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 Posted: Fri Aug 28, 2009 8:04 pm
The south end, past third, is considered the trashier part of the city. It's speckled with bars, tattoo parlors( ninja ), low income housing, closely built buildings, pawn shops, and thrift stores. It also holds some of the older/historic buildings of St.Eva. It's a quaint enough place to live, with lots of character, but the streets aren't necessarily the safest.
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Posted: Fri Aug 28, 2009 9:05 pm
Up on the 4th floor of building 2, Mallory sat typing away at a computer.
That was all Mina could be sure of, from the other side of the door. She could hear the clicking of computer keys, and she knew no one was in there besides Ms. Cross--no one was EVER in there besides Ms. Mallory Cross--but the sounds and light spilling under the door gave no further clues. It was frustrating. She knocked.
"Hang on!" came Mallory's voice from inside. There were footsteps, which paused at the door as she looked through the peephole--Ms. Cross had told her that she ALWAYS looked through the peephole first--and then the sounds of bolt after deadbolt sliding back. Never the chain, though. When cops came to the door, Mina knew, Ms. Cross always pretended that the chain lock must be broken, because she could never get it unlatched from the door. Mina didn't believe it, though, and she didn't think anyone else did, either.
The door cracked open. "Oh, Mina," she said. "You have the groceries, then? Ah, right, there they are." They passed the items through the door one by one; here a bunch of grapes, there a bag of green onions, then a packet of... female items... til it was all through the crack in the door. "And here's your pay, Mina." The other way through the door, a five dollar bill. "Thank you so much for this! You didn't run into any trouble, did you? What's the new gossip?"
Mina lied and said her trip to and from the grocery store was fine, mom and dad were getting along, she was doing fine in school... but Ms. Cross didn't believe her. It was hard to see her face through the crack, but there was this look in her eye that said I know you're lying to me. Mina hated it when grown-ups gave her that look, but at least Ms. Cross didn't try to pry the truth out. That was even worse.
Finally, she got to the REAL news. "Oh! And you know that lake out by--well, I guess you don't, but Davey from school was out there with... his brothers, and he was looking in the water, and HE says there was something IN there. Something creepy." Mina nodded and folded her arms as she passed this on. "He was talking about it all day at... at school. The grown-ups thought it was important, too." The last part, she was lying about... but grown-ups like Ms. Cross never believed anything unless some other grown-ups did first. They were stupid like that.
Mallory nodded thoughtfully, ignoring the bit at the end about adults thinking it was important. Maybe they did, maybe they didn't, but she'd noticed that Mina was a terrible liar. There was a telltale nuance to her voice whenever she was making things up. Something in the water... Well, that could be anything from a frog to a chicken bone to his own reflection, if this was a particularly dirty lake. Just one more thing to keep in mind about this horrible island.
Mina saw that she'd made an impression, and congratulated herself on making up the part at the end. "Okay! Well, I have to get back... home. So, see you later, Ms. Cross! Eat well!" Grandmama insisted that eating well was the most important thing in the world.
Mallory shut the door and rebolted everything as her young neighbor bounded off up the stairs. Dinner would be... soup, she thought. Chicken and vegetable soup, with some of the sourdough loaf on the side. Should be tasty.
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Posted: Sat Aug 29, 2009 10:45 pm
"Hey Mina," Pan said, passing by the interaction in the apartment building. She held a grocery bag in one arm, the free hand holding onto Peter as she walked towards her own apartment.
She briefly eyed, Mallory's door, having not really met her neighbor, despite the fact they'd lived in the same building a fair amount of time. Her eyes moved quickly back to Peter, though, as the boy tugged on her hand, impatiently.
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Posted: Sat Aug 29, 2009 10:57 pm
"Hey, Pan! Hey, Peter!" Mina replied enthusiastically. She was always happy to see her 'cousins,' as she called them. There weren't too many kids in this building, and it got lonely without them. She completely forgot what she was about to go do. "Hey, you want some help with that? I can help you carry, so you can see the stairs and stuff."
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Posted: Sun Aug 30, 2009 1:34 pm
Pan handed over the grocery bag with a brief thanks, grateful to have a hand free to manipulate the door key. "Thanks, Mina." She moved to her door, fiddling with the lock. "If you'd like to come in we just bought some organic hot cocoa mix."
She gave the door handle a sharp twist, making sure to lift it slightly, so it wouldn't get stuck again. "Peter isn't talking to anyone right now, because he's having a tantrum over my refusal to buy him poison."
"Skittles." Peter grumbled.
"Poison." Pan said, giving the boy a challenging look.
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Posted: Sun Aug 30, 2009 5:05 pm
"Sure!" Mina replied, carrying the bag in after them. "I've never had organic before--Mom always says it's too expensive, and I hate the kind at school. Is it good?"
She looked between Peter and Pan with a perplexed smile, not really sure why Peter thought poison was Skittles. He was too smart to be tricked like that, at least she thought so...
