Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice

Who: Maddy and Pepper
Where: Sixth Street Bridge
When: Afternoon

The little 'neighborhood' under the bridge was kind of daunting. It was the people with nowhere to go. The people who felt they had no choice but to live in whatever nook they could find in the middle of winter by the water. Maddy thought it was kind of ridiculous. If you tried hard enough, you could find a place. She had. Roy had. But it wasn't something she was going to bring up to Pepper, who, of course, hated taking charity from anyone. She got that, she totally did. Still.

"Pepper?" she called, nearing what she knew was Pepper's place. She hoped the girl was there and not some other vagrant. Maddy was really not in the mood for that. "Pepper, I need you like, right now!"

Pepper was there - she'd spent every waking moment since she'd got her space back cleaning it out and making it hers again. For once she'd been grateful for the torrential rain - even well under the bridge, everything was wet, puddles of water so big that the dry parts were more islands in the lake, but at least it'd helped her clean out the smell of piss before finding some crating to put down so that she could keep her newly put-together bed with a little lean to over it out of the water. So much of her stuff that she'd had before was gone, so she was back at square one with furnishings for her little place, but it was hers. Maybe she'd get a knife, to make sure that nobody could take it from her again. When she heard Maddy call, she popped her head out, the stubble that covered it longer now - it had been over a week since she'd last shaved it all off.

Maddy wasn't expecting her friend to pop out of her spot like a gopher and she jerked back immediately, fists raised before realizing that it was Pepper. She relaxed for a moment before pointing at her rather authoritatively, which Pepper probably wouldn't take so well, but this was important. "You! We need to talk," she commanded. Arm still out, her eyes moved from Pepper to the figurative lakes under the bridge. "On higher ground, preferably."

Pepper grinned and beckoned. "Sure! Come on up," she said, indicating the bricks that were missing from the bridge that had always formed the more sheltered and permanent part of her patch. It was all still a little damp from where she'd been cleaning, but it was out of the water, and there was enough room for two, as long as neither girl minded sitting on the edge with legs dangling.

Pleased that Pepper seemed to be in a good mood, Maddy carefully headed over there. She judged the height -- nearly as tall as her, but then that wasn't such a difficult feat -- and pulled herself up, glad that she wore her overalls because if she hadn't, her legs would've been all scratched up. "Okay, so can you do me a favor first?" she asked, because she really needed to clarify what she needed. Pepper was the only one she could talk to and while maybe wouldn't be the best source of advice, at least Pepper would listen and that's what she needed.

Pepper was already settled by the time Maddy got up there and she shifted over slightly to give the other girl the bulk of the room. "Sure - what's up?" she asked. Her normal good humour was returning now that she had her place back. the world seemed much more on an even keel.

Pulling her legs up indian style, she looked at Pepper quite seriously. "For the next few minutes or so as I tell you this story of heartache, intrigue, and epic adventure, you need to stop being the enemy of the color pink and embrace the fact that you are a woman, because women are awesome and Roy isn't a girl and he would probably flip out and freak and possibly pull out all his hair. His brain might explode too. So Pepper? You are my only hope."

Pepper raised an eyebrow. "You gonna make me wanna hurl?" she asked, since that was usually what came when someone wanted to be girlie - and if this had to come with a warning, then it had to be really girlie.

"Is that a no? Because that means you are a lame person and an Enemy Of Woman Kind." It deserved capitals. It wasn't like Maddy wore pink herself, but it was a fact that pink was for girls and blue was for boys in identifying whether or not you were a girl. Apparently. "'Cause we gotta stick together. We're like in this epic battle for the future of this city and we have to beat the boys." Exactly what this epic battle was and what would happen if they won and the boys lost was completely irrelevant. It was the Principle Of The Thing.

"Fine - I'll listen, but I won't promise not to hurl. I'll just... try and safe that until later, kay?" she said, her offer of a compromise. She did actually want to know what was so damn important, but she was pretending like she didn't - it, also, was the Principle of the Thing. She didn't do 'girlie' and she wanted to keep that reputation in tact.

Maddy nodded, accepting the compromise. She looked down at her hands, taking in a deep breath. "So, Dodge and I sorta almost had sex." That certainly made what happened that morning all the more real. And it was true. Stuff was really close to that point. As in, had maybe she'd taken that step, they would've done so. She frowned. Wow.

