Heather decided that the drug store was her best option. They were certain to have diapers in her size and the staff were used to people buying strange things for all sorts of reasons. She grabbed her backpack, pulled on some sandals, and made her way to the bus stop at the end of her street.
The bus ride was fairly short and soon Heather was standing on the pavement in front of the local drug store. She knew that the prize she sought was in there. She could see the sign for incontinence products through the large windows. But her courage had failed her at the last moment. She couldn't bring herself to open the door and walk in. What if someone she knew saw her? What if one of her mother's friends saw her and gossiped? Panicking, Heather turned and rushed towards a different store.
As the door shut behind her with the rattle of a cheap bell Heather looked around to find out just which shop she had ended up in. The store was rather large and the layout was a bit haphazard. More than half of the space was taken up by racks of clothing, along the far wall was shabby-looking furniture, tables of random household goods made up an entire section off to the side, and the rest was just shelves full of odds and ends. It was the local thrift store. Heather had been in here quite often. She had a pretty decent allowance but shopping in places like this allowed her to stretch it quite far and she had found many nice things hidden away amongst the piles of seemingly worthless junk.
Heather decided that spending some time browsing would help calm her nerves. She set off down the racks of clothing, poking around to see if she could find any designer labels hanging among the random assortment of clothing that teen girls had worn throughout the past two or three decades. She definitely still had diapers on the brain though. As she dug through the hangers she found herself attracted to brighter colors and childish designs. By the time she reached the end of the teen girls section she had an armload of t-shirts like the one she had worn that morning but in more comfortable sizes, a few pairs of sweats in bright girly colors, and a pair of dark purple shortalls that had been hidden deep in a rack of ripped jeans. She tallied up the prices in her head. The beauty of shopping here was that everything was so cheap, she was barely scratching the surface of her savings.
She wandered out of the clothing section and towards the furniture. There she lingered beside a small dresser with a padded top. A changing table. It was much too small for her however. Though she was petite she was hardly infant sized, she would hang off both ends of this if anyone tried to change her on it. She could dream though. Lost in a daydream she drifted into the shelves of assorted items. She lost herself for a bit among the toys, but nothing was interesting enough to catch her attention fully. She breezed past the games and puzzles having long ago learnt that missing pieces and torn cardboard were not worth the criminally low price. Now she was in the back aisle, where all the unsellable junk ends up shortly before being tossed into the dumpster out back. There was a lot there but Heather had no real hope of finding anything of interest. Everything here had been thoroughly picked through by the extreme bargain hunters, there was nothing of value.
Heather shifted her load of clothing to one arm so she could trail her hand down the edge of one of the shelves. Her daydream had sputtered out and now she was just letting her mind wander. As she stepped over a rather threadbare stuffed unicorn some discourteous shopper had left on the floor her fingers caught on some tangled strings left hanging over the shelf edge sending the marionette they were still barely attached to crashing to the floor. As she looked over to replace the ancient puppet something caught her eye and caused her to do such a violent double-take she got a crick in her neck.
There, sitting on the shelf half hidden behind a lone stereo speaker was a package of baby diapers. No wait. Heather pulled the package out. They just looked like baby diapers. The patterns were similar to the diapers she saw in the supermarket but the size was... A perfect fit for her. She stared at the package. It was still sealed. A large carton of about 80 diapers that would fit her perfectly. The brand was one she had never seen before, but that didn't matter, it's not like she regularly looked at diapers after all. For all she knew this could be a popular brand among... people who wore diapers, she guessed.
She didn't stop to think. She quickly tossed her small pile of clothes on top of the box and carried it up to the register. She knew this shop quite well, the old lady that ran the till was half-deaf, mostly blind, and wouldn't know know a package of diapers if it had lights and sirens on it.
"Oh dear." the elderly clerk said, squinting at the box. "I can't seem to find the price. Where did you find this sweetie?"
"In the back aisle." Heather gulped, having to raise her voice so the woman could hear her. "You know, with all the junk?"
"Oh." the woman quavered. "In that case let's just call it $10 then. Anthony said he was going to clear out that aisle tonight so this would have been thrown out anyways."
Heather paid for the clothes and the diapers. The woman pulled out an oversized plastic bag and helped her put her purchases into it. Heather was glad to see that the bag was opaque so you couldn't see the label on the box. She piled the clothing on top of it so no one could see anything beyond a vague box shape. Hefting the bag she thanked the cashier and left the store at a quick trot and managed to catch the next bus back towards her house just before it left.
She sat down heavily on a seat and carefully perched the bulging bag on the one next to her. It was late morning now. All the commuters had already come and gone so the bus was mostly empty. She kept her arm possessively locked around the bag none the less. It seemed like a much longer ride back home than it had into town. Heather swore there couldn't have been this many stops on the route. At last the bus reached the end of her street and she hurried out the rear door and up the sidewalk. She hardly dared to breathe until she was safely back in her home with the door locked securely behind her.
'Well,' she thought, 'What now?'