If Mina stared long and hard enough at the harsh fluorescent lighting, she could disappear into the abyss of all the other times she burned under its harsh whiteness–she could forget where she was, how old she was, who she was. Mina wondered if these self-proclaimed staring contests with the lights were the cause of her headaches, or if there was something actually wrong with her. The other night she had a nightmare that she would die here, collapse behind the pharmacy counter as she handed someone their antidepressant and the last thing she would ever say is, “do you have any questions about the medication?” The last thing she would see is the stupid Valentine’s Day teddy bears holding a heart-shaped container of M&Ms in the distance.

“Mina, can you help me for one second to transfer a prescription to this pharmacy?” Mina snapped out of it, her body moving towards the tablet Deidre was working on as her head flurried with stained shapes of the fluorescent lighting and the outlines of those stupid teddy bears. She took the tablet from her young coworker’s hand. Deidre was freshly twenty-three and a painful reminder of positivity. It was just the two of them working today, as they expected fewer people would be out and about with the shooting threats to the area. The CVS still had a good bit of traffic, despite the three teenagers who were shot to death yesterday just a few miles farther into Pittsburgh. Mina thought that it was no surprise the people who came in to pick up prescriptions were those picking up antidepressants; after all, the only thing scarier than a gunman on the loose is the monster inside your brain. She expected Deidre to be more on edge but was again reminded how accustomed each young person she met was to the constant disruption of guns to their lives. Deidre seemed more preoccupied with her inability to properly transfer a prescription than to an unfound killer on the loose.

Mina handed a customer a prescription, said “Have a nice day,” and was tempted to say “be safe” even though she knew those words were empty. She saw a worried Sasha, the manager of the CVS, scurrying over with her arms swinging so high and fast that they nearly knocked over any customer in their path. “What’s up Sash?” Mina asked.

“We’re closing up shop. Right now.”

“What, wh-”

“He’s here, somewhere in town. The shooter. They think he’s here. We need to go home and take shelter.”

“Oh g-”

“I’m gonna make an announcement and close up the front. Can you close and lock up the pharmacy?”

“Yes, yes, I can. What else can I do?”

“Nothing, nothing. Get home safe, honey, get home to Greta.” And then she was off down the allergy, flu, and cold aisle, her arms somehow swinging even higher as the flash of her red polo disappeared. Mina felt the heavy and unsteady breathing of Deidre behind her.

“Go home,” Mina said.

“No, there’s things to do, there’s all the prescr-”

“Go home,” Mina said. As Deidre started to squirm again, Mina grabbed her arm and gave her a threatening look in her eye.

“Are you sure?” she asked as she frantically picked up her belongings. Then the loud speaker crackled, and instead of calling Lisa to report to the front for passport photos as usual, Sasha in an unsteady voice announced:

“We have to close early due to unforeseen circumstances. Please carefully make your way to your vehicles and take shelter at home. Please leave the CVS now. We will be closing in two minutes. Stay safe.” There were more crackling sounds, bits of chatter and rush between the few people inside the store, and then Deidre came from the back of the pharmacy yelling in frantic half sentences,

“So, I’ll see ya, be safe take care I’m sorry thank you,” and was on her way. Mina took a deep breath. She looked at her phone for a news update or call, but there was never any service inside this CVS. What was it about grocery stores and pharmacies never having any service? How could the world in 2044 have robot assistants that were more effective than humans but still not figure out having proper service inside this CVS? Mina often was embarrassed to remind her daughter Greta’s school to call the pharmacy line and ask for her if they couldn’t get a hold of her cell.

Mina had to get home to Greta now. She created a mental checklist of everything she must do before leaving: log out of the tablets and place them on the charging station, update a message to the phone’s voicemail, secure the unsorted medicine, lock up, and get out of there. Mina started on her tasks, shuffling around, trying to motivate herself to move faster by the thought that the sooner she left, the sooner she would see her daughter’s face. A few minutes later she noticed some of the lights flickering off, and she turned around when she heard Sasha shout, “Mina, honey, do you mind if I leave? The store’s been emptied out, I’ve sent all the rest of the staff and customers home. Can you lock up and turn off the lights?”

