Paper Hearts (Phan)

90/89 days

We pulled into the nearly empty Tesco parking lot at 11 pm exactly, the only cars around being the ones belonging to employees working the night shift for some extra money.

"That wasn't too bad, now was it?" Dan said and squinted up at the flickering street lamp, pulling off his helmet and running his hands through his hair to fix it, even though it still somehow looked perfect. As I unstrapped mine from under my chin and placed it on the seat, he reached up, tousled my hair and laughed, brushing it back into place.

"You get really bad helmet hair." He giggled and linked our arms together, pulling me towards the sliding doors of the store.

Now was a bad time to realise how much I hated Tesco. It smelled awful, the employees were either too nice or too weird, and when you shopped there past 8pm the creepy customers made an unwelcome appearance. In 7th grade I remember running down to Tesco a couple blocks away for some glue and almost getting jumped by a gang of kids sharing a sandwich stuffed with drugs or something of that nature. I was convinced I was going to die and only return to the store with both my parents in tow. 'Why don't you want to go with just one of us?' They'd ask and I'd have no choice but to say 'drug sandwich'.

Dan waved hello at the only normal looking person sitting down in a lawn chair that was eerily similar to the ones PJ had stood on and broken, and started jogging towards the multiple direction intersection in the middle of the store. He glanced left, yelled "DOG FOOD", turned to the right and declared "PAINT" at the top of his lungs and took off down the aisle.

I followed him at a much slower pace, not wanting to have to go through the pain of finding new boots at some expensive shoe store. Dan was standing in the middle of the paint section, grabbing locked bottles of spray paint and normal cans filled with neon colours.

He caught sight of me catching up to him, and held up a container of bright sparkly blue. "Do you think they have industrial strength dye?"

"How should I know?"

He shrugged and grabbed another can of pink spray paint, stopping at the end of the aisle next to a display case stocked with red air horns.

"Not in the middle of the store-" I tried to stop him from dropping everything in his arms and shaking the air horn, but I was too late. He pressed the button and covered an ear with one hand, smiling an ecstatic open-mouthed smile as the noise filled the air and nearly set my eardrums on fire.

He howled with laughter and held down the button for another 15 seconds straight before the employee with really greasy hair and almost non-existent eyebrows swatted it to the ground.

"You're not allowed to use the items without paying for it." They said and I could've sworn one of the pimples on their forehead popped in front of me, which was absolutely disgusting by the way.

"I was gonna buy it." Dan shot back without hesitation, annoyance lining his tone. "Just needed to test if it worked." He grabbed the paint cans' handles and lifted them off the ground and tilted his head swiftly towards the main aisle, gesturing for me to follow him and to try and appear to be as professional as possible. So I puffed out my chest like I'd seen these cute little birds do on TV to appear bigger and better, and strode out of the aisle with the longest steps I could take, keeping my chin up towards the ceiling and trying my best to keep the heels of my boots in place before they crumbled to pieces right where I stood.

He marched quickly through the store to the shitty food section, where I was convinced all the goods were either mass produced in China or created at a nuclear plant. Dan started pulling some boxes of gummy bears and peanut butter cups into the free space in his arms between two cans of spray paint, throwing a couple bottles of cheese whiz at me when he couldn't hold anything else.