Reality Check, Aisle 8

Aisle 5.

Skipping along to Stevie Wonder with an Oreo and Chips Ahoy! audience. Mothers with young children hustle by, secretly envious of the empty cart being maneuvered by an oblivious young woman singing off-key. Shall she have the chocolate fudge cookies for dinner or splurge for the double chocolate fudge tonight? Popcorn sounds like a splendid choice for dessert. With butter. Lots and lots of butter...

"Matty!" a woman screams.

"Sooooooorry." a young boy responds.

Clean up in Aisle 6, please. Clean up in Aisle 6.

Ketchup everywhere. Shards of glass make the spilled condiment sparkle like liquid rubies. The young woman marvels at its beauty as a man brushes past her with a mop.

"Watch yer step, miss." he calls over to her as she pushes her cart forward.

"I don't mind a little ketchup." she says to him, "Doesn't it look so beautiful all splattered like that? Kind of like spontaneous food art."

"Are you alright?" the man asks her curiously, "It's just ketchup."

"They said the same thing about me." her mind hums as she propels her cart past him.

There is a small amount of ketchup decorating the hem of her jeans.

"I think you do fabulous work, Matty." the young woman says to the small boy when she meets up with him in Aisle 7.

"Matty!" his mother calls out for him in that same undermining tone she had used upon discovering the art he had made with the ketchup and pulls him close.

He seems obedient, but the smirk on his face thanks the young woman in a way only she would understand.

Aisle 8 brings about a lonely stockboy who cites the most entertainment he has had all day came from placing a single bottle of Sprite can amidst a sea of root beer.

His girlfriend was a bitch; the type that strings along nice guys who are merely a victim to their senses. His mother was the type that only paid attention to spilled milk and broken glass. His father was there. Somewhere. Aren't they all?

His nametag reads "Andy", but he prefers to be called Wyatt because it creates a lot of confusion.

He spots a young woman zipping around the corner and spiraling into his aisle. His aisle. He preferred to refer to any aisle he was working in as his own. Making claim over it made him feel like everything that happened in that aisle was his responsibility. Garbage, bickering children, and eccentric young women. They were all his. His problems, his responsibility, his...

Entertainment.

"Stockboy!" the young woman barks.

"Yeah?" he responds meekly. Cheeks flush and perspiration accumulates on his striped polo shirt. She was pretty. Too pretty to be alone so he keeps a watchful eye out for any sign of a jealous companion as he inches towards her.

Timid steps. Cowardly strides.

"Did you do this?" she asks him when he is by her side.

"Do what?" he says knowing very well what she was referring to.

"The Sprite bottle." she presses, "In the middle of all this root beer."

"Maybe..."

"Beautiful." she says softly.

What?

"What?" he asks her shaking his head slightly, "Beautiful?"

"Does the Sprite bottle represent you?" she asks, pausing to read his nametag, "Andy?"

He doesn't tell her to call him Wyatt because the way her tongue dances with each syllable of his name leaves him dizzy in hypnosis. If everyone was as delicate with his name as she was he would have never thought of having them call him by anything else. If only.

"I don't know," he mumbles in response, "Maybe."

"You're not very sure of yourself, are you?" she teases.

Damn, she was beautiful, he thought as she threw her head back and laughed at a private joke. If only his girlfriend could see him interacting with such a pretty girl. At this moment he desired her jealously more than he did her affection. Perhaps he always did.

"I think what you're saying here is very clear, Andy" the young woman says gesturing towards the Sprite bottle, "You simply will not conform, am I right?"

She was educated. She probably had some hot-shot boyfriend on a university football team who she only dated to prove a point. She was too good for him and everyone knew that. Everyone except the jock.

But that was the joke.

"Right." Andy replies in agreement. "Screw conformity!"

The young woman was taken back with the surge of emotion in his voice, but not as taken back as Andy himself.

Calm down, he scolds himself.

"What are you doing here then Andy?" the young woman muses, "In a grocery store, stocking shelves, wearing a uniform for crying out loud."

"I need the money." he mutters.

"I'm sure you do." she says easily dismissing his excuse with the careless edge she fastens to each word.

"I do." he protests.

"Girlfriend with expensive taste?" she asks softening a bit.

"Kinda."

"So dump her!" she exclaims. She is suddenly intoxicated with the exictement of all the possibilities she could begin to toss his way.

"Why don't you dump the jock?" Andy snaps.

He looks confused as he watches the effect of his words register in her facial expressions. He had no intentions of saying that out loud. What if there wasn't even a jock to begin with? What if she was dating one of her professors instead? What if she was a lesbian? Nah, he thought, she was too pretty to be a lesbian. Lesbians were supposed to be stocky and manly. "Butch" is what the other guys at work would call them. He had never met a real lesbian before though...

"Andy!" she says clapping her hands.

He shakes his head. He is reminded of preschool and how the children had to line up against the wall as the teacher clapped her hands.

Like sheep, he muses.

"You think you have me all figured out, don't you?" she tells him with a smirk, "Little tiny puzzle pieces being thrown together in that mind of yours. Magic if you ask me."

Like root beer, he thinks to himself. Tiny little bottles of root beer lined up on a shelf. All eager to play outside, all confused when a stranger, a bottle of Sprite, makes its way on to the playground area and throws everything out of whack.

The alignment, it all falls apart.

Damn.

He doesn't mean to ignore her as his mind spirals out of control, but she doesn't seem annoyed. She peers curiously at him and admires the way his eyes dart from side to side as his brainwaves churn out thoughts.

"I'm going to buy some popcorn for dessert." she informs him when his eyes fixate themselves on her. Their gaze never fell anywhere below her chin. She found comfort in this; comfort in his awkward simplicity.

"Popcorn?" he stammers.

"Yes, popcorn." she insists. "Not too many people eat popcorn for dessert, do they?"

"No, not really."

"Keep sticking it to the man Andy." she says motioning to the pop bottles, "You do your part and I'll do mine."

Her hands grab hold of the shopping cart handle and she begins to depart.

"Wait," he says, "Do you come here a lot? To, you know, shop?"

She laughs.

"That would be conforming to one grocery store and I couldn't do that, Andy."

Of course you couldn't, he says to himself.

She laughs to herself as she makes her way down the aisle, lost in another private joke, and Andy watches her as she drifts off his aisle and into another where he has no command.

Each day after that he makes sure to place a bottle of Sprite next to the boxes of popcorn.

Just in case.