Tale from a Teenage Dirtbag

Growing up, I never took anything my grandpa said seriously. Thought it was all just a bunch of clichés.

But as I'm staring headlong into the most gorgeous green eyes I've ever seen for the second time in my life, all I can think is…it really is a small world.

I realize too late that I'm staring. Feel the air moving softly, shallowly, through the part in my lips. Great. I must look like a dying fish right about now.

"Hey! I don't have all day, you know."

There's a bitterness that clashes with the beauty, makes it purer somehow. And now I'm thinking, is it possible that she hasn't a clue how achingly beautiful she is?

I bite my lip to keep my mouth closed, somehow managing a muffled "sorry" as my trembling hand scoops up the cash card haphazardly tossed on the countertop. She rolls her eyes, a motion that somehow leads me to think she's been ogled enough to last a lifetime.

The transaction is over in less than a minute, and I can taste the blood from my abused lip as I try to pry my eyes from the sway of her retreating hips, the next customer already frowning at the pile of unchecked groceries awaiting my attention on the countertop.

"What's the matter with you," a scratchy, high-pitched voice says, followed by a severe poke in the chest with a wooden cane; "Are you retarded? I haven't got all day, either, you know!"

Were it not for my complete disorientation, I might have played with the old bat on the giving end. Instead, I ease back into reality with nothing but a slight wince at the ache in my breastbone, bagging groceries and typing methodically on the register, wondering whether the pain was from the crony's jab, or from something else. A glance to the front of the store tells me she's gone. Quick, silent, just another customer. Almost like the last time.

----

One year? ago…

It was my first day at the market, and I was hating life.

I'd gotten caught making runs for a dealer—nothing hot, just one of a thousand middlemen. I seemed to be a lucky one in that I was a juvie. Didn't rat because I didn't know anything, but it got me a month in a detention center and a year's worth of probation. My parents agreed I needed something to fill my days, and so, there I was, drowning in the smell of brown bags and tins, dreading that another five hours of mediocrity lie ahead before I could run from the place, when the craziest thing happened.

I got shot.

Well, not really. A graze, actually, but it sounds better, right? Yeah, well, anyway, I never heard a thing. No one did. Just felt like someone punched my cheek. I didn't have time to react before a car came careening through the front of the store. And then it was all out chaos.

Apparently, the driver and his occupants were a bunch of crooks. Not entirely sure what kind; all that mattered at the time was that they all had guns and they weren't afraid to use them. A lot. Bullets sprayed the racks around me, and I don't know how I managed to get behind the countertop without getting hit a second time. The next few seconds slowed down to an eternity as I realized that a few other people weren't so lucky. The cashier lay just a few feet away, having collapsed against a display of canned beets, coarse graying hair a bloody mat at the back of her neck.

The bullets were still flying, aimless, unending, and over the ricochet I could hear an angry voice shouting. The bullets finally stopped, but the voice went on.

"You fucking idiots! Whose fucking team are you on? Get the fuck out of there; he's dead. C'mon, out of the car! Fucking automatics."

More cans fall. The sound of hard soles on broken glass. A grunt and the agonizing creak of a car door. The bloodstain on the back of the cashier was getting bigger, and I realized she's alive, but I couldn't move. Footsteps were getting closer. Out of the corner of my eye, near the back of the store, I thought I saw a shadow, but I couldn't be certain. And then another voice.

"Amos P. Wiley! Give up! You're surrounded!"

It dawned on me suddenly just what exactly the store had somehow managed to get in the middle of. I couldn't tear my eyes from the form of the dying cashier, suddenly and absurdly wondering if this would somehow affect my probation. I felt something wet and warm cooling on my cheek, knowing it was my blood. I did my best not to make a sound in the sudden, eerie silence that settled.

And then, the first voice: "You're bluffing, bounty hunter! I don't see any back up. I think we got ourselves an amateur, boys!" A haughty laugh and a few not-so haughty sniggers. I was gathering the courage to chance a peek, hoping they were distracted enough that I might sneak out the back. I'd made it about halfway, my knees aching, my fingertips pulling me up to the edge, when something grabbed my collar and yanked me back. I hissed, landing solidly on my tailbone, proud that I hadn't screamed like a little girl, not so proud that I'd closed my eyes, instinctively stealing for the worst.

When nothing happened, I began to unfold, my shoulders relaxing, muscles unwinding, eyes opening one at a time. I remember thinking I must have hit my head, not quite believing what I saw. So I blinked a few more times, feeling my jaw go lax.

"C'mon, c'mon. Spike, you egotistical sonuvabitch."

She was real. And talking to herself. Black hair, no, wait…violet? And a gun. She had a gun, and she was using the check-out counter as a shield, bouncing on her heels, peeking around the side, then bobbing up to glance at the front of the store, then down again. I'm not entirely ashamed to admit the next thing I noticed was that she had next to nothing on. Some bright yellow, shiny, suspendered thing that managed to cover all the wrong places and expose some of the right ones.

"Jet, there's only three of them. Looks like two got taken out in the crash." Her voice was smooth and seductive, her tone business-like, tempered to a whisper as she leaned over a comm.-link.

A bounty hunter. A real, live, drop-dead gorgeous one, close enough to smell the kind of shampoo she used. I went scouting for it, too, afterwards; bought a bottle for myself, to help me remember. Yeah. I remember being so damned turned on, I'd forgotten all about the dying/dead cashier and having been almost shot myself on my first fucking day of the Lousiest Job Ever. And then she was talking again.

"Spike, no, wait…grrrrah!"

Oooh, yeah, I was gonna have to change my pants.