“Yes, yes-”

“I’ll leave the pharmacy lights and aisle 1 lights on so you're not completely in the dark. Okay be safe, I’m going. Be safe.” Mina stood there frozen as she watched Sasha disappear into the darkness. Mina took a deep breath. She pulled down the first gate to the vaccine counter. She reached for her phone again and dialed her mom’s number. She waited for the ring, but it didn’t come.

“Stupid service,” she murmured under her breath. She shut down all the tablets one by one, pulled the rest of the gates down, grabbed her coat and keys, locked the last latch to the pharmacy, and headed down the supplement and vitamin aisle.

As Mina turned the corner, she almost bumped right into a man in a hoodie with headphones on. “Good Grief!” Mina shocked herself by the power of her own volume, but the screech of her shock still did not seem to alert the man. He remained squatted down low carefully analyzing the shelves of protein powders, bouncing his head to beats blasting from his noise-canceling headphones. She firmly tapped him on the shoulder and then took four precautionary steps backwards. He removed a headphone from one side of his ears, holding it only a short distance away from his ear, so he could continue listening to his music. He raised an eyebrow at Mina, as she said, “Excuse me!”

“Can I help you?” he asked, his grimace deepening.

“What are you still doing here?”

“Huh?”

“The store’s closed. You need to leave now,” Mina said and started backing away.

“Can I just buy this one thing first?” he asked. Mina was astounded by his complete and utter aloofness to everything around him. She could not believe that his “GET JACKED” whey protein powder is what was up for discussion at this moment.

“How did you not notice the announcement over the loudspeaker and all the lights being turned off?” she asked flustered. He shrugged his shoulders.

“Um, can you check me out quick?” he asked.

“Are you seri-” She was interrupted by the ringing of the pharmacy phone. She threw her bag down, searched for the keys, and ran back to try and unlock the pharmacy gates to reach it. She thought, please be Mom. Please be Mom. Her mom was notoriously awful at being on her phone. Mina could not miss the possibility of her being on the other end of the line. She jumped for the phone and picked it up on the last ring.

“Hello?”

“Min, dear.”

“Mom, thank god, is everything okay? Where are you and Greta?”

“Min, we’re fine. We’re fine. We’re home and safe and sound. But I just tracked you and saw you're still at work.”

“Yes, yes, I’m leaving now. I’ll be there in five minutes. Stay put,” Mina said faster than she had ever said anything before.

“Min, stay there. Don’t leave. The police are looking for the shooter right off of Lenox Ave, right near you. Don’t go outside. Stay there.”

“No, no, Mom. I’m coming. It’s fine.” There was no way Mina was going to choose to stay in a place she was so sick of instead of being with her twelve-year-old daughter.

“Min, listen to me. You don’t really have a choice. If you leave right now, you’re going to be in the middle of it.”

She was yet again reminded and irked by the dangers of sharing her phone location with her mother.

“Jesus, Mom. Fine, I’ll stay. Just for a little longer until things are cleared.”

“I love you. Be safe.”

All of a sudden, she noticed the man, however old he was, looking at her from the other side of the counter.

“So, what’s going on?” he asked.

“Good God,” she murmured under her breath. “The gunman is in the near area.” The word slipped her mouth so easily, so casually it made her sick.

“Oh, shit,” he said, not actually sounding surprised in any way. “Alright, I’ll be heading out I guess then.” He started back down the supplements aisle. Mina started to watch him go.

“Wait,” she raised her voice.

“Yuh?” he responded.

“It’s not safe out there.”

“It’s never safe out there,” he said as he started to turn away.

“Well,” Mina paused, surprised at the weight of what had exited his mouth. “Just wait it out here a little.” He shrugged.

“Where?”

“What do you mean, where? Here, inside.”

