Here's just a proof of concept draft for my next story that I worked on while taking a brief break from editing FBT. It's about a lost child in a mall. This is very rough--I'm not sure which (if any) of the parts will survive. Now, back to editing FBT.

The station wagon’s engine whined as Eddie’s mother braked. The whine, which descended in pitch as the car slowed, calmed Eddie. He fell asleep to that whine often when he was a child sliding on a blanket in the metal, flat part of the wagon. This was a time before car seats and seatbelt laws, where a slumber party during a long car trip found three children sleeping with pillows and sheets across the lowered back seat and wagon area. Also a time before his father left his mother. Eddie sat in the backseat with his gurgling brother, Ernie. His mother relied on his sister, Beth, to help care for Eddie and Ernie. The unfairness of being watched by a sister only two years Eddie’s senior grated on him. Beth sat unchallenged in the front seat next to his mother.

Eddie checked his watch. Eleven o’clock. Before leaving home, he synchronized his watch with his conspirators, Carl and Ari. He patted his shirt pocket, where he felt the folded up note he planned to leave his mother. Anxiety welled in Eddie. He breathed loudly through his mouth and sucked at his inhaler to clear his lungs. If everything went as planned, he would be wandering the mall with his friends in thirty minutes. Freedom would smell good, at least better than what wafted from Ernie’s diaper.

His mother turned into the King’s Plaza parking garage. A line of three cars waited at the bottom of the entrance ramp. The station wagon took its position at the end of the line. Its front tires twisted inward waiting to complete the right turn. The pallid parking structure looked like a stack of alternating wooden blocks turned at ninety degrees to form openings on every other row of the five-level garage.

The line moved as a green car pulled out of a parking spot near the entrance. The first car drove into the opening. The station wagon followed the next car around the turn, and the first-floor entrance to the mall came into view on the left. Six glass doors opened into the mall, with a large orange number one painted next to the doors.

“Drop me off here,” Eddie said. Part of his plan was to give his mother one more chance to do this the easy way. If it failed, he would be absolved of any guilt for what happened later.

Beth snickered. “Shut up, fish head. You know mom won’t let you walk alone. You’re still too little.” Beth was the bane of Eddie’s existence. At 13-years old, his mother allowed Beth to walk around the mall with her friends. Today, his mother was taking her shopping, and Beth didn’t mind being seen with her since she was not yet old enough to borrow her mother’s credit card, and her allowance was too little to afford much besides candy and food.

His mother crooked her head first toward Beth and then toward Eddie. “Shush, Beth. I’m still the mother. Eddie, we talked about this. You’re not old enough. I told you your friends could join us.”

The wagon weaved up and down the rows looking for a parking spot. His mother would circle the parking areas for hours, if need be, to find the closest spot to the entrance. Eddie did not understand this. If he drove, and besides flying with a cape, there was nothing he wanted to do more than to drive, he would pull into the first spot he saw. Circling and waiting for a spot made no sense to him. He knew it didn’t make much sense to his father either who would sensibly take the first spot he came across.

They drove through the brown darkness created by the yellow lighting that partly illuminated the garage. When his mother checked all the rows on the first floor, she turned to the up ramp leading to the next level. The wheels squealed loudly as she accelerated up the ramp, braking hard at the top to allow a car heading to the down ramp to pass.

The radio signal’s strength weakened and strengthened, providing a strange rendition of Leaving on a Jet Plane, to which his mother sang the chorus. Ernie clapped his small hands and giggled at his mother’s rendition. Beth’s eyes widened and with gritted teeth she said, “Mom.” When his mother sang louder, Beth cranked up the window so nobody outside could hear her horribly off-tune voice.

After two harrowing turns up the ramps, his mother found her parking spot, two cars from the mall’s entrance on the fourth floor. With a satisfied murmur, she pulled in. She pressed the only electric window switch in the car and the rear window squeaked up. When it closed, she turned off the engine and Beth and Eddie leaped out of the car, locking their doors behind them.

“Beth, get the stroller,” his mother said. Beth retrieved the stroller from the rear of the wagon and unfolded it. His mother lifted Ernie and strapped him in the stroller. Ernie wore striped blue pants and no shoes. His white shirt had banana stains along the edges where he had worn his bib. Ernie always smiled, showing the single tooth that grew in crooked. Even when he screamed, there was a smile on his face. Eddie found it creepy, reminding him of Chucky, who always stabbed his victims with an evil grin on his plastic face. Eddie wasn’t supposed to have watched that movie, but his father had taken him to the theater. While Ernie’s eyes were large, they were not as large as his blonde head, which was humongous compared to his body.

Beth pushed the stroller and they walked to the mall entrance. Spaced-apart cement blocks supported the ceiling. Eddie jumped to touch the bottom of one block, but missed by about four feet. The garage smelled of leaded-fuel exhaust and heated rubber. His mother held the glass door open and Beth pushed Ernie through. The coldness of the mall struck Eddie, smelling acrid and manufactured. Outsized brown squares covered the ground, giving it the look of a large, unwrapped chocolate bar.

The second set of doors led them into Macy’s women shoes department. The shoes stood on platforms like differently colored twin statues. The display was enormous. The men shoes department, by comparison, which was on the other side of the path leading through the store, was paltry with a few solid black and brown shoes standing on platforms, some with dots or tassels, most without. Eddie had heard his father yell at his mother about her shoe collection. Every time she went to the mall, she bought another pair. He glared back at his mother. When did she think she would wear all those shoes? He looked down at his own worn sneakers. A hole had formed on his left sneaker separating the sole from the leather covering his big toe. He wiggled his white-socked toe through the hole. He still didn’t think he needed another pair. They were completely serviceable.

Beth led them through Macy’s toward the women’s clothing department. She had been speaking nonstop about the new dress she wanted for her school dance. She had discussed the color and cut with her mother in the car. Eddie lagged behind them as they walked faster toward the dresses. Beth wore a collared shirt, with an ironing crease running down the side of her short sleeves. Her skirt was pink terrycloth, stitched with flowered patterns and pull strings hanging from her waist. Her legs and arms were slim, but she held bulk in her upper body and face, where her chin threatened to double. Her ears were rounded except for a sharp point on each ear’s down slope. She pulled her black hair back in a partial ponytail, held in place by a yellow rubber band, and the remaining hair failing down to her white collar.

A recurring nightmare shrieked through Eddie’s head. Throughout childhood, he dreamed of getting lost in a department store. The tall clothing racks surrounded him on all sides like trees in a forest, and the exits disappeared. Eddie ran around the department store looking for the exit, getting lost in circular racks of clothing and checkout registers. He could not even find the lanes that led through the store. He went from carpeted showroom to carpeted showroom, moving from department to department with no breaks. With the wisdom of a teenager, Eddie now interpreted the dream: the time he spent in the department store, for him, was torturous. His mother would force him to try on clothing or shoes, usually in preparation for starting school. The mall outside the department stores was safe. His father would take him shopping at Radio Shack, play video games with him at the arcade, and share great, big vanilla shakes with him at the hamburger stand. The department stores had none of these things.

Ernie cried when he lost sight of his mother. Ernie was not a well-adjusted baby. He wailed every time his mother went out of sight. Neither Eddie nor Beth could quiet him. Only when his mother picked him up did he stop crying, the tears turned off like twisting the faucets of a sink. Eddie yelled at his mother that she babied Ernie and he would grow up to be a wus. But she ignored him. This never happened before the divorce.

To be continued...