Stealers

I’m considering the turkey socks, doing the look around to see who’s watching, when I see the kid. Freaky little kid over in toys staring me down. Just standing there staring, like he just got back from the dead. Ghost-white hair too. If that kid had a twin, I swear I’d fucking scream.

The kid picks up a toy rifle and aims it at me. I fake bullet to the arm, pick up a scarecrow and shoot him dead. He doesn’t drop, though, just stares. Bet his mom’s that lady I saw in face paint. Probably left him in toys and said Stay here and be good while mommy loads up on pretty. He looks like the kind of kid a mom would want to lose.

The Christmas aisle’s just a big fuck you to Thanksgiving. Turkey’s got no fight against Old Man Nick. I could go for some Peeps right now but I don’t feel like devoting that much coat space to marshmallow. Just for kicks, though, I slip a chocolate elf up my sleeve.

In the random shit aisle also known as aisle four, we got your fake flowers, your plastic pompoms for the bitch-to-be, your summer crap clearance items. Water wings and penguin sprinklers. If I had my puffy coat, I’d totally swipe that spitting penguin. Never know when you might need water wings, though. I lean in and do the reach up high with my right while I snag a pack with my left and slip it down my coat.

Biggest thing I ever stole was a hairdryer. Next biggest thing was a box of light bulbs. My friend Kurt got caught stealing a keychain, just some dumb little keychain, but nobody thinks a girl wearing a purple headband’s going to steal, even if it’s their own crap band I nabbed last week.

Baby aisle’s got your Mama’s Little Elf bibs, your Package for Santa diapers. I can hear the kid’s feet running down the other side, then there’s his head peeking around the corner. I stick a baby bottle in my mouth. Isn’t my best material but still, he could have given me something. The kid’s mom’s nowhere in sight. Mom like that should get shit canned. I grab a Little Princess toothbrush and make like I’m sliding it up my nose. At least that gets a smile out of him.

Panty hose, curling irons, creams for the bearded lady. Don’t need any lipstick, already reached my goal. Got every shade of Maybelline lined up on my dresser. Mom never asks how I got them. I don’t even wear lipstick and she still doesn’t ask. I put a cake pan on her pillow one time and she didn’t say anything about it.

No way that kid could ever rob a bank with those squeaky-ass shoes. We come to the end of the aisle at the same time. I say ya! and he runs back the other way.

Last stop, magazines by the checkout. Gotta make it look like you aren’t in any hurry. I grab a Rolling Stone and flip to Jack White. The kid comes up next to me and picks up People. “That’s crap,” I say and switch it out for Life.

The two zitty clerks are making up some shit about their big tit girlfriends so I take the opportunity to reach around and slide a couple Three Musketeers off the candy rack. I bring them down by my leg so the kid can get a look before I work them up the back of my coat.

“Come on little bro, better get home.”

The clerks stop talking and watch us walk out the door, kid on my heels, grabbing at my coat like a starving puppy.

“Jesus, cool your britches will ya?”

I walk easy until we clear the window, the kid back there yapping the whole way. One for me, one for you, right? Where we goin? Are you a robber?

We turn the corner and duck behind the garbage bins outside Papa John’s. I sit down on the least greasy pizza box I can find and pull out the bars.

The kid’s doing the frog squat, knees up by his ears. “Which one’s mine?” he says.

“Who says one of them’s yours? Maybe they’re both for me.”

I unwrap his first and hand it to him. He eats it the proper way, chocolate first. “You don’t say thank you when someone gives you something?”

“You didn’t pay for it.”

“Okay, give it back then.”

“Thank you,” he says. Barely says.

While he rolls some inside fluff into a ball, I unwrap mine. That’s when the screeching starts up. “Sol! Sol if you’re hiding from me!” Kid’s up shit creek and we both know it. He starts to stand up but I grab his shirt. “You got plenty of time. What the hell kind of name is Sol?”

He licks some melt off his fingers. “Solomon.”

“Solomon?”

“It’s not funny!”

