Bubblegum Boy

[one] Thursday, July 11

[1] Thursday, July 11

                Thursdays are the worst. Everything sucks that day. Everything in class is due that day. Everyone (as in your fat, mean boss) expects you at work that day at five a.m. and that’s why I’m in the middle of the painstaking process of stacking exactly one hundred and four cans of beans into a perfect arch at the entrance of aisle seven.

                The last two barely stay as I carefully place the last can on top, sealing the opening and putting everything into the right balance.

                “Yes!” I let out a whoop and jump around, careful to not move the arch, while a toddler stares at me, eyes wide and thumb in mouth. Grabbing my bulky price gun by the handle, I slide it out of my belt and start tagging the diapers in aisle fifteen, directly across my source of pride: the bean arch.

                Clint, my boss, is so bad that he fits the stereotype of terrible boss perfectly. So perfectly, in fact, that sometimes I wonder if the stereotype had actually been based on him; it would answer a lot of my questions. But then I would realize that even if Clint was old, he wasn’t that old, as weird as that was. He had decided that this Thursday he wanted to inflict me with horrible, terrible pain, so I had been appointed to create a bean can bridge in the entrance of aisle seven. Also known as: a waste of energy on a fucking useless piece of shit created to torture, poor, kind, human souls. Okay, so maybe I’m not a hundred percent kind, but I am poor in the B-R-O-K-E sense and unless I have been lied to my entire life, I’m human as well.

                Sighing, I shove a box of Pull-Ups back into the shelf as Shakira stars playing through the store. I start getting into a kind of a rhythm, but then stop abruptly when I see a boy nearing my bean bridge. He looks about my age with short, quiffed brown hair peeking out of a black beanie, a gray t-shirt, and dark-wash jeans. As he gets closer and closer to the arch, I set the price gun down and creep closer and closer to him.

                “Excuse me,” I call out. “Excuse me.” He either doesn’t hear me or chooses to ignore, so I try one last time, a bit louder and a bit meaner. “Hey! You!” The boy whips around, blowing a bubble from a piece of gum I hadn’t noticed before. It bursts with a loud POP and he gestures to his chest in a Who, me? Kind of way and I narrow my eyes. “Yeah. You. Bubblegum Boy. Get away from those beans,” I jab a warning pointer finger at him and to my surprise and annoyance, he smirks.

                “But…” his elbow nears the arch and I let out a tiny squeal. “I want some beans.”

                “You…” I grind out, “Can get…your beans…in the goddamn bean aisle,” I hiss. You’re making money. You’re making money, I chant to myself.

                “But I like these beans,” his hand suddenly flashes out and hits a can off from the top, which is then consequently followed by one hundred and three others. I growl and pounce at him with my hands stretched out.

                “You son of a bitch!” I nearly yell, all the while reminding myself that if I touch him, I won’t be making money anymore. “Do you have any fucking clue how long that took? Do you know what my boss will do? And why are you wearing a beanie in the middle of July, anyway? Actually, keep it on; maybe you’ll die of heat or something,” I glare at him and start picking up the cans of beans from the floor, a bunch of them rolling away from me. When he starts laughing I’m about to lose it. You’re making money, you’re making money, you’re making mo-

                “Quite the temper you’ve got there.”

                “Shut up, Bubblegum Boy!” I yell and a mother walking by with a toddler hurries to pass us, picking a can of beans up on the way. Great, now I need to figure out how to make one hundred and three cans of beans into an arch.

                “Geez, no need to be such a bitch,” he mutters and I turn to fix him with my meanest, coldest gaze. All he does is shoot me his irritating smirk.

                You’re making money. You’re making money. You’re making money.

A/N:

First part up. Whaddya think?

Vote? Comment?

-Nova.