The bullets started up again, but I kept my eyes open this time. Every moment would be fodder for my teenage, sex-starved brain later on. Each time she moved to take a shot, I came closer to getting a glimpse of what lay beneath those shorts. I kept expecting something to give, as tight as the get-up was. Well, maybe hoping was a better word.

I nearly voiced an objection when her lithe little body eased around the checkout counter into the melee out front. The gunfire had been reduced to an occasional rat-a-tat from the far end of the store, and in the distance, I could hear sirens. I strained to hear anything else, and thought perhaps I could make out the sounds of a fistfight, but I wasn't sure. And then, silence reigned.

But not for long.

It was that growl again, that voice, oh, that voice, and I found myself balancing on my heels, preparing to bob up to sneak a peek much like she had a few moments before.

"You asshole! Why don't you ever stick to the plan? You could've gotten us all killed! Not to mention the fact that we needed this guy alive to collect the bounty!"

A groan from said guy interrupted her tirade. Peering over the edge, I could barely make her out in the waning twilight. Apparently, something had taken out the power. She was standing over a balding, overweight, gussied up mound of flesh, one booted foot resting on the obese mound of his belly, her arms akimbo, gloved hands sitting low on her hips. She was glaring out the front of the store, and for the first time, I could see her face, or at least her profile. Her cute, upturned nose, red lips puckered into a pout, eyes fierce beneath a lowered, flawless brow. I was beginning to think there would never be a time when she could look ugly. Ever. Then again, what did I know? Except that my pants felt like they were going to explode.

I could faintly make out another voice approaching from outside, and wondered if this was "asshole", and just what the nature of his relationship was with this purple-coiffed goddess.

"Break it up, you two." This from that first voice heard at the back of the store. The owner emerged from the right. He was massive standing next to her, appeared much older, with what looked to be a prosthetic arm cradling a rather large rifle. She didn't look at him when he spoke, eyes still boring holes into "asshole", who'd yet to make an appearance. I envied the bastard, whoever he was.

Something was said, something too low or far away for me to catch, but it had the current object of my, uh, attentions taking a breath and bending at the waist to rattle off a scathing retort…Well, I'm sure it would have been hard core, only that the Large One intervened with a gruff "Shut it!" that sounded peculiarly like a bark. He turned away from her to send a nod to the other, still invisible cowboy. "Spike, see to these while I make a call, will ya?" Another sidelong glance to the femme fatale and he turned his gaze towards the device in his real hand, punching numbers with his thumb.

She sighed, examined a nail while she spoke airily. "I don't know why you bother, Jet. You know, I'm right here. Why don't you ever ask me to—?"

The front door swung open roughly, almost like it was kicked in, banging the magazine racks just to the left of the checkout, sending mags sprawling. "Maybe because he doesn't trust you, Faye."

Ah, so here was Asshole, at last. Piecing together the last few minutes—had it been only minutes?—I figured he was Spike, a.k.a Egotistical Sonuvabitch. His back was to me as he casually strolled over to Faye—ah, yes, she had a name!—but I could tell he wore a smirk by the tone of his voice. She didn't miss a beat, though. God as my witness, with every passing second I was falling in love with this woman.

"Oh? Do tell, Spike…is it your uncanny ability to reek havoc and rain medical bills that keeps you in his favor? Should I shoot first next time? Or, wait, no…I should probably use my spacecraft as a battering ram."

"It worked, right?" The Spike guy had a cigarette perched between his lips as he rounded the unconscious bounty, her boot now tapping angrily on his belly. The other guy, Jet, he'd disappeared amidst the rows of goods, his voice subdued as he spoke through a comm.-link. There was a long, drawn out moment, the tension building like a rubber-band drawn too tight, as the two bounty hunters stood eyeing one another over their prey, like two carnivores getting ready to fight over a catch. The Spike guy dug a lighter from his pocket and lit his cigarette, exhaling smoke from his nostrils as his eyebrows went up, his hands now resting in his pockets nonchalantly. And though I couldn't tell in the waning light, I just knew he had a crooked, lazy smile on his face. Instantly, I didn't like him. Maybe because I wanted to be him, to have her stare at me as long and hard as she was staring at him now. And what the hell was up with the hair?

He gestured with his elbows, keeping his hands in his pockets, nodding to the passed out and bleeding guy on the floor. "Do you mind?"

She cocked her head to the side, crossing her arms, fingers drumming against her skin. Her nails matched her lipstick. Fuck, she was perfect. And then that hand had swooped in, quick as a snake to snatch his freshly lit cig and bring it to that pouty mouth of hers for a long drag, swift steps bringing her closer to wear I was, now slowly standing, no longer in need of a hiding space. She blew out three perfect little rings of smoke; a singsong voice sent over her shoulder, "No, I don't."

He appeared to be about to come after her, hands now fisted at his side, when his eyes noticed me. I didn't realize at first, his voice an annoying buzz in the back of my brain and my heart in my throat as she sashayed by me without even glancing in my direction, disappearing out the front door without another word, just the sound of her heels clicking on the asphalt. Every dream I'd concocted since the moment I'd laid eyes on her melted in a puddle at my feet.

"Hey, I'm asking if you're okay."

More buzzing. I let out a breath I hadn't realize I'd been holding in a long sigh.

"Hey!"

----

"Hey!"

I heard rather than felt the slap of an open hand against my head. Events of the past melted, morphing into the exceptionally angry version of my boss, his jowls trembling, face red and sweating, with an actual bulging vein coursing tortuously across his forehead. I couldn't help the amused snort that escaped, and did a lousy job of covering up with a half-hearted cough.

Well, shit. Looks like I'd done it again.