Title: Elsewhere

Summary: It's an emotional rollercoaster, taking care of three boys. Especially if they're not yours, and you don't know how long they're staying. Troypay.

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Chapter Five

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

Kevin sighed. "From the Good Will."

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

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

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

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

They were in the car and driving aimlessly. Troy 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 Troy 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, Kevin or Zac would know.

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

"Be quiet!" Kevin yelled, blushing.

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

Kevin's eyes were wary. He didn't know why Troy 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 Troy to turn the car around and say 'Okay, then, we don't have to get anything.' Kevin was slowly beginning to realize, however, that many of his expectations were not turning out as he'd imagined. Troy 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 Kevin, though he didn't often voice it) just wanted to know what was going to happen next. Troy 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, Troy 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 Kevin. "Do they have clothes at K-Mart?"

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

Troy's grin was sheepish. "Actually, Sharpay takes me to 5th Avenue, 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. "

Troy noted that both Kevin 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 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 Kevin. "You want one, too?"

Kevin 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 Troy. "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," Kevin 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. Troy had to wonder.

A little while later, (after being lost in the Home & Garden section for the better part of ten minutes) Troy took a look around him and decided they were in the boys department.

"Does this look right to you?" he asked Kevin and Zac.

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

"What sizes are you guys?" Troy 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. . ." Kevin shifted. "About medium?"

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

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

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

"Why?" Troy 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?

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

"Oh." Troy 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?"

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

Troy 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."

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

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

Troy 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. Troy 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."

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

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

"Okay, thanks." Kevin 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.

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

"Okay." Kevin 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. Kevin 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?" Troy yelled, over the partition.

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

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

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

"Come out a second, and let me see," Troy 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!" Troy called, then turned to Kevin. "Slim? These are the ones for skinny kids?"

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

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

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

Troy put his hands on Kevin's shoulders, feeling the sharp ridges of bone just beneath the skin. "It's okay, Kev. 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." Troy 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?"

"Kevin." Kevin 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," Kevin told her.

"Really? Thursday was your birthday?" Troy 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!" Troy 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." Troy nodded to Kevin. "That wasn't so bad, was it?"

"It wasn't?" Kevin 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?" Troy asked, hoping Kevin hadn't lost them amidst the debris in the changing room.

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

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

Kevin was astonished. Troy 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 Andy," Zac told Troy. "And Ninja Turtle ones for me."

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

But Troy just laughed. "Do you want pictures on your underwear?" he asked Kevin.

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

"White ones." Troy 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," Kevin added.

"Thank you!" Zac agreed.

"Hmm. . . because, you know what I was thinking?" Troy asked. "That we should get some kind of toy or something for Andy. Do you guys want to go pick something out?"

The Andy part was just a cover-up. Maybe he'd get all of them a toy.

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

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

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

"Yeah, so's Barbie," Troy winked at Kevin, 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!" Troy 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," Troy 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. Andy really did like them all.

"Really? Them all?" Troy 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," Kevin agreed. "So, Zac, which one do you think he wants?"

"Michelangelo," Zac answered, immediately.

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

"Leonardo?"

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

They looked at each other. "Raphael."

"I have an idea." Troy 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," Kevin said, quickly. "You don't have to do that."

Troy smiled. "Why not?"

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

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

"No," Zac supplied.

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

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

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

Kevin looked suspicious. "What for?"

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

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

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

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

Kevin glanced at Zac. Zac smiled. "See, Kev?"

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

"Okay," Troy 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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So, more Troy-boys interaction. I just love them. Sorry there's not a lot of Troypay interaction—there will be some, in the future, kind of.

Leave a review! And thanks so much for the ones you've already left.

margaret