Survival Of The Fittest

(( Scarlett McAfee continued from Romeo And Juliet))

Scarlett couldn't believe that she was back in Target. But she seemed to be drawn to the place. She was checking through the t-shirts. A pink one. Nope. A orange one. Nope. A yellow one. Nope. They didn't seem to have the right t-shirt that she was looking for. Which was a shame as she seemed to always come back when the clothes that she wished to buy were always gone. She really did have some rotten luck. She couldn't let it keep her down as it wasn't the end of the world. And they could have another dark blue t-shirt out by the next week. It wasn't that big of a deal.

Scarlett tapped her foot on the ground patiently as she observed through the rest of the t-shirts. Maybe she could get the green one. It didn't look that bad. She would be willing to try out a new color and she could show it off to Lizzie. She hoped that Lizzie would think it would look cool on her. She reached out to look at the price tag. Then she shook her head and took a step back, sighing softly. No. She really did want to save up her money. All she really wanted to do for now was check out the other clothes around Target and see if she would get anything that she would like for the next time she came there. Hopefully there would be a dark blue t-shirt next time as well.

"Okay. I'm just going to check out the jeans section and then I am going home." Scarlett promised quietly to herself as she made her way over to the jeans and she started to look through the sizes. "Let's see...."

(((Rea Adams, continued from Morning Dew)))

So. Target. One of the few chain stores that existed both in her home country and here, and with the same name as well, it was a brief familiar sight amidst all the unfamiliarity of the country; one of the few things she recognised from where she was from when she first arrived in the States. Speaking of familiar sights, there was one right now. Scarlet McPhee, or whatever Ben had said her name was. His partner. Well, after some elaboration on his part, she found that Scarlett was only his partner for studying Macbeth. Wouldn't make sense anyhow, considering the fact that he had a thing for that Lucy girl or whoever she was.

Regardless, after a tumultuous morning and an even worse yesterday, she found herself going through the local target; just browsing to see if there was anything she liked the look of. Of course, as Ben reminded Rea constantly, simply browsing and buying whatever the hell she felt like without consequence was a luxury that normal people (like himself) simply couldn't afford. Well, that was what she understood from him anyway.

Anyway, Scarlett was standing there in the aisle, deciding between several different colours of shirt. Well, Rea was walking by her anyway, might as well say hi.

"Hey, you're Scarlett McPhee, right? Ben's friend or something?"

(Loretta's Jerry''s Pregame's Start (lol))

Target, Target, Target,
A lot of stuff to buy like socks, more socks, pants, shits and whatever you needed. Someone could find their mine of gold in there, but they'd need to have a bullseye. The smell of big surface shop was a favorite to Jerry, it didn't smell any good but it was good at triggering nostalgia in his mind. Just entering the shop, it reminded him of when he was a kid and would shop with his parents.

But despite his old memories of grocery shopping at Walmart with his parents, Target was a new and unknown hunting ground for goodies. Walking around the alleys, seeking for a hidden treasure between two pairs of underwear or maybe even in the electronic section where something's price like an iPod's was lowered to an affordable price of his "ten coins a week but no drugs" allocation. Maybe he could pay for something better if he bothered to save up money instead of spending it all in candies.

But this time, he wasn't there because of a sweet or sour tooth, he was there because he needed a shirt. A nice one, a comfortable one, a pretty one. Not a polyester "I'll catch on fire if a flame is too close to me" one but a cotton one. That's what his mom said but aren't both flammable? Whatever, if the family went wrong he wanted to die with something comfy at that barbecue.

Scarlett McPhee.

Oh gosh. Someone had just said her last name wrong. That wasn't the most embarrassing thing she had ever heard before. Scarlett cleared her throat softly and she turned to see who had just spoken to her. She thought that she recognised the voice. She was surprised to see that it was Rea Adams. They barely talked to each other beforehand. All she really knew was that Rea was dating some guy named.... Will? At least Scarlett thought that was his name.

