Having used her socks again and spent most of the morning sitting still, she imagined that the woman at the church, Imani, might have some way to help her out. But she had arrived too late for the meal service and Imani was nowhere to be found. That was when the idea of coming back to the little market had popped into her mind. Aria had hoped that, in keeping with the first day she had visited, the store would be untended long enough for her to steal what she needed. There was a deeper part of her that wanted the man who had been there on the first day to be there again. But necessity trumped the degree that she currently cared for him.
Omkar desperately searched for the least awkward way to approach her to ask for her number as Aria scanned the aisles until she found what she was looking for. Resorting to her goto technique of looking at an item with one hand and putting another in her pocket with the other, she took a mini-pack of tampons and slid them in her pocket. That jolted Omkar out of the romantic interlude he was planning for them in his mind. Because he liked her, he was paying special attention to the security mirror in the corner of the room, hoping to learn something about her from her purchase choices. And so he had seen her take the item off of the shelf.
He felt his excitement drop as if hurled from a ten-story building. Maybe he’d been wrong about this girl all along. She didn’t seem like the type to shoplift. He had imagined that the connection he felt between them would certainly mean that she wouldn’t do something like that to his family. He tried to rectify his impression of her by telling himself that she didn’t know the store was owned by his family. Perhaps she just thought he worked there as a clerk. He felt dizzy, not knowing what to do. He could hear his father in his head, yelling at him to call the police. He didn’t want to do that to her. But he didn’t know what to do, so he stood like a statue, in shock, doing nothing.
Aria picked out the cheapest packet of gum she could find and walked toward the checkout counter. For a second, Omkar hoped that she would take the item out of her pocket and pay for it as well, so he could go back to seeing her in the way that he did before tonight. But she didn’t. Instead, she took a handful of spare change out of her pocket for the gum, hoping that the purchase would serve as further disguise for what she had taken. The noise from the cash register took up the space where their words did not. Aria was disappointed by his suddenly withdrawn demeanor; he had been so friendly before. But all she could think of was getting out of the place quick enough to avoid being found out. So when he handed her back a dime and some pennies, she pivoted and walked back out the door.
Omkar stood at the counter in shock for 30 seconds before the idea of following her shot into his head. The rush of the decision had already taken hold of him. “Papa, Papa, watch over the store for me!” he yelled upstairs, throwing his jacket over his shoulders and struggling to get his arms through the sleeves fast enough.
Neeraj came downstairs with a worried look on his face. “What is this?” he said, equally concerned and perturbed at his son’s request.
“It’s something I forgot at school. It’s very important.” Omkar’s apology was inherent in the way that he said it. Neeraj was visibly frustrated by his son’s immaturity in having forgotten something so important, but he nodded consent and Omkar sprang out the door.
He looked frantically both ways down the street as far as he could, searching for her. As fortune would have it, he could just make out the patched design of her camo pants and the edges of her hair being played with by the wind as she walked away from him. He began to follow.
It was one of the most exciting things he’d ever done in his life. Keeping the perfect distance to survey her every movement, but also making sure never to be noticed, made him feel like a character in one of the action movies he loved so much.
After 30 minutes had passed, the feeling of excitement began to crumble at the edges. It was confusing to him that she was still walking. They had walked so far, Omkar was afraid of not being able to find his way back to the store. He felt more worried now than intrigued. But he continued to follow her down the dismal, crowded streets and through alleyways, stoplight after stoplight impeding the flow of her progress toward wherever she was going.
After two hours had passed, Omkar knew he would have to call a cab to get back home. It had also started to rain. He was following Aria with a knot in his stomach. At first he had imagined the spy mission to be fun. But it wasn’t fun anymore. He had assumed that, because she strolled into the store on foot, she must live in the neighborhood, especially given that she’d showed up twice. He was now plagued by confusion about why she would ever walk so far. He was bothered by the idea that a girl shouldn’t be walking alone on the streets of any city, much less for so long. Omkar was now committed to the mission of finding out where the hell she was going, more
