WHO: Lilah and Ellie. WHAT: Ellie has a puppydog. Lilah meets said dog. There are also conversations. WHERE: The Library. WHEN: January 23rd, afternoon. RATING: Low, for science! STATUS: In progress.
It took a lot for Lilah to be angry with her twin. Leah had been through so much, and usually, just remembering that was enough for Lilah to let things go. But last night had been different. She wasn't sure why, as much as she'd tried to figure it out. The best she could guess, it was because Ellie was so similar to herself. The question had seemed innocuous to Lilah, and to see Leah fly off the handle? It felt oddly personal, and she'd felt almost hurt by it.
Friends were hard enough for her to come by, and Lilah didn't want Leah to scare off the one person that understood her most of the time.
Because honestly, it was kind of lonely being a crazy genius. She didn't deny the crazy part-- sometimes it felt like her mind was irreparably broken, like she couldn't hold a thought without another interrupting it. Layer upon layer, thing upon thing, worry upon worry, until she'd long forgotten what it was she was thinking about in the first place. Everything frightened her, and it made it harder to understand other people who seemed to act so normal when she couldn't be. They said things they didn't mean and didn't say things that they meant, and it was frustrating because no matter how hard she tried, she didn't understand. Not to mention most of the time, people didn't understand a word she was saying, or she accidentally insulted them by telling the truth.
But things were okay now. Or, okay-ish, Lilah hoped. She'd managed to barter a six-year-old for an unopened three pound bag of skittles. All it had taken was one of her pretty dresses (which she never wore anyway-- zombies didn't really care what you looked like) and two chocolate bars. And Leah had given her a card with a cute crab on it. So everything was kind of sort of mostly okay.
Brandon had been nice enough to take her to the Library, since Lilah didn't feel comfortable asking her twin for an escort so soon after arguing. He'd agreed to pick her up after a couple of hours, and had even let her take a large bin with some of Cinnamon's stuff: gently used dog brushes, a collar, and a half-bag of dog food. The bin was fairly large for Lilah's thin frame (arms made of chickens, she'd often say), so she dragged it through the library with a thunk-thunk every time it went over a bump.
Thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk! The bin protested loudly as Lilah dragged it upstairs, looking for Ellie and the apparently not-small puppy her friend had inherited.