“Do you gotta nicer worker’s lounge or something back there?” he said. She rolled her eyes and walked to the front of the store making sure the doors were locked and secured. If she left right now, she could be safe inside her car within seconds. She stared into the glass doors for a second almost seeing a glimpse of her reflection. She looked for any sign of danger outside, and only seeing an empty parking lot, she was tempted to push right through the doors and be quickly home to Greta. Something stopped her, maybe the nagging voice of her mother in her head. Why was her instinct in these situations was always to hide and lock down and never to run? The frequent illogical lockdown drills of her childhood instilled a false sense of security in  hiding. Her own daughter was trained to create a logical escape or fight for her survival in the wake of a gunman during the drills at her school, but Mina was a lost cause. She was taught to freeze growing up and now didn’t have the confidence to fight or flight. She paced back and forth for a minute and then peered down the supplements aisle and saw the guy sitting up against the vitamins, slightly bouncing his head with his headphones back on. She approached him and awkwardly hovered until he pushed his headphones down to rest on his neck.

“There’s chairs, if you want–right outside the other side of the pharmacy, those might be more comfortable,” she said. He nodded and without verbal response, grabbed his backpack and walked that way. She followed him slowly, and then sat at the chair furthest from him in the waiting area. “What’s your name?” she asked.

“It’s Toph,” he responded.

“Toph?” Mina questioned. He nodded.

“What’s that a nickname for? Toffee?”

“Nah, Christopher.”

“You’re a Christopher who goes by Toph,” she said, and he carelessly nodded. “Hmm, your parents didn’t like Chris or Topher or just plain ol’ Christopher?” He gave a pity smirk and shook his head.

“Your name?” he asked.

“Oh, Mina.” Another ten seconds of silence passed, and as he went to put his headphones back on, she asked, “How old are you?”

“Twenty-four.”

“Interesting, interesting,” she responded while continuing to refresh the Safari page on her phone hoping for a moment of miraculous internet service.

“And you?”

“My age? Boy you’ve got to be kidding,” she snapped.

“You asked me,” he said, looking off in the other direction.

“Yeah, but it’s clear I’m over forty and isn’t there some part of the social contract to not ask women over forty how old they are?” She paused. “I mean, of course, you can ask men over forty how old they are because men get to age without constant judgment and ridicule as they wrinkle and get fat but women, no! They do not have the right to normal biological processes.” Toph looked at her and then away as she realized her words meant nothing to him. She put her head down into her hands and tapped her foot. Was it too soon to call home again? She should have asked her mom to let her hear Greta’s voice. She got up, headed back behind the pharmacy counter, and dialed her mom’s number. As the phone rang, the world felt painfully silent in between each ring, although Mina could have sworn she heard the faintest sound of Toph’s terrible house music destroying his eardrums in the distance. The phone rang and rang off into the abyss with no one picking up on the other side. She tried again and again and again. What on earth was her mother doing? How does she not have her phone on her in a time like this? Finally, she slammed down the phone and walked back to Toph, waving her two hands aggressively to get his attention. “Do you have service on your phone?”

“Oh,” he said, “no, don’t really have any bars.”

“Well, how are you listening to music then?” she asked, surprised by the accusatory tone of her own voice.

“I got all my shit downloaded.”

“Of course you do,” she mumbled under her breath. He then started bouncing his head to the sounds from his headphones so violently, Mina swore he would give himself whiplash. He occasionally let out a few whispers of lyrics. Mina couldn’t stop thinking about how, out of everyone in the world to be with in a life-threatening situation, she somehow ended up with this goof of a man. Where was he from anyway? He had the strangest of accents, with a mix of a Southern drawl, Midwestern syntax, and California dude vernacular that he must have grown up in a random state where you didn’t think anyone actually lived. She imagined him with cheesy, meaningless tattoos just like her ex-boyfriend who had a massive bear tattooed in between his nipples. Mina pondered why he was so unconcerned in this moment, why did he not ask to use the pharmacy phone to call someone? Could he be this numb to this happening? She needed some air, if only she could get some. She walked back over to him. “Do you mind if I just try to use your phone? I want to call my daughter. I’m desperate to hear her voice.”

