Find Her, Fix Him

1 | An angel

1 | An angel

~LILO~

You know it's a bad day when you're considering how much money you'd get paid if you became a nun.

I'm standing at the front of the queue for the till at the shops, the shop-assistant looking at me expectantly as she tallies up the price of everything I've bought, and I'm staring down at the loose change in my purse whilst trying to figure out how easy it would be to become a nun. I'm sure there are no GCSEs you need to pass. Except maybe religious studies, but how hard can that be? I'm a fast reader. I bet I could bang out the bible in a couple of hours. And I guess there's the downside of having to wear those long black dress things, but at least the black would cover up any dirt. Which is more than I can say for the school-skirt I'm currently wearing.

Maybe, if I legged it to a convent right now and signed up- or whatever it is you need to do to become a nun, declare my faith infront of a judge? Or maybe a statue of an angel or something?- they'd give me a pay advance, and I could run back here and pay for the packet of bread, three baked-bean tins, milk, cereal, reduced-price pasta and 30p par of Galaxy chocolate that the shop-assistant has laid out on the till. I'm sure that whatever the pay advance would be, it'll be more than- I mentally calculate the loose change in my purse added together- £3.45.

I look up at the shop-assistant, and try to arrange my face into something that looks pitiful and please-feel-sorry-for-me-like. She has hair that is dyed purple, and red lipstick that goes over the top of her mouth in what I assume is an attempt to make her lips look bigger. Her mouth looks like it's trying to smile but can't quite bring itself to do so at me.

"That'll be five ninety-nine, please," she says, in one of those high-pitched sweet shop-assistant voices.

I chew my lip. "I have three forty-five?"

"But that's not the price, sweetie."

When she says 'sweetie', she looks as if she'd rather be saying 'brat'.

I hear a cough from behind me, and realise that the queue has gone from two to about twenty people in the few minutes I've been standing here with my purse open in my hands. I can feel the red crawling over my cheeks like it always does when I'm in a horrific situation. It doesn't help that the shade of my skin pretty much matches Snow White's level.

"I- I could call my Dad?" I try offering, "We live really close, he could get here really quickly-"

If he's out of bed, which I very much doubt. And I'm not sure how much money Dad would be able to contribute either- he hasn't been in work for nearly two weeks.

The assistant clucks her tongue. "There is a queue, sweetie. I'm going to need to ask you to move along. If you can't pay for everything-"

"But I can! Please, just give me a minute..."

I'm fumbling in my pockets now, purse abandoned, digging in the depths of my coat and school blazer. I'm pretty sure there's nothing in there, but at least this makes me look like there might be. Throwing open my bag and holding up a queue makes me look less pathetic than if I just told the assistant that I had nothing.

"Sweetie, I'm going to need to ask you to move along-"

"Look, can I just pay for the bread and put back some of the other stuff?" I beg, "I'll be literally thirty seconds." I suppose the Galaxy was never a necessity, but I thought it would be nice to bring home something nice for a change. I can't remember the last time Dad had chocolate. I always beg a square off of Del at lunchtimes, but Dad hasn't really had anything nice for ages.

"I'm afraid I can't hold up the queue any longer for you," the assistant says in a voice that I'm sure she thinks sounds apologetic, "If that's what you'd like to do, you'll have to rejoin the queue once you've returned the items you no longer want. The back...of the queue."