The Evanent

Chapter 6: Atticus

Padmei came to a stop in the parking lot of a small shopping center, which only had a total of 5 stores in this small stretch of land. There was a movie stop, auto tags shop, pet shop, clothing shop, and Grocery store. The tiny parking lot was almost completely empty, aside from us, there were only 3 other cars. As soon as Mei stepped outside the car, all of her energy seemed to rush back to her. She all but sprinted across the nearly empty parking lot, straight toward the clothing shop, Annie's Anything Attire. Mannequins stood in the window dressed in everything from suits, tuxes, and dresses, to jeans and T-shirts.

"Hurry up, slow poke!" Mei was already standing in the door frame, forcing me to jog to catch up. Crossing over the threshold was like getting hit with all the cold in the Arctic, it felt amazing on my flushed face, making me home sick for my favorite place, which was almost always chilled.

A rolling rack came to rest directly in front of us, it was filled with clothes marked "clearance". A tiny red head revealed her face around the side of the rolling tack. "Hello," she bellowed, a smile cracking across her fair, freckled face, "Welcome to Annie's! If you two need any help, just let me know, I'll be around." Her big smile disappeared just as she turned to go, the wheels of the rack squeaked with every rotation.

Padmei ran straight to a rack full of shirts, and before long she had a large pile of clothing that she swears would look amazing. She pushed me into a dressing room and demanded I show her how each outfit looked. After donning on 3 outfits that she absolutely hated, she finally smiles. "Yes, you're colors are definitely dark!" She barged into my dressing room, rummaging through my pile pulling out all the light, bright colors. "No more mint greens, light blues, bright oranges. We'll keep this red one, this dark blue one, hmm... maybe the green one....?"

"Oh no, definitely not!" The red head had reappeared, "He will make that shirt look hideous, no offence." She shrugged uncaring.

"How isn't that offensive?" But after a moment's thought, Mei seemed to agree with her, which made the worker smile.

"Your girlfriend obviously has a good sense of style. You're in capable hands, I wouldn't sport that worried look anymore." The red head, who was wearing a name tag with the name Michelle on it, chuckled even harder when my eyes widened to the size of saucers.

Both Padmei and I couldn't protest faster for the fact that she was definitely not my girlfriend. "I don't even know him, we're practically strangers..." She trailed off, concern and panic knitting itself into her brows.

That comment had sprouted a scared thought, one that the red head poked at even more when she said. "Helping a stranger pick out and buy clothes, that's generous." Everything I worked for, all the trust I forced into Mei's thoughts began to slowly unravel, if I were to focus, I'd be able to see it, the sparks of white flashing in her blue sea of thoughts, the white hot rod of suspicion stabbing into my beautifully woven light blue knots of trust.

What I should do, that was unclear. Should I potentially out myself to my enemy? I could force the "trust knots" back into place, then everything would be fine, I'd be able to go in, search the house, find what I came for, and go back home to finally finish this war; the only problem is that doing that would put up a red flag, and a trail that would lead right to me, the Solarites would descend upon us before we even made it back to Mei's apartment.

The other option would be to let Mei's memories and thoughts spring back to the way they were before, allow everything I worked on came under, Padmei would realize how silly she's been acting and use her common sense. I'd not only have to find an alternative way of finding my lost possession, but I'd also have the Human police on my tail, I'd probably, clumsily get arrested, have to break out and in the process, once again raise that flag. Either way, I'd raise alarms back home, which could lead to me being found. Option 1 seemed like the better option, I'd still be able to visit this area after option 1.