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Posted: Sun Aug 30, 2009 9:51 pm
"It is expensive, which is why it's a treat." Pan walked inside the apartment, closing the door with her heal, before kicking off her teal flip flops. "You can set the bag on the counter, I'll go get some water boiling. Peter, go play with your blocks."
Peter looked up at Mina, ignoring Pan's command.
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Posted: Mon Aug 31, 2009 3:54 pm
Mina nodded and set the bag on the counter, starting to take stuff out to put away. "Where's this stuff go, Pan? I can put stuff away while you make it, but I only know where you keep the dishes."
She looked down at Peter with a smile. "Hey, it's okay, cousin. You go get the blocks out, and I'll be there in a minute. We can build a castle!"
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Posted: Mon Aug 31, 2009 6:21 pm
"In the cupboards," Pan shrugged. She'd tried organizing things before, but it always ended up organized in a non-function way, such as by color or height, or some odd artistic arrangement. She carried on with the making of the cocoa, though stopped to water some window plants in between.
"Castles are for girls." Peter mumbled, but went for the blocks anyway.
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Posted: Mon Aug 31, 2009 8:02 pm
Mina blinked at her for a moment, then shrugged and just put stuff in the cupboards wherever it would fit, reflecting on how much stuff Pan bought that she never saw anywhere else. Except the bag of untreated organic flour. Ms. Cross often had her buy that, and she wondered what they each used it for. Mom didn't buy flour, but there was a bread recipe on the back of the bag.
Mina frowned, a little hurt, when Peter said castles were for girls. "They are not..." she muttered. She was sure castles were for boys and dolls were for girls, though she couldn't be sure. She'd been home-schooled up until a year ago, and she had no brothers or sisters.
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Posted: Mon Aug 31, 2009 10:28 pm
"Do you want some all natural marshmallows in your cocoa?" Pan asked, filling up a few cups with the hot liquid.
As Pan was busy, Peter had bent down to collect an armful of blocks and bring them back over to the kitchen counter. He wouldn't build a castle, but he would build a tower. "I want three marshmallows," He shouted as he came walking over.
One of the blocks casually slipped from his arm, he looked at it, and it stopped, in mid air. He quietly set the blocks down by the counter, and then went back for the last, plucking it from the air and returning, as if nothing alarming had happened.
Pan missed the whole thing.
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Posted: Tue Sep 01, 2009 12:01 am
"Sure!" Mina replied happily. She loved marshmallows, no matter WHAT kind they were. Her mom hadn't let her have any for a long time, growing up, because she thought Mina took in enough raw sugar as it was, but finally relented when she realized there was no way to control her daughter anyway once she started going to public school. Mina's current all-time goal was to find some family that would take her camping, so she could find out what this mysterious "golden marshmallow" tasted like.
Mina jumped at Peter's shout and turned with a smile, reaching out to help him with the blocks, when the one fell. She started to tell him it was okay, that she'd grab it, when she saw it stop moving too soon to have hit the floor. Her jaw stopped halfway open and her head tilted, watching blankly as the boy plucked it from the air and brought it back. She came to herself again as he returned and found that her hands had been taking the blocks on the floor and putting them up on the counter the whole time.
She started breathing again and smiled at Peter. "Hey, cous, wanna put these up here and I pick you up? We can play with these on the counter, so no one trips over them by accident. And then we can still play while we drink the cocoa! Sound good?"
As for the mysterious floating block... she'd have to think about that. If there was one thing her mother had taught her, it was that you don't ask about stuff right when it happens--you wait, you think about it, and you try to find out yourself before you go bugging people about it. She'd been told to go look in the dictionary so many times that it was ingrained in her head to look there before doing anything else about a question.
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Posted: Tue Sep 01, 2009 11:16 am
Pan placed the cups of cocoa on the counter, taking a seat herself, but put down her own cup as she looked at Mina's face. "You all right, Mina? You look a little pale. Here, let me go get you some ginger root to suck on."
"Yeah," Peter said, already trying to climb up one of the counter stools. "I wanna build a tower."
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Posted: Wed Sep 02, 2009 7:54 am
"Uh, yeah," Mina replied, helping Peter onto a stool and putting the rest of his blocks in easy reach. "What does ginger root do again? You have the most int'resting plants and stuff Pan. We can't even grow daisies, on our porch."
"So, what kind of tower, Peter?" she asked the boy. She picked up her cup of cocoa, but blew on it to cool it off instead of sipping it right away.
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Posted: Wed Sep 02, 2009 11:22 am
"It's what sailors would suck on to settle their stomach and calm the effects of seasickness." Pan said, moving to the fridge and helping herself to a small slice of the root from the vegetable drawer. She handed the slice to Mina. "you suck on it," she said simply, not bothering to explain how strong straight ginger can be.
"A big one." Peter said quietly, as he began placing the blocks on the counter. As the castle grew a bit too high for him to reach, a few blocks began making their own way to the top, floating up and placing themselves perfectly.
Pan's cup of cocoa dropped onto the floor, and shattered.
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