[hr]
[center][img]https://txt-dynamic.static.1001fonts.net/txt/b3RmLjY2LmJjYTgyZi5VR1Z1Ym5rZ1RHRjNjMjl1LjAA/fake-boss.regular.png[/img][/center]
[hr]

Between getting held up, getting stuck in Maya’s car yet again, and having to sleep on the rollaway bed because Isla jacked the good bed and immediately passed out, Penny felt as if she had earned a break. She couldn’t recall the last time she did something relaxing. She couldn’t really recall if she ever knew how to relax in the first place. There was something nerve wracking about taking time to do absolutely nothing, especially when there was a somewhat decent chance that Armageddon wasn’t just an awful movie with a killer song. Perhaps she could scope out the meeting place with the Dollhouse, or make sure that the cops weren’t looking for them after the whole gas station fiasco, or check in with Kimberly, or—no. Today was a day off, and she deserved it.

Plus, what kind of idiot could possibly pass up a two for one sale, like, are you kidding? 

Penny soon learned that the answer to that question was “not any”, as all of the idiots had seemed to show up to raid that particular mall boutique that day. Not a rack was spared as the frugal vultures picked the hangers bare, raiding the store like a pack of vikings if vikings were mostly middle-aged women desiring to appear as if they were and would always be twenty-one. The actual twenty-one year old slipped through the crowd. Even with all of the fucked up things she had seen, the mutilation of a gas station attendant’s fingers being one of the tamer things on that list, she was still horrified by the massacre of the store. Penny barely escaped with her life and the four cute little dresses she probably couldn’t really afford but she’d worry about having a good credit score if they all got through the next year. 

Shopping trip successfully completed, Penny began the trek through the mall towards the food court in search of an iced latte. She dodged around the preteens in their miniskirts and the mall goths in their Tripp pants, sped past the booths hocking phone cases and airbrushed t-shirts, and avoided every perfume lady like they had the goddamn plague. Penny had almost made it to the food court when the sight of a tiki hut lumped with fake, oversized fruits stopped her dead in her tracks as the whirl of a high-speed blender pierced through the air. An iced latte lost to a fruit smoothie every day of the week, for drinking one allowed her to pretend to be healthy. 

The line to the smoothie shack was long, twisted, and full of the same kind of monsters that had ransacked the boutique. Penny wanted to skip it but the inotixicating draw of a green smoothie full of whatever the fuck antioxidants were was too strong to resist. Penny found herself standing in the line before realizing that she had even made the decision to do so. The line inched forward, the stressed out teen and only employee of the drink stand frantically darting back and forth between blender, fridge, and register, as a hundred angry eyes stared at her and waited. Penny found herself staring too, just another lost soul stuck in line for an overpriced smoothie.