Scarlett showed a warm smile and she chuckled lightly. "Oh, hi, Rea! Yes, I am Scarlett. Ben is a good friend of mine." She nodded as she was speaking and she thought about Ben for a moment. She got to know him a bit when they worked on Macbeth with Aiden. "Oh, I just wanted to tell you that it's McAfee, not McPhee."

Scarlett noticed someone out of the corner of her eye and her smile was now widening into a grin. She never thought that she would see him there. She raised a hand to wave him over to her and Rea.

"Hey, Jerry! Over here!"

"Oh my- sorry about that Scarlett. Must've misheard it from Ben or something."

This had to stop. How many people was she going to inadvertently make mortal enemies out of by getting their name wrong? First there was Asha Sur, which she now knew too late that "Asha" was not, in fact, short for "Ashley", as she had originally believed, but was actually a name given to her by her father who died before she was born.

It was almost comical how bad she fucked up.

Fortunately though, Scarlett had reacted far more jovially to Rea's mistake than Asha had. It also didn't hurt that they were both good friends of Ben Fields.

But who was this new guy she'd just called out to? Jerry, was it? An almost maniacal grin spread across her face as she called out to him. Rea swung round to see who this Jerry kid was.

Oh. Him. That guy. The ballerina. Jasmine had pointed out to her (before their sudden falling out) that this guy was apparently really into both Wrestling and Ballet. Which meant that he liked both prancing around in a leotard and watching scantily clad, incredibly muscular men clamber all over each other and... yeah. She had her suspicions about him. That he was one of the types of people Ben apparently had a vendetta against.

Rea rolled her eyes as Scarlett called out to Jerry. "What, you seriously know that guy?"

((Rene Wolfe continued from Skeletons and Spaghetti))

Clothes shopping was definitely not very high on Rene's list of enjoyable activities.  Most of the time she couldn't find anything she liked, which meant that it almost always came down to her going home and shopping online after having wasted hours searching around town that could have been spent doing other things.  More specifically, things that she actually liked to do, and did not do merely out of necessity.

If nothing else, she could at least take comfort in the fact that she only had to do this about twice a year on average.

The selection was, as usual, quite underwhelming, at least from her point of view.  She could deal with the options for pants and the like, but she was very particular about shirts.  She did not like shirts that were, in her words, "boring".  Why take a plain shirt over one that actually has some graphic design work put into it?  That philosophy led to her wardrobe containing only two shirts without any designs on them, and those were formal wear.  After all, isn't a shirt with, say, a dapper skeleton in a top hat on it better than a solid color or a Coke logo?  Rene certainly thought so.

As she expressed silent disapproval over the shirts on display, Rene came across a couple of girls she recognized from school.  She wouldn't describe Scarlett and Rea as super-great friends or anything like that, but they seemed pretty all right to her, even if she thought that Rea needed to learn to take a joke every once in a while.  Scarlett was trying to call someone named Jerry over of the conversation.  Rene decided to stick around for a while.  After all, it wasn't like she had anything else to do at the moment.

"Jerry?  Nah, name's Rene.  Good guess, though."

Not a faded white shirt, it's going to be stained.
Not a pitched black shirt, it isn't a funeral.
Not a light pink shirt, looking like a skinned pig isn't in.

Wait, that was his name he heard? He stopped in his tracks, his eyes still fixed on the shirts but all of his senses aware of the presence of the girls. Footsteps turning around him, revealing the presence of another person. The unknown lurker answered the remarked said toward him, saying her name was Rene. Jerry was pretty sure it was someone from school, he talked to her maybe once or twice so that's one person down.

He slowly spun his head toward the two girls, and there they were. Two other Cochise students, Scarlett and Rea, were trying to talk to Jerry until this girl, Rene, answered for him. However, even this was a normal exchange, she made, whether intentionally or unintentionally, the whole conversation awkward for Jerry. Answering the question would make it redundant, not answering it would be rude, walking away would be even more rude and acting like he didn't hear anything wouldn't work since he softly jerked his head in the direction of the pair.

