“Call your parents,” said Imogen. “Get an Uber. I really don’t care what you two do. As long as it doesn’t involve me.”

With that, Imogen and Holden left us at the AMC 8. They abandoned us with purpose. I had never seen a pair of people want to get away from another pair of people so fast.

There was no way this could possibly get worse. My best friend hated me, the girl I was in love with hated me, and I felt sick, and bloated, and the pressure in my lower abdomen was becoming unbearable, and my vagina felt itchy and sticky and—

“Oh my god,” said Wynezra.

I looked at Wynezra, then realized that she was staring at my crotch. I glanced down.

A trickle of blood was seeping out of the bottom of my dress, all the way down my leg.

I couldn’t help it. I started crying again.

While I was an inconsolable mess, Wynezra told me to go to the women’s bathroom and lock myself in a stall until otherwise instructed. I did as I was told. Now that I knew I was having a period, the contents of my lower abdomen felt like they had been liquefied with an electric mixer. I pulled my underwear down, sat on the toilet, and felt my insides spill outside. I glanced down with a sort of terror usually reserved for the scared little kid who watches a horror film through their fingers.

Blood.

Ribbons of blood unspooled in the water into thick, soupy clouds, like something out of Jaws.

Was this really what a period was supposed to feel like? Because this seemed worse. This seemed apocalyptic in nature. A biblical End of Times situation, like the Book of Revelation was fulfilling prophecy, except inside my vagina. And that was to say nothing of the nausea, or the crushing headache, or my boobs hurting, or the feeling that someone was stabbing me in the stomach with a fork and twisting up my insides like a spool of spaghetti. This period was special. This period must have known I was a guy, and I was intruding on the Sacred Rite of Menstruation, and it had resolved to kill me with its own secret ways.

I heard the bathroom door open, and then Wynezra’s voice. “Ezra?”

I sobbed in response.

Wynezra knocked on the stall door, and I unlocked it. She entered holding this orange-wrapped thing that looked like candy at first, but then I remembered the context of the situation, and I immediately wanted to die.

“It’s a tampon,” said Wynezra.

“Where the hell did you find a tampon?” I said. “Concessions?”