"Ewwww, really? That's what you came here to tell me?" Pepper asked her, pulling a face, all promises to actually be a girl about this entirely forgotten with the news. "And with Dodge? You do know he, like, flirts with everything in a skirt and thinks he owns half the world - including you, right?" yeah, possibly Pepper could have been quite a bit more diplomatic with her responses there.

She pressed her lips together in a thin line, holding in her immediate angry reaction right back. "Correction: I have Dodge totally wrapped around my pinkie finger." She wiggled one for emphasis. "And it's not like we just fell into bed or something. We made out yesterday afternoon. Okay, so I was watching rehearsals and working on ideas for posters 'cause they hired me to do some, right? And Dodge shows up like, totally out of the blue and we were talking and I half-lied to his face about meaning something I said to him and we're sitting like we usually do and I kiss him. We do that sometimes. It's just this thing. Then he left. I went to work. I come back, he's there asleep. We're talking, he kisses my knee 'cause I said I banged it and then we're making out, I'm pulling his shirt off, he's got my shirt off and it's totally storming outside and we spend like, the next two hours not having sex but doing a bunch of other stuff an it's on my own terms." She made sure to emphasis that. That this was the first time she'd ever been with a guy and she had a say in everything that was happening. "And then we fell asleep." Among... some other things, but Maddy wouldn't subject Pepper to that much.

"Also, there's this... I dunno. Agreement? I guess. He can flirt, but he doesn't get to bring girls around or talk about them or anything fucking annoying and he swears to never hurt me and keep me happy, which means he's wrapped around my finger. Because he wouldn't be doing stuff with other girls because he knows it'd hurt me." She was quite positive at this point that he would know that. Unlike earlier the day before, she didn't feel bad feelings about it. "And... I like him."

Pepper didn't look convinced. "You think you have that guy wrapped around your finger just because if he has other girls he needs to keep them out of your sight?" she asked, interpreting that a completely different way. "Because he could just as easily decide that it wouldn't hurt you as long as you didn't know. Flirting, but not bringing girls around or talking about them is not the same as doing what you say or being, like, faithful or anything like that and boys can't be trusted for things like that. They're all skeezy idiots and Dodge tells me I'm pretty and stuff even though I tell him not to and... So, you like him. So what! This is the guy who would have preferred never to see you again than to let you do what you wanted with your life - I know, I talked to him about it and he was all... 'My way or the high way' about it, Maddy!"

"He promised he would always come back to me," Maddy said quietly. "And he'd do whatever he could to keep me happy. And I told him that being with him made me happy." She ran a hand through her hair and leaned against the wall and stretched her legs out in front of her before letting them dangle. "He makes me feel like I'm running for my life, eating an ice cream sundae, and ten packs of sugar coated Twinkies all at the same time and it makes my stomach do backflips and like my heart is going to, like, explode. In a good way." She looked at Pepper, frowning a little. "Everyone keeps telling me I should do things that makes me happy. This makes me happy."

"What do you want me to say, Maddy?" Pepper asked her, feeling sorry for the other girl right now. This was what she never wanted - she didn't want to feel this, this, this stupid. "Do you want me to be happy for you? Because you're willing to put up with a guy just because he's 'promised he'll come back to you'?" she exclaimed. "You deserve a guy that would never leave you in the first place. You wanted me to be a girl for a moment and be good with pink - well, that's it! If I ever have a guy - which I'm not saying I will, but if I did - then he'd always be there and he'd never look at anyone else and he'd be fine with me the way I am and never want me to change, because he'd love me just the way I am and that's that!" As much as Pepper would always deny it, she'd actually had thoughts, quite a lot of thoughts, about that very subject. Just so she'd be able to write every other guy off as 'not good enough', of course.

"But Dodge isn't asking me to change! And do you think I like feeling like that? Because I don't even know what I feel except that it makes my toes curl and I get stupid smiles sometimes and it's girly and stuff and I know that but you know, my options are kinda limited. The only other guy in my life I think of as a brother and I'm pretty positive he thinks of me like a little sister and yeah, he's not gonna leave me, but that's not the point. And I've never felt that with Dodge. And if this is what it takes to have one less person in my life leave me alone for years, then that's what I'm going to do." So yeah, she was acknowledging that Pepper had a point. Maddy knew she deserved the best and right now? This was the best she had. "You think this is a bad idea, huh?"

"Why do you have to have a guy in your life at all anyway? It's like - it's like you're settling for something just because when you shouldn't be and he is asking you to change - he didn't want you working like... that, did he? And sure, you decided not to do that all by yourself, but he gave you an ultimatum and want if he decides that he doesn't like something else about you, huh? Something that maybe you do like, but it's him or you - what then?" Pepper asked her.

