Lost in London (5 page)

I yawned and waited.

No one came.

After a long time—I’m not sure how long because I fell asleep—I woke up. I could tell something was different.

Strange.

Dark.

Quiet.

Even a little eerie.

I crept out of my hiding place. The lights in the store were off. There were some dim security lights. I heard
a strange slapping sound on the outside wall that was closest to me. It took a minute to get the sleepy fuzz from my eyes and focus on a window. When I did, I saw lots of rain and a flag hanging off the side of the building, flapping viciously in the wind.

What is going on?

I took my phone out of my back pocket and checked it. It was completely blank.
Broken?
I fiddled with the buttons, and the screen lit up.
My butt turned it off!
I dialed the last number that had texted me.

Sam answered, “Where are you?”

“Linens.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. That’s where you told me to go.”

Sam said, “Like three hours ago.”

Three
hours
? I’d slept in a department store bathtub for three stinkin’ hours?

“Where are
you
? Did you get found?” I peeked around a display of purple towels in search of another human. No one was in the dark room. A chill went up the entire back of my boring body, telling me this was anything but dull; it was bad.

“Found? No. J.J., are you off your trolley? The game is over. It’s been over. The store lost electricity in this storm. Everyone had to leave. Where have you been?”

What storm? I had a dreadful feeling that I’d just woken up in the middle of a scene from a horror movie, and I was the main character. We had crossed exciting and gone to scary. I wondered if I’d rather be bored. “So no fish and chips?” I asked. I couldn’t think of anything else to say, and besides worrying about being slashed by a department store killer, I had food on the brain, in a big way.

“We
had
chips a while ago without you,” Sam said. “We thought maybe you found the Dress-Up Department or you got to demo an electric car or something better than dinner.” Well, dang. Now I was hungry, scared, sans a new outfit, and
also
bummed I didn’t demo an electric car. “We stayed in the store as long as we could looking for you. You didn’t answer your phone. What’s ‘Rub-a-dub-dub’?”

“You know the poem ‘Rub-a-dub-dub, three men in a tub’?”

There was an odd pause. “None of us knew what that clue meant.”

“What floor are you on?” I asked. “I’ll come find you.”

“No floor,” Sam said. “I’m across the street. The store closed. As in the doors are locked.”

My mouth went dry. “What are you saying?”

“I’m trying to say that you’re locked in.”

If this was a horror movie, really spooky music would’ve played right at that moment. A lump formed in my throat as I finally grasped the very dire situation.

“I’m all alone.”

“Not exactly,” Sam said. “There’s Ham.”

“There’s a ham?” A sandwich sounded really good right about now.

“A bloke named Hamlet. He’s the night security guard,” Sam said.

“I’ll find him, and he can let me out.”

“No!”

“Why not?”

“DO NOT let Hamlet see you,” he said. “He caught Caroline last time we played Slip Away. She got in a heap of trouble. He called her dad, who sent Hamlet a sack of money to let us out of the store’s security office. He said he wouldn’t do it again; next time he’d ban her from the store.”

“Do I really have to stay in here all night?” I asked, panicked.

“That’s an option, but we have a plan. We’re arranging to rescue you.”

“What? How?” Then I heard footsteps coming from Linens. “Someone’s coming,” I whispered to Sam.

“I know.”

“Is it Hamlet? Is he going to take me to security and handcuff me to a chair?”

An arm shoved the shower curtain aside. It was Caroline. She looked royally mad. “There you are.”

“Thank God it’s you,” I said, sitting up. A few plastic bubbles fell out of the tub and rolled across the floor, disappearing underneath a nearby bed.

“You’ve gotten us into quite a jam.”

“I didn’t do it on purpose. I fell asleep. You know, jet lag and all.”

“What I know is that my friends left the store before it closed, and I stayed in here looking for you, and now we’re snookered.”

“You got locked in on purpose to look for me?” I guess she had started to like me. She was worried about me.

She continued, “There’s no way I could go home to my stepmum without you. If I lost our abroad student, she would make my life miserable. After all, that is her purpose in life.”

Or maybe she wasn’t concerned about
me
at all.

I followed Caroline to the escalators, which were turned off. We walked down in a crouched position, below the handrail so that we couldn’t be seen by anyone (well, Hamlet) who might be on one of the landings.

“Where are you going?” I whispered.

“To the door.”

“If the store is closed, don’t you think the doors will be locked?”

“Yes, Madam Obvious, I think the doors will be locked.” She clucked her tongue like I was a total idiot. She quickly sent a text message. A minute later we were on the ground floor at one of the many sets of big glass doors. We hid behind a tower of boxes wrapped like pretty presents for a party at Buckingham Palace.

Sam appeared on the other side of the glass doors, on the sidewalk in the rain, and started knocking. He looked pretty wet, but it seemed like it had eased up since I’d looked out the window in Linens. When Hamlet didn’t come, Sam knocked louder.

I heard a set of feet wearing wet shoes squeak through Purses to the door. Hamlet removed a clunky set of keys from a clip on his belt and turned several locks on the door.

“What is it?” he asked Sam. “Store’s closed.”

“Thank goodness you’re here, sir,” Sam said urgently. “I got home from shopping and realized I didn’t have my wallet.” He made a desperate face. “My mum is gonna kill me. I’m serious. She’s loony. If I come home without her credit card, she’ll bloody flip.” His eyes were surrounded
by raindrops that could easily be mistaken for tears.

