Conversing in the snow.

Who: May and Isabelle
When: Late afternoon, before dark
Where: The streets

So the ghost movies hadn't been that scary. At least May hadn't screamed too much, but it was really hard to be scared of scary movies in the middle of the daytime. Especially when you were in the living room and patients kept walking through. She'd manged to finish the two movies she had before the day was even out, so to keep from forgetting them later, she headed back to the movie store to drop them off. Now, if she could get there and back home before it got dark, she'd be perfectly content with the day. Despite her run in with Kaysen's world-hating boyfriend.

Isabelle was on her way to check out Nevermore, see what they had on ghosts and perhaps do a little reading of her own on psychic vampires. Wasn't it just like Medea to find an interesting little pet straight off the bat? All the same, her little projects were starting to shape up a bit, she just had to speed up the timetable a little. Distracted by her musing, she bumped into someone on the sidewalk, stumbling a touch but regaining her balance quickly. "Whoops," she said, flashing a smile. "Sorry about that, I wasn't looking."

May shifted a little, trying to keep her balance and thankfully not falling flat on her face. "No, no, it's my fault." May said, automatically taking the fault like she always did. It was typical for her. The girl could have been barreling down the sidewalk and she would have still apologized for being hit. She gave her a little smile and took a step to the side in case the girl wanted to walk away.

When Isabelle realized who it was, she disguised her triumphant smile as a much friendlier one. She'd just been talking about bringing Aaron's little bitch squad into the fold, hadn't she? And here was one of the girls she'd been thinking about. "May, right?" she asked, as if she wasn't sure. "We go to school together. I'm Isabelle," she added, though really, people should know that by now. "How are you?"

She smiled again and nodded. "Yes, May." she told the girl, slightly surprised that she knew her name. "I'm okay. How're you?" she questioned, eyes finally meeting the other girl's. She actually wanted to talk to her? When Heather wasn't around? No one really came to her to talk. Not if Heather wasn't there.

"I'm not bad," Isabelle chirped, all friendly-like. "Just thinking about popping into the bookstore around here for a bit." She noticed the movies the other girl was carrying, nodding in their direction. "Are those any good?" she asked, wondering why one wanted to rent ghost movies when they were practically living one.

"They were okay." she nodded. "Just taking them back before it gets dark. Finished them today. I figured if real life wasn't frightening enough I could check some movies for similarities." she smiled. At least that's what she kept telling herself. She really wasn't sure what possessed her to rent those specific movies.

"I don't think I'd want our ghosts to start killing people in creative and horrible ways," Isabelle said, laughing. Though really, as long as it wasn't her or Medea, it might be interesting. Inspirational, even. "Now, zombies..." she suggested with a grin. "You can never go wrong with zombies. Let's be glad we only have a spirit infestation and not a zombie horde."

That got a tiny little laugh from May. After of course the pause and wide eyes of hoping that they could stick with the ghosts and not zombies. "Yeah, definitely want to stick with the ghosts..."

"So, what else are you up to today?" Isabelle asked. "It feels kind of weird to be doing things as normal with all that's happened lately, but I guess there's not much else we can do, you know?"

"I'm dropping these off and trying to get home before it gets dark. That's just... yeah... dark and ghosts really isn't something I want to do today." she said with a teeny bit of a smile. "What about you?" she questioned.

"Why are they scarier in the dark?" Isabelle questioned curiously. "They don't do anything different than what they do now - just wander around and look bewildered." She shrugged. "Just thinking of checking out some books. There's a bookstore that has a lot of supernatural stuff, I thought I might see if I could find any good ghost books or something."

"The dark makes everything scarier." she said in her ever soft tone. "Um... we could walk that way together." she suggested. "Up to you though, I mean if you had other plans or you were meeting someone or something. I'm okay to walk alone."

That was dumb reasoning to Isabelle, but she didn't let that show. "Sure," she agreed. "I'm not meeting anyone, you're welcome to come hang with me for a while. Where are Aaron and Heather?" she asked innocently. "You three are usually hanging around together, aren't you?"

"Aaron moved." she told the girl. "Heather is with her boyfriend. They had a date or something. I'm sure she'll be with me tomorrow probably. Catching up on all the homework we need to get done." They usually didn't put off homework til the last second, but with the ghosts and the lack of real amounts of homework due to the lack of kids at school this week, they'd pushed it to Sunday. She took a few steps in the direction of the two stores and smiled at the girl. "You're new right?" she questioned. She knew she'd seen the girl around, but she wasn't someone who'd been around a long time, she was certain. She maybe was even on the cheer team with her, but May wasn't certain. Usually Heather had her full attention when it came to cheering practice.