"I'm not saying that. It's not my fault that the majority of people in my life are guys," Maddy pointed out. And it was true. She wasn't really too keen on other girls in general, but Pepper was different so it was okay. "And Dodge was right. I mean it was extreme, sure, but he had a point. It was a stupid thing I was doing. That's a worst case situation right there." There was a certain extent of attempted rationalization there, that Dodge wouldn't ever give her one of those ultimatums again or anything like that. "I'm not saying he's right all the time. I'm the one whose right all the time, but this was one of those weird kind of things."

"That makes not sense, you know that? you can't be right when you're wrong. And I'm not saying you were right - what you were going to do was just plain stupid and I told you that myself, but it was the way he went about it and telling someone what to do and giving them ultimatums like that isn't fair and I don't know if it was just about this I mean, this is Dodge - he likes things to be just his way and he does always think he's right and everything and I just don't want to see you end up kinda giving way all the time and settling for something rather than actually ending up with someone you actually deserve," Pepper told her.

Maddy fell quiet at that, looking away from Pepper and focused on her shoes instead. She knew Pepper wasn't going to be all gung-ho about this, but she hadn't exactly been expecting a lecture. "I guess." She tugged on her pants, fixing the denim in lieu of anything else to say. "So what do you think I should do?"

Pepper shrugged and looked out over the road. "I think you should do what you want to do. Just... Don't think this is it, I guess. I mean, you sound - on one hand you're talking giddy. But on the other, you sound like you're settling. Like you're doing this because you don't think you can do any better. It's just odd to me," she admitted. But then, she knew she ran from anyone who even called her pretty, so what did she know?

"Well, it's not like I'm going to marry him or anything," she said, pulling a face at that idea. "It's not like I'm looking to move in with him and start some happy family with a bunch of kids ready made. That's just creepy." Her and Roy were going to get a house, even if Roy might not believe that, she did, and it was going to happen. Dodge wasn't in that picture except that he wouldn't be allowed to just walk right in. "I deserve the best because I am the best. And Dodge isn't the best, but right now, it suits what I want." After saying that, she wasn't so sure about it and it felt wrong to say it, but she didn't take it back.

Pepper looked back over again and smiled. the one thing she'd always liked about Maddy was the other girl's total and absolute confidence in herself. It was one of the reasons she always reacted so badly when it seemed that the girl was selling herself short. If Maddy didn't deserve the best in life, nobody did. At least Maddy always seemed like she would go out and find it if it didn't come to her. "Well, as long as it's that," she said.

She exhaled slowly and leaned back, smiling a little back at Pepper. "You're not really an enemy of the color pink. You're just badass. And thanks." Pepper wasn't the most girliest girl in the world, but she was smart and she was on her side. Most of the time anyway, and Maddy never felt like a scolded child. They were really on the same level, which she liked. The biggest plus being that Pepper wasn't nuts. She couldn't have gone to Alyson about this. Alyson would have no idea what she was talking about.

Pepper raised her jaw a little. "I'm badass and an enemy of the colour pink," she proclaimed, then broke into another grin. "Only, not so badass - Dodge had to get me this place back, but don't you ever mention to him that I couldn't have done it without him!"" she confided, lowering her voice.

"I promise," she swore, raising her pinky for a pinky promise. "He's a fucking pain in the ass sometimes, but he's a good guy, Pepper. He comes through when we ask him. And we've gotta stick together out here, don't we?" Especially girls like them. Easy pickings on the streets. "I'd be pretty pissed off at him if he didn't help you out." She gave her a haughty, superior look and flipped her hair over her shoulder. "He'd have to face the wrath of the Supreme Goddess of the Universe."

"Yeah, well - I don't like owing people things, see? It makes me uncomfortable. And I know, kinda, that he's good for it - but still. Doesn't sit right with me, so - don't tell," she said, even though Maddy had already promised and everything.

"S'drawback," Maddy agreed with a nod, not a fan of being indebted either. "But I won't. No need giving him a bigger head that." She considered the brick below her that made up part of Pepper's spot. "Did you lose a lot of stuff?" she asked. Maddy couldn't imagine someone taking over her attic.

