The Fugitive Grandma Lives

Chapter 26 - Shift Replacement

Sally Styles was in her bedroom with the door closed. She listened to music in her ear buds and tried to shut everything out of her mind. But she couldn't do it. Thoughts of Billy Chase kept creeping into her head. She couldn't get over how he'd risked his own neck to save her.

Sally didn't expect anyone to protect her. Her father had never been around. And her mother could barely fend for herself. She'd bounced around between different elementary schools in the Valley. For a while they were living in their car. Then they were bouncing back and forth in week-to-week motels until they save enough money for an apartment. She arrived at a different school with each transition. She was teased as "the new girl" or "the ugly girl" or "the poor girl" or some combination of the terms.

On her first day of middle school, an eight-grade boy walked up to her in the cafeteria and asked her to go out with him. She was scared and said no. Then he took a carton of chocolate milk and poured over her head so that every kid in the cafeteria could see. She could still hear the laughter ringing in her ears.

After that she started wearing black. She tried to make herself look as weird as possible so people would leave her alone. The only boy before Billy who had ever been nice to her was Javier. He was an oddball like her but for entirely different reasons. He looked normal enough, handsome even. And he seemed pretty smart about school work.

But the rumors were nasty. Some said he was an illegal. They said his family lived in a trailer park on the edge of town. Sally had a few classes with Javier last year. He had helped her with math assignments and her history paper. One time, some kids put a wad of chewed gum in her seat. He pointed it out and swapped it with an empty chair.

But this year it had been no classes with Javier. She was all alone until Billy Chase popped into the picture. Maybe things weren't going to be as bad as they seemed. Maybe Billy liked her. Maybe she could trust him. She didn't want a boyfriend but she sure could use a friend. It had been so long since her last friendship that she wasn't sure she remembered how it worked.

The next morning Sally went downstairs to make her cereal and her mom was passed out on the couch, reeking of whiskey and cigarettes. Sally grabbed her by the shoulders and tried to shake her gently.

"Mom, you gotta get up."

Her mom's eyes were closed tight like a shuttered storefront. Saliva dribbled from the corner of her mouth.

"Mom! You can't do this again! You're going to lose your job."

"I can't do it," her mom murmured, her eyelids still shut.

"You can't lose the job."

"You go," she groaned.

"What?"

Her mom nodded off again. Sally checked the clock and made a decision. Really, all things considered, what did she have to lose? She called the school absentee line.

"This is Stephanie Styles." She pinched her nostrils to make her voice sound different. "My daughter Sally has a cold and won't be in school today."

Then she went to her mother's bed room and slipped into her store uniform and employee ID card into her backpack. She tucked a blanket over her sleeping mother on the couch and set a glass of water on the coffee table. Then Sally hopped onto her bicycle and reported for work at Great American Superstore.

Sally and her mother had always resembled each other to the extent they'd been mistaken for sisters. They had the same dishwater blonde hair, high cheekbones and pure blue eyes. So Sally was hoping there was a chance she might be able to go unnoticed. She figured not many people paid attention to either one of them. And this one time, maybe that would actually work to her advantage.

It was worth a shot. Anything was better than seeing her mom get fired again. Because there wouldn't be any more jobs after this. There weren't any places left in the valley to give her another chance. And Sally would try anything to avoid going back to living out of the car again. For one thing, she was much taller now and her head would press into the side door when she tried to sleep by laying across the back seat.

She entered through the rear of the store, passing the manager Pat Mercer. Her mom complained about him often and had pointed him out one time when they were there together. Mercer had over a dozen staff on duty so she should be able to slip in and out of the shift without attracting attention.

She knew enough about her mom's job to go through the motions. She was in charge of several canned goods stations. She could clean up the spills and check inventory with the scan guns. She walked the aisles and memorized the locations of the soups, fruits, beans and raviolis. Then she helped a few customers find what they were looking for. Then she unloaded a new shipment of instant coffee on aisle 7. Then she mopped a mustard spill on aisle 8. Then she worked the scan gun. The time started to pass more quickly, with customers cycling in and out, co-workers starting and ending shifts. She'd managed to avoid Mr. Mercer the entire time.

It was 4 pm, with only one hour left in her mother's shift, when she ran smack into them, all three of them, Brad, Phil and Lance. The Killer Boyz.

"Whoa!" Brad cried in astonishment. "Check this out."

Sally was frozen in her tracks.

"She's working her mom's shift!"

"Oh my God! Get the manager!"

The room was spinning with blurry lights, noisy with the commotion of angry voices. The next thing Sally knew she was face-to-face with Mr. Mercer, who took her mother's badge and uniform. Then he assured her that no one in the Styles family would ever work for Great American ever again.