The week following the bad dream was weird - dreamlike in another sense. Pen found herself idling around the house a lot, avoiding everyone, including the gremlins (their squabbles involved too much curling of upper lips and growling). She even avoided the basement and her beloved keyboard, knowing that she'd be discovered there most easily. When she wasn't tiptoeing around the house, Pen took to the long, quiet, tree-lined roads, undertaking any errands her mother could give her. Sometimes she drove, but mostly she walked. It took longer, and she was sure her parents did not approve, but Cora and Brady were in no position to scold her anyways.
Besides, the twenty-minute walk to the grocery store was relaxing. It gave her time to think or not think. Not-thinking was something she'd made into an activity of sorts. As she tromped down the quiet road, she listened to the rubbery scrape of her sneakers on the asphalt. She marked her speed and tried to keep it as constant as possible, even when she took on the little hills that lay in her way. It made for good exercise, and distracted her (just barely) from other things. Sometimes she brought her music with her, and that was another form of not-thinking. She memorized lyrics, hummed harmonies and matched her steps to the beat of heavy bass. Listening to music was perhaps the most enjoyable form of not-thinking, but she'd woken to find her iPod out of battery (a rare occurence). She was left to make her way to the store without it's help.
Once again, she found herself standing in front of the lunch meat cooler, staring up at rows and rows of thinly sliced meat. More specifically, she found herself fixating on the yellow-gold packaging of 'Freedman's Honeyed Ham'. The boys had devoured the stuff the last time she'd brought it home. She'd liked it herself. But she couldn't quite get her fingers to uncurl from around the handle of her shopping basket. So, she continued to stare, and continued to play her not-thinking game, oblivious to the shoppers who wove around her.
"Can I help you?"
Pen surged forward and wacked her shins on the metal bottom of the cooler.
"Fuck!" she spat under her breath. She clenched her teeth together and cocked her head to the side just enough to see who was standing behind her.
Tanned skin, black hair, dark eyes - but unfamiliar. She swallowed and tried to relax again.
"No. Thanks."
"I'm sorry about -"
"Don't worry about it," she barked, forcing a smile. She snatched a packet of turkey off the shelf and made for the cash register.
The turkey was twenty-five cents more expensive than the honeyed ham had been. Pen didn't even know how she'd remembered that, and she tried to sink herself back down into not-thinking. Just like Dory, in Finding Nemo: "just keep swimming, just keep swimming, just keep swimming, swimming, swimming."
Just stop thinking, just stop thinking, just stop thinking, thinking, thinking.
She crested a hill, switched a grocery bag to her left hand, raised the other to brush her nose (a habit), and stopped dead when Liam Uley jogged up the opposite side of the hill.
He stopped abruptly too, or tried to, instead tripping over his feet.
Pen didn't have to try to clear her mind. The barrage of feelings and thoughts that hit her in the first five seconds of seeing him subsided and left her feeling strangely numb. Wariness and adrenaline tingled in her fingertips, though.
Liam was breathing a little heavily, but other than that, Pen heard nothing from him. She watched his chest rise and fall for a moment, before shifted her bags again.
"Grocery run?" Liam asked. Pen glanced at her cargo.
"Yeah," she replied. Her cheek twitched in a cheap imitation of a smile. Liam nodded in understanding. He hadn't looked away from her yet, and it was starting to get on her nerves. She shifted again. The plastic handles of the bags were starting to cut into her fingers. Her knuckles hurt from holding on so tightly. Liam opened his mouth, as though he was about to say something. She watched him glance away from her and down at her shopping bags, and willed him not to ask if she needed any help.
Liam shut his mouth, looked down at the road and ran a hand over his head.
"I won't keep you," he said a moment later and she wished she hadn't been watching him. He met her eyes, and she couldn't look away. "Have a good day."
"You too," she managed to choke out, and then he was gone, loping off down the hill. Penelope regained control over her feet several moments later.