Pepper shrugged a shoulder. "Didn't have much to begin with. But yeah, I guess. A few things. And he ruined the rest, so I got rid of them too. He was filthy - didn't take care of anything," she said, unimpressed. Pepper might not have much, and what she had wasn't new, or even necessarily clean per se, but she looked after her stuff.

She pulled a face, rolling her shoulders as if she could get the imagery off her back. "Uhg. At least you got him out. You know, you're more than welcome to stay at my place if you ever need to." Maddy was pretty sure Pepper wouldn't take her up on the offer, but she wanted to put it out there again.

"Thanks - but I like having my own place. And anyway, being all shut up in a place? Dunno if I can do it. I like having space around me," she admitted. She knew that most people wouldn't get it, but she did truly like her home under the bridge. She knew people here, people looked out for her. okay, maybe not enough to help her against big bully guy, but enough to make sure that she'd not been truly hurt by him. he wouldn't have gotten away with some of the threats he'd made to her, she was sure of that (at least, she was now that she didn't have to worry abotu them anymore).

"Yeah, I know what you mean. But it's open if you need it." Like if this flooding got any worse or she needed to lay low for a bit. "How'd the guy get in, anyway? Like, while you were out or something?" Maddy surveyed the lay of the land. It was like a little neighborhood and people knew Pepper stayed there, so how someone would've come in and lay claim to an already claimed spot confused her.

"Dunno - I was there, but... Lots of other people weren't," she explained. "He kinda jumped me." She didn't sound too happy about it, and she wasn't - it was embarrassing and she did feel let down by the others around. Another example of how she could only actually rely on herself. George, Henry, the other homeless, they were fine - but they weren't always there. And they hadn't been there.

Maddy was quiet, hearing the unhappiness in her friend's tone and gently bumped her shoulder against Pepper's in a show of solidarity. "Well, you gave him what for, didn't you? And he got what was coming, so it turned out alright. Fucker knows not to come back around."

Pepper looked across and smiled. "Yeah. Yeah - definitely. He knows that now," she agreed, gaining enthusiasm throughout the sentence as she put aside the thoughts that she hadn't given him what for. She'd not even got in the kick she'd been intending. In fact, seeing the guy being set upon by Dodge's gang had troubled her. She hadn't liked it. It had made her realise that she really didn't like violence. "It's all gonna be okay now. And I'm back and not going anywhere at all. I'm on the lookout for like a little string of bells or something that I can put up as an early warning sound. Or maybe I'll get a dog, or something."

"A dog would be a good idea," she agreed. "But you'd have to train it and feed it and stuff. You could set up traps or something. Traps could be fun. Ask Roy, maybe? He's good at putting together stuff. He could help you figure something out." Roy was definitely smart that way. He could build anything, Maddy was pretty sure of that.

"Ooh, traps! That could be good - cunning traps that only me and my friends knew how to get round and that like made other people fall down wells, or get thrown into the sky or eaten by mice or something!" pepper agreed, ignoring the slight - or definite - lack of realism in all of those suggestions.

"I used to have a pet mouse, back when I first moved into the theater. I named him Theodore Longtree. And you need to have maybe a makeshift door. With a password as the last way to get through and if you get the password wrong, a dinosaur comes out and eats the intruder. Because getting through the other traps to the final destination deserves a pretty cool death." Who needed realism when you could come up with really cool ideas? It was all about the creativity and Maddy, if anything, was creative.

"Dinosaurs would be good - or a three headed giant dog that drools everywhere," Pepper agreed. "Or when you press the bell a trapdoor opens and you fall into a pit of snakes. Or fish that eat you, like sharks or something. Or the sewers." The sewers was just a nod to realism. Though she was tempted to put sharks in the sewers. That was reasonable - there was water down there.

"What about alligators? They can chase you up onto land. And they're big too, like in Peter Pan." She was pretty sure they could get just as big as the one in the play too, and that they might be a lot scarier than sharks because of that. "It might be hard with a giant dog because you run into the problem of having to train it."

"What, harder to train than an alligator?" Pepper teased. "And, anyway, if I had a giant dog, it'd already be trained - I'd get a trained dog from the pound and it would love me and nobody else but me and it would not let anything ever get to me ever. Plus, it'd be furry and warm at night. Which alligators aren't," she pointed out, deciding this was a real plus point.

Maddy nodded, having to agree with that. Especially with the terrible weather that had been hitting the city the past couple of days. "What would you name the dog?" she asked curiously, wondering if a dog could be a kickass guard dog and snuggly at the same time.