“I mean, yeah I guess,” he pulled up the phone dial pad on his phone, turned off his headphones, and handed the phone to her. Mina desperately dialed, waiting for a ring to fill her ear as she felt the blank gaze of Toph closely surveilling his technological property as if she was about to sprint into the danger zone of the shooter. The ring never came, and she handed Toph his phone back and slumped back into one of the chairs.

“I bet the police are searching all over the place for this guy outside and we locked ourselves in here to be safe, but then it turns out the killer is hiding in the CVS all along,” Toph said in a goofy, joking tone. Mina coughed out of disbelief.

“Why on earth would you say something like that?” she said.

“I was jus-”

“You hardly say anything, but decide to get chatty all of a sudden to propose we’re about to die?”

“Jeez I was ju-”

“I need a moment,” she said. She used her phone flashlight to head to the fridge aisle, walking quietly now paranoid that the killer could be hiding around any corner because of Toph’s stupid proposition. She searched for a beverage, desperate for a flavor to drown out the terrible taste of Toph and gun violence from her mouth. She settled on Vitamin Water, the same one she would buy before starting her CVS shifts in high school. She slouched down to the floor with her back against the cool fridge. That strange taste of artificial fruitiness brought her right back to being sixteen, having the energy to beg for a job before her sixteenth birthday, so she could start on her very first day of legally working to start saving up for college.

She sipped and remembered the dream of becoming a cardiac surgeon, of planning the whole trajectory of her life around it before that dream became stale. She wanted to study chemistry and literature in undergrad, do research for a year post-college, and then start medical school. Mina spent all of high school living in that dream still years away from her reach, working herself so hard that she lost her friendships or any sense of a typical childhood. When her mom was diagnosed with lung cancer her senior year of high school, she knew she would stay at home and pursue an associate degree instead. By the time her mom got better, she had settled in as a pharmacy technician, putting off getting a bachelor’s degree and MD for a little longer to help cover the bills. Suddenly, a little bit longer became forever. She never left pharmacy life and often felt incomplete because of her unfulfilled dreams.

Well, at least in a situation with death lurking outside, she could sit here in the darkness and not be haunted by the fluorescent lighting she was so fed up with. How ironic that she would be trapped here, she could die here, in the one place in life she could never escape. Should she risk it? Should she run to her car and go home? Somehow it didn’t feel that scary out there. After all, maybe Toph was right–maybe inside the store was just as dangerous as outside of it. She closed her eyes, she pictured Greta–the scariest but most wonderful surprise of her life.

When Mina found out she was pregnant at thirty, she cried and cried and cried. She had broken the promise to herself to never make her child be raised in a single parent household like she was, desperate to know an absent father she never would. The love of her life had cheated on her repeatedly for years. When she found out, she gave him and the seven years they spent together a gut-wrenching farewell. He almost seemed relieved to be free of her and decided to move to California. One month later, Mina found out she was pregnant with his child, and when she finally worked up the courage to call and tell him, he said “no thank you” to being a father. Greta became Mina’s new dream. But as a result, she decided to settle and go to a four-year pharmacy school instead of trying for a bachelor’s and MD. It was all of a sudden just too unattainable.

Mina opened her phone again, refreshed her browser hoping for anything to pop up, and when she was let down, she went to her camera roll to see her beautiful twelve-year-old girl. After thirty minutes of longing through the perimeters of her screen, she grabbed a water bottle and a Coke from the fridges and walked back to Toph. She found him lying down on that gray CVS carpet, headphones off, just staring up at the ceiling. He turned his head, and she extended both the water and the Coke to him.

“Oh, thanks,” he said and cracked open the Coke, raising the upper half of his body in a crunch to take a sip before lying back down flat again.

“So, it’s Toph like cough, and not Toph like loaf,” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Hmm,” she nodded, and let a moment pass before she asked, “but isn’t it technically Christopher like Chrisloafer, so it should really be Toph like loaf?” He laughed. She was caught off guard by his chuckle.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right, I’ve never thought about that,” he responded. Mina could not believe how this man seemed to move through the world never quite questioning anything.

“Are you scared?” Mina asked, desperate for human connection in this moment where she was longing for Greta.

“I don’t know if I even know what scared feels like anymore,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“We’re just so used to this shit that it just kinda becomes the norm.”

