what size he is, and nothing seems to fit. . ."

He's desperate, the woman thought. His wife must usually buy the clothes. And that kid looked like they never fed him. She sighed. "Let's see, what's your name?"

"Isaac." Isaac studied the ground. How many people were going to be dragged into this?

"And you're eight years old?" The woman bent and examined the tag on his jeans. "Seven slim."

"I just turned eight two days ago," Isaac told her.

"Really? Thursday was your birthday?" Dan asked.

Oh my lord, thought the woman. He doesn't know his own kid's birthday? She'd known deadbeat fathers, and this was one. They were probably divorced. "You could try a six husky," she suggested, "but that would probably still be too big around the waist, and the legs would be too short. Maybe you should stick with these, and buy him a belt. He's tall, though. He might outgrow them pretty soon."

"Thank you so much!" Dan grinned, finally seeing a light at the end of the tunnel. "One more thing, though?"

The lady glanced back at him as she turned to rejoin her son. "Uh huh?"

"If I had a small five year old. . . I mean, really, pretty small. . ."

"Size five," the lady told him. "Slim."

"Thank you." Dan nodded to Isaac. "That wasn't so bad, was it?"

"It wasn't?" Isaac slipped back into the changing stall and reemerged dressed the way he'd been before. He wasn't carrying anything.

"Hey, buddy, where are those jeans?" Dan asked, hoping Isaac hadn't lost them amidst the debris in the changing room.

Isaac's mouth dropped open. "We're going to buy them?"

"What'd you think we were going to do with them?" Dan asked. "And bring the other pairs, too. . . I think we have to put them back."

Isaac was astonished. Dan was actually buying them clothes? Why? He was afraid. . . no one had ever done anything nice for him before without some ulterior motive. Something bad had to be coming, and he wished he knew what.

But after the jeans, there were shirts, then pajamas. And then socks. . . and everyone's favorite. . . underwear. "Get Superman ones for Tay," Zac told Dan. "And Ninja Turtle ones for me."

"Zac!" Isaac was shocked. You didn't tell someone what kind of underwear to buy you. That was incredibly rude. Dan would think that they were really demanding, and then he'd get mad.

But Dan just laughed. "Do you want pictures on your underwear?" he asked Isaac.

Isaac shook his head. "No! No way!"

"White ones." Dan found them and threw three packages of undershirts into the pile, for good measure. "This seems good. Do you guys want anything else?"

Two pairs of shocked brown eyes stared back up at him. Anything else? This was more than they'd ever gotten in their whole entire lives put together. What else was there?

"Nothing," they chorused. "Thank you," Isaac added.

"Thank you!" Zac agreed.

"Hmm. . . because, you know what I was thinking?" Dan asked. "That we should get some kind of toy or something for Taylor. Do you guys want to go pick something out?" The Taylor part was just a cover-up. Maybe he'd get all of them a toy.

Zac and Isaac looked at each other and grinned. "Ninja Turtles."

"Ninja Turtles?" Dan raised an eyebrow. "Wouldn't he rather have a Barbie?"

Zac shook his head. "He's a boy."

"Yeah, so's Barbie," Dan winked at Isaac, who ducked his head and studied the floor.

"No. . ." Zac stopped in front of the toy aisle, his hands on his hips and his expression defiant. "Barbie is a girl!"

"Oh!" Dan looked surprised. "I never knew that."

"You need me to tell you lots of things," Zac observed. "Otherwise you probably wouldn't know anything."

"That's right," Dan agreed, solemnly. "Otherwise I wouldn't know anything. So which Ninja Turtle does he like?"

Zac smiled. "Them all." He wasn't trying to drop a hint. Taylor really did like them all.

"Really? Them all?" Dan lifted one of packages off of the shelf and examined the little green alien thing inside. This thing was kind of cool!

"Yeah. We never thought we'd get any of 'em, so we figured we should just like them all," Zac explained.

"Yeah, but now we have to pick one," Isaac agreed. "So, Zac, which one do you think he wants?"

"Michelangelo," Zac answered, immediately.

"That's the one you want, not Tay," Isaac told him.

"Leonardo?"

Isaac swallowed. "That's the one I want. I don't think Taylor likes him as much."

They looked at each other. "Raphael."

"I have an idea." Dan wondered how to propose it casually. He smiled. "Why don't we get all four? You can each have one, and the other one can be so you can play with all of them." That was phrased wonderfully, he thought. Lord!

"No," Isaac said, quickly. "You don't have to do that."

Dan smiled. "Why not?"

"Because." Isaac chewed on a fingernail. "You shouldn't spend money on stuff like that."

Dan thought for a second. "Do you have a Ninja Turtle?"

"No," Zac supplied.

"Then why not spend two dollars to buy one?" Dan asked.

Isaac shrugged. "It'll be your Ninja Turtle, then."

Dan smiled. "I'll give it to you. As a present."

Isaac looked suspicious. "What for?"

Dan grinned. "Wasn't it your birthday two days ago?"

Slowly, Isaac nodded. "That's what for," Dan told him. "Hasn't anyone given you a present before?"

"Not really," Isaac admitted, twining his fingers through the metal rods on the edge of the cart. He shut his eyes.

Dan swallowed, but he tried to hide what he was feeling. "See? It's about time."

Isaac glanced at Zac. Zac smiled. "See, Ike?"

"Okay." Isaac said it so softly Dan could hardly hear him. "That's all right, I guess."

"Okay," Dan agreed. "That's what we'll do, then. It's a birthday present."

Zac smiled up at the ceiling. "Birthday. . . present!" he repeated.

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