Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann Brashares Page B

next afternoon under the whirring fluorescent lights. This job probably wouldn’t cause death any sooner than the normal time. But it would be very painful.
    Why don’t stores like this ever have any windows? she wondered. Did they imagine one glimpse of sunshine might cause their caged, pasty employees to bolt?
    Today she was back in aisle two, this time restocking geriatric diapers. What was it about her and personal hygiene? Last night her mother had asked her to use her special discount to get diapers for her brother and sister. She didn’t confess that she’d already lost her discount.
    As she stacked packages of Depends, her body and brain functions seemed to slow to their lowest setting. She could imagine her brainwaves flat-lining on one of those hospital machines. Just dying here at Wallman’s.
    Suddenly she heard a crash, and she snapped her head around. In fascination she watched her entire pyramid of roll-on antiperspirants collapse under the weight of a falling girl. The falling girl didn’t catch herself, as Tibby expected, but dropped right to the ground, her head making a hollow thwonk on the linoleum.
    Oh, God, Tibby thought, running over to the girl. Tibby had the sensation that she was watching it happen on TV rather than actually experiencing it. Antiperspirant rolled in all directions. The girl was maybe ten or so. Her eyes were closed. Her blond hair fanned out over the floor. Was she dead? Tibby wondered in a panic. She remembered her headset. “Hello! Hello!” she shouted into it, pressing various buttons, wishing she knew how to work it.
    She sprinted toward the front checkout. “Emergency! There’s an emergency in aisle two! Call 911!” she ordered. It was rare she spoke so many words in a row without a hint of sarcasm. “A girl is lying unconscious in aisle two!”
    Satisfied that Brianna was making the call, Tibby ran back to the girl. She was still lying there, not moving. Tibby took her hand. She searched for a pulse, feeling like she’d suddenly landed on an emergency room show. A pulse was pulsing away. She reached for the girl’s wallet in her purse, then she stopped herself. Weren’t you not supposed to touch anything until the police got there? Or, no, that was if it was a murder. She was mixing up her cop shows and her doctor shows. She went ahead and got the wallet. Whoever this girl’s parents were would certainly want to know that she was lying unconscious in the middle of Wallman’s.
    There was a library card. A handy horoscope card cut out from a magazine. Some girl’s toothy school picture with the name Maddie and a lot of Xs and Os on the back. Four one-dollar bills. How completely useless. It was just the kind of stuff Tibby had carried in her wallet when she was that age.
    At that moment three EMS guys carrying a stretcher stormed the aisle. Two of them started poking at the girl, and the other studied a silver medical bracelet encircling her left wrist. Tibby hadn’t thought about checking the girl’s wrist.
    The third guy had questions for Tibby. “So what happened?” he asked. “Did you see?”
    “Not exactly,” Tibby said. “I heard a noise, and I turned around and I saw her crashing into the display there. She hit her head on the floor. I guess she fainted.”
    The EMS guy was no longer focused on Tibby’s face, but on the wallet she held in her hands. “What’s that?” he asked.
    “Oh, uh, her wallet.”
    “You took her wallet?”
    Tibby’s eyes opened wide. She suddenly realized how it looked. “I mean, I was just—”
    “Why don’t you go ahead and give that back to me,” the man said slowly. Was he treating her like a criminal, or was she being paranoid?
    Tibby didn’t feel like ridiculing him with her famous mouth. She felt like crying. “I wanted to find her phone number,” she explained, shoving the wallet at him. “I wanted to tell her parents what was going on.”
    The man’s eyes softened. “Why don’t you just sit tight