Grammar Rock

Who: Roy and Maddy
Where: Roy's Vault
When: Morning

When Maddy woke up, she thought she was dreaming. The sun shining through her window could not possibly be real. And then the feel of warm, fresh air on her face when she opened said window? Maddy had to pinch herself a few times to make sure she hadn't actually died in an alley or something the evening before and that this was, in fact, real.

Positively gleeful, Maddy pulled on what she deemed her 'summer clothes', only to find that they didn't fit quite as well as they used to. Which surprised her, considering she hadn't thought she'd grown at all in awhile. After much searching, she found a plain, pale pink chiffon flapper dress, throwing on a few strings of fake pearls and grabbed her ratty bag, making sure the books she got the other day were still in there. She had a mission that morning.

On her way to Roy's vault, she whistled happily, enjoying the walk under the bright morning sun and the slowly warming air. Sleeveless may not be the best idea this early, but she'd be set for the day. That much was already clear. Splurging her previous day's paycheck, she actually bought some pastries from the bakery on the corner to go with the apples she'd "picked up" at the grocer's. So it was with the sweet smell of fresh baked apple strudel that Maddy entered the cool, dim interior of Roy's bank and headed up the stairs. "Roy!" she called out, not wanting to spring out at him. You just didn't do stuff like that when entering someone's home.

Roy was asleep. It had been a while since he'd crashed that hard, but he most certainly had. Sometime last night--he wasn't even sure when--he had dropped like a stone, and hadn't so much as stirred for hours. When he heard his name, it got a slight little twitch out of him, but not anything resembling an answer, or even anything that fully woke him up.

Maddy reached the top of the steps, calling again but softer this time as she neared the entrance of the vault, spying Roy half sprawled on his makeshift bed. She smiled, pleased to see that he was getting some sleep and she carefully walked in, setting the pastry bag beside him so he could smell what would constitute as a 'Best Way to Wake Up Ever' in her not humble opinion. "Roy," she murmured, shaking him a little bit before stepping back, just in case he lashed out.

He didn't, more just twitching when she touched him, and then he sort of slowly picked his head up. He was laying on his stomach, and sort of blinked his eyes open slowly, trying to focus on Maddy, but it was a rough thing for a minute. His stomach, however, was quicker on the uptake, and as he smelled what she had, it gave a loud growl. "Madeline?" he asked in a fuzzy tone, voice hoarse from sleep.

"You can call me Maddy, you know," she told him fondly, voice quiet because there was nothing she personally hated more than someone who was loud and obnoxious when you were just waking up (Nuns singing about giving God your glory at six in the morning was enough, thank you very much). "I brought breakfast."

He quirked a half smile, and rubbed at one eye. "I don't want to call you Maddy." he said. "You've got a nice name, I'm going to use it, not shorten it so it's like any other girl in the world." The ones he'd known in school a million years ago when he'd actually attended all tended to cutesy-fy their names. "Smells like you did. You didn't have to do that." he told her. "But I'm not turning it down."

Maddy honestly had never thought of it like that and she blushed pink a bit. "Well, in that case, please continue. You could add Queen at the beginning to liven it up," she teased and took a seat on the edge of the blanket. "And I can do whatever I please, and if that means buying you really delicious food with my first paycheck, then I'm gonna do it." She was glad he wasn't turning it down, because she liked doing things for him and she even got a bit of a smile out of it, so really, that made everything worth it.

Sitting up, he stretched, a lot of pops and cracks coming from his spine and shoulders as he did so. That was pretty normal though, considering his sleeping arrangements. "I'm never referring to you as royalty." he told her. Though it was with an amused sort of tone. "I'm sure you've got little followers for that." He reached out to pick up the bag, then looked back to her. "You spent your first paycheck on this?" he asked. "Why?"

"Well, it wasn't the whole paycheck," she clarified, because she didn't want Roy feeling guilty. "And it was because I wanted to. I wanted to do something nice for you." Maddy pursed her lips a bit, fiddling with the fake pearls that hung from her neck. "You're my friend and I like making my friends happy." To make up for when I'm a total brat. "So just -- just don't question my authority! Just eat! Here. I got an apple too." She pulled out one of the shiny red apples and handed it over to him.

