a study. If only school was still in session, maybe there was a class I could apply such investigation toward. What would I be researching? The worst things for a girl to be, based on insults directed at items of female clothing by shoppers at Ohmigod!
A cluster of girls who looked about twelve but had their faces painted up like twisted, baby beauty queens were getting hysterical over by the astrology shirts, yanking them off the racks and thrusting them at one another. I felt a surge of hate. Not only had I just spaced those T-shirts out in a precise finger-length order, I had organized them by chronology of zodiac sign and then, within the signs, suborganized them by size. And the little twats were fucking it all up. And they weren’t even going to buy them, anyway. I just could feel it. They were too wild, too loud. Not serious shoppers. I stomped over to them, my flops bitch-slapping the linoleum. Hey! I snapped at the gang of them. I had my official-looking Ohmigod! tag pinned above my left boob. It was the shape a
Bam!
comes in inside a comic book. It was purple, and the
“Ohmigod!”
was in hot pink, scrawled, maybe with a lipstick, as if it had been tagged there by a very passionate and heavily made-up female. You Messed Up My Rack, I scowled at them. Are You Going To Buy One Of Those Shirts Or Are You Just Going ToFling Them At Each Other?
They stared dumbly for a moment, ambushed by my bad attitude. Then one piped up,
We can shop here if we want. Baby.
She said “Baby” mockingly and burst into laughter. Her laughter was caught on the giant pillow of laughter that erupted from the perfumed throats of her friends. They all giggled like it was the funniest thing they’d ever heard, choking on their giggles, occasionally pausing to take a gulp of air and burp out the word one more time,
Baby
, inspiring a fresh flood of hilarity. I stood there and realized that this confrontation was a terrible misstep on my part, a bold act born on a wave of low blood sugar, certainly, because I’d skipped breakfast and become horribly mean and cranky when I don’t eat. I was famous for it in my household. Between this low blood sugar problem and the more recent legend of my powerful PMS, no gripe of mine was ever taken seriously within my shabby home. This pained me, this drove me nuts, so it was my duty to keep my blood levels stable and therefore not get written off so easily. The gang of girls smirked at me. They had the most basic advantage: they were a pack. I was just me, in a stupid shirt scribbled with the ridiculous word
BABY.
I was walking around with an insult sprayed across my chest, inviting the world to fuck with me.
You Just…You Were Making A Mess. And I Have To Clean It. The girls laughed in fucking unison, a snort-chorus.
Well, too bad for you
, one snipped.
I guess that’s your job
, another reminded me. Meanly. It was true. I was scheduled to be at Ohmigod! for seven more hours and certainly I’d be reorganizing the racksendlessly, again and again, as hordes of shoppers rifled through the merchandise. It was my job to undo their damage. The leader, clutching a shirt with an electric-blue scorpion sprayed across the front, relaxed her fingers and let the hanger clatter to the floor.
I was going to buy it but now I’m not. Baby.
And she led the rest of them out of the store. Their hands trailed out behind them, brushing and swatting at the racks they breezed past, knocking them out of their finger-length order. One little fist shot out, a hand with purple-tipped fingernails clutched at the skirt of a flowered dress, and gave it a hard yank. I could hear the plastic hanger crack as the dress sailed to a gentle heap on the floor. The hand disappeared into the horde of girls moving as one into the dimness of the mall, gone. Bernice O’Leary had come to the side of her glass bubble like a little goldfish, to watch the parade of ill will traipse by.
Trishy?
she asked, frowning. Her voice bounced around
A cluster of girls who looked about twelve but had their faces painted up like twisted, baby beauty queens were getting hysterical over by the astrology shirts, yanking them off the racks and thrusting them at one another. I felt a surge of hate. Not only had I just spaced those T-shirts out in a precise finger-length order, I had organized them by chronology of zodiac sign and then, within the signs, suborganized them by size. And the little twats were fucking it all up. And they weren’t even going to buy them, anyway. I just could feel it. They were too wild, too loud. Not serious shoppers. I stomped over to them, my flops bitch-slapping the linoleum. Hey! I snapped at the gang of them. I had my official-looking Ohmigod! tag pinned above my left boob. It was the shape a
Bam!
comes in inside a comic book. It was purple, and the
“Ohmigod!”
was in hot pink, scrawled, maybe with a lipstick, as if it had been tagged there by a very passionate and heavily made-up female. You Messed Up My Rack, I scowled at them. Are You Going To Buy One Of Those Shirts Or Are You Just Going ToFling Them At Each Other?
They stared dumbly for a moment, ambushed by my bad attitude. Then one piped up,
We can shop here if we want. Baby.
She said “Baby” mockingly and burst into laughter. Her laughter was caught on the giant pillow of laughter that erupted from the perfumed throats of her friends. They all giggled like it was the funniest thing they’d ever heard, choking on their giggles, occasionally pausing to take a gulp of air and burp out the word one more time,
Baby
, inspiring a fresh flood of hilarity. I stood there and realized that this confrontation was a terrible misstep on my part, a bold act born on a wave of low blood sugar, certainly, because I’d skipped breakfast and become horribly mean and cranky when I don’t eat. I was famous for it in my household. Between this low blood sugar problem and the more recent legend of my powerful PMS, no gripe of mine was ever taken seriously within my shabby home. This pained me, this drove me nuts, so it was my duty to keep my blood levels stable and therefore not get written off so easily. The gang of girls smirked at me. They had the most basic advantage: they were a pack. I was just me, in a stupid shirt scribbled with the ridiculous word
BABY.
I was walking around with an insult sprayed across my chest, inviting the world to fuck with me.
You Just…You Were Making A Mess. And I Have To Clean It. The girls laughed in fucking unison, a snort-chorus.
Well, too bad for you
, one snipped.
I guess that’s your job
, another reminded me. Meanly. It was true. I was scheduled to be at Ohmigod! for seven more hours and certainly I’d be reorganizing the racksendlessly, again and again, as hordes of shoppers rifled through the merchandise. It was my job to undo their damage. The leader, clutching a shirt with an electric-blue scorpion sprayed across the front, relaxed her fingers and let the hanger clatter to the floor.
I was going to buy it but now I’m not. Baby.
And she led the rest of them out of the store. Their hands trailed out behind them, brushing and swatting at the racks they breezed past, knocking them out of their finger-length order. One little fist shot out, a hand with purple-tipped fingernails clutched at the skirt of a flowered dress, and gave it a hard yank. I could hear the plastic hanger crack as the dress sailed to a gentle heap on the floor. The hand disappeared into the horde of girls moving as one into the dimness of the mall, gone. Bernice O’Leary had come to the side of her glass bubble like a little goldfish, to watch the parade of ill will traipse by.
Trishy?
she asked, frowning. Her voice bounced around
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