His sarcastic voice rung through her head. Annoyed by his tone, she turned around, looking straight in the smiley face of the mysterious boy. He leaned against the counter, as he always seemed to do. "Are you here to steal again?" she asked, not looking at him. Next to her stood a big cardboard box, filled with diapers. She sat on the dirty floor, while she tried to fill the shelves, but so far, she hadn't made a lot of progress. Every time she had time to sit down and fill the empty space, someone would come up to her and ask her something. It was unusual that so many new costumers stopped by. The regulars wouldn't ask her silly questions like: 'Do you have coconut flavored toothpaste?' She couldn't imagine someone even selling such product, but they certainly didn't have coconut flavored toothpaste.

"Well no, unless you'd like me to." He kicked against the box, that was now almost empty.

Anger came up to her. She took a deep breath, preventing herself from getting up and hitting him. If he was a customer, she couldn't hit him. Her father would hate her if she did. They already had financial problems and if the news came out that one of the cashiers was hitting customers, nobody would come. They couldn't afford a bad reputation. "Look, every time you came by, the money does not match the stock at the end of the day. We never had problems before you showed up, so I'd rather have you leave this store." She slowly rose to her feet and even though she was a lot shorter than him, she still looked fierce and strong.

"How do you know it was me? Maybe someone else steals."

"You're wasting my time. I'm going to get my dad and when I get back, you better be gone." Aliyah turned around and walked to the storage room, where her dad was counting stock and organizing everything. New load just came in and it was always a hassle to get it on the storage shelves and into the store, before the next day. "Dad?" she called. "Can you help me with something?"

The man, standing on a ladder, looked over his shoulder down to Aliyah. "Is it urgent?" he asked, while trying to grab a box that was way too high for him.

"Kinda," she said. "Do you need help?"

"If you could just catch the box that I'm throwing down. It shouldn't be too heavy." He yanked the box, that moved closer to the edge, nearly falling off.

Aliyah leaped forward, ready to catch the box that would come crashing down. Then the box came down and she tried to catch it, but the moment that it would touch her, she jumped out of the way, afraid it would crush her. The box was filled with bags of chips. It wasn't heavy, but the fear that the big box would crush her, made her jump. "Sorry," she whispered. "I just..."

Her dad started laughing. "It's okay Liyah. Some chips might be a little more crushed, but they're bags of air anyways." He laughed again, as he descended the stairs. "Now, what was that problem I needed to help you with?"

"Never mind," she said. He would probably be gone anyway.

He did leave, but not before taking a box of painkillers. On the counter he left a note for her, that she would hopefully notice.