“But doesn’t that scare you even more?” she asked.

“What?”

“The numbness, isn’t it terrifying? It’s like we’re void of all emotion, all hope, just waiting for the guns to take over.”

“But it’s not the guns taking over, it's some sort of explosion of that numbness.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, of course, there’s too many guns or whatever, but it’s other stuff too. Everyone’s trying to push down and forget all this fear and they get all mentally messed up because of it. Then they do bad shit.”

“Fear’s not a reason to take someone else’s life.”

“Well, yeah, but maybe if you think everyone else is about to take yours all the time it is.”

“You’re kidding, you think that thinking other people are going to kill you, even if they aren’t going to, is reason enough to kill them first?”

“Nah, nah, I’m not trying to come across all pro-gun here m’am, I’m just saying it’s complicated. I’ve seen it both ways. My cousin Andy for instance…”

“What happened to him?”

“I don’t want to get into all that, but all I’m saying is you gotta think about it from several angles. Gotta think about the killer apart from the killing sometimes.” Mina shot him a judgmental look but then saw his face turn a little red. This conversation was upsetting him.

“I didn’t mean to overstep…”

“Nah, nah all good.” Painful silence filled the space between them. After a few seconds, Mina looked back in Toph’s direction to see what emotion he had on his face. He looked back at her and said, “Andy killed three of his coworkers’ three years ago and then killed himself. It was terrible. Super tragic. Terrible for the victims and their families, but also for mine.”

“Oh, wow. I’m so sorry.” Again, silence swallowed them. “Were you close?”

“At one point, yeah. But not really at the time he died.”

“I don’t know what to say,” Mina said, biting her lip.

“Nothing really to say. I was just tryna say how that shit can change you, knowing one of the killers, that's all. It’s dark for everyone involved. My aunt likes to say he took his life in that moment because he just finally wanted to have control. She says he wanted to feel like he had control over his fate in a world where death always sneaks up on ya.”

“That’s devastating. I mean I get it. Death really can be waiting for you around any corner. Yesterday it was three teenage girls at an ice cream shop. Who imagines they will take their last breath in an ice cream shop?” Toph shook his head and looked down at the floor.

There were not really any more words to say, just emptiness, an inability to feel the weight of lives lost anymore. Pockets of time collapsed into each other, the two of them drifting in and out of nightmare daydreams.

“Do you like working here?” Toph finally asked twenty minutes later to break the silence.

“Wow, he is capable of asking a personal question,” she mocked. “Well to be honest, it’s complicated.”

“What’s complicated?”

“It’s all I know. I started working at a CVS in my hometown when I was sixteen as a shelf stocker. I worked almost every day after school, desperate to put myself through college.”

“Did you?”

“Yeah, but just my associate’s. I had to stay at home and care for my mom while in school. I ended up settling for pharmacy school years later.”

“Settling?” he asked.

“I wanted to be a doctor. Dreamed my whole life around it actually, but by the time my mom got better after the cancer, we needed bills paid, so I kept working as a pharmacist technician until I had enough money to eventually go to pharmacy school.”

“Sorry your mom was sick, that’s hard,” he said, almost with a little bit of a compassionate tone breaking through his so-called masculine facade. Mina nodded her head and smiled softly at him. “So, you’ve spent a whole lot of your life in a CVS,” he chuckled.

“Way too much of my life in a CVS. I’ve worked at three different ones, but they are all blurred in my mind, they have the same stupid red signs and sterile smell and awful lighting,” she ranted as Toph nodded. “So, what do you do?”

“Ya know, little bit of this, a little bit of that,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“Well, what do you do every day? I mean except get jacked,” she asked while nudging her head to the whey powder. He shook his head.

“To be honest, I spend too much time on Fanduel,” he said.

“Sports betting?” she asked, and he nodded. “What do you bet on? Football?”

“Darts.”

“I’m sorry, you can bet on darts on a sports gambling app?”

“Yeah, well I’m too shitty at the other sports but darts is right in my sweet spot.” Mina almost wanted to laugh, but it felt too mean to do so.

