Young girl in the pharmacy, maybe fifteen or so, rose cardigan and a maroon beanie—she spent forever looking at medications on the shelves. She picked them up, and she spent more time looking at the counter than at what was in her hand.
I kept an eye on her from one shelf back, and when she turned my way, I turned my eyes down at the medication in my hand. Some bullshit drug called Lidipsynol.
The guy behind the counter was reading a show on his mobile phone, earbuds stuck in his ears. While I was watching him, the girl in the cardigan walked up to the counter and knocked on it. I kept a packet of Lidipsynol in my hand, just high enough to watch the two.
“You must stock all kinds of medicine here, huh?” the girl asked.
The pharmacist took his own time before pulling the earbuds from his ears, chuckling at whatever joke had crawled into his ear moments prior, and then he placed his hands on the counter.
“What was that?” he asked.
“I’m looking for something that will make me harder to see,” the girl said.
“Come again?” The pharmacist squinted. He stroked the head of a simple ballerina figurine that balanced on the counter.
“I read about medication that can make you harder to see,” she said. “Like, you turn invisible to people.”
“Invisible?” The pharmacist’s face was full of lines by now.
“Yeah. But like… not invisible as in disappearing into thin air. More like, you’re there, but no one registers that they see you. You’re invisible to people, but not really invisible.”
The pharmacist looked away with a grimacing face and stumbled on his words. “I don’t think we have anything like that, miss, I’ll have to check— No, I don’t think we have that. Where… did you hear about this?”
“It was in a game I was playing,” the girl said. Her voice was quieter as she said that.
“A video game, you know,” the girl said. “There’s a character, he stops by a pharmacy along the road, and its layout is just like this one, and he finds the medication on a shelf and he steals it. Then later, he tells this other guy about what the medication did. He says it made him harder to see, that it made him pretty much invisible to people.”
The pharmacist dropped himself onto the office chair behind him and let it slide backwards. “I did not understand one word of what you just said. Where are you from?”
“Aldering,” the girl said. “The far side.”
“Aldering?” The Pharmacist slid his chair closer to the counter. “You came here all the way from Aldering? That’s twenty miles out.”
“I drove,” the girl said.
“No,” the girl groaned and touched her forehead. “Fine, look, this was a mistake. Just get me an aspirin and I’ll be gone.”
“I don’t want any trouble.” The Pharmacist rolled his chair back, opened a glass case, pulled out a pack of aspirin tablets and put them on the counter. “Five-twenty-nine,” he announced and then rolled his chair back to the counter. “Look, miss, are you really okay? Is someone after you or…”
“I just thought it was the right kind of medication for me, you know?” The girl played with the pack of aspirin. “It made sense. I thought, maybe that’s what’s going to help me, if I just became harder to see. It’s just really hard to find those pills.”
I stepped away from the shelf and towards her.
“Well, I guess I’ll try another pharmacy. Maybe this isn’t the right one.” The girl placed her cash on the counter and slid the pack of tablets off the counter before heading for the door.
The girl look behind her, around me, past me, through me. Then she shrugged, and she left the pharmacy without the Lidipsynol.
andulkaphoto
titsay
stormborns
germansingergirl
2087
yousharknotpass
