Hey! It's your favourite author! Back at it with the writing! Those following my account were probably expecting College Roommates, and I swear I am writing it. The first chapter will be out on September 1st! Yay! Anyways, I am currently on my period, bored as hell, and in a lot of pain. This idea just came to me, so I started writing, and here we are. Hope you like it!
Annabeth lay there, squirming on the sofa, hardly able to focus on the TV show she's watching. And she loves that show, it's one of her favourites. She is in so much pain. Her fucking uterus feels like it's trying to tear itself apart, which it is. I mean come on, so what if she's not pregnant? Her body doesn't need to punish her for it. Nature is cruel. She's already taken as many painkillers as humanly possible before it's dangerous, and set the timer so that the second she can, she will take more. Her dad, step mother, and brothers had gone out, leaving Annabeth alone to writhe on the couch, squeezing her stress ball so that it's at the point of almost bursting.
"ARGH!" She screams, slamming her fists down on the sofa like a two year old throwing a tantrum. "I HATE THIS I HATE THIS I HATE THIS I HATE THIS!" It's the middle of summer in San Fransisco, the middle of a horrible heat wave, and it's boiling. Seriously, Annabeth could fill up an olympic sized swimming pool with the amount of liquid coming out of her pores right now. And, of course, the air conditioners that she had dragged out of the cupboard are broken, so if she even tried to use a hot water bottle to relieve her cramps, she would melt into a puddle of lava. It's juuuust great.
She stands up and walks to the kitchen, groaning in pain with every step. She pushes a glass against the little lever that makes the ice come pouring out of the fridge, and fills it up to the brim, taking an ice cube out of the top and beginning to suck on it. Thankfully, it cools her down a little bit, temporarily at least.
As she's on her way back to the sofa, she checks the time. Ugh. She needs to change her tampon. Gotta avoid that toxic shock syndrome. She sets her glass down, and heads to the bathroom. It only takes her a second to change it, by now, she's gotten it down to a fine art. Annabeth has been getting her period once a month, for the last five years. At six days a period, and three tampons a day, she has had to change her tampon a total of one thousand and eighty times. Roughly.
After flushing the toilet and washing her hands, Annabeth decides to check the cupboard under the sink. She had just finished a box of tampons, and wanted to grab another to put on the windowsill behind the toilet. Crap. Annabeth rubs her face with her hands. Crap crap crap crap crap crap crap! That was the last box! Now she has to go to the store to buy more! I cannot stress this enough, Annabeth does not want to leave her house right now. She isn't wearing a bra, she's got one of Bobby's t-shirts on, the oldest pair of shorts she owns, and her hair is tied up in the messiest messy bun known to man.
You know what? Screw it. Annabeth thinks, going to her room and grabbing her wallet, before slipping on a pair of flip flops. She takes her dad's car keys from the bowl on the table in the front hall, and leaves the house. The second she gets in the car, she blasts the AC, fanning herself with her hand.
Annabeth pulls up in the Walmart car park. She climbs out of the car, and walks into the store. Grabbing a basket on her way in, she heads straight for the aisle with the tampons, wanting to be out of the supermarket as fast as possible. On her way to the tampon aisle, Annabeth passed the chocolate aisle, so she backtracked and went down there instead. As she's looking at all the different chocolates, trying to decide if she wants the cheap one or the good one, she hears snickering coming from somewhere to her right. She turns, and sees Connor and Travis Stoll, two guys she goes to high school with, pointing at her and whispering back and forth.
"Nice outfit Chase!" Connor comments, making his older brother laugh.
"Bite me!" Annabeth shouts at them, not taking anyone's shit today. The glowering look on her face must have scared them, because they quickly fled the aisle, leaving her to pick out her chocolate in peace. She grabs the expensive stuff, then goes to get some chocolate ice cream as well. She's hot, it's cold, why not? Annabeth reaches into one of the big freezers, and picks up the ice cream, before finally going to the tampon aisle. She turns the corner and is met with... dog food. Lots and lots of dog food, cat food, and every other kind of pet food that you can imagine. But no tampons.
"ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!" Annabeth yells, with no regard for anyone else around her. It's fine, there's hardly anyone in the store anyway, they're all making the most of the heat at beaches, or in their gardens, or something like that. "ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS RIGHT NOW?!" The Walmart people must have moved some of the aisles around, and now she has to go hunting for the fricking tampons.
