The Lost Gate (38 page)

“By drowther rules,” said Marion, “you need a car.”

Danny put his hands in shrugging position. “Why? I already have better transportation than the President.”

“In a word,” said Marion, “dating.”

“You can't very well gate a girl to the movies, Danny,” said Leslie, “and very few of them will be impressed if they always have to walk.”

“Or maybe you expect the girl to drive,” said Marion. “They are not impressed by this.”

“I think you're overlooking the biggest point here,” said Danny. “I don't need a
car
so I can date. I need a
girl.
”

Marion and Leslie looked at each other, and Marion coughed. “Uh, Danny, in, uh, drowther culture, in
this
country, anyway, teenagers of opposite sex are generally expected to find each other without adult interference.”

“And you know where they do that?” asked Danny. “At high school.”

Again Marion and Leslie looked at each other, then back at Danny. “Are you saying you want to go to high school?” asked Marion.

“You've already taken the PSAT and the SAT and the ACT,” said Leslie. “Your self-education has been superb, and your scores prove it. You'll be able to get into any college in the world.”

“You two are wonderful teachers,” said Danny.

Marion gave a hoot of laughter. “Danny, the most we've ever done is brought you a textbook now and then.”

“And listen at the dinner table when you go on about Mongolian history or the uses of differential calculus or the principles of calculating vertical load versus horizontal flexion or whatever it was in bridge building,” said Leslie.

“And how many parents would do that?” said Danny. “I don't want to go to high school for the classes, I want to go to high school because that's where they keep the girls. And the
friends.
You two and Veevee are my only friends in the world, and no offense here, but you're all old enough to be my parents.”

“It's not safe for you to spend a lot of time with drowthers,” said Marion. “You could do or say something—”

Leslie interrupted. “They could ask something you couldn't answer—”

“If any of the Families was alerted to what you are…,” said Marion.

“I have to be able to function in drowther society,” said Danny. “Drowthers go to high school. They talk about music and movies. I don't know what movies and music they talk about, except what I see discussed online. It's not the same.”

“You don't
like
any of that music,” said Leslie. “You always switch away from hippity-hop or whatever it's called.”

“Hippy-hop,” corrected Marion.

“Hip-hop,” said Danny, rolling his eyes.

“Aha!” said Leslie. “See? You
already
know about that kind of thing.”

“If you have friends, they might come over,” said Marion. “Unannounced. You'd have to stop using any of your gates around the farm.”

“I only have a few gates here,” said Danny. “You wouldn't let me.”

“The parents of the girls you date would want to meet
your
parents,” said Leslie. “All you have is us. How do you explain that?”

“Uncle Marion and Aunt Leslie,” said Danny. “And wouldn't it be hilarious in a kind of terrifying way if some girl ever did have to face my real parents. Even supposing they didn't kill me and whomever I brought with me on sight, they'd despise her for being a drowther, and she'd despise them as uneducated country bumpkins.”

“So you see why high school just wouldn't work,” said Leslie.

“He doesn't look persuaded,” said Marion.

“I'm not proposing that I go to high school here,” said Danny.

Again, Marion and Leslie traded looks. “But why not?” asked Leslie. “The high school is just through the fields and up the road.”

Danny laughed.

Leslie took umbrage. “I don't see what's funny about what I said.”

Marion undertook the explanation. “We just told him all the reasons why going to high school while living here wouldn't work out, and then you seemed hurt that he wasn't planning to go to high school here.”

“There is no contradiction in what I said,” Leslie retorted.

“It's okay,” said Danny. “It has nothing to do with you. The kids at Yellow Springs High have seen me running past. I've been noticed and mentioned—I've seen them pointing and telling each other about me. Wondering why I'm not in school, I'm betting. Speculating on the reason. I can only guess what they say. The point is that I'm already kind of legendary at Yellow Springs High. There is zero chance I'd have a normal high school career there. It'll be bad enough that I'm coming in as a junior. A ‘new kid.' ”

“How do you know what they're saying?” said Leslie.

“Why are you arguing for him to go to high school here,” asked Marion, “after telling him why you didn't think he should go?”

“I'm arguing for him not going away to some other place for high school,” said Leslie, “because even though he's skinny as a rail, I can't imagine him getting any decent food in Florida.”

“I don't want to go to high school in Florida, either,” said Danny. “And I know what kids must be saying about me because I've been reading about high school kids and how they talk and think.”

“ ‘Young adult novels,' ” said Leslie. It was her turn to roll her eyes. “When you've already read the classics.”

“It's research,
Mom,
” said Danny, deliberately using a term she didn't like him to use, or at least said she didn't. “Isn't it kind of pathetic that the only way I can learn about the life of a drowther teenager is by reading
Bruiser
and
Friend Is Not a Verb
and
Holes
?”

“I notice that you keep reading about teenagers with magical powers,” said Marion.

“Not always,” said Danny, “but if I ever go to high school I'll
be
the kid with magical powers, won't I? So that's part of my research—how they cope.”

“By hiding who they are and becoming social misfits and pariahs,” said Leslie. “Is that what you plan to do?”

“Of course he plans to hide what he is,” said Marion. “Or word will get out and the Families will find him and they'll zap him with lightning or have the earth swallow him up and crush him before he can gate away.”

“You've been reading my novels,” Danny said to Leslie. “You really
are
my mom.”

“Your mother is a great mage,” said Leslie. “I don't deserve to receive the respect you owe to her.”

“ ‘Mom' isn't a term of respect,” said Danny.

“You say that and I don't even know what you
mean,
” said Leslie. “Our kids always called me Mom and they respected me!”

“What he means,” said Marion, “is that it's a term of affection.”

