The Fugitive Grandma

Chapter 10 - The Shopping List

For the remainder of the school week, nothing special happened. Johnny shuffled from class to class replaying the scene of the soccer game in his memory, particularly the part where Sabrina thanked him for his help as she left the field.

The Maguire twins kept taunting him, and they never returned the Captain Justice comic book. Each night, Johnny returned to an empty house, his father still out working late. Slowly the humdrum of regular life set back in, and Johnny began to doubt whether anything special had really happened after all.

Johnny didn’t want to lose the spark of excitement that started when he found his grandma’s gun in the dresser. Grandma Stella was the key to keeping his dream alive, so he made plans to visit her.

Riding his skateboard through the streets across town, he arrived at her house. The plan was to spend the afternoon together and maybe bake some chocolate chip cookies for a fund-raiser at Saint Jude’s Church. They chatted and watched the game between USC and UCLA. During the halftime break, they scooted out for a quick trip to the grocery store.

Stella drove a burgundy Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera. It was twenty years old, paid for in cash with a bonus Mr. Caruso gave all employees the year he became the top-selling grocer in the county.

They drove along Mariposa, turned onto 10th Street, then cut west through a residential neighborhood toward Saint Jude’s. Across the street from the church parking lot stood a pinto bean-colored house that looked like it hadn’t been painted since it was built. This was where Stella’s friend Millie Szymanski lived

“She coming with us,” Stella announced. “She needs refills on her medicine and I told her that I’d give her a ride. Otherwise, she’ll put off buying her refills forever.”

Millie climbed into the car, holding a purse stuffed with coupons from the Sunday newspaper. One for instant rice fell from her purse to the car floor and Johnny bent over to pick it up for her.

“Never pass up the chance to save a buck,” Millie said, winking at Johnny as she put the coupon back in her purse. “You remember that, Johnny.”

Millie was always worried about money. Once he overheard her telling Stella how she got “taken to the cleaners” years ago when she invested her savings in the stock market and nearly lost everything.

Stella steered onto Magnolia Street, a six-lane stretch of strip malls, gas stations, fast-food chains, and parking lots sprawling out to the horizon. Towering palm trees shared the skyline with billboards, burger logos, and gasoline station signs. In the distance, behind an ad for phone sex and a giant revolving bucket of chicken, Johnny could see the San Jacinto Mountains, where Elmer took him fishing at Hideaway Cove.

Stella circled the Caruso’s parking lot until a spot opened up near the entrance. As Millie and Stella strolled through the glass sliding doors, Johnny grabbed a shopping cart and followed after them. He steered through the oncoming traffic of bodies in the bustling store and swerved around display stands of daily specials for fruit, cheese, and potato chips.

They collected the ingredients needed for the cookies as well as Millie's coupon specials. After that, they stopped at the fresh meat and fish section, where Sabrina’s father, Vince, was unpacking a shipment of salmon fillets into the glass display case.

Stella asked how Sabrina was doing after her asthma attack on the soccer field.

“She’s better now,” Vince said of his daughter, with a tired smile that betrayed his worries. “She’s going to be dealing with it all her life. My wife has it, too. Johnny, we all appreciate the fact that you were there and got the inhaler to her immediately. If you hadn’t acted so quickly, it could have been a lot worse.”