He took it, looking like he was concidering turning it down, but at the same time, he figured she might have lifted it. Either way it had been a while since he'd had fruit, so he took it. "Thank you." he told her. "What else did you get with your paycheck? Did you at least get something nice for yourself?" he asked, hoping she had. She deserved to get something nice. Which might be even nicer for her since it would be something she got for herself, something she earned.

Maddy shrugged, biting into her own apple and chewing slowly. "Your welcome. And I'm saving up for my house. Nothing else I really need." It was nice to have cash on hand in case of emergencies, but Maddy didn't want to spend it if she didn't have to. Not even if it came to a new paint set at the store down the street. Her house was her goal.

"Where are you keeping your money?" he asked. Because that was probably important. And he vaguely wondered if Dodge knew about it if he or his boys would dip into that fund. He hoped to hell not. But at the same time, he really wouldn't put it past him, depending on what their needs were at the time. He'd give that maybe it wouldn't happen unless they deemed it necessary, but who the hell knew what 'necessary' was defined as anymore? Half the time Roy didn't, even. The lines got blurry pretty fast in some areas of life.

"Someplace safe," she assured him. The money was actually in various places around her attic, and the box of money that Dodge knew about was all fake, so that was her decoy. Maddy was quite proud of herself for being clever. "I'm thinking of opening a bank account though. Maybe. Once I get more." She took another bite of her apple, savoring the crisp taste.

He listened, glad that she seemed to have put it someplace safe, even if he didn't know where that might be. Frankly, he didn't want to know. Knowing things could be dangerous. Knowing things meant people could ask you, and try to get the information out of you even if you didn't want to give it. If you didn't know? Well. There wasn't anything to tell, was there? "Maybe you could put half of it in the bank, and half of it somewhere else, just in case." he suggested.

"I was thinking about that, yeah," she agreed with a nod. "I have to find out what I need to do though. Like, don't you have to be living in an actual place to open an account?" Roy might live in an old bank building, but she wasn't sure if he'd know or not. But the bank idea seemed like a good one. And didn't they give you money the longer you kept your money there? Money was always good and the faster she could get it, the better. "Anyway, I didn't forget about my promise to help you out with the reading thing. If you're still interested."

"I don't know? I'd ask Marian, on that." Roy said honestly. And if Marian didn't know about bank things, then she could find out, or help or something. That was his theory. He always had faith in his sister. He hesitated for a second when she brought up the other stuff. "Yeah? I'm still interested." he told her. "Like...now?" he asked.

The Marian from her dream, with her cat claws and eyes, crossed Maddy's mind for a second but she nodded to show that she'd keep the idea in mind. "If you want," she said as an answer to his question. "I got a couple of books at the library but I've never really done this before so I figured we could figure out where you're at and kind of go from there. I've got some ideas, anyway." She did, actually. A little list of ideas that she could utilize to help out. "What do you think?"

"I think if you have the time, then I've got the time." Roy told her. He could spend at least most of the day at it, even if his evening was going to be taken up with number running. But until then, he could learn what she could teach him, and even if she got the basics down with him maybe he could keep trying to get better on his own, too. It was a plan.

"Well, I do have the time," Maddy grinned and reached into her bag to pull out a notebook that she had gotten that morning while picking up breakfast. "Okay, so what do you already know? That way I'm not rehashing stuff you already know." She took out a pencil and opened the book up to a fresh page and writing the date in small, neat print on the top line.

"Not a lot." Roy admitted. "And stuff I did learn is a little fuzzy." he added. "Maybe it'll come back when you start going over it." he suggested, really hoping that was the case. He didn't want to be stupid, he didn't want her to know he was stupid, and he didn't want to be unteachable, either. This whole thing sort of terrified him in a weird way. Learning this shit...having her teach him, it was owning up to a huge weakness. And while he wasn't always the guy who tried to show a lot of bravado, it was a pretty rough area to fall short in.

Maddy nodded in understanding. She knew this was a hard thing for him and she wasn't trying to make a big deal out of it. She was helping out her friend and he trusted her with this and she didn't want to screw anything up for him. "Well, we'll start out simple," she said confidently and under the date, she carefully wrote out his first and last name. "Your name's easier than mine," she said. "Mine's like, a bazillion letters long." Which took her forever to remember when she was little. "So you know this, right?" she asked, hoping it didn't come off the wrong way.

