Reap lingered on the edge of a group of men and women waiting at a day laborer pickup point. She picked up a smattering of Spanish she recognized and other languages she didn’t. She typically avoided these kinds of places because of the risk of ICE agents running people down. Reap could get caught up in the net in the process. She risked it today because in the months since Euphoria vanished she had scraped by with dumpster food and the occasional charity. She felt like she was moving backwards and the dream she had with Euphoria of an apartment and a proper job were getting further out of reach.

Reap felt like she had been waiting all day for a job when a woman pulled up in a flashy car. Reap expected to be overlooked as she had before but the woman called out to her. She walked over to the passenger side window which the woman rolled down.

“What’s your name?” She asked.

“Reap.”

“Reap?” The woman repeated looking confused.

“It’s a nickname…” Reap explained.

“Oh,” The woman asked, “Well, I am having a party tonight and I need someone to help me out. I’ve left it all to the last moment so I need to go gather shopping for all my supplies. What I need from you is to get the house cleaned so that my guests don’t know what a slob I am…”

“I can do that,” Reap agreed.

“Great! Hop in!”

Reap was whisked away to a nice neighborhood with a line of expensive-looking brownstones. The woman was so polite and friendly that Reap found herself relaxing in spite of herself.

“I will be back in about four hours,” The woman explained as she got Reap the cleaning supplies. “There’s stuff for sandwiches in fridge…help yourself to them and water, tea…anything you want.” She took a glance over Reap’s appearance, noted that she wasn’t exactly clean herself. “If you want you can take a shower in the downstairs bathroom before you clean it…and you can throw your stuff in the laundry. You can call me from the home phone if you need anything.” She bid Reap goodbye and hurried out the door.

For a second, she considered stealing everything in sight but then she felt ashamed for the thought after the woman’s kindness. Reap decided to start with getting in the shower (something she hadn’t experienced in years). She knew she couldn’t spend all day in their but it felt so luxurious. After the shower, she threw her clothes in the laundry (the woman had left her out yoga pants and t-shirt to change into). She then made herself a sandwich.

By the time the woman got home, Reap had scrubbed the entire house within an inch of its life and not only that her plethora of dead plants were suddenly looking a lot more lifelike. The woman was extremely pleased and in addition to giving thirty bucks, she packed her up some food, let her keep the clothes, and offered to give her a ride back.

“No, thank you so much, I can make my way from here…” Reap said.

“No, thank you! You are a lifesaver, Reap! And I don’t know how you managed to un-murder my plants!”

Reap wisely said nothing to that other than a hesitant smile. She left the brownstone with thirty bucks in her pocket and that felt like fortune to her. Usually, she would head straight to the supermarket and buy all the food she could, but she had a bag full of fresh, non-dumpster food from the woman so she didn’t even need to do that. She felt clean too…like she could almost blend in with all the non-homeless people. What did non-homeless people spend their money on?

This question inevitably brought her to a busy mall in the area and it quickly overwhelmed her. All the people, all the stuff, she had no idea where to start. She looked like a doe-eyed girl in the big city for the first time, even though she had been camped out in NYC for a while now.

Two or three years ago, the sight of a busy mall would have sent Elliott’s heart into beatific pit pat oats of anticipation. So many people. So many things. So much opportunity. Now older and wiser, the tall green man still saw plenty of opportunity... but it was of a different sort.

What once were targets were now just people. Helpful people, who might be valid targets for his business enterprises, yes, but in a wholly friendlier sense. Instead of pilfering pockets, he was picking patrons.

His art paid... but it didn’t pay above and beyond food and rent dues. College costs money. A lot of money. They look down on you if you can’t prove your validity, with your quality of art materials and your pedigree. Cheap paints and cheap origins lower personal worth, and if you can’t elaborate on why your art is first rate, people see you and a degenerate, and dole out hate. Makes you irate. Leads you to prevaricate. And that was why, in addition to his abstract art he peddled to indie galleries, Elliott was drawing big headed caricatures at the mall.

College had taught him a lot of things. Big words were, lah dee dah, one of them. Explaining the social, philosophical, and psychological importance of his abstractions was another. Actually drawing living, breathing people was a close third.

He wasn’t outstanding at traditional artistic sketching, or landscape painting, or any of that. He was more a big idea guy. And if the idea was bigger than him, he kicked his canvas and put extra energy into the art to transfer violence and emotion from point A, his head, into point B, his art. And maybe it would make it all the way to point C, hopefully. His viewer’s heart. Big heads didn’t require as much energy, though. He just set up a sketch pad on a tripod in the center walkway of the mall, and went.

“...And this is you.” Elliott said. He put the finishing touches on a woman’s face, and handed her the big head. She laughed. It really didn’t look like her, save for exaggerated aspects. But that was kind of the point. She ponies up the cash, and went away pleased.

