It's Alex's final year of high school.

Today is Errand Day.

Errand Day is basically what it sounds like: various errands such as buying food or delivering mail or returning library books.

Alex Kim gets annoyed that she had to come along because she'd rather be home, and sometimes it's a pain,

but deep down, Alex does enjoy getting to be out and about with her mom.

After Allison Kim hears her daughter's seatbelt click, Ally starts the car. "You ready for this?"

Alex's voice is soft and slightly tired. "What are we doing today?"

"Not too much this time." Ally starts to back out of the parking lot. "We have to get some groceries from the supermarket and pick up your dad's medication from the store, and that's it."

Alex leans back into her seat, distracting herself with her imagination.

She's imagining if all the music that cars play was visible and each car was filled with something like a painting to show the kind of music that person was listening to.

The car parks into the parking lot of the supermarket soon enough.

The young girl looks a bit reluctant but she asks, "Mom... is this going to take long?"

"Uh, it shouldn't. Why?"

Alex mumbles, "I'm having a bad sensory day."

Her mom expected as much. This morning Alex was stimming a lot more than usual.

"We only have 7 things in the list. This won't be too long."

She looks down. "Then I guess that's okay."

"Alright." Ally asks, "You got your headphones?"

These are the kind of headphones that don't play music but they make things quieter.

Alex holds up her small backpack she always has. "Yeah, let's go in."

"Okay well first, I have more for the plastic bottle return."

Ally gets out of the car and grabs the trash bag full of empty plastic pop bottles.

By the time Ally has slung the bag over her shoulder, Alex has slowly gotten out of the car, headphones on, hands in her jacket pocket.

Ally nods at the store. "Alright. In we go."

Alex follows behind her mom, preparing for the sensory mushroom-cloud that is the supermarket.

It's bright, loud, just not a good time.

The bottle return station is a small room attached to the side of the supermarket building, and it's stinky, loud, poorly lit, and worse of all, crowded.

When they get inside, Alex cringes and her mom notices this. "You good?"

Shrinking herself, Alex murmurs, "The smell..."

"Yeah it's bad. Let's get in and out." Ally turns her attention to the machine and starts putting bottles in.

But Alex feels more and more discouraged as thundering glass bottles are sent down the angry, poorly-made tubes.

Ally frowns. "Seriously? There's only one open?"

Alex quickly decides this won't do.

She moves behind her mom and puts her mouth by Ally's ear. (Alex has this thing where she mostly prefers to whisper in her mom's ear than talk aloud in public. Ally finds it weird but is okay with it.)

"Mom, can I take the list-"

"Oh yes please, my hands are full."

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Alex takes the list and holds it firmly but leans in again. "I mean to go in the store and look."

Ally seems a bit surprised, but glad. It seems her daughter is getting into the swing of errand day. Then again, Alex has been here enough she can go on her own.

With a clear approving tone, Ally says, "Yeah, go for it."

Alex nods and with the list in hand, leaves the nightmarish bottle return station,and makes her way into the store.

As soon as the doors slide apart, Alex looks down, hating the long strong white lights on the ceiling.

She's just glad she has her headphones. The hum of electricity and bags rusting and carts clicking and people moving just are too much.

Moving into the store, she looks down at the list and sees the first item is waffles and eggs - breakfast foods. The next item is ramen bags and shrimp rice bowls, which Alex eats a lot of.

As she moves through the store, Alex hums to herself a bit, and some people give looks... in an small town in a province of Canada comprising mostly of white people, it seems a Cambodian girl with a blank expression and headphones and a hum are worth weird glances, but Alex doesn't care.(I think)

Alex makes her way to the area with all the freezers, and she looks at the aisle labels to find the frozen foods.

She quickly sees the specific waffles her mom likes, and at the end of the aisle are the shrimp bowls.

Now holding two boxes of waffles and two shrimp bowls, Alex realizes she should've grabbed a cart, because the coldness is bothering her and it's hard to hold the four containers.

In her mind, she curses herself for forgetting something obvious.

She then heads to the cart area, but sees Ally coming from the cart area with a cart.

Alex seems very pleased with herself as she plops the containers into the cart.

Not whispering in her ear this time, Alex announces, "I found some things~"

Ally nods. "I knew you would. What's next on the list?"

Without looking at the paper, Alex answers, "Eggs and ramen bags."

Ally knows where those are, so they head there and find them quickly. "Next on the list is juice."