“Interesting, interesting.”

“You think I’m pathetic,” he said.

“No! You’re twenty-four, you’re lost, everyone’s los-”

“Alright,” he said, irked.

“No, Toph, I’m sorry. To be honest, am I much better? I’m twenty years older than you, and I’m still bitter about never following through on a dream I once had.”

“So, the truth about your age comes out…”

“That’s not the point!” She laughed. “The point is I’m the one that’s lost, I didn’t mean to imply that you were too.”

“I think you’re a lil hard on yourself. Being a pharmacist seems hella impressive to me.”

“That’s what my mom always says.”

“Fuckin moms are always right. If I had listened to my mom even once growing up, I think I’d be better off.” Mina smiled. Maybe it was time to try calling her mom again. She made her way back to the pharmacy phone. As the phone rang, she jumped and ducked as she heard gunshots from outside. The walls and floors shook a little bit and she saw Toph quickly sit up and take his headphones out.

“Toph, come, come,” she gestured for him to come behind the pharmacy counter. He waddled over and they sat hidden behind the counter, as if that would protect them. Mina could not stop thinking about how stupid it was that she didn’t leave when she had the chance. Why did she listen to the words of her mother? Now she was trapped close to the gunfire when she could have been two miles away at home.

“I’m sorry,” she said, shaking her head.

“For what?”

“I trapped you here. I should've let you go, I should have gone, now we’re probably just in more danger.”

“I’m not worried.”

“I wish I was home,” she desperately said. Toph looked at her, unsure what to say and then looked down at the ground. “Where’s home for you?” she asked, desperate for a distraction.

“I live over on Riverside with a few buddies,” he said.

“Are they home?” she asked.

“Think so,” he said, “I texted them I was here, but I don’t think it went through.” Mina nodded her head and Toph asked, “Do you live near here?”

“Yes, yes, with my mom and daughter, just a few miles away, near the Lincoln Elementary School,” she said.

“I don’t know it, I’m kind of new around here, I grew up in Little Rock.”

“Arkansas?” she asked. “I knew your accent was weird, how does one get from Little Rock to a small town outside Pittsburgh?”

“You said it yourself, I’m lost in life, remember?” he joked.

“Well, that’s incredibly vague.” She lay down flat after hearing more gun shots in the distance. “Who do you think is shooting?”

“Prolly the police, maybe they’ve spotted him and are tryna get him,” he responded. “It’ll prolly be any second now, I mean if this guy has been on the run and hiding for over twenty-four hours.” Mina got on her knees to reach the phone, she started to dial her mom, desperately wanting to tell Greta she loved her. But before she could dial, she was struck by the possibility of Greta hearing gunshots in the background of the phone call. Could she bear to put her through that? Greta was incredibly aware of the constant threat of gun violence, but how long could she protect her from actually hearing it with her two own ears? She put the phone down and lay down on her back. She and Toph remained silent then for a while, Mina hearing the fast pace of her heartbeat in some moments and then feeling blankly numb in others.

By the time she sat up again, not having heard gunshots in at least thirty minutes, she could see through a tiny window at the back of the pharmacy that it was dark out. “Dinner?” she asked Toph.

“Dinner?” he asked, confused.

“Come with me.” She crept to the snack’s aisle, grabbed Cheez-its, potato chips, and Chips Ahoy cookies. Toph quickly followed her lead and used the flashlight of his phone to snatch a bag of Frito’s off the shelf. Then they headed to the fridges and took some water, Sabra hummus, guacamole, and two tubs of Ben & Jerry’s. They crept back to the snack aisle to grab tortilla chips and landed there sitting in the dark only illuminated by their phone flashlights to begin their feast. Mina felt a cold shiver run through her spine. Could she possibly be having fun? She was taken back to when she was little, when she would imagine hypothetical horrific situations and become giddy planning on how she would act. There was something thrilling about being right on the verge of death, but she hated herself for it.

“How on earth are we gonna eat the ice cream without spoons?” Toph asked. Mina smacked her forehead.