“Love,” said Danny. “It's a term for the woman in my life who loves
me
enough to read the novels I'm reading just so she can try to figure out what they're teaching me.”

There was a silence in the room until Leslie asked, in a somewhat smaller voice, “Do you call
her
Mom?”

Danny laughed. “Veevee?
Mom?
Oh, right. She's a
colleague,
Leslie. We
work
together.”

“I notice that when I brought her up, you stopped calling me Mom,” said Leslie.

“Don't make him explain,” said Marion. “You and I can have
that
fight later. This is his birthday we're talking about, and I think what he's saying is that he wants to go to high school, but he doesn't want to do it here
or
in Florida.”

“That's it,” said Danny. “I want to go to Parry McCluer High School.”

“I've never heard of perimacluing,” said Leslie. “How do you perimaclue and why do they devote a whole high school to it?”

“It's the name of the school,” said Marion. “But it's nowhere near Yellow Springs or I would have heard of it.”

“It's in Buena Vista, Virginia,” said Danny. “And yes, it's within twenty miles or so of the North Family compound. But the family never goes there—if they even come close, they go to Lexington. They have no business ever in Buena Vista.”

“It's a needless risk,” said Marion.

“If they're still looking for me—” Danny began.

“They are,” said Marion.

“You've heard something?” asked Leslie sharply, suddenly worried.

“No, of course not, I'd have told you both,” said Marion. “What would
we
hear? Who would we hear it from? But they're looking for you, Danny, count on it.”

“But they won't be looking in a town so close to home,” said Danny. “Not after nearly three years. One town is as safe or dangerous as any other. We don't know where their spies are. But Thor, the one in charge of the spies, said that he doesn't want me dead.”

“Which might just mean that he doesn't want you wary,” said Marion. “But you're right. After all this time, they can't be expecting you to locate near them—nor to do something as bizarre as go to high school.”

“What's so special about this Perry McDonald High School?” asked Leslie.

“Parry McCluer,” said Danny, “and there's nothing special about the place except that when I was a kid and I first started gating out of the Family compound—though I didn't know I was gating then—I used to go up to the woods above the high school and watch them. Like I watch the kids here, only I wasn't just glancing as I ran by, I could sit there for a long time and kind of study them. They were all older than me then, I was just a kid, but I kept thinking, If only I could be one of them. Getting on their buses or into their cars. Girls getting into guys' cars, whole groups of them piling into one car and driving off yelling out the windows. Stuff like that.”

“Girls getting into boys'
cars,
” Marion pointed out helpfully.

“What were they yelling?” asked Leslie suspiciously. “I don't like teenagers who yell out of car windows.”

“That's not the point,” said Marion. “He wants to
be
one of the teenagers yelling out of car windows. He wants to find out why they yell what they yell.”

Danny nodded.

“How could you possibly go to high school there?” asked Leslie. “I hope you know we're not moving. And the school authorities will have
drastic
questions about a boy who shows up with no parents, no birth certificate, no school records, no records of immunization—”

“I've kind of already planned that out,” said Danny. “I haven't talked to anybody about it yet, because, well, I wanted to talk to you first. And this wasn't the day because I hadn't worked up the courage yet, only you brought up cars and dating and, you know.”

“What's your plan?” asked Marion.

“Veevee has a lot of money, apparently,” said Danny.

“We have a lot of money, too,” said Leslie. “Just because we keep farming doesn't mean—”

“Veevee has enough money that she could rent a small house in Buena Vista. Within walking distance of the high school. It's way up a steep road and it isn't the city's best neighborhood, but it's the right place for me to live. Veevee will pretend to be my aunt, and when I need her to she'll dress in an appropriate costume and meet with any parents who visit. But I'll make gates between her condo in Florida and the rental house so she can really keep living at home.”

Leslie held her tongue—but so painfully that it was obvious she had quite a bit to say about Veevee's involvement in the plan.

“I haven't asked Veevee any of this, but you know she loves to playact and there's no chance she'd turn me down. I'll also make gates between there and here, so I can come home on weekends and holidays and stuff.” Danny could see that calling their house ‘home' smoothed some of Leslie's ruffled feathers. “I'll even make a public gate between here and there, if you want to be able to drop in and check up on me.”

“No public gates here,” said Marion. “Not until you learn how to lock them.”

“Yes,” said Danny, “it would have been better if Veevee had been a Lockfriend instead of a Keyfriend. But then I probably would never have found her, or vice versa, and I'm learning a lot from her—mostly from all the research she's done over the years, but also because she can see what I'm doing and give me feedback and ideas. That's just a fact of life—something that nobody in the world right now except for her could have done. So she has to be part of my life. But Mom, Dad, you are the people I love like parents. This is the place where I was happy for the first time in my life. I'm not trying to get away from you. I'm just trying to learn how to live in the drowther world. I'm trying to find out how to be a normal human being. And I can't learn that here.”

Danny had seen that Marion picked up on his calling him “dad” and that it meant perhaps more to him than “mom” had meant to Leslie. But Danny wasn't saying those things as a trick, even though he knew that, as a trick, they would absolutely work. He said them because they were true.

“Mama” and “Baba” had been titles of awe and fear more than love. Occasionally as a child he had referred to them that way as a claim to special status for himself, when he was young enough that his drekka status had not yet become clear. But “mom” and “dad” were words that had remained as empty placeholders in his mind and heart until he came to Yellow Springs and the Silvermans.

Danny had often wondered if Stone's choice of Leslie and Marion as his guardians and trainers didn't have more to do with the fact that they were such great parents than with any particular skill they would have at training him—though they had schooled him as much as possible in the disciplines of magery. What he learned from them was a lot more about being a decent human being and taking responsibility for his actions and treating people who were weaker than himself with decent respect. And not playing tricks on people just because he thought of them.