Story 1:Krista

Leaning back, Krista pulled open the heavy drugstore doors. After entering she bounced between the shampoos, feminine hygiene products, sleep aids, and cereal aisles. Then, standing in front of her on a wire rack was her favorite cereal,Apple Crunch Cheerios. She took it as a good omen. She paused for a moment and allowed her eyes to pass over the various types of chocolate syrup, peanuts,candy.

She strived to look composed, but she was, to be sure, a bit preoccupied. To other eyes, she hoped, she appeared to be just another Saturday suburban shopper, enjoying the wide variety of useful products available at her localpharmacy.

As usual on such errands, she was clad in her old high school gymnastics uniform. She found that people loved it, and, now in her mid-twenties, it still made her look, at least to the unperceptive eye, like a teenager. People knew her as “Tiny Krista,” and she was famous, at least among the few people with whom she still spent time, for being able to pack prodigious amounts of opioids inside her diminutiveframe.

At that moment, Tiny Krista felt good, really good and optimistic. She was still riding thehigh of her last dose. Unfortunately, however, those were the last pills she and her boyfriend Patrick had. As the moments passed, she sensed the clouds appearing in the distant sky; the peak was behind her, and her high was just beginning to wear off. She knew what was happening. She sensed the deep rumblings, the subtle tremors, and the slight changes in her body temperature, changes that normally camebefore the terrible reality of dope sicknesshit.

Of course, she’d been here before. Done this many, many times. This was not her first or second or even one-hundredth rodeo. She had with her perfect reproductions of physician narcotic scripts, the expert work of Patrick and herself. She made her way over to the pharmacy counter and presented the script, smiling innocently at the busy pharmacist, who reached out a hand as she stood, still staring at her computerscreen.

Then, back over by the Cheerios, Krista waited. It was important not to give any indication of strangeness. The goal was not to give the pharmacist any reason to question why cute little Krista neededanother refill of sixty pills of oxycodone. Of course, why wouldn’t she need these narcotics? She was a pretty, amiable, tragically injured gymnast,right?

Krista took a quick peak over at the pharmacy counter, and immediately her mood plunged. She just happened to catch the gaze of the hard-faced pharmacist, who at that very moment had the phone pressed between her shoulder and ear. She was peering at the green square of paper as she talked intensely on the phone. The green square of paper looked just like Krista’s forged