Five fingered discounts and fun at the food court for new friends Who: Pavel and Sky When: Afternoon Where: The Mall
Pavel shifted his backpack on his shoulder as he quickly walked out of one of the clothing stores. With skateboard in one hand he walked with a hastened pace around the people until he got to the corner. Looking back over his shoulder, he let out a sigh over the fact he'd not been followed. In retrospect, he should have stopped walking when he looked back as when he circled the corner he circled into someone coming the other direction. At least he had reasonably quick reflexes and managed to side step, an arm moving out ot make sure he hadn't hurt the girl, who looked about his age. "Ogorchenno." He said quickly.
Shiny new cellphone in hand to replace the one she'd sent crashing to the pavement the previous morning on the parade route, Skylar decided now was as good a time as any to play with her new toy. She was pleased that despite the fact that her former phone had taken a rather nasty beating against the streets of Scarlet Oak, that they'd been able to pull off her saved texts as well as her contact list and get it all transferred on to the brand spanking new one. She was so busy looking down at the screen, text tweeting with Lucas that she wasn't exactly paying full attention to the fact that she was nearing a corner. At least until she nearly collided with a young man that had just made the turn into her direct path. Luckily for her, the boy had quicker reflexes and managed to avert near disaster and Skylar managed to keep hold of her new shiny. "Um, sorry?" she blinked, not recognizing the language he spoke; smiling sheepishly.
"Er, sorry." Pavel said, cringing slightly- he needed to learn to always speak english when not at home still apparently. "I said sorry." He cleared up, his accent very thickly Slavic. "I vas not paying tha attention." He glanced back in the direction he'd come again, making sure it was still clear before relaxing and letting himself forget the stolen clothes in his bag else make himself look suspicious. "You are not hurt, da?"
"Hurt? Oh no, I'm fine. No harm, no foul." Skylar replied with a little smile, giving the boy direct eye contact. Cute boy was cute and had very nice eyes, and the accent thing was kind of adorable too. Maybe having to start her life in Scarlet Oak wasn't going to be so bad after all, she had two of the best guy friends anyone could want, and already in the span of two days she'd met a couple of hotties by sheer random and slightly clumsy (on her part) happenstance. "And no need to be sorry, really, I wasn't paying attention either. So it's all good. Really."
"Horosho- good." Pavel said with a nod. This town really was full of cute girls. Why hadn't they moved here sooner? "Do you know vich vay to tha food?" He asked, looking down the direction she'd just came from as he adjusted his grip on his skate board. "Dis ees my first visit. Et ees so big." Everything was so different in America than it had been in Odessa. The stores were much bigger, but the outside was much smaller. It was crazy.
"Ah, the Food Court? It's actually down the opposite way you came." She replied, pointing down the way she was headed. She couldn't help but smile a bit, he really was much like a little lost puppy. Too cute. "I was actually heading over myself, so... you could easily just tag along... if you want?" Skylar asked, slipping her phone into her bag, she had plenty of time to kill, why not spend it getting to know the adorable foreign boy?
Looking back down the hall, Pavel nodded. "Dat vould be nice." He told her. It had been long enough and no one had followed him out of the store, so that meant he had to have not been spotted. His stills are still in tact and just as good on this side of the world. "Lead tha vey." With a gesture of his hand Pavel took step next to her.
"Right this way," She smiled as they started towards the food court. "I'm Skylar, by the way, my friends call me Sky... the smart-alec ones call me Skylark, but I do not encourage that unless you like a pointy elbow to the side." She snorted a laugh. "So I'm going to be Captain Obvious here and guess that you're not a local...?"
He didn't quite get the joke, but laughed slightly anyhow as he followed. "No, I am not. I am Pavel." He introduced himself. "I have just moved to America." He explained, to her. "Skylar is a very pretty name." He told her with a smile, taking a breath of relief once they passed the store he'd lifted from. With it behind him he was now ok to pay attention to the pretty girl.
"Pavel... that's like Russian, right?" She asked, glancing over at him curiously, it at least sounded like a Russian name, but she could have been totally off. "So all the places in the US and you picked Scarlet Oak, that's... random." Skylar noticed the boy seemed a little bit tense as they had started back in the direction he'd already come from but shrugged it off to the lad just being all turned around. "Thanks, I suppose it's an okay name, could have been worse." Like Prudence or something, the fact that she'd seen that on the list of baby names in one of her dad's notebooks made her shudder just a bit.
"Da, Ukrainian to be more precise. But I suspect many Russian children have dat name as vell." Pavel laughed a little at her comment about Scarlet Oak. "My Sistar ees going to school at tha school here. So I am coming vith her." He explained. "Et is pretty, pretty name for a pretty girl. Et ees unique name too, no?"