Hamlet said, “Calm down. She’ll understand.”

“You don’t know her. She’s off the north side of the cliffs, if you know what I mean.”

Hamlet’s eyebrows shot up like he couldn’t believe this kid was so afraid of his mother.

“I think I left it at Lively’s, which is another problem. If I tell her that, she’ll remind me of how fat I am. I’m not supposed to have sweets.”

Sam was NOT fat, but the detail added to the picture of his allegedly psycho mother. I had to clap a hand over my mouth to keep myself from giggling.

He continued. “But sometimes I can’t help myself. They have the best tarts.”

Hamlet patted his chubby stomach. “Don’t I know it.”

“Can I get it? The wallet, not a tart. I promise, no tarts.”

“Sorry, lad. I can’t let anyone in after closing. Rules. But wait out here, and I’ll take a look at Lively’s. If I see it, I’ll bring it out, eh?”

Sam shivered more. “Oh, okay, thanks.” He gave his teeth a chatter.

Hamlet stood aside. “Come in and stand here and wait. Don’t move.” He eyed Sam carefully. “I mean it.”

Sam stepped inside and stood in front of the unlocked door. As soon as Hamlet was out of sight, we would all dash through the unlocked door.

Hamlet tried to reach around Sam to get to the locks. Sam kept going in the wrong direction and getting in the way. The two of them sidestepped in an awkward dance in which Sam was always in the wrong place.

“Step aside, lad,” Hamlet finally said. He released the key ring from his belt, and just as he was about to twist the locks, Ellie came running up to the door.

“Wait,” she called, raising her arms like she was protesting.

“We’re closed,” Hamlet said through the glass door.

“That’s my brother.” She pointed at Sam. “And . . . and . . . ummm . . . I cannot let you . . . umm . . . You can’t kidnap him!” she said, her voice rising about thirteen octaves.

“Kidnap?”

“Yes, that’s what I said. Kidnap. Now let him go or I’ll call the police right now.” She held up her phone.

Ham pushed the door open. “No one’s kidnapping anyone.”

She made an act of calming herself down. “Oh, okay, then. As long as that’s settled.” She looked at him and
searched for something else to say. “Nice keys. Do you lock all the doors?”

She was being so totally obvious.

“Yeah. That’s my job. Now you and your brother, neither of which I am kidnapping, clear off. I’ll check for your wallet, but only if you get out right now. Otherwise you’ll have to come back tomorrow.”

They stepped outside. Ellie casually left her toe in the door, keeping it open just a smidge. Did she really think that was going to work?

Hamlet released the bulky key ring for a third time and reached for the highest lock. He immediately saw the crack in the door. Looking down, he noticed Ellie’s foot. “Do you mind?”

She pulled it out. “Not at all,” she said.

Hamlet twisted the locks and walked away, turning occasionally to watch them argue on the sidewalk.

Not surprisingly, a few minutes later Hamlet returned empty-handed, and with a slight hint of powdered sugar around his mouth. I turned off the flash and took a picture of the man. I figured that if I was going to photo-document this trip, I might as well start with Hamlet.

Without unlocking the glass doors, he yelled, “No wallet!” He turned away, and his squeaky shoes took him
back toward the Hall of Gourmets. My stomach sank.

Sam and Ellie walked away, heads down. Drenched.

Caroline’s phone vibrated. She showed me a text from Sam. “Fail. You’re stuck.”

Caroline didn’t send a reply.

“What are we gonna do?” I asked. If my mom found out that I was locked in a department store on my first night in London, she’d make me come home right away. My whole trip would be blown.

She exhaled. “There’s only one thing we can do.”

“Turn ourselves in to Hamlet?”

“Um, no. Think again.”

No escape? No turn-in?

She tapped a few texts. Then she snapped her phone shut and put it in her purse. “Stepmum and Dad think we’re sleeping at Ellie’s. Ellie, Gordo, and Sam know the cover story and they’ll meet us in the morning.” Caroline headed for the escalator. “If we’re locked in here all night, we’re going to SHOP!”

Finally! I can get my new look after all!

“What about Hamlet?” I asked to the back of her head.

“There are eighteen floors. We’ll just have to stay a few behind him as he does his rounds.”

“What about the security cameras?” I pointed to one mounted on a wall in a corner.

“J.J., this may be the luckiest day ever, because those cameras are not on. There is usually a little green blinking light. Perhaps when the electricity is out, the cameras go out too.”

“I guess that
is
lucky,” I said, staring at the camera. She was right; nothing was blinking.

We walked up the escalator and stopped when we heard Hamlet humming “A Spoonful of Sugar” from
Mary Poppins
.

Caroline said, “We canNOT get caught. That would ruin my life. Got it?”

Caroline and I stayed a floor behind Hamlet, so we would know where he was. While he did his security thing on the floor above us, we stopped at Cosmetics and Jewelry.

Just enough light from the moon and a few emergency bulbs allowed us to see. We wandered over to one of the counters, and Caroline found a white smock and a palette of colors. “Might as well give you a makeover.”

Maybe Caroline’s sixth sense was better than Sam’s, because it was like she was reading my mind. Or maybe I really looked like I needed a makeover, which sort of hurt my feelings, even if it was the same thing I’d been thinking all along.

“You could use a bit more color around your eyes,” she said, and proceeded to brush powders onto my eyelids. Her art project continued with liner, mascara, fat brushes of bronzer and blush, and finally lipstick.