THE SUPERMARKET IS COLD AND I’VE GOT MY ARMS INSIDE MY orange raincoat so that the sleeves hang lifelessly by my side. Dillon trails behind me with his hands in his pockets, looking embarrassed to be seen with us. I get an urge to do my zombie impression. Twisting at the waist, making the sleeves swish about, I stagger toward him with my mouth open and eyes rolling around in my head.
Dillon raises his eyebrows and shuffles close enough to whisper. “What are you doing? You look like you should be in a mental hospital,” he says.
“You should see yourself,” I reply, slipping my arms back into the sleeves.
“Have you forgotten why we’re here? You’re going to really piss them off.”
It’s impossible to forget. Especially because it’s my fault we have to go through this.
“Course not. But zombies don’t like miseries. If you don’t cheer up, they’ll get you.” I roll my eyes back again and hang my tongue out. As I lurch into him, a very convincing zombie-like groan escapes from my mouth.
Dillon smiles. A tiny sideways smile, but it is there.
Then my father picks up some Cadbury chocolate fingers and Mum freaks out.
“He hates those, Colin,” she says, loud enough that people turn and stare at us. I look at Dillon. He shakes his head and pretends to read a sign on the shelf behind.
“Well, he won’t have to eat them,” my father mutters.
“That’s not the point!”
When my father puts the fingers in the trolley anyway, Mum whimpers and pulls her hair, her fingers working through her curls like hungry little worms.
“Why are you being so insensitive?” she says, spitting the words out.
My father stands quietly, looking around, shaking his head. I’m not going to help him out; he is being insensitive. He steps back as Mum hurls packets of biscuits at his feet. We seem to have taken over the snacks aisle, and there’s a crowd of people at one end watching us. Two of them I recognize from school, so I hide behind a shopping trolley filled with Jaffa Cakes. I think about doing my zombie impression to distract them from my parents’ argument, but I’m stuck to the floor with shame. Dillon is still reading the sign on the shelf, but it’s obvious he’s pretending, because even from here I can see it says OUT OF STOCK in big red letters.
Mum picks up some pink wafers.
“Celia,” my father cries, jumping out of the way, “we’re going home.”
He slams the trolley against the shelf and walks off. The shelf wobbles, and packets of gingersnaps tumble into the trolley. When everyone else has run after my father, I unzip my jacket a little way and slide one of the packets inside so it sits neatly under my arm. Then I scoot to the next aisle, where the party bits are, and grab some candles. They’re the flimsy ones that go in cakes, but they’ll do. At least we’ll have something for tomorrow.
The wait is like listening to a ticking bomb. The closer the day gets, the louder the ticking; the louder the ticking, the more my parents shout; the more my parents shout, the more I want to get in a car and run my father over.
I catch up with them as they’re leaving the supermarket. Dillon walks by Dad’s side and brushes Mum away when she goes to him. He always defends my father—sucking up is the term I’d use. I don’t know why, because Dad’s so hard on him. He goes on at Dillon all the time about getting good grades and makes him sit in the kitchen and study if he gets a low mark. I get shouted at and banned from going out, but my father never actually makes me do my homework—he knows I’m a lost cause. For that, at least, I’m grateful. I start on the gingersnaps before we’ve even left the car park. No one says anything. Eventually I offer them around.
“Did you pay for those?” my father asks. In the rearview mirror I see his nostrils flare.
I shake my head.
“For Christ’s sake, Elsie. Do you want to end up in a detention center? Because you’re going the right way about it. They’ve got CCTV, you know.”
I do know this, because I’ve been dragged into a back office and shown footage of myself trying to get a packet of noodles into my back pocket. I don’t know why noodles. At the time it seemed like something that might be useful.
“You can go back and pay for them if you’re that worried.”
My father accelerates, and when we get home he grabs the packet from me and chucks it in the dustbin. Mum doesn’t defend me like she usually does. She’s distracted with everything else. With tomorrow.
4