Shopping (Open)

It was time to restock supplies at her house, and see if she could get a hold of something that would work as a poison. Obviously, she didn't want to buying anything overt, because that would instantly lead back to her. While it was possible she was going to get caught immediately, she wanted to have just enough time to try to injure enough of them to put a stop to this. While the island itself had good people, there was no way that the people at St. Christina's were any good. She'd wandered close enough to know that some of the kids never got to leave the grounds, while others did. Likely there was some sort of system, but it was wrong to keep those poor children locked up like that.

The older woman pushed the slightly rattling cart through the aisles of the store. The wire basket already held essential baking supplies, sugar, flour, chocolate chips, and the like. It also held more personal items, chicken breast, bread, cheese, things for Imogen to eat when she wasn't baking. One couldn't live on cookies and cakes alone, although it might be fun to try. At the moment, she was working her way down the beverage and cracker aisle. She was debating which flavor of soda she was going to have on hand for her treat this week.

It was always something that came up for debate. Because of all the baking she did, Imogen tried not to eat many sweets. Her diet didn't vary much, and to inject a sense of difference, she chose a new flavor of soda to help keep her from getting bored. Last week had been a cherry sort of flavor that wasn't very good. Right now she was debating between cream soda and regular root beer. They'd had a different kind of root beer when she was younger. It had been more plant like and less sugary. She found that the sugary kind tasted far better.

Finally picking out a six pack of root beer, she placed it gently in the cart and began to head towards the last of her groceries, the refrigerated section. Mentally going over her list, she wasn't watching where she was going and bumped into someone else's cart. "Oh my, I'm sorry. I wasn't paying attention. Are you alright?"

Shopping, shopping, shopping... the activity was by far one of the brunette’s favourites whether it is clothes or food. Though food was certainly one of her main favourites of them all since Julie loved to cook and she rarely ever ate out or bought frozen readymade meals or the like. You never knew what additives and colourings were packed in those things and you could say that Julie was a little conscious of what went in her body... perhaps a little too conscious especially being a vegetarian who had a weakness for shellfish... though she couldn’t really eat such things because she was allergic but apart from that she had learned to eat healthy filling meals without the presence of meat or fish or other animal fats and gelatine. Living with a father with a high cholesterol you could say it had turned Julie into a little bit of a health freak but well she didn’t see anything wrong in wanting to be healthy plus there were also the ethical reasons about her diet that came into it.

Another benefit of her diet was that it was easier for her to lose weight and keep it that way especially since she wasn’t very active outside of her work or her home since she wasn’t the greatest sportsperson and... She couldn’t swim either (which was a comforting thought, living on a remote island) the only form of exercise she tended to get was when she did dancing, Latin and belly dancing and of course when she cycled around. The only downside to shopping was rarely ever having a car to pack it into and so Julie was usually stuck toting her heavy shopping around or taking public transport. Not having a car had been another ethical and health choice that Julie had managed to stick by winter had never been an issue for her in such cases since she lived in California for the majority of her life. Which was why New York had come as such a shock to her, she wasn’t used to such cold weather in February and she hadn’t adjusted to such cold weather when she had first come to the island though now they were in summer it did seem to be picking up a great deal.

Julie had walked to the grocery store and decided she could just find a way to carry all her shopping home. She wasn’t completely weak and had the streamlined muscles of a dancer so she supposed she would be fine, it wasn’t like she was going to be carrying a boulder or anything and she shouldn’t buy too much. Shouldn’t. But as Julie went around adding food to the cart flour, sugar, jams, baking powder, free range animal bi-products and completely skimmed milk she was beginning to realize that she may as well be carrying a boulder and the woman hadn’t even gotten to fruit yet. The thought of it could only make a soft smile touch her face with a slight stab of annoyance, but she could deal with it she supposed. She added some juices to the cart and went over to the refrigerated section to get herself some ice-cream and frozen vegetables. As her cerulean orbs were drawn in by what was in the refrigerator as she hummed some verses of “Vision Of Love” by Mariah Carey she didn’t notice the other woman until she had bumped into her completely. A few of her top items, some packets of cookies and such went tumbling off the cart and onto the floor as Julie felt her face flush crimson in embarrassment.

