a little bit of black with a little bit of pink

Broccoli

A pair of dark sunglasses hid her eyes even though it was past midnight and pitch black outside Walmart. The fluorescent lights washed out her skin, making her look deathly pale as she shuffled along the aisles in a pair of sweatpants, scowling as she scanned the signs, looking for the fresh produce section. Jennie had her hands in the pockets of her MIT hoodie, and was trying to keep a low profile as she hunched her shoulders and walked through the store, avoiding eye contact with anyone.

Finally, the rows of electronics and garden equipment, and racks of clothes and books, gave way to the groceries, and Jennie cast her gaze around, looking for the vegetables. Her eyebrows were drawn down into a scowl over the frames of her sunglasses, and her lips were pressed together in a grim line – not entirely an approachable look, but it didn't stop one of the workers from approaching her.

"Hi, can I help you look for anything?" she asked, smiling brightly at Jennie, her eyes crinkling at the corners. She looked entirely too happy to be working at a store in the middle of the night, and Jennie's defences shot up immediately, recognising the girl.

"No," Jennie bluntly replied, her voice coming out sharper than she'd intended as she frowned at the girl.

Her smile didn't falter in the slightest, and she just gave Jennie a small shrug, wrinkling her nose slightly as, if anything, her smile grew wider. "Okay, well I'm at checkout four if you need any help!" Jennie just blinked at her from behind her dark lenses, her eyes narrowed slightly as she focused on the girls face, and the girl turned around and walked over to one of the checkouts. Leaning on the counter, she threw a ball of paper at a guy who was stacking tins of soup on a nearby shelf, and Jennie watched her fall into a whispered conversation with him.

Averting her gaze, Jennie turned her attention back to the task at hand, stalking through stands of apples and potatoes in search of the broccoli. She wasn't in a good mood, and after a night of cramming for finals in the library, Jennie just wanted to get her broccoli and go back to her dorm, which was why as she wandered around the fresh produce section, she felt her frustration growing. There was no broccoli.

The blonde haired girl had left checkout four and moved onto stacking apples, and she looked up as Jennie stormed over to her, accidentally misplacing an apple and causing an avalanche of apples to roll off the stand. "Oh crap," Lisa said, scrambling to catch as many of the apples as she could and falling to her knees as she stopped them from rolling away. With an armful of red apples, she rose to her feet, giving Jennie an embarrassed smile and trying to nudge the glasses up her nose, dropping another apple in the process. "Hi, um, sorry, c-can I help you?"

"I left my glasses at home and I can't see shit. Can you please tell me where the fucking broccoli is?" Jennie asked her, her shoulders tense as she stared at Lisa expectantly. She wore a badge with her name on too, and there was a little smiley face drawn next to it in black marker.

"Oh, yeah, um sure. It's just over there near the carrots," Lisa told Jennie, dumping the apples into a crate of bruised ones, and turned Jennie around, pointing out the orange blur to her.

"Thank you," Jennie stiffly replied, glancing down at the hand on her arm with a frown. Pulling her arm away from the girl, she set off in the direction she'd pointed out, leaving the girl to pick up the rest of the apples she'd knocked over.

"You're welcome!" Lisa cheerfully called after her, and Jennie snorted slightly. The worst part was that the girl genuinely seemed sincere, but Jennie couldn't bring herself to make polite conversation with a stranger when she was about to collapse from mental exhaustion.