“Okay, shhh, keep it down.” I look around the bin, make sure she didn’t hear.

“You aren’t pretty. My mom’s pretty. She wears lipstick.”

“Yeah well marry your mom then.”

The hollering gets further away. The kid stops licking and looks at me. “I don’t know where I live.”

I keep peeling away chocolate like no big deal.

“I’m thirsty,” he says.

“Great, go swipe us some Cokes.”

That shuts him up at least, but he’s still staring a hole through my nose. I stare back until he goes back to his fluff.

A pigeon comes by and looks at us awhile until he figures out we’re pigeons too and goes hopping off after some guy with a bag of Bugles. If I was that pigeon I’d fly up and snag one right out of his hand.

“Is she coming back?”

“Why would she?” I say.

I thought he meant the bird.

Kid starts chewing on his sleeve like it’s got a nougat center.

“You shouldn’t do that, you’ll ruin it. Plus you need the elastic or shit’ll slip out.”

“You’re a stealer, aren’t you?”

So fucking funny how he said it. Chocolate goes shooting out my mouth, almost out my nose but I snort it back in. That gets the kid laughing, too. He points at the chocolate on my knee and laughs one of those high-pitched little shit laughs.

“Shhhh, she’s going to hear you.”

I suck the mess off my jeans and lean a little extra so I can see out around the bin. His mom’s walking back and forth in front of the bike shop, talking on her phone, but the phone isn’t even touching her ear because, you know, we wouldn’t want to mess up our hair while trying to find our missing sons.

“I had a brother.”

I look back to see if the kid heard me but I can’t tell because his eyes are closed. He opens his mouth and pushes some flattened fluff onto his tongue. He’s the first person ever who doesn’t ask what happened to Nick so he’s the first person ever I tell.

“OD’d.”

I look at the kid’s face to see what he thinks of it. He opens his eyes and looks back like OD’d, no big deal. He doesn’t ask how old Nick was. He doesn’t say Oh that’s just awwwwwful or ask if he did it on purpose, so I don’t want to stomp on his face.

“Accident. I think. Heart stopped.”

The kid just nods. Like he agrees that’s how it was.

His mom’s two blocks away now, flapping her arms at some old lady and her little cat-dog. Just a few more minutes and it will be too late for her kid to be lost. For some nice young man to walk him back to Rite Aid or the girl at Baskin and Robbins to say, We can’t give you a sample unless your mom’s here with you and for him to run back and beg her for a triple scoop.

“How old are you?”

“Seven. I never saw her run before.”

In her spiky shoes she looks like a tightrope walker. A drunk tightrope walker. I think my mom might have run like that for me one time.

Other people are looking for him too now. Five, six people hopping down the sidewalk, hopping across the street, calling out his name. “Solomon! Solomon!” They try to act worried but it’s obvious they don’t know shit about it. Holding their hands up at their foreheads even though there’s no sun. Makes them feel like they really want to find him, I guess.

At first the siren is just a meow. The kid doesn’t even notice it. But then he looks at me. He starts to get up again but I hold him back. “No. Wait.”

He isn’t dead yet. The stranger hasn’t dragged him into an alley. He hasn’t stepped onto the train tracks. He’s made it to the lake but he hasn’t gone under.

A second police car is on its way. I feel it before I hear it. There might be three. The kid’s mother feels it too. When the sirens are a chorus of shrieking angels, that’s when she loses it. Never would have guessed she had it in her. I close my eyes and listen. Take a deep breath of garbage stink, open up my chest to make room for her.

The kid is pulling on my arm, his sticky fingers around my wrist. I try to shake him off me, but his grip is too strong. “Hurry!” he says, like I’m some missing kid too. “Hurry, they’re going to leave us!”

I want to tell him Go, it’s time, she’s ready for you, but I’m afraid her scream will slip out of me so I keep my mouth shut.

“Get up!” the kid says, whipping my arm up and down, “Get up!” Hot chocolate breath on my face when he leans down over me, then the cold air of gone when he leans back and uses all of his weight to pull me from the ground.