The store was devoted mainly to Vandals and Bengals t-shirts, but it also had NFL, NHL, and baseball tees. She went to the Vandals section and looked around. There were traditional t-shirts, babydoll t-shirts, and muscle shirts. Lia was a little chubby, so she decided to get a traditional t-shirt instead of a babydoll shirt. Unfortunately, the shirt she wanted for Lia was on the top rack. She had to step on her tippy toes to reach it and even then it was hard to get a hold of. In hindsight she probably should have asked for help, but instead she stretched to reach it. She had it in her hand when she fell backward into something soft and landed on her padded butt.
“Are you all right?” asked the girl she landed on. The girl got up and reached down to help Deborah. She was the girl in the Go Veg shirt from the night before. Today she wore a PETA shirt. It actually said the real slogan instead of what she was used to: “People for the Eating of Tasty Animals.” She was so surprised she wet her pull-up a bit.
“I’m fine,” she said. She wanted to grab the girl by the neck and force her to tell her where the terrorist who had ran her truck into the middle school. She wanted to waterboard her, but she had no idea how to go about the practice. She knew it involved water.
“They put the shirts up too high,” said the vegetarian girl. To Deborah, she looked almost sickly. Her skin had an unhealthy paler and Deborah thought she could see the outline of girl’s bones through her skin. “I want that Washington State Cougars shirt.” She pointed at a babydoll shirt on the top shelf. “I’m going to be a freshman there in the fall. I live in Seattle. My uncle came here to meet someone and took me along so I could see the University. It is so much cheaper here than at the campus store.”
Deborah was dying to press for more information. She didn’t dare spook the girl. “I still have to choose. I just can’t decide yet. I got acceptance letters from places,” she said. “My best friend is going to Moscow for college. I am getting her this shirt.” She held up the shirt she had literally fallen for.
“My name’s Flower,” she said. “My parents were hippies.”
“Br–Alison.” She started to say Deborah, but remembered at the last minute.
“BrAlison is a funny name.” Her face turned red as Deborah guessed she realized she said something rude. “Not as funny as Flower.”
“My name is Alison. My friends call me BrAlison because my boyfriend’s name is Brandon.” She showed her a picture of Evan Fiscus.
“Wow, I bet you are going to the school he goes to. I wouldn’t let him go off alone, BrAlison”
“Just Alison now. He left me for the easy girl at my high school.” Deborah didn’t mind slandering Evan Fiscus at all. It actually felt good. It almost felt too good. She was beginning to like Flower and that couldn’t happen. She still wanted to get revenge against the terrorist and all his friends.
“Well, it was nice meeting you.” She pointed to the terrorist who had walked into the store. “My uncle is here. I got to go.” Flower turned and walked to the cash register, paid for her shirt, and left.
The pee started filling up Deborah’s pull-up. She was afraid it would leak, so she tried hard to stop peeing. She felt drops of pee at the legs of her pull-up. She hung up Lia’s shirt and walked quickly out of the store to the bathroom. Tears welled up in her eyes. The diaper would have held until she got to the bathroom, she thought. The pull-up was going to leak; she knew it.
She hurried in the lady’s room and grabbed a stall. She pulled down her shorts and the pull-up and let the rest of her bladder out in the toilet and cried.
She pulled off her shorts completely to survey the damage. There was a tiny wet spot on the inseam of her shorts, but it was hardly anything to worry about. It wasn’t even noticeable. She put on her spare pull-up and her shorts. It wasn’t the best thing in the world, but it wouldn’t be embarrassing to walk around the mall or even return to SporTees. She bought the shirt for Lia and returned home.