Image by Christian Naccarato on Pexels.

Photo by Ирина Сороколетова: https://www.pexels.com/photo/girl-in-hat-sitting-on-pier-18447713/

Writing inspired by the following Sunday Writers’ Club prompt:

The Lost List

A shopping list lies abandoned on the ground at the entrance to a supermarket. What items are on it? Who might have written it?

Restocking the Shelves

by Doksa Papachartofyli

Restocking shelves at the supermarket might not exactly be science, nor is it art, but at least it gives my cucumber-thin arms a bit of a workout. Mom says not to worry, the rest of me will fill in as I get older, but she isn’t the one who is 17 and looks like a dollop of putty streaked out into a spaghetto, is she?

Arms shake as the last box of canned sweet-condensed milk is deposited on the top shelf, and then I sigh in relief as I see that the only shelves left are the coffee capsules ones. Coffee capsules are light. A lady pushes her cart rather aggressively as she hurries by me, talking into the phone which is tucked between her shoulder and her ear. She is beautiful in the way the influencers my sister follows on Instagram are: Velvet skin, plump lips, glossy hair, a gym outfit, and what my sister has explained to me is ‘no-make up makeup’.

“What do you mean, Joshua, that you aren’t coming?” the lady says to whoever is on the other end of that phone call. Joshua, presumably. In her hand she holds a piece of paper, pink and adorned with red hearts. It seems to be a shopping list titled “Joshua’s welcome back party”. And I know that because it’s written with sparkling stickers that take up half the page.

Her eyes pass by me as indifferently as the garden sprinkler will sprinkle without caring if it’s hitting the lawn or a tree, and lands on the organic ceremonial-grade matcha powder tins that I just restored a few minutes ago. She lets go of the cart and walks towards me and the matcha.

There is a glint in her eyes and a dangerous gait as she approaches. More caffeine even in the form of matcha seems like a very bad idea but I won’t be the one to tell her that. I make myself look smaller as I look down at my coffee capsules, studying the packaging with a concentration I’ve never exhibited before in my life. Notes of orange and chocolate? And a dark, intense roast? Very interesting, Nespresso, tell me more.

She grabs a tin of the matcha and hurls it into her cart where it lands with a loud bang upon a collision with a prosecco bottle. At least the eggs are unharmed.

“And you’re telling me now? A day before your big surprise welcome party? Everyone will be there, Josh: everyone.” She enunciates the last word, so it sounds like e-ve-ry-one-uh. Josh – I think I can also call him that – is saying something that is making her take the phone in her hand as she scrunches the pink shopping list in the other.

“We are what?” she says, and scoffs so loudly I swear a thin duster layer of her no-makeup makeup abandons her face like powdered sugar from a donut. Now she is just picking stuff off the shelves, and throwing them in her trolley. Jam, candy, a jar of Nutella.

“Do you even understand what the word over means? It means no me,” she says, and gesticulates in front of herself furiously. “It means you will go back to being a loser like you were before I met you, and…”

Josh must be losing his patience because he is relaying some piece of information that has her gasping and clutching her dainty necklace.

“Maria? Not only are you breaking up with me over the phone the day before I have planned a surprise party for you on daddy’s yacht, but you’re also telling me you are still in love with Maria? She only has ten thousand followers, Josh. Ten thousand! And she isn’t even pretty,” she replies without pausing for a breath, even as her voice transcends higher and higher, into a pitch only whales and sonars should be able to detect. And Josh. And me. But I don’t count, I’m just restocking shelves.

Done with Nespresso, moving on to Starbucks capsules. Oh, look at all those different blends! There’s Arabica and Robusta and…

“You’re just being crazy,” she says and she flexes her fingers towards a KitKat bar. Then swiftly retrieves them with a hiss as if singed. “I’m willing to forget all this because there is press coming tomorrow at the party, and I already have the ring with which you would propose…”

My eyebrows rise and I try to blend in with all the Starbucks blends. Arabica and Robusta. A muffled sound comes from her phone. Josh must be really losing his patience.

“I am the one who is crazy for having just basic organizational skills? For taking the initiative? That’s feminism, Josh; women are allowed to force their boyfriends to propose to them by giving them the rings they bought for themselves.”

If there is a reply it must be quiet because no sound carries to me other than the tearing of the KitKat wrapper. Peripheral vision grants me this information; basic survival instincts prohibit me from turning to look at her.

She is stuffing the chocolate in her mouth and talking, little morsels of chocolate and saliva spurting everywhere.

“Do you know what you have done? You made me eat chocolate, Josh. Chocolate! After three years of no gluten and no sugars. Look at what I’m doing for you? Would Maria do this for you?”

At this point one has to wonder why Josh is still talking to her.

“Oh she isn’t obsessed with food like I am, Josh, right?” she shrieks and reaches out for a second candy bar. A Snickers, this time. My task here is done but you don’t move in the safari when the lions are out hunting, so I stay crouched, staring at the rows of coffee boxes aligned perfectly. Hmm. Let’s move that one a centimetre to the left.

There is some more yelling and then she freezes.

“He hung up,” she says. “He actually hung up,” she repeats, munching on the Snickers.

“You. Boy.,” she says.

Oh no.

“You, teenage boy, do your ears not work?”

I sigh and turn around, standing up. “How can I help you?” I ask politely.

“Here,” she says, and grabs a Louis Vuitton paper bag from her shopping cart. “Take this,” she says and thrusts the bag towards me.

“What…What is this?”

“It’s a cashmere pullover perfect for an afternoon golfing,” she says. “And now it’s yours.”

“Thank you, but I don’t want it,” I say.

“Take it, because he will hate knowing his bespoke pullover is now in the hands of a prepubescent boy with arms as thin as my Manolo heels.”

“I am 17,” I mumble as I realize I have the bag in my hands and she is already walking away, cart filled to the brim and abandoned. I will need to put everything back, won’t I?

As she reaches the entrance of the supermarket, she throws down the shopping list and stomps on it once, twice with her white sneakers before waking out.

Perfect timing, as the market manager decides to appear just then, looking at the overflowing cart. “What happened here?” she asks.

“You don’t wanna know,” I reply. She has seen enough in her years here that she doesn’t press for more.

“Just make sure everything is back on the shelf,” she instructs, and I follow her gaze as she takes in the discarded chocolate wrappers, and the gigantic pink shopping list at the entrance of the supermarket.

“Please, clean this up too,” she says.
I tuck my new cashmere sweater underneath my scrawny arms. “Yes, on it.”