“Oh no!” she said, realizing that there were probably no spoons to be found as she knew the sellings of this store all too well. “Well, if we don’t find any, we are gonna just have to let them melt and drink them as milkshakes.”

“Alright, I’m down,” Toph said. She smiled.

“So how bad do you have to pee?” Toph asked.

“Literally so terribly I can’t even have one more sip of this water,” Mina laughed.

“What about you?” she asked.

“Well, I had to release myself when you were napping before,” he said.

“Where?” she asked.

“Do you want to know?” he asked.

“No thank you,” she said, “especially because there’s a bathroom in the back and I have the key. I was just too worried before to leave from behind the counter, but I should go now.”

She wandered to the bathroom with her phone flashlight as it flashed, Low battery warning: 5%. Shit, she thought, and when she wandered back, she found Toph licking the top of the Ben & Jerry’s pint. “Oh! Busted!”

He looked up and laughed, “Oops,” but continued licking the top of the pint like a three -year-old.

“You’re disgusting.”

“Don’t knock it until you try it,” he said. She removed the lid of the pint, licked it and giggled like a little girl.

“I feel like a cat,” Mina said.

“It’s awesome, right?” She nodded, too ashamed to admit it out loud. She felt completely childish, but also so free trapped in the place she could never escape.

***

“Mina?” She shook out of slumber and wiped her eyes to see a concerned looking Sasha above her. Mina shot up, her hand knocking over a pint of half-baked ice cream soup.

“Sasha, oh my goodness, I must have fallen asleep-”

“Whoa,” Toph said as he sat up, surrounded in a circle of chip crumbs and half-eaten bags of junk food.

“Sash, what happened?” Mina urgently asked.

“They got him last night, what on earth you doing with this random guy here?” Mina looked at Sasha who appeared in utter disbelief. She could hardly process the scene around her either. She imagined what she must look like, with Cheez-it crumbs in her hair, ice cream on her pharmacy coat, found sleeping on the floor next to a poorly dressed punky looking twenty-year-old.

“I, well so my mom called and-” she interrupted herself with her own laughter, completely flabbergasted by the image that Sasha must have just walked into. After a moment she said, “Don’t worry, we’ll clean this up.”

“That’s quite frankly the least of my concerns, honey,” Sasha said, still staring at Toph with confusion. “Who the hell are you?” she asked so forcefully that Mina felt a speck of Sasha’s saliva land on her cheek.

“Uh, Toph.”

“WHO?”

Mina laughed. “He got trapped in the store, he had headphones on so he basically, you know what? It doesn’t matter. Story for another time. Let’s go home.”

“You slept on this carpet? Honey, you better give yourself a full scrub bath, you do not want to know the things I’ve seen on this carpet.” They all laughed then, and Mina went back to the pharmacy to collect her stuff.

The faint breeze of the automatic sliding doors had never felt so good, but as she started walking to her car, she saw all the blocked road signs and cops’ cars still stationed out and about. The killer was right here. Mina stopped in her tracks standing there, what would she tell Greta about this? She threw up in her mouth a little bit and was repulsed having to swallow a now rancid mix of Cheez-its, Vitamin Water, and Ben & Jerry’s. Her flurry of thoughts was interrupted by a rough hand on her right shoulder. She jumped a little before seeing it was Toph.

“Well, it was nice hiding out the shooter’s capture with ya,” he said in that strange twang of his. Those words stung her ears, his humor all of a sudden seeming wrong and out of place.

“Oh, yeah, well get home safe,” she said halfheartedly. He turned around, backpack slinging from his right shoulder, the protein powder in his left arm, and he threw a final hand high in the air as a quick goodbye. She watched him start to walk away.

“You didn’t pay for that protein powder,” she shouted after him.

“Busted!” he said, turning back her way and beginning to walk backwards.

“Do you want a ride?” she asked.

“Nah, I’m gonna walk. Gonna call my mom and aunt.” Mina watched him walk into the distance and heard, “Mom? Mom! It’s Toph. Yeah, I’m aight just wanted to…” and the sight and sound of him slowly drifted away.

She smiled. It was time to tell her own mom that she was alright. It was time to go home to Greta.