He looked it over, and nodded. He could recognize his name. "Right." he agreed, after he was sure of his answer. But he was. He'd had to write it before, and know where to sit at school, and things of that nature. So, he could see it, even if possibly it was like recognizing a picture.

"What are the letters that make up your first name?" she asked, because that was what was important in this case. That he knew what letters he needed to use.

Roy made a face. "...I don't really remember." he said. "...Y?" he suggested. Because he could remember that. And he pointed to the Y there, and it was in his last name too. So it was repeated. So maybe that was why he recalled it. He pointed out a couple of other letters, but not all of them.

Maddy grinned. "That's perfect. The key to spelling and recognizing letters is that you know where they are. That's why we start with your name. You can see how they're used and hear it come together in your head. The most common letters you're going to see are E, A, H, I, O... and um, R, S, and T, I'm pretty sure." She printed out Marian's name under his, since she couldn't remember Roy's middle name. "So which letters does your first name share in common with Marian's name?"

Roy pointed to the A and the R. "those ones." he told her, still paying avid attention, wanting to get it all done correctly. It was important to him. And that he possibly pick it up as fast as humanly possible, so he wanted to be able to get past the basics in short order. Whether or not he pulled that off remained to be seen.

"Very good," she told him with a smile, and underlined the last three letters of Marian's name. "What's cool about her name is that there's another name in it. I-A-N is Ian. So knowing the sound they make at the end of her name means that if you ever see someone with that name on their name tag or on paperwork, you can automatically recognize it. She wrote the name 'Ian' under Marian's name, indented, and circled the name in her name as well. "Same for the name Mary." She underlined and circled the first three letters of Marian's name and added a 'Y' on the end, saying the letters out loud so it would help jar his memory. It was the easiest thing she could think of doing, because the English language was kind of weird when it came to sounds versus spelling. "And this is my name." She carefully printed her name a couple of lines down, spacing them a little bit because it was so long. "And I have two words in my name. One at the beginning and one at the end." She underlined M-A-D (again saying it out loud) and wrote it on the next line. "Mad, as in 'I'm pissed off and going to kick your ass'. And then it ends in L-I-N-E, which is line. Like running lines for a play or standing in line." She wrote that under her name too.

Roy knew his alphabet, even though he was a bit rusty at it, but Maddy figured it was just a matter of finding the places they went in and if he could match sounds, hopefully he'd be able to pick it up faster. "Because a lot of times, long words are made up of a bunch of smaller words, so if you know the sounds those words make, you can sort of try mash it up in your head to figure out what it means. Like... when you put the letters C and E together, they make a 'S' sound." At the bottom of the page, she wrote the word 'Grace'. "So take what I showed you and try figure out what this word is. It shares something in common with one of the names we went over."

Roy looked at the word, and tried to work it out. "Grass?" he suggested, since the last thing she'd told him was that C and E made an S sound. So, he was pretty sure that was what the word was. He could definitely get the first part, since it started like his last name. That bit was easy. He smiled, a little tentatively, in hopes he'd gotten it correct.

"Very close," Maddy said with a nod. "You know how you say your last name and it starts sort of sounding like Gray-dee? Go from there and sound it out." She grinned at him, hoping he'd really believe her when she said he was really close to getting it. "Sometimes vowles -- A, E, I, O, U -- will sound how they're called. Sometimes they're weird. It's complicated, but that's why sounding it out helps. Hearing it and repeating it helps trying to figure it out." She wanted him to understand that it was a learning process and what she was trying to do with this particular word. That repeating it and sounding it out would help him figure it out.

That clicked it for him. "Oh." he said. "...grace?" he suggested, looking unsure, even if just a second ago he'd looked like he'd gotten it. This was probably going to be harder than he'd figured, and he hoped she didn't get frustrated and stop. Hopefully, she'd put up with him, and he'd learn, and get better. He could stop feeling quite so stupid in the world. Maybe he could go to the library and actually read something. Maybe.