Awkwardness flowed through his body making it heavy and clumsy, and it didn't help that Scarlett used to date one of his friend. They weren't necessarily friends but on friendly terms, they often met outside of school ground because of their mutual friend group. She was dating one of the guys and he, well, was one of the guys. Jerry slowly pivoted him body toward them, Rea and Scarlett, attempting his best not to mess with Rene. The latter kinda scared him because he felt she could break him in half if she wanted.

He slowly raised his left hand up to the height of his shoulder, and said,

"Hey."

Scarlett put her hand down quickly as Rene Wolfe responded to her instead of Jerry. Well, that wasn't embarrassing at all. Rene was the jokey type of girl. Scarlett would sometimes laugh at some of Rene's jokes. Sometimes she would find herself cringing if she knew that they were bad. But she would try her hardest to not hurt Rene's feelings about her jokes. At least, Jerry said something to her. She couldn't really have a normal conversation with him because of Rene and Rea being around. She didn't have anything against them.

"Oh.... Hi, Rene. I didn't see you there. Sorry about that." Scarlett chuckled softly, feeling a bit awkward. Then she turned to Rea as she made a comment about Jerry and she raised an eyebrow. "Yes, I do know Jerry, Rea. He is actually a good friend of mine. Now I have to get going. I'll see you two girls later!"

Scarlett had sounded cheerful as she spoke but she really didn't like how Rea seemed to be judging her being friends with Jerry. She thought that it was insulting. Although, Scarlett could be a little too overprotective of her friends sometimes. It was a habit that she should at least try to grow out of soon.

She approached where Jerry was and she smiled at him warmly. "Hey, when you're done here. Come and meet up with me at Liberty Park. Then we can talk without any distractions. Okay?" She was speaking to him quietly as she didn't want Rene or Rea to hear her. "I'll see you then, Jerry."

Scarlett then made that her moment to leave. She actually missed talking to Jerry. She wanted to know how he was doing.

((Scarlett McAfee continued in and Jerry Larkin heading for Loud Girl And Quiet Boy ))

So, Scarlett just left. And was probably taking Jerry with her. Good riddance, Scarlett was nigh intolerable and Jerry was a generic stock high-schooler with delusions of becoming a professional athlete. Indistinguishable from the other several hundred guys exactly like him at Cochise.

So that meant she'd soon be alone with just herself and the self-announced Rene.

She had literally never seen her before in her life.

Well, maybe once or twice around the school; her face looked familiar enough. But Rea knew nothing about her. She'd never spoken to her, had never heard anything about her, not one of her friends even knew her.

So who the hell was she? She was pale enough to be a vampire, or at the very least someone who didn't have enough of a life to venture outside for once. Kinda short too, at least compared to herself.

"So, Rene, is it? Don't think I've seen you around before."

Rene watched Scarlett leave, talking to who she assumed had to be that "Jerry" kid on the way out.  Damn, only one line in, and one conversation partner already out the door.  This left Rene alone with Rea.  Well, not technically alone considering that they were standing in the middle of a retail store, but considering that the people around them had absolutely no interest in what was going on between the two of them, Rene counted that as being alone.

Despite their names sounding kind of similar, Rene wasn't sure if she actually had anything in common with Rea.  Sure, she didn't really know Rea at all, but she had made some assumptions from their brief interactions in the past.  Brief interactions, in this case, meaning walking by each other in the halls maybe two or three times.  Not really much to make a hypothesis off of, but Rene was pretty sure that she had a little bit to go off of.

Oh wait, Rea was talking to her.

"Yeah, I'm not really the type to spend a lot of time going out on the town."  She replied, leaning against the side of a shelf.  "Maybe I would be if there was actually more stuff to do around here, though."