"Oh, what a shame," Isabelle said, managing to sound genuinely compassionate. Even if she didn't give a damn that the fussy little queen was gone. She started walking with her, concealing a flash of irritation. She practically had the rest of the cheerleading squad in her goddamn pocket and yet this chippy was spazzing on her? Isabelle didn't think it was deliberate. "Yeah, my sister and I moved here recently from Iron Mountain," she confirmed. "We're on the cheerleading squad together." She was only like, their best tumbler. And she'd take Heather down if the bitch gave her any trouble about Isabelle's decision to step up and lead things.

"I thought you were." she smiled. "But you and your sister? Does she cheer too?" she questioned. May didn't think there'd been two new people on the squad. She was pretty sure she would have noticed that a little more. Heather was capable of letting a person slip past her, but two? She doubted that.

"No," Isabelle said with a laugh, "cheerleading's my thing. Medea's into drama. Plus she bruises kind of easily, she'd be black and blue after one practice. She's... artsier. I'm the loudmouth."

May smiled. "Well that's neat." she told the girl. "Have you been cheerleading long? Like... at your other school or whatever?" She might as well ask. Maybe the girl was really talented and she just hadn't paid enough attention to realize it. May made a mental note to herself to watch for Isabelle the next time they had practice.

"Yeah, I've been into tumbling since I was little and got into cheerleading once I started middle school," Isabelle said. It had never been hard to manipulate foster parents into paying for lessons. "What about you?"

"For a long time." she nodded. "I do dancing. Been doing that since I was a toddler, cheerleading came in high school, but I've been doing some type of physical thing since... well, since I can remember."

"Same here," agreed Isabelle, smiling. "I couldn't imagine not having something physical to do. Medea can hang around reading or acting or whatever all day, I'd go nuts if I didn't have something to run around, climb on, jump or flip over."

"Guess we have a little in common." May said, smiling lightly. "So... why'd you guys move?" she questioned. She couldn't help but be a little curious.

Cue the slightly sad but mostly brave face. "Our new foster family lives here," Isabelle said quietly. "There was... an incident back home, and they thought a change of scenery would do us some good. So here we are. Medea's going to be eighteen soon, though, and I will be just under a year after that, so no telling where we'll end up then."

May bit her bottom lip when the girl said 'foster family'. "Oh..." she said softly, glancing down at the ground. She would have asked what happened, but she didn't want to seem like she was prying or rude or nosy so she did the next best thing and tried to relate to the girl. "I'm adopted and my parents divorced so I ended up with my dad. I know what it's like to be in a new place so... if you ever need someone to talk to..."

"I appreciate it," Isabelle said, smiling reassuringly. "Really, it's not that bad. Iron Mountain was small, so honestly it's kind of like living back there except I know fewer people. And in some cases, that wasn't a bad thing, trust me. And I've got Medea - we're good as long as we have each other."

A little smile moved across her face and she nodded. "Well that's really good that you guys are so close." she told the girl.

"Do you have any siblings?" Isabelle asked. She could always potentially use them. Particularly if they went to the same school and were as biddable as May seemed to be. Adopted siblings, blood relative, didn't matter to her. "Or are you an only child?"

"An only child." she told the girl. "It's just me and my dad." May smiled. She reached up to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. "Is it just you and your sister?"

"Yeah," Isabelle said. "I mean, our mother might be out there somewhere, but no one knows who she is. Heck, maybe that means we've got other half-siblings, I don't know. But here it's just us."

May nodded. She wondered for a moment if her mother would be making babies with her doctor second husband, but she didn't mention it. She doubted it would matter anyway. It wasn't like she actually talked to her mother. She hadn't even called her or sent her a card or anything on her last birthday. "Well at least you have each other. I bet that makes things easier."

"Definitely," Isabelle agreed. "We don't know what we'd do without each other. It makes moving from place to place a lot easier - no matter where you go, at least one thing stays the same."

"Even if it's just one constant, that's most assuredly better than being alone all the time in new place."

"You can say that again." But Isabelle was getting bored, and thankfully enough they were almost to the bookstore. "Well, this is my stop," she said, nodding towards the entrance. "It was good to run into you."

"You too." May said with a little nod. "I'll see you at school on Monday." she smiled. "Nice meeting you." And then she gave a tiny little wave and headed towards the movie store.

"Same to you," Isabelle said, smiling and waving back. "See you later." Christ. No wonder Heather did all the talking for them. Still, lackeys were lackeys and Isabelle needed to have a solid base of operations before they could do anything really fun.