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Chapter One

Nick

“Do you have a Shoppee loyalty card?” the bored clerk asks the girl in front of me

“Helen, you know that I do I’ out a giant wallet stuffed with God knohat, a keychain with three tiny dogs attached to it, a hairbrush and one of those doohickies that girls supposedly wear in their hair but I’ve only ever seen on their wrists, and a calculator Who carries around calculators? “I can’t find it”

“What’s the number?”

“Don’t you know?”

“I don’t got your nuainst the law,” the clerk snaps back

“How is it against the law to memorize loyalty card nu the stuff back into her purse

I wish I knehat a loyalty card was because I’d give her ot three other tasks on ran that the old bat of a nurse can be shown the door I’m all Gran needs

“I don’t irlie Besides, it ain’t the Shoppee number It’s your phone number”

The girl’s head jerks up and she stares at the clerk “All you need is my phone number? Why didn’t you say so?”

“I did I said, what’s your Shoppee nu what it is”

This conversation is going nowhere I tally the two bags of groceries the girl purchased and slide two one-hundred dollar bills across the conveyor belt “Here I’ll pay for it”

The girl grabs the money and throws it in my face As in actually crushes the two bills in her tiny fist and launches the paper at its, like she’s about to audition for a rap battle with Es of groceries behind

“I got it,” I say before the clerk can call for the girl’s attention I drop the two daed bills on top of the counter, throw irl My boots splash in a couple of puddles from the recent rain before I catch her in the ot these,” I tell her, holding up the groceries

She flushes “I was corows red with chagrin