in ur game, stealing ur ota
So far, freelance photography in Lawrence was working out fine - the newspapers were willing to pay her to get decent photos, giving a couple of assignments here and there already. It was working, but that didn’t mean it was a well-paying gig. She was used to not making much - hell, back home she’d had rent to worry about, too, so she’d had even less money on-hand, but at least there she’d had years to get herself established. Here, she needed to buy all new... everything, really.
Kat had been putting off shopping for a while now - making due with one or two outfits bought quickly from the second-hand store not that far from the complex, doing laundry way more often than she’d have liked to, and just generally avoiding the issue. She really was not a big fan of shopping, okay? It was like every time she went into a store, the most annoying people ever happened to be in the same areas as she was. And, really, was there some kind of unwritten rule that women in the clothing department had to talk to each other, even if they were strangers? Kat didn’t exactly enjoy being harassed by some blond fondling pink miniskirts, asking her what she thought of this ‘ohmygosh so super cute’ top.
Seriously, she was pretty sure she’d much rather run into Lucifer himself.
...which maybe she would, who knew? It was Wal Mart after all, and pretty much everyone said the place was evil, so whatever.
Annoying blond woman turned away by a couple of biting remarks about how the pink from her top clashed a bit with the orange of her fake tan, Kat grabbed some clothes and high-tailed it out of there before the woman started crying or something. Normally achieving crying was sort of her goal in situations like that, but apparently it was a lot less fun crushing people’s spirits without someone to brag about it to. She couldn’t call her sister or Ethan, and tell them about it - they weren’t here. And, sure, she had the neighbor kid to harass, and Epiphany was pretty cool, but it wasn’t quite the same thing.
After she got out of the clothing area, she made a few stops (coffee, some mugs, a hammer and some nails, a couple dozen of those free paint-sample cards, and a couple tiny bottles of pepper spray, on a whim) and then headed off towards the front of the store, planning on grabbing some chocolate or something before she left, because, really, it was probably lunch time by now, and chocolate bars were totally acceptable lunches as long as they also had peanuts or something. She wasn’t really paying a whole lot of attention to her surroundings, just sort of darting out of one aisle into another, and narrowly avoided a proper collision as she completely obstructed the walkway. Definitely her fault.
“Hey, buddy, watch where you’re going.”
Of course, she wasn’t going to apologize for it.
On second glance, he was sorta familiar. Like, his face, she was pretty sure she'd seen him before somewhere, or whatever. But more important than that, he looked like he was trying to be a tree or something. Seriously, Kat was pretty sure there was no way it was safe to be that tall.