Addiction in August | Completed

Chapter 6: Abnormality

Abnormality

Later that evening, I wheel my grocery cart down aisle after aisle with the calculator app on my phone at the ready. I have a solid $30 so that should be relatively enough. Hopefully. I'm already at $15 and I haven't even bought bread or milk.

When there's nothing but flies coming out of my pocket, I hand the cashier a twenty dollar bill with a ten. My fingers tighten on the money for a second and the young teenager gives me a strange look. I force a smile back at her but it only serves to creep her out even further. Instead of weirding out the underaged girl, I look at the bags in my cart. There's barely four and it feels like some sort of sadistic joke. I almost laugh when there's suddenly money in my face.

I stare at the five dollar bill like it's gold. Slowly, I reach up to take it. I half expected her to yank it back and yell, 'Sike!'

"Your change," she tells me like it's obvious.

"I have change?" I ask, probably sounding like a lunatic.

"There was a discount on the coffee."

"Oh. Great. Thank you," I tell her and pocket the bill with a big smile on my face.

She prints out my receipt and I wheel out of the grocery store like I just won the lottery. Depositing my cart with the others, I lift my bags out of it and loop them onto my arms. Then I pull my beanie and my gloves on and brace the cold weather back to the bus stop.

It's darker than usual because of how cloudy it is. Unfortunately, it just makes me feel even more unsafe than I normally do and I find myself veering toward a pizza shop. Five dollars will get me a slice of pizza and I'll be damned if I pass it up again. Maybe it's ridiculous to spend my last few bucks on fast food when I just bought a bunch of groceries, but what else am I going to spend it on? For fuck's sake, the only thing I want in life right now is a damn slice of pizza.

And a damn slice of pizza I get. I step back out onto the cold sidewalk and fold the slice in my hands like a hotdog. I'm tempted to scarf it down and turn back around to get another, but I don't. I step away from the store and adjust where my grocery bags are on my arms while I take my time savoring the pizza.

As I'm doing so, I take the liberty to scan the sidewalks. There are a few people here and there and I see a homeless man sleeping across the road, but no one really catches my eye. I look toward the bus stop and see that nobody's there. That's good. Maybe it'll just be Charlie and I today.

I wipe off my greasy fingers with a singular thin and papery napkin. They should really give people more than one. Maybe they normally do and I just got unlucky. After tossing the napkin into the trash, I look both ways before jogging across the street. My foot reaches the sidewalk just in time for the bus to roll around the corner. I fix my beanie on top of my head while I wait.

When the bus stops in front of me, I smile up at Charlie. He waves at me and I jog up onto the bus. Looking toward the seats, my smile immediately drops.

Sitting in my seat is the man from earlier who helped me up from the ice. The same man who said the bus is shitty. And sitting right in front of him is a man who looks tweaked out on drugs. Great.

The man looks at me with recognition and surprise as I walk down the aisle toward him. I slouch down in the seat across the aisle, glaring his way. He watches me with a confused face like he doesn't know why I'm angry at him. Yeah, right. He knows what he's done.

I mean, taking my seat after dissing the bus? That's just cold. Ruthless, even. If his pretty face was doing him any favours before, it certainly isn't anymore.