"Hmm, names.... Woof? Then he'd know his own name! Or...Butch, cos he would be. Maybe Danger, just cos - really it would depend on what he looked like. And his personality. That's important. Lke I'm Pepper cos I'm fiery," she said, decisively.

She grinned at how sure Pepper sounded about how to name the dog and the pride her friend seemed to have about her name. "You're spicy hot, that's for sure," Maddy teased, poking her tongue out at her. "That's a good way to go about it. Don't want to think about naming a dog something like Spot when he won't have any. Saves on the disappointment." Maybe she should get a dog. A guard dog would be nice, although that might have to wait until she got her house.

"Of course I am!" Pepper grinned. "And it could be Spot, like in 'spot the spot' if he doesn't have any. Like a joke, or to confuse people or something," she suggested, definitely warming to the idea of getting a dog, though she doubted even the pound would give her one. Which meant taming a stray - that could be hard, some of them were vicious.

"I think Spot could totally be a confusing name," Maddy agreed. "You'd be all 'get 'em, Spot!' and people would be looking for a dog with spots and instead this big black dog comes lunging out or something. All super sneaky and stuff." Yeah, no one would mess with a girl with a big, scary black dog.

Pepper nodded. "Right, exactly - surprise them and everything. Course, you could do the same with a black dog called snowy. But... I don't like snowy." She paused and looked across at Maddy. "How hard do you reckon it would be to tame a stray?" she asked.

"If you wanna get bit, I say go for it," Maddy said honestly. Strays in this city were usually pretty vicious, especially with the dog fighting that went down in certain places. Abused animals never turned out cuddly. "I guess if you found one that hadn't been on the street long, not beat too bad, you could." She may be reckless, but Maddy certainly wasn't stupid and you just didn't mess with animals that you didn't know.

Pepper wrinkled her nose. "I'm not really a fan of being bit. That kinda hurts and you can get all kinds of diseases. Like... I don't want to get rabies or anything. You know you go all grr and mad and frothy at the mouth and everything. I don't want that. I don't want to get sick in any way. maybe a dog's not the right way to go. Unless I could rescue a puppy or something, like if someone tried to drown one in a bag in the river and I rescued it." She paused. "Though, I don't swim too good..."

"People who try to drown puppies are evil." Maddy couldn't swim, period, although she'd never admit that and considering how often she would walk the rails of the very bridge they were under, it just doubled the recklessness of her behavior. "Maybe you could work at a shelter and help take care of the ones there, then maybe they'd let you adopt one." Maddy was all about jobs right now and making money and Pepper could use the money. It was always good to have some.

"Work at a shelter?" Pepper asked. She'd not done too well with jobs to date. Being somewhere she had to be on a regular basis wasn't something she'd been particularly good at so far. She kept coming up with excuses, but that was what it boiled down to. Pepper was terrible at holding down a job.

Maddy nodded. "Yep. Help take care of the abandoned cats and dogs that need someone to take care of 'em. Or volunteer or something. Might be fun. Then you could figure out if a dog really would be a good idea to help guard your patch. And you'd know the best way to take care of one if you got one." It sounded like a good idea to her and Maddy thought that her ideas were the best course of action at least ninety-five percent of the time.

"Maybe..." Pepper didn't sound so sure. It seemed like an okay suggestion, practically, but still an awful lot of work. "But, they probably wouldn't want someone like me around anyhow. Probably think I have more fleas than the dogs, y;know. Which - I don't, by the way!" she added, quickly, in case Maddy actually thought that maybe she did.

"I didn't think you did!" Maddy said, a little bewildered. "I dunno. It's an idea that you should keep in mind, I think. Options are always good to have." She said it very knowingly, as if she was a world-wise old woman and not a barely-sixteen year old street girl who had never been out of the city in her life.

"Right - a girl's gotta have options," Pepper agreed with a grin. She could go with options, she just wasn't entirely sure if she could go with work. Maybe. Maybe not. She didn't know. "So - you got plans for the day? Or you seeing Dodge again?" she teased.

Maddy's face turned pink and she huffed, scowling. "No. I've got stuff to do. I've got paintings to practice and stuff. I'm not some starry eyed kid tied to his wrist."

Pepper pulled a face, making fun. "You sure?" she teased, but she was glad to hear that. At least Maddy wasn't lost entirely, and that meant something. "You any good? At the paintings, I mean?"