She stomps her foot in irritation, and probably would have screamed something else, but is interrupted. "Excuse me miss, are you on-"
She spins around to face the voice, anger building up inside of her. "MY PERIOD?! Are you seriously about to ask me if I'm on my PERIOD?! What, just because I'm angry, I'm on my period?! What kind of sexist, inappropriate question is that?! You know, there's a lot of reasons for a woman to be angry, idiots changing the aisles around for one! You are just a misogynistic, uneducated, stupid, prick!" Annabeth finally stops to take a breath, while the owner of the voice just smirks.
"The right aisle." He completes, watching as the blonde gets progressively more confused.
"Huh?"
"Excuse me miss, are you on the right aisle?"
"What?"
"That's what I came to ask you. I work here," He points to his name tag that reads Percy, attached to his Walmart apron, "and I've been helping direct people to different aisles all day. Whoever's in charge decided that it would be a great idea to move the aisles around, God only know why, so a few people have gotten confused. You seemed quite irritated, so I thought that might be why." He explains, making Annabeth feel like a complete idiot.
"Oh." She says quietly, embarrassed. Now that she has stopped shouting, she starts to feel terrible. He's just trying to be helpful, and do his job, but she's started yelling at him for no good reason. She's like one of those customer horror stories, one of the entitled dicks who asks to see the manager. Tears start forming in the corners of her eyes, damn these stupid hormones! Quickly, she wipes them away, hoping that he didn't see. "Um...sorry. I uh...overreacted a bit, didn't I?"
Percy chuckles, "Don't worry about it." Now that Annabeth actually gets a good look at the boy, he's quite cute. He has sparkling, sea green eyes, dark hair, in a perfectly imperfect style, and his smile seems to light up the world around him. "Anyways, I think what you're looking for has been moved to aisle 13."
"Thank you." Annabeth mumbles, blushing slightly and looking at the ground. "I'm gonna go now." She spins around and marches away, in search of aisle 13.
Once Annabeth has her tampons, she goes to the checkout counter, unloading her items out of the basket, and onto the little conveyor belt. As she waits for the person in front of her to finish, she starts to scroll through Instagram. Every single photo she sees is of people enjoying themselves and having fun. Everyone she knows is at the beach, sunbathing, swimming, and building sandcastles - they're all certainly having a better time than she is.
"Hello again." Annabeth looks up to see that the person in front of her has left, and the cashier has now started scanning her items. And you'll never guess who the cashier is.
"Oh! Hi, um, Percy was it?"
"Yep." He smiles that dazzling smile, making Annabeth blush again. "And you are..."
"Annabeth! I'm...Annabeth." She tells him, watching as he scans her stuff. He looks around her age, so she wonders why she's never seen him before. "Are you from around here?"
"Nope. I'm staying with my cousin, Jason, for the summer. This is just a temporary job, I'm from New York."
"Jason Grace?"
"Do you know him?"
"He goes to my high school, and I'm friends with his girlfriend."
"Cool." Percy scans the last chocolate bar, and clicks the screen on the till a few times, before looking up. "That'll be $9.58."
"Here." Annabeth hands him a ten dollar note, and he gives her her 42 cents worth of change.
"Thank you." She picks up her bag of stuff, and is about to leave, before he stops her.
"Annabeth?"
"Hm?" She raises her eyebrows, wondering what he wants.
"Can I have your number?"
"What?" She asks, why would he want her number? She looks like crap and yelled at him earlier, that's hardly attractive.
"Your number. I was hoping you might want to go on a date with me."
"Really?" Her brow creases in disbelief, "But...why?"
"Um..." Percy looks a bit confused now too, "Because I like you."
"But...why?" She repeats, finding it hard to process.
"Well, I think you're pretty hot, and you seem like you could kick my ass, which makes you even hotter."
"Oh." Annabeth's stumped, this doesn't happen to her very often, most of the guys she knows are scared of her.
"Is that a no?"
She thinks about it for a moment, but then she smiles. "Jason has it."
"HIV?"
"My number. See ya Percy!" She waves and walks away. As she gets back in her dads car, she's in a good mood. Maybe that finished box of tampons was a blessing in disguise.
Get it, aisle 13? Like cabin 13? As in Hades? Cause periods are hell? Okay, I'll just see myself out. Anyways, I know that was super short, but it was fun to write. I hope you enjoyed it, and I hope that it has cheered up any of my fellow period sufferers. Please favourite and review, I will be back on September 1st, see you then!