“Oh, of course!” Donna laughed too. “You remind me of myself the last time I tried a juice cleanse! I ate so much junk food before I started—”
But Christine knew if her friend got going, she could talk all day. Donna was a nice person, but really hard to get away from. And Christine had an uneasy feeling about leaving the big Monstrum at home alone for so long. She had already been out longer than she wanted to—it was time to get back to her cabin.
“I’m really sorry, but I can’t chat right now,” she told her friend. “I only ran down here for a minute—I’ve got a loaf of banana bread baking in my oven and it’s going to dry out if I don’t hurry up and check out so I can get back home.”
“Wow, donuts and banana bread? You really are going to have a good time before you start that diet!” Donna widened her eyes. “Bring me whatever you have left,” she called, as Christine headed for the checkout lanes. “I’m not planning on cutting carbs out of my life anytime soon—they taste too good!”
She laughed and Christine threw her a smile over her shoulder as she rounded the corner, pushing her shopping cart with increased speed, in case Donna thought of something else to say and started following her. But after a moment, it seemed that she really had gotten away.
There was only one lane open when she got to the front of the store, but there was only one other person ahead of her--a skinny girl in her twenties. The girl was pushing a shopping cart which seemed to be almost entirely full of beer and various forms of candy. She had scraggly, dishwater blonde hair and when she turned her head, Christine thought she had a disturbingly vacant look in her pale blue eyes.
As she waited her turn, Christine saw with surprise that the checker was Jenny Albright. Her oldest daughter, Lisa, used to baby-sit Jenny on Saturday nights when her folks went out for “date night” and now, here she was, old enough to be a checker at the Food Lion!
Well if that doesn’t make you feel old, I don’t know what will! Christine thought with an inner sigh. Still, Jenny couldn’t be more than fourteen or fifteen. This must be a weekend and after school job for her. She had her hair tied back in a ponytail and she was wearing innocent, pale pink lipstick that made her look just like she had when Lisa had let her play with her makeup back when she babysat her.
But just as Christine was reminiscing about the times when she’d had all her kids at home—back before she was an “Empty Nester”—someone new came barreling into the line.
It was her neighbor, Mike Fenster, and he looked angry. Not at Christine, however—he barely seemed to notice her. It was the skinny blonde girl he was furious with.
“Hey, why the fuck are you already checking out for?” he demanded, glaring at the girl. “I told you to wait until I found what I wanted, you little bitch!” He dumped another packet of candy on the moving conveyer belt, where the girl had been mechanically unloading the big, heavy cases of beer.
“Sorry, Mike.” She hung her head. “I just thought I’d get a head start, since you were taking so long.”
“I wasn’t taking too long! I was fucking shopping, Sheryl!” he snarled in her face. “You’re damn lucky you didn’t finish checking out before I found what I wanted!”
“Sorry,” she muttered again. “Didn’t mean to.”
“You’re so fucking stupid, you know that?” he ranted at her. “Why can’t you be smart like this little cutie here?” He turned suddenly to Jenny, who had been watching wide-eyed as she checked out the beer and candy. “What’s your name, baby?” he asked her. Reaching across the checking conveyer belt, he chucked her lightly under the chin with his crudely tattooed fingers. “You sure are pretty,” he said, giving her that crazy grin of his.
“Uh…” Jenny recoiled from him—a natural thing to do, in Christine’s opinion.
“What’s the matter, sweetie? Ain’t nobody ever told you what a sweet little piece of ass you are before?” Fenster leered at her. “Tell me something—you a virgin?”
“I…I don’t…I can’t…” Jenny stammered, shaking her head. Her cheeks were bright red and she didn’t seem to know what to say or where to look. She was checking slower and slower, probably because her hands were trembling as she tried to move the items over the scanner.
“Because if you are, I can show you a real good time—break you in nice and easy,” Fenster told her. “Just ask Sheryl here—she never had a dick in her pussy until I came along. Now she can’t get enough of it! She fucks me and both my brothers every night—don’t you, Sheryl?”