Crash

58: Necessities

Nathan- 

I drove out of the parking area and watched in the rearview mirror as Cody closed the gate, waving goodbye.

"So where do we need to go?" I asked.

"Um, the little general store down the road from the diner," Lyra said.

I nodded and pulled onto the dirt road. I followed it until we passed the diner and parked in front of the store. Lyra hopped out, leaving Baine in the back. I locked the Rover and followed her inside.

Lyra dashed around, grabbing this and that. She snatched up a map and started finding some snacks for the road.

"Can you go grab something for me while I look for a few things? I want to hurry up and get on the road," Lyra asked.

"Sure," I shrugged, "What do you need?"

She bit her lip and smiled sheepishly, "Playtex tampons, regulars. I ran out last month and I'm supposed to start sometime this week."

"Um, okay," I nodded. What's a Playtex? Is there something other than regular?

"Oh and the same brand but in night pads. I hate waking up in puddles of blood," Lyra said before darting off somewhere.

I nodded, vaguely aware of what I was supposed to look for. I browsed the isles and looked for the one with Lyra's stuff. There was an isle with lots of pink lining the shelves so I stopped and took a look. Apparently, there's a lot of brands of tampons and pads and stuff like that.

I found a box labeled Playtex super. Then thin and then regular. Lyra said regular. But then there was different amounts. How much do girls use when they do this? Last time I checked, Lyra had a jumbo box but I wasn't so sure.

On the box, it said use for up to six to eight hours. Didn't this last a week? Or less? My sister tried to explain this to me but I was fourteen and grossed out.

So...if they last a minimum of six hours..six times two is twelve and twelve times two is twenty four. Four tampons are the equivalent of twenty four hours. There are seven days in a week. Four times seven is twenty eight so Lyra needed about twenty or so because half of that time is sleep and she needed something different for night time. God was this confusing.

I grabbed the Playtex regular box that had twenty in it and then started searching for the pads. They weren't far away and were much simpler to judge. I wandered around, looking for Lyra and nearly ran into her. She had some food in her hands, a map, some batteries, a cd, a few other things and a bunch of candy.

"Oh good, you got them. Thank you! Now let's go!" She grinned and started towards the check out.

"Whoa wait, what's with the candy?" I asked, following her closely.

She blushed a little, "Um, I've gone through my thing about five times without a hot pad, chocolate, and ibuprofen. I'm not doing that again."

I have no idea what that means, "Okay."

The lady at the counter was in her thirties looking bored as hell and smiled when she saw us. Lyra dumped her stuff onto the checkout and I set the boxes down.

"Find everything okay?" The lady asked, her tag said Sara.

"Oh yeah, just stocking up for a little road trip," Lyra smiled.