The Girl From the Gang

An Unplanned Shopping Trip

I wake up the next morning and roll over in my bed. I do not want to get out of bed today, but I do really want to go shopping with Veronica today. I pull myself out of bed and slowly walk into the shower. The hot water from the shower wakes me up, and I feel wide awake by the time I hear the horn honk from Veronica. I run out the front door, making sure that I lock it behind me, and jump into the car that has pulled into the driveway. "Hi Veronica!"

"Hello darling! How have you been these past couple of days?"

"I've been fine. Just trying to hold out until this trial comes."

"It'll come soon enough. In the meantime, let's have some fun. I've planned to go to a couple of stores today, most of them are for teenagers like you. We need to get you some casual clothes, and some tennis shoes."

"Good, because I am sick of wearing fancy clothes every day. It makes me feel like even though I'm still me, I'm someone else. Do you get what I mean?" When Veronica gave me the clothes she had picked out for me when we were at the warehouse, she only gave me really nice clothes. This is coming from a girl who wore jeans and a T-shirt every day for her whole life. It is a real change, and its hard fitting in when you feel super uncomfortable in your own skin.

"I get it. You miss your old self. We are going to fix that today." She says cheerily as we climb into the car. I'm definitely starting to look at Veronica more as a friend than a caseworker.

We drive for about an hour and a half until we arrive at a mall. We walk out of the car and head into the first store. It is filled to the brim with jeans, and we walk out of that store with at least three hundred dollars worth of jeans. I was worried about how much money we were spending, but Veronica assured me that she was totally fine with paying for everything. "I'm single, and I have a high paying job. I don't get to do this very much. I'm never home! I have to run around with hooligans like you every day!" she teases. "Don't worry about the money, just find stuff that you would wear and like." We walk into another store and I look around at the racks of shirts that are hanging up. I pick out a couple and buy them at Veronica's approval. We decide to take a break at the mall food court before we continue shopping. We get some corn dogs and french fries and sit down at a table. Two seats are taken up by all of our shopping bags. Its weird having all of this money at my disposal.

"Can I ask you something Veronica." I say, breaking the silence.

"Sure darling. You can ask me anything."

"Did the Witness Protection Program assign you my look or did you come up with it?"

"I came up with it. I decided everything, with a little input from the chief of the program. The clothes, the hair, and the makeup was all me. I saw you and I knew you had so much potential, but you never had a chance to show it. I just unlocked the potential."

"Thanks." I said. "Thanks for believing in me. No one has really done that before."

"I am happy to do it for you, my darling." We continued our shopping trip for another couple of hours. We stopped in the afternoon, and we were both very tired from walking around the whole day. My feet felt like they were stepping on hot coals every time I stepped. When I sat down on a bench, my feet would not stop throbbing. Veronica took that as a sign for being done for the day. She was fine with it because she had to catch a flight a couple of hours later to get to another thing for my case. She was doing something that had to do with the trial I was waiting for to happen.

When I got back to the house, I plopped the bags down in the entryway and went into my bedroom. Before I did anything, I wanted to take a nap. My nap lasted about two hours. In my opinion it was two hours too short. I woke up and went into the entryway and grabbed the shopping bags. I lugged them to the closet and proceeded to sort them and hang the clothes up. It was a long task, but after it was all done I saw what I had accomplished and I was very proud of what I had done. It's weird having something to be proud of now. I'm out of the gang. The only thing I was proud of back then was if I did a job well enough because just maybe, it would be my ticket out of the gang. It was a glimmer of hope that I held onto every day. It was a good feeling to have. I looked at the clock and saw that it was about five o'clock, and I was hanging out with Jack at six. I walked out to the garage and got my bike. I can see on the bike the tires are starting to get flat, so I quickly pump them up and get on my way.