Elliott started shouting his wares, like the fishmonger of olde. ‘Big heads, get your big heads here! Big and goofy, like your faces!’ From time to time, people shot him curious looks... but that may have been due to his very mutant, very n alien appearance, more than anything else.

Reap paused in front of a store filled with the flashing screens of iPads and Macbooks. These were not strange things to her but it had been years since she stood close enough to touch one. She could hear the excited chatter of teenagers just inside the door as they pointed out the newest models to one another and mused over whether or not their parents would buy them it. She felt her face fall into a frown and tasted bile in the back of her throat. Reap might have been one of them once but she was homeless now. A shower and a new set of clothes didn’t change that.

Reap left that store behind her and passed another store. This one was all done up in pink and it had an alarming number of lacy items in the window. It took her a long time to realize what they were. Bras. When her parents abandoned her, she only had the one training bra and it had broken long ago. She didn’t bother to replace it. Bras didn’t keep her warm at night plus she did not have much reason to don one. She didn’t have the meat on her bones for that.

Reap was beginning to think that this was a mistake. She didn’t know what she had been thinking. She had no place at the mall. She should be holding her money close not spending it on things she didn’t need. She had just decided to look for an exit when shouting startled her. Big heads? Goofy face? She could just make out the words but not sense of them. She located the source soon enough and startled almost worse than she had at the shouting. A shocking green-faced and bodied mutant was the source.

Reap might be a mutant but she wasn’t a visible mutant…at least not yet. She shuddered and rubbed her green palms together before shoving them back in her pockets. She wished someone could just tell her whether or not she would wake up like that one day. Sometimes when she woke in the morning she would spend a long time just staring at her palms trying to discern whether or not the green was creeping up forearms too.

Gloves.

That is what she wanted to buy. Gloves that she could pull up to her elbow to hide the green skin entirely. She could buy those and still have some money to spare. With that purpose in mind, Reap started to walk back in the direction of the stores but someone bumped into her with all their shopping and she tripped right into the green mutant's easel.

“Big heads,” he called again. “Great big fu— huh?”

His back had momentarily been turned away from the easel to shout his services. The sound of the clatter as someone bumped into the thing had brought him back, and left him speechless. At least, for a second.

Emotions boiled within him. Anger was one of them. He quashed it beneath annoyance, with actual apprehension and concern following on their heels. The various emotions flickered over his red eyes as his mind did the mental gymnastics. Narrowed, smoothed, twinged. Smoothed to normal once again.

The girl who had tripped into his easel, was she hurt? Had it been intentional? Was there malice, or had it simply been an accident? Nothing seemed broken on the thing, at least from where he stood. Staring. Red eyes focused on the whole scene. Nothing seemed broken on her, either. Just some kid who’d gotten bumped.

In the past, he might have not taken a second to ascertain the facts before he’d reacted. He also may not have had the word ‘ascertain’ in his wheelhouse. Oh, the wonders college and a semi-stable frame of mind can do!

“Here.” A three-fingered hand got extended. A helping hand. A hand up off the ground. He reached for hers, and made a mental connection focused on colors. “You okay, green?” Elliott asked.

Reap took the entire easel down with her when she tripped. She hit the ground with a squeak and got jabbed in the back and side by the ends of the easel. She would be bruised tomorrow. “Ow…” She moaned as she struggled to untangle herself but she only succeeded in getting a splinter from the wood. She heard a ‘here’ and automatically reached out her hand to take the offered one. She was surprised that anyone offered to help but then she didn’t look like a homeless person today. She had showered. She had on a fresh set of clothes. It must be nice to be treated like this all the time instead of being soundly ignored.

As Reap pulled herself up to her feet, she realized that the hand she held was green. It nearly matched the color of her own skin, although, her own skin was more a leafy color and this was more alien. “Tha…” Reap started to say but then he called her ‘green’. She ripped her hand out of the green man’s hand and shoved both her hands deep into her pockets. “I’m fine,” She hissed, “Don’t call me that…”

“Oh Kay,” Elliott said.

So she didn’t like her green hands, was self-conscious of the green hands. That was fine. People could feel however they liked. So long as they didn’t hurt anyone, kill anyone, over how they felt, everything was copacetic.

“Sorry.” He added. “Didn’t mean to upset you.”

It having been her who’d toppled his easel, he kind of felt like he shouldn’t be the one apologizing, but yet here they were.

His red eyes dropped to the easel. It had lost a bit of wood, and the pad of paper was crinkled up real bad, but those were just things. They could be replaced. At least, that was something an old friend of his had always told him. He glanced back at the girl.

“You sure you aren’t cut or anything.” He asked, though it was more a statement than anything. “No giant splinters.”