“N-no... sorry, my fault completely I should’ve been paying attention myself, I’m fine though... thanks for asking and you are as well I hope?” she breathed a nervous laugh as she bent down to pick up the packets of cookies tucking a wave of her dark hair behind her ear as she did so. Once the biscuits were back in the rightful place she looked over her shopping and gave a light chuckle. “As you can see I’m only packing enough to hibernate until Christmas,” her own attempt at awkward humour to ease the awkwardness of the situation she bit her lip softly and then held out a hand to the woman. “I’m Juliette... Juliette Valdez but most people just call me Julie,”

Imogen waved off Juliette's apologies. As far as she was concerned, it was Imogen's fault. She'd been far to busy thinking about other things and not paying attention to where she was going. The whole scene could have been prevented if she'd simply focused. And she'd just realized that the poison had been forgotten and would have to be gone back for. But for the moment, it needed to be pushed aside. More pressing matters presented themselves.

"Imogen Taggert." She said in her soft, old woman's voice. "It's all my fault. I wasn't paying attention. " Amused blue eyes looked over Julie's basket and a smile curved her lips, showcasing the deep seated wrinkles in her face. "Looks like we are both going the hibernation route." She said with a soft, warm laugh. "I work at the bakery, what do you do?" Might as well start a conversation and find out if this girl was at all responsible for what happened over at St. Christina's. Imogen pulled her cart back slightly and turned it next to the refrigerated cases, and perused the choices while she waited for Julie to answer.

The frosty air swirled out as she cracked open the door and reached in to rescue the box of Magnum ice cream bars from its frozen prison. The dark brown box was placed reverently into Imogen's cart and the door closed slowly. Magnum ice cream was something the older woman had only recently found, and she was entirely addicted to it. It was her other vice. She didn't buy them every week, but it was summer time, and that was the excuse she was using.

"Have you tried these? They are so delicious." She said with a smile, indicating the box of ice cream. She liked to spread the word about this yummy food. "It's decadent." Imogen smiled again as she crossed off another item on her list. Just a few more to get, and she'd be done with her shopping. At this point, she would need to go to the hardware store for poison she thought. Might make more sense that way too.

Julie herself had been distracted by looking at food and singing to herself but she realized that she may as well appease to the woman and just agree to disagree with her. Julie didn’t feel like getting into a debate about something so silly, apologies had been made and so they were free to progress on in their conversation. A smile prettified her features as the woman introduced herself as Imogen Taggert “Imogen, that’s a lovely name... I haven’t met many Imogens... um... it’s nice to meet you,” she realized that she probably sounded stupid with her random babblings but she couldn’t help it. There was something soft and soothing in the old woman’s voice, like a lullaby... or it reminded her of her own grandmother, whom she hadn’t seen in very many years. So the woman’s voice was a bit of a comfort to Julie. “And honestly it’s fine, no damage done,”

At Imogen’s reply to her awkward humour Julie could only laugh along with the woman good-naturedly. “I think the worst part is that this is all for me really, and I’m not even a terribly large eater it’s just that I adore cooking.” She gave a light shrug of her shoulders, then the woman went on to say that she worked at the bakery and asked what she did, Julie nodded before answering “oh I’m a nurse, at the medical centre, what do you do at the bakery? Are you a server or a cook?” Now Julie honestly hadn’t been to St Christina’s facility, she worked at the medical centre and before that she had worked at Hadley and even if she had been working at St Christina’s, she would’ve likely had nothing to do with whatever happened over at St Christina’s involving a person’s death... her profession was to heal not to harm and even though she knew what they were doing at the facility wasn’t legal it was all for a noble cause... wasn’t it? They all had the common goal of wanting to better troubled youth... well she knew some did and some honestly didn’t care, but Julie couldn’t do very much about those people, the only thing she could do, was her job.

A sudden chill filled the air as the fridge door was opened Julie rubbed at her bare arms that were left exposed and vulnerable by a simple short-sleeved chiffon blouse. She followed the woman’s lead, opening up the fridge next to her and bringing out a tub of vanilla ice-cream, raspberry ripple and mint chocolate chip and added them to the cart. Julie could empathize with the weakness for sweets, she much preferred baking over cooking after all and she often found herself baking cupcakes and cookies and sharing them out with whoever passed just to prevent herself from eating them all herself. When Imogen spoke up again about the Magnum lollies Julie nodded her head enthusiastically “oh yes I have, they are lovely, I personally prefer the white chocolate ones though. I’m more of a milk chocolate person but something about white chocolate mixed with ice-cream tastes divine.” Julie reached to straighten out and dust off her blouse even though there was nothing on there, simple habit. “So how long have you been here? I mean if you don’t mind me asking...”