She smiled at him sweetly and like she often did with strangers, wondered if he could be her grandfather. The man stopped sweeping and came over to check her out. She picked one up and rolled it around in her hand, then picked up another and made her way to the cash register. When she reached the part of the floor that tripped the automatic sliding door, a large yellow cardboard sign advertised stacks of blue electrical tape - two for a dollar. Rifling through her pockets, she came up with a dollar in quarters and three nickels. She watched him sweep for a moment then walked down the next aisle. He walked away and picked up a broom that leaned against the wall. “It’s for an art project I’m finishing today at school.”
I was just looking for a clear coat,” she said with a toss of her hair that made her look like every other idiot teenager. Not like she was going to try and lift something – more like, why wasn’t she at school this time of the morning? She was almost eighteen, but not quite the last thing she needed was this old geezer calling the boys in blue. The way his shaggy white eyebrows arched made her feel guilty. “ Can I help you miss?” an elderly, aproned employee asked. Foster were just as interchangeable to her as she was to them. Or any of the other foster homes in any of the other months for that matter. It’s not like there were regular art supplies at the foster home she’d been dumped in this month. Her fingers trailed along the cans, tapping the caps when she came to a favourite colour. The itch surfaced as soon as she reached the aisle that mattered. She laughed when she jumped off, stepping down almost straight into a hardware store. The air smelled like rain, so she hurried to the closest bus stop and rode until reaching an area where it looked like the cops would have more serious crimes than graffiti to worry about. They’ll probably use them to paint their kid’s bikes or wagons, or some stupid table in their garage. She jumped out the patrol car’s backseat, indifferent to being let go with just a warning and angry that they kept the spray-paint cans when they picked her up on the other side of town.
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