I watched as two teenage girls hung around the refrigerated aisle, casting me nervous looks. One had long blonde hair, and sneaky eyes. The dark haired girl seemed a bit more brazen and openly popped the top off a can of whipped cream and held the nozzle to her mouth.
I rolled my eyes and walked towards them. I crossed my arms over my chest and leaned against the shelf opposite them. They didn’t notice me. They were too busy getting their cheap high.
“You know you’re going to have to pay for those,” I said and the blonde girl nearly jumped out of her skin.
“Oh, shit!” she whispered to her friend. The dark haired girl tucked a can under her coat like I couldn’t see her.
“Are you serious right now? Do you think I can’t see you?” I scoffed.
The girls faced me with hard, angry looks on their faces. Eyes narrowed and hateful. It was like looking into a mirror fifteen years ago.
“Fuck off!” The blonde girl’s voice wavered slightly and I knew she was trying really hard to be a badass when on the inside she was scared shitless.
“Wow, I’m shaking in my shoes. Now pay for your stuff and leave,” I said, affecting a bored tone.
The dark haired girl, clearly the ring leader in this ill advised whip-its operation, twisted her face into an ugly sneer and gave me her best mad dog stare.
“We’re not doing shit and you’re not going to make us. So back the fuck off.”
My anger spiked and I was two seconds away from letting these dumb little bitches know exactly who they were messing with.
But something in the blonde girl’s eyes gave me pause.
I looked at her, not her obnoxious friend. Her mouth was set into a firm line but her eyes—a deep, dark brown—held a sadness that hit me straight in the chest.
This was the type of girl who had seen too much and not enough. She was hooked up with a bad crowd because she had no one else.
Yeah, I was making some serious assumptions. But her entire life was tattooed on her too young face.
“Get the hell out of here,” I said firmly.
The dark haired girl smirked but I barely paid her any attention. Girls like that would never learn until life forced them to. I would be wasting my breath saying anything to her.
I reached out and touched the blonde haired girl’s shoulder and said something that I wished someone had said to me all those years ago. Not that I would have listened though.
“You can do better than this.”
The girl’s lip curled in derision. “What the fuck?” She backed away, looking at me as though I were crazy. And I felt something like disappointment when she and her friend left, tucking some candy bars beneath their shirts, which I didn’t even bother to comment on.
Had I really expected some vague Yoda advice said by a convenience store clerk to make any sort of difference? I thought about myself at that age and how I would have responded.
I would have probably been a hell of a lot nastier.
I went back to my spot behind the counter and had just sat down on the stool when the bell droned from above the door.
The blonde haired girl rushed towards me and dropped two Milky Ways on the counter. The same ones I had seen her tuck in the waistband of her jeans. Then she handed me five dollars.
“To cover the whipped cream,” she whispered, as though she’d be overheard.
Before I had a chance to say anything she was gone, slipping out the door.
Things were never set in stone and people could change. In a single moment a life could be altered forever.
And I wished for that girl with the blonde hair and sad eyes for a thousand moments that could make things better for her.
Just as I had hoped them for myself.
Chapter Twenty
