The next day, as with every day, students must attend homeroom.
"We can go to Damons apartment? I should get cleaned up before I need to head back to the Boarding House for the full moon tonight..."
"If you're hungry, you'll want to bring some food. I ran out of groceries and money the other day."
"No, I think I'm going good."
He takes his camera.
"I'll meet you outside. I think I'd break this thing trying to sneak out my window."
She hums in agreement and kisses him. "I'll see you in a minute then."
Then steps up to the window, opens it, looks and listens for a moment and then just jumps straight out. She lands perfectly on the ground and does not break both her legs.
And in a few minutes, after conversing with his parents, Matt is outside with a backpack and a camera.
"I'm guessing we're walking?"
"Unless you want to ask your parents to drive us, then yeah, we're walking."
She takes ahold of his hand.
He approves.
"There's a comic book shop, an antique shop, and a park within walking distance. If you want food we'll have to further."
"Let's head to the apartment first. I can shower and change into something more people appropriate." She fingers the shirt. "I like this shirt though. Smells like you."
She makes a face.
"Is that creepy? It sounded less creepy in my head," she laughs.
"Everybody does. I'm used to yours by now. I could probably track you from anywhere in town."
"I think I'll go with 'flattered', instead of all the other adjectives I could be."
To the apartment they go.
Matt gossips idly about the inhabitants of houses they pass; based on how many dragons and spaceship pilots there are, he's probably making it all up.
Juliet will ask the appropriate questions about such people, listening with interest. Who knew there were so many dragons in the neighborhood!
Eventually they arrive at a fancy looking apartment building and Juliet leads them up. If he's looking closely he can see that the lock on the front door is bent out of shape and broken.
Inside is a bit of a mess. Juliet has obviously made herself at home, there are clothes thrown about and bits of paper and homework on most of the available surfaces. Theres a projector running, loudly playing some sort of black and white horror movie. There's also two sets of music playing; one in the kitchen, some sort of indie music and another coming from the direction of what is maybe the bathroom.
Overall: It's a lot.
"I was planning on coming back here after tonight, if it goes badly with my dad. So no packing really required."
She picks up a control and turns the music and projector off.
"I need a lot of noise. I get all angsty when I'm cooped up all alone."
"I'm mostly the same," he says, and indeed, he's humming along to one of the songs, improvising the parts that he didn't hear.
"Give me ten minutes."
And she goes off and comes back ten minutes later all clean, still wearing his shirt but some shorts instead of his tracksuit pants.
"Comic store? You can introduce me to the world of superheroes and villians."
The comic book store is a tiny little place, on its own little island on a main road.
It's not very busy, but in such a small space, other customers are immediately noticed.
"Archie? No, you're not starting with Archie. I just need to find the right issue..."