"So you're from the Ukraine, the United States must be like a whole different world, huh?" Skylar asked and then backtracked just a little. "Not that I know much more about it than from watching the little biography blurbs when I watch figure skating on TV, but it just seems really different... and that's kind of sounding bad no matter how I put it, isn't it?" She didn't want to come off as a snooty and idiotic typical American teenager, she really hoped she wasn't putting her foot in her mouth. "So, it's just you and your sister then?" she inquired, switching her purse to her other shoulder. Skylar's cheeks flushed a bit pinker when he called her a pretty girl, it had been awhile since anyone outside her family had told her such and she liked it, even if it made her feel slightly self conscious. "Thank you... yeah, there's not a lot of Skylars out there, though it's kind of a unisex name, really."
"Et ees very different. But not a bad different. Nuthing like home though." Pavel replied, not taking her comments the wrong way, As much as they were fact. "I grew up in Odessa, around lots of boats." He said, pointing out one way it was a bit different. "Yes, et is me and Yulia. She ees like a mothar. What ees, 'unisex'?" He asked, not familiar with the term.
"So you like it then, yeah? Are you guys planning to stay permanently or return home once your sister completes her education?" It was kind of a nosy question admittedly, but she was curious about how that kind of thing worked. She knew getting American citizenship wasn't exactly a cake walk, it likely wasn't all that easy to even gain entry for educational purposes and they'd managed that part alright, it seemed anyway. "Unisex... basically unisex means it can be for a girl or a boy, names, clothing, dorms, bathrooms... those sorts of things."
"Yea, et ees nice, so far. Lots of nice people and pretty girls and I do not think ve have thought dat far, I think Yuli vants me to go to university too." Pavel replied to her questions. Her explaination of Unisex made sense and he nodded. "So vill you be in school too? In tha fall?"
"University is probably a smart thing to do, no matter what country you settle in, you can't go wrong with a good education." She nodded. Skylar was already looking into universities herself, though she'd likely end up going to U of M, it was local and they supposedly had a fairly decent music department. "Yeah, looks like I will. I was just supposed to be here for the summer, I come up to Scarlet Oak to stay with my aunt every year and then go home to Detroit a few weeks before school starts... usually." She frowned thinking about her unexpected drive home a few days before only to find no trace of her mother. "But I'll be staying with my aunt for awhile longer while my mom works out some stuff." She fibbed a little, she honestly had no idea if her mom would ever be coming back or if she did, if she'd even want to go home again. "At least I won't be the only new kid in school, right?"
"No you von't." Pavel was comforted to know he wouldn't be the only new kid. It seemed there were a few new people in town. "Ve vill get lost togethar." He said witha small laugh. "Vill you be... senior?" He asked, taking a moment to remember what the term was called. He'd spent a little while getting to at least know the class levels of american schools before they'd come over. It wasn't that hard. Four levels and he was on the last.
"That we can, we newbies gotta stick together, right?" Skylar smiled, sure she had Theodore, Lucas and Blake already as friends, but you could never too many friendly faces to greet in the halls. "I'll be a junior this year, that's one year below a senior." She replied, making a face. "Two more years of high school, oh the joy." It wasn't that Skylar disliked school, she actually rather enjoyed it to the point of being slightly nerdy, not that her outward appearance would show however, no one would expect the little wild child was actually a bookworm in wolves clothing.
They finally reached the food court and Skylar came to a stop and looked around at the over abundance of options that spread out before them. "Now for the really tough life decisions... Pizza, Chinese or Hot Dog on a Stick?"
"Ve vill... I vill be a senior." He told her as he stopped next to her and looked around. "'amburgar sounds good." Pavel said, noticing the pictures over the McD's. He hadn't had a good piece of meat in a while. They'd not had a lot of money for food so Yulia and Pavel had been sticking to soup.
"Ahh, the classic American artery clogger, McDonald's it is." Skylar nodded, starting in the direction of the golden arches. Money wasn't really a problem for Skylar, it never had been, her mother had always seemed to have a never ending supply of it and her aunt Alyssa seemed to be set for life as well. Money was probably something Skylar tended to take for granted.
Stepping up to the counter, Skylar ordered cheeseburger meal and a vanilla shake for herself and took a small step to the side, motioning for Pavel to go ahead and order as she dug her debit card out of her wallet. "This one's on me courtesy of my darling mother, feel free to get whatever ya want."
"I could not ask you to do dat." Pavel told her, shaking his head. Sure they didn't have a lot of money at the moment, but he had just found a job so things were looking up. "But thank you for tha offar." He told her, insistant.