She looked at Pepper with a mildly disbelieving look on her face. "Any good?" she asked, pulling out a little notebook from her jacket pocket and handing it over. It was all the portrait sketches she was doing for Peter Pan. "They're gonna pay me to show put those up in the lobby on opening night," she said proudly, preening a bit. Was she good? What kind of question was that?

Pepper took the notebook and looked at them. She liked pictures - her reading wasn't too good, but you didn't need to be able to read to look at pictures and these were pretty. "Hey, these are really good," she said, flicking through them.

"I know," she said primly, watching Pepper flipping through the notebook. "I don't know how long I've been drawing. Forever, I think." Forever wasn't impossible, but she'd been sketching one way or another since she could remember.

"So - will those be the ones that will go up, or...?" pepper asked hesitantly, not knowing how these things worked. She would have thought that they'd need to be bigger. And maybe on better paper. She saw big full colour posters outside the theatre, but inside - she didn't know what kinds of things they had inside. She'd never been in even as far as the lobby.

Maddy shook her head. "No, these are just the ideas I've been throwing around. Once I have all the ideas perfect, then I'll do the final drafts." She pointed to the one that Pepper had open. "This one is my favorite." It was the Darling children looking up at Peter Pan flying around above them. "I think they said something about using them for an auction or charity for the children's wing at the hospital or something."

"Wow, that's cool, though i hope they're paying you extra for it. Charity's fine for them's that can afford it," pepper said. Not that she took charity. Well, aside from the soup kitchen - but that didn't count for reasons she couldn't quite define. usually due to hunger. But charity was something rich people did.

"I'm getting paid a for doing them and they said if they auction off good, that I might get a little extra and maybe they'll ask me to do more," she said proudly. "Maybe keep me on retainer, which I think means that when they have big plays like this, they'll hire me on to do paintings and stuff. Gets my art out there. Maybe people will start hiring me." It wasn't something she'd thought about much until her conversation with Roy the day before, the discussion of color and canvas and she had to admit that she liked the idea of living off her painting.

"hey - that's really great! You could be really going places with that. And maybe get that house you wanted, all legit-like," Pepper pointed out. She could imagine Maddy going off and becoming some kind of famous artist. "People could come from all over to buy your stuff, and maybe you could have a gallery or something, and your house could be full of your paintings."

That got a bit of a blush from Maddy, at Pepper's enthusiasm about her drawings and she looked down at her feet with a little smile on her face. "I do like that idea," she agreed with a nod, looking back at Pepper. "Painting stuff can get expensive, so I gotta save up." She had to save up for a lot of things. "Maybe I'll draw something of you. Maybe in a pink dress, since you love the color so much."

Pepper narrowed her eyes and scowled at Maddy. "You know - I could go off you..." she said. "No pink. No dresses. I'm not a girl. half the people round here think I'm a boy anyways and I don't have a problem with that! I'm me and that's all there is to it!" she declared.

"Pretty Pepper prancing in pink," she teased again, completely unperturbed by the narrowing of eyes and the scowl.

There were some things that pepper really had no sense of humour about, and appearance and how people perceived her was one of them. She gave Maddy a dirty look and jumped down from their perch, deftly making her way back to the ground before looking up at Maddy. "I don't prance - but I do have a lot to do, and I'm sure you need to work on your drawings. None of which will have me in them at. all," she declared, firmly.

Maddy shrugged, repocketing her little book and hopped down, forsaking the makeshift ladder to land nimbly on her feet. "I promise I won't draw anything of you if you don't want me to," she swore with a little salute. "No dresses even if I did." An apology disguised as a... not apology.

Pepper looked mistrusting, but slightly less pissed than she had a moment ago. "Sure you've got better things to draw anyhow," she mumbled. "Like your picture stuff that you'll get paid for and everything."

She tilted her head, having just been able to catch that and suppressed an eye roll. "I'll catch ya later, Pepper," she smiled, bumping her shoulder with her fist. "Stay dry, okay?" She'd draw something for her friend. Something that she was sure Pepper might like even if the girl might not actually say it.

"Yeah, you too - and good luck with the... well, everything," she said, Maddy really seemed to be a girl who was going places, which gave Pepper a pang, as much as she hated to admit it. She'd miss her when she was gone, that was for sure.

Maddy raised an eyebrow but nodded. "Yeah. Thanks." She wondered if there was something wrong, but wasn't sure what to say about it. "Stay safe and dry. Come by if you need a place." Because the offer was still there. With another nod, Maddy made her way out of Pepper's spot, wondering if yet something else had been changed.