mint limeade

six cups of water, divided

Casey glared up at the yellow bags of chips on the top rack as it half dangled just out of her reach. The shelves were too wobbly for her to put her full weight on them for even a second and if she knocked it with something from the toy section she knew she'll get banned for real this time, and that wasn't on the to-do list. This was the only location that even sold this flavor and nothing was going to stop her from getting her fix.

Except the shelf, apparently. And if her resolve ever broke on the whole getting banned thing, it was gonna be the first to go.

"How many?"

She jerked and swiveled towards the voice that suddenly appeared to her right—when did they even show up? Casey swore she would've heard something at least, but no, someone just popped out of nowhere like a whack-a-mole. Their hands tucked into the pockets of their baggy maroon hoodie and their hood was flipped up, and they had on some sort of gym shorts with a hammerhead shark silhouette at the bottom of one leg.

"... What?"

"Chip bags," the stranger said. And yeah, stranger danger and all that, but Hammerhead tipped their head at the shelf she'd been glowering at for the last couple minutes. "How many do you want?"

"Um." Casey mentally recounted the allowance in her wallet. "Three?"

A hand reached up for those stupid yellow bags that shouldn't have been stocked so high to begin with and they snagged three of them without stretching. And when that one arm brought them down and offered them up, their other hand pulled down their hood.

"Here." And she—her hair was pink. Cotton candy pink, freshly dyed. "The seaweed flavor's good too."

"I've never had seaweed." Casey stared longer than what was probably polite and, "I thought you had a bunch of ear piercings?"

Her cheeks bloomed red before she could stop herself, and the older girl only quirked a brow.

"I take them off at the gym. Casey, then? Leon's sister?" Hammerhead asked. Casey nodded dumbly, then watched as a hand extended her way. "Sakura. Nice to meet you."

Scars marked her palms and fingers and, when Casey slowly took the hand to shake it, she felt the dottings of toughened skin all over. The handshake she wasn't expecting, but to be fair it wasn't like she had a lot of expectations to begin with. Leon talked about her enough that she had a vague idea of who he was dating, but she wasn't on any social media and didn't like being in pictures. Sounded pretty sketchy to her, but Claire seemed to like her and her friends too, and Claire was way cooler than Leon could ever be.

But it was also... she didn't know, Sakura just never really sounded like his type. And if his ex was anyone to go by, she expected a lot more lipstick and manicured nails and handshakes that didn't have such a firm grip.

She blinked down at her hand when Sakura took hers back. "Uh, nice to meet you too." Her head raised back up. "Are you really my brother's girlfriend?"

"Yeah."

"He asked you out first? And you said yes?"

"I like him too."

Sakura's face stayed blank, and her tone didn't change once.

"Like... for real?"

"I wouldn't waste my time if I didn't."

"Huh." Casey blinked again. "I kind of had a whole thing planned out for when I finally got to meet you, but I'll be honest—you're a lot different than I thought, so now I'm just kind of... confused. No offense."

Sakura tipped her head to the end of the aisle nearest to them and shoved her hand back in her hoodie pocket before walking off. Casey startled a brief second before jogging to catch up to those long strides from even longer legs, arms full of puffed-up plastic.