The aisle is long. Many of shelves have drinks but none of them are juice.

"Maybe it's the flavored water aisle?"

"I think the juice is by the milk."

Possibly having not heard her daughter, Ally asks, "Can you check down that flavored water aisle?"

The autistic teen seems hesitant (because she was sure the juice is by the milk) but she nods and speeds down the aisle, looking carefully, but seeing no juice.

She then walks around the aisle, and sure enough, opposite to the row of milk is a wall of various juices. Ally has gotten here too.

Alex smirks. "Hey, I found the juice."

"Yeah, I have no clue why it's back here... there's not even an aisle label."

The young girl shrugs, focusing on finding the juice they usually get.

~ 🧃 ~ 🧃 ~

Food in the car trunk, the two are getting their seatbelts on.

This time, Alex is sitting in the front seat next to her mom.

Ally asks, "So, how was that?"

Alex bobs her head slowly, rocking side to side. "All... right. I don't like the lights."

"Yeah, those things are bright."

"And loud."

"Loud?"

Alex turns her head at an odd angle while tangling the seatbelt in her hands.

"... I... think... I can hear the lights... they buzz and hum..."

"With your headphones on?"

Alex starts rocking back and forth. "No, I can't hear it then. I don't want to hear it."

Ally nods thoughtfully. "Hmmm.... I think I have an idea. We're going to make a small detour before we go to the pharmacy, okay?"

With a groggy monotone, Alex whines. "I don'wannaaaa."

"Don't worry, this won't be noisy or too bright, I think."

"Pharmacy" Alex insists impatiently.

Patiently, Ally gently says, "Later. I want you to see something first."

Tired, Alex makes an annoyed verbal stim.

Ally responds by turning on the car's Bluetooth so "daylight" by Maroon 5 starts playing

Alex calms down, preoccupied with humming and singing along.

Soon enough, they arrive at a notably smaller building.

Alex is stimming a lot, so her mom isn't sure if Alex is paying attention. "Alex, honey, we're here. This is a mini-market. What we were at was a super-market. Let's go in, I think you'll like this better."

Her daughter wordlessly complains, but she puts her headphones around her arm and gets out of the car with her mom.

"So this place is fun- you use quarters to take your carts."

"Quarters?"

They approach the cart area. "Yep." Ally points at a little coin slot. "You put one in, you get the cart, and when you're done, you bring it back and you even get your coin back."

A man walks up, bringing his cart back. "Oh, do you need a cart? You can take this one."

Ally smiles. "Thankyou, but I'm teaching my child how these carts work." she gestures at his cart. "May I?"

The man takes his singular bag out and Ally takes it.

She connects it to the other carts, and a coin pops out of a small compartment in the handel.

Ally starts talking again, but instead of listening, Alex quickly grabs the quarter and hands it to the man.

He smiles at her and thanks her, though Alex already turned around.

As the man walks away, Willow leads Alex into the store.

Alex doesn't have her headphones on, and she immediately notices it's way quieter.

There's less people, there's none of the clicking beeping rattling nonsense.

Any noise there is doesn't bother Alex at all.

The only remotely bothersome thing is the faint hum of the lights, but it's so soft, Alex could tune it out if she tried.

Ally explains, "This place is mostly food, but there's some home goods and various nicknacks."

Alex looks at this, impressed that the smaller space still holds so much, but it's not the overwhelming walls of options like the supermarket.

"Minimarkets have less so people don't come to these as much, and there's a smaller selection of things, but for a quick grocery run, this isn't too bad."

Just then, one of the ladies from church spots Ally and waves hello. Alex waves hello back.

While Ally starts chatting with the lady, the autistic teen wanders off, not interested in the small talk, and her mom lets this happen since the store is small.

Alex notices one aisle that's nothing but random items.

Ally catches up to her. "Ah, this is the aisle of shame."

"Why the aisle of shame?"

"Because it's full of good deals on good stuff for your house."

Ally gets sidetracked by some pink kitchen ware.

"Mom, nooo. It's the aisle of shame, remember?"

"Okay, okay."

They head to leave the store, though as they walk, Ally points. "See over there? This place is a self check-out, so unless you needed help with the machine, you wouldn't even have to talk with anyone."

Alex visibly smiles.

"Maybe I'll work here... organizing or cleaning or something."

"You could."

"It would be alright to spend some hours in here each day."

"maybe."