Sigs tucks the 5th of Smirnoff into her baggy jeans and cinches her studded belt tight around her waist and bottle both. 

At 19 and in 2007, Sigs doesn't blend well with most social surroundings: she's a mess of goth-punk-drunk style. Her purple-black hair, eyebrow and nose piercings, and vacant eyes make her an immediate suspect wherever she goes.  

And tonight at 9:00pm, under the bleaching lights of the CVS alcohol aisle and swaying with drunkness, Sigs doesn't blend well. 

The pimple-faced manager, Chet, has been tracking her movements since the dark goth girl stumbled in a few minutes earlier. 

Sigs had her walls up, but her defenses were staggering. So when she decided to make her move to lift the bottle from the shop, she wasn't fully aware of the sloughing bottle. She cinched the belt not quite tight enough 

Chet, on the other hand, spotted the alien bulge in Sigs' jeans the moment she departed the alcohol aisle. 

In a pinch, Chet might be called a whistle blower. In middle school, he wet his pants after screaming "bully! Bully!" at the neighbor kids, who were smashing snails in their mother's garden. 

In this current Sigs situation, he's flummoxed: the girl is tiny, but she scares the life out of Chet. He can feel tingles of anxious excitement throughout his lower body. 

Chet can read the poorly done tattoo on her forearm: Film Pigs 

While trying to suss out the meaning of the ink, Chet is losing track of Sigs sauntering; she's a hop-skip from the sliding glass.

"Hey!" Chet ejaculates or pisses a little in his cargo shorts. 

Sigs black and purple and wildly chopped hair frames her red-lined eyes and watery whites. She's staring straight at Chet, who looks like he's about to say something else when Sigs pops her middle finger like a meerkat and makes to run. 

Only, as Chet observes from his still stunned position, the bottle has fully slipped from crotch to ankle, thereby tripping the punk-rock kid and sending her face first toward the hard floor. 

To her credit, Chet also observes, Sigs kiss-the-bricks face is suitably defiant. As her teeth ready to slam into the tiling, Sigs' lips pull back into grimace and her eyes narrow. 

Sigs two front teeth chip and her upper lip is slashed. By the time Chet arrives to her position, just shy of the sliding doors, two customers bracket the situation and Sigs is trying to get to her feet.

"Hey." Chet says again, but the edge of concern in his voice is clear. 

The customer waiting to enter the store took a moment's notice of the scene then turned and began walking back to his car. The customer behind Sigs struggling form asked Chet, "She steal?"

Chet looked at the customer—a woman in her forties whose eyes betrayed no sympathy for Sigs as she spat blood and moaned like a sick dog.

Chet never had a way with words, and in this moment, his tongue felt impossibly thick. He wanted to say something that would solve the situation, but, frankly, Chet was in over his head: the girl was now injured inside the store while in the process of shoplifting; who should he call—the police or upper management? Would the store prosecute or the girl sue? 

As Chet's mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water, the customer looked back and forth between Chet and Sigs then stepped over Sigs and left the store without paying for any of the items in her basket. 

Chet scanned the empty store and breathed a little easier. Sigs rolled to a seated position. 

"You okay?" Chet heard himself ask. As he heard the words pass stupidly between them, Chet became immediately aware of his shorts. He turned away from Sigs, who wouldn't have noticed anyway, and checked to make sure he hadn't actually wet himself in all the commotion. 

"Where's the bathroom?" Sigs asked without looking at Chet; her dazed eyes drifted around the snack aisles.

Chet, certain his pants are dry enough, turns back to Sigs and offers her a hand. 

"Where's the bathroom?" Sigs says without acknowledging the extended hand. Chet open palm closes then reforms into pointer, "back of the store," he says pointing to the door near the pharmacy.

Sigs stands, and as she does, she shakes the vodka bottle roughly from her pant-leg. It clatters on the ground without breaking. When it finally stops, she picks it up, twists off the top, takes a swig, gargles and washes her mouth before taking another, much longer drink. She returns the cap gingerly, twisting it with the tips of only her index finger and thumb. Then, she pushes the 2/3rds full bottle into Chet's chest and says "thanks" before wiping blood from her face and walking toward the employee bathroom, behind the pharmacy. 

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