Impossible? Maybe, but baby it's true
I catch a flash of red up ahead in the corner, somewhere between the produce and dairy. Finally.
A bit of relief as some very pessimistic part of me has already decided I would never find her.
"Pssssst." I hiss to get her attention as I approach.
She turns and her face lights, barely visible over a cart that looks grotesquely large in her presence. Only a few things in it, but on the top a large grocery list scribbled on ripped brown paper. I know she can't afford that list, and I know she knows it. She's just proj'd out on groceries.
Still there's something endearing about that nearly empty cart with the giant list. Something childlike. She's grinning ear-to-ear now, a genuine and rare expression.
"Hi!" Excitement in that greeting. I smile. She launches into a rambling narration of her thoughts. "Should I get this or this? Oh, I'm stupid, I'm already gonna get snapple I don't need this. Does everyone want waffles or donuts?" She's ecstatic to be grocery shopping. It's obvious no matter how hard she tries to hide it.
I let her talk freely, choosing to remain mostly silent and instead merely nod and agree when appropriate. She needed someone to just listen. I could tell.
While we're shopping I begin to see layers of her personality fall away, until The Girl, the rage-a-holic chick whose garage provides us with shelter, is totally gone and instead I see her as she truly is. As the 17-year old girl. She's excited to be having girl time, to be grocery shopping, to be playing a sort of maternal role in the twisted family our friends often seem to form.
She's smiling easily. Laughing. Comparing prices like a normal teenaged girl.
We finished with the groceries and swung by her house to drop them off. Travis and Ryan were waiting at Ryan's house for us to come back with food and dope. We tooled around, though. Got Starbucks and shopped around a bit like girls often do.
The boys' persistent hunger [and texts] didn't allow us much time though. We returned to Ryan's place, a nice condo-like home on the outskirts of a nice complex.
"Pack it?" Travis asked mildly after we had all had a bit of lunch/dinner.
Wordlessly we all agreed and the bowl was filled instantly. The Girl was still crazy high from eating all the rest of her $60 sack, and she refused the pipe almost entirely.
I watched her more carefully than usual. Whereas before she was just a friend, a background piece, a tweaker.
Now she was a lost little girl wanting a big sister. Wanting a mother.
An unwelcome flashback of the day's shopping trip exploded in my mind's eye. "I would kill, like, 30 people no problem if it meant I could spend just one more week with my mom..." I had just learned that The Girl had lost her mother two short years ago.
The sun, brilliant as it always was this time of year, washed the scene in white and made everything look fake. Nothing but surreality as The Girl turned her face towards mine and spoke out the window:
"But it could always be worse, ya know? It could always be worse."
Strength in those eyes. And makeup decorating them, making them look as old as the girl who donned them acted. Her hair was beautiful today, freshly dyed and falling almost to the middle of her back in soft, large curls.
"You just gotta remember that."
//