"Anytime, seriously not a big deal." Skylar smiled, swipped her card and entered her pin to finish her transaction before stepping off to the side to wait. She put her wallet away and pulled out her shiny new toy once again to check her twitter to see if she was missing anything with Lucas or Theodore while she waited.
Pavel got two $.89 cheeseburgers and a small soda and payed with the five in his wallet. He then moved over next to Skylar to wait. He admired her phone for a moment, he would need to get one for him and Yulia with his first paycheck... or when the rest of her student aid came in. Once their food came up Pavel took up her tray as well as his, being a gentleman. "Lead tha vey."
Skylar quickly put her phone away after making a quick tweet about the awesome of random run-ins with handsome strangers and smiled when for the second time in as many days it had been proven that chivalry was indeed live and well and rather in abundance within the town of Scarlet Oak when Pavel played the gentleman and carried her tray for her. It was a simple gesture but a pretty cool one to be sure.
She glanced around the food court and spied a table off in the corner and out of the direct line of foot traffic and well away from screaming tots and made her way over, laying her purse down on the floor under the corner chair and plunking herself down upon it. "See now this is nice, here I thought I was going to have to eat lunch and people watch on my own, and by pure happenstance I now have the company of a new friend. Today is shaping up to be pretty damn cool."
Pavel set down their trays. "I must agree." He replied. "Noo friend, and I have a noo job. Et has been a very good day." Pavel sat down, once she'd sat and took a sip of his soda. "Der are quite a number of people here today to vatch, yes?" He asked, unsure how crowded American malls usually got. The shopping villas in Odessa, and the shorefront often got crowded at certian times, but there really wasn't anything directly comparable with this place- not directly. Pavel liked crowds. Crowds meant people became distracted by trying to get through them, and they were easy to blend into. It meant easier liberation of a wallet or two was easier.
Skylar smiled at him as she pulled off the lid to her vanilla shake and a second later dragged a french fry through it. She popped it in her mouth and gave a little bobble headed nod. "New job? Awesome, I was thinking of getting a summer job, just to have something to do... but then I didn't, figured it wasn't worth the trouble of getting a work permit, it's not like I need the money anyway. Did that sound as bad as I think that sounded?" She wrinkled her nose, looking around at the people milling about. "And yeah, seems to be quite a variety of folk here to watch today." Skylar liked crowds for different reasons, she just liked to watch to see the social dynamics, she found social interaction interesting.
It did sound a little privileged, but really in Pavels mind, every American kid could be the same way. He'd not met enough yet to really get an idea. "I need a job to help get food." Pavel said, as if clarifying why he didn't fit into the same mold as she did. "But et ees so strange here, tha jobs are nuthing like home." At least not the manual labor one's he'd done, mainly on the docks. "Even so, tha Owl's Nest hired me, vith no experience." He seemed a little proud of that fact.
Skylar did feel slightly bad for taking her money situation for granted, she was far better off than a lot of kids her age, including some of her closest friends. Just sometimes she forgot that not everyone was as lucky as she was to have to never want for anything of monetary value. Though really she would gladly give up most of her possessions to have her dad back and the 'normal' family she'd had when she was tiny. "They don't do on the job training where you're from?" she asked, cocking her head to the side.
Pavel chuckled slightly. "Not really tha same. I vill be cleaning tables here. Home I did many things; helped tha fisharmen unload dar boats, vashed down tha decks, untangled nets- vat evar I could find. Nuthing tha same every day." He explained. He didn't seem embaressed, or ashamed he wasn't huge on money, and of course he left out the job that involved swindling tourists which had brought in more money than many of his other jobs.
Skylar may have taken having money for granted, but she didn't look down on those that weren't as fortunate as her either. It was admirable that he worked to help his family, it sounded like the job at the Owl's Nest would likely be a cake walk for him by comparison. "Likely more variety than you'll be getting in food service," she nodded. "Though likely prepared you for dealing with whatever they throw at you. Working with the public I hear is a pretty thankless job, but somehow I think you'll handle it without much problem." Skylar said, dragging another fry through her shake before popping it in her mouth.
"I hope to do vell." He replied with a nod. Pavel finished his hamburger, enjoying it very much. Crumpling up the paper as he took a sip of his soda he nodded to his tablemate. "Thank you very much for showing me to tha food. I should go, I must get home before et ees too late. I do not want to vorry Yuli." He said as he got up from the table. "I vill see you." He liked to get to know the pretty girls, especially those he'd go to school with the next year. He still believed that nothing would be a better impression then being able to walk into school on the first day and have all the girls say hi to him and walk with him, while making all the other boys jealous. It would let them know what was what.