June felt like she should say something. The silence was getting awkward as she and Kelan walked to the changing rooms. She searched for something to talk about.
"So... Are you from around here?" she blurted out. She had to force her face to freeze before it started wincing. That was the best she could come up with?
"Um, yeah. I've lived here my whole life. I mean, I was away for college but...yeah." Kelan scratched the back of his head. Seeing him showing a little awkwardness himself put June more at ease. She was also happy to know they shared the same hometown. That gave them plenty of things in common to talk about to fill the silence.
"And you? You're not from around here."
June blinked a few times. Her carefully practiced gait faltered and she slowed her pace. "What was that? I'm sorry."
Kelan noticed and smiled, repeating himself in a gentler tone. "You're not from around here. I think I'd have noticed a well-dressed goth hanging around town before now."
"I'm not... err..." June stuttered as she found herself losing focus. Something wasn't right about what he'd just said, but the more she thought about it, the less certain she was about that feeling. And Kelan sounded so confident.
She thought harder. There was a faint impression that she had grown up in the area, just like Kelan, but if that was true why wasn't she able to remember? She tried to remember the house her family lived in when she was a kid, but only a blurry picture formed, and then vanished before it came into focus. She tried hard to think of any memory of where she had grown up... but nothing. She couldn't remember where she was from, but her thoughts were distinctly telling her she didn't grow up here.
She tilted her head and brushed her bangs, expressing her confusion with a murmur. "Sorry, I'm..." She felt foolish. It wasn't like Kelan was trying to deceive her or something. He was trustworthy. And since she couldn't remember where she'd grown up at the moment, it was possible he was right.
June took a breath and straightened up. "No, I'm not from around here." She spoke uneasily, trying to convince herself that was the truth and remove the last pesky thread of doubt.
"Are you okay?"
"Yeah. I just had a brain far-- uh, a... a mental lapse." She cringed at the poor substitution for the crass slang. If she'd been minding her manners, she wouldn't have stumbled into that mistake.
This seemed to make Kelan even more worried. "Do you have those often?"
June put up her hands. "Oh no, no, it isn't anything that bad. I'm sorry. I had trouble finding the right words."
"Oh, okay," he said with some relief. "It's totally fine if you can't think of the right words. English is super hard. I wrote a paper for a class once on all the exceptions to 'I before E, except after C.'"
June giggled. He was definitely right about that. "A whole paper, huh? Did you go into exhaust-- ex-uhh... lots of detail about all the examples?"
"Sure did," Kelan smirked. "My teacher wrote it was an accurate report, but too pedantic." He paused and looked at June skeptically. "Too dry." June got what he meant the first time, but politely chose not to say anything.
They finally arrived at the changing rooms. It struck her just how long it had taken them to get there compared to before. "Huh. I thought these were much closer to the... um... jewelry aisle." Her powdery face flushed with a little pink as she struggled to finish the sentence. Words seemed to scamper away from her tongue just when she needed them and she had to mentally chase them down. "When the... the... Lola, a woman who works here, when she was showing me around, it seemed...err..." She gave up and let herself trail off. English was hard.
"Well, you're walking kind of slow," he said off the cuff, before tensing up and gritting his teeth. June frowned but didn't respond. He knew his manners weren't as good as hers and she appreciated him at least making an effort. "I- I mean, that dress must be pretty restrictive. Gotta be careful when you're wearing it."
June nodded. Now that she was thinking about it, the bodice felt laced kind of tight. And the crisscrossing ankle straps that secured her shoes did make it harder to rotate her feet.
Kelan nervously smiled and raised his voice into a lighter octave, noticing his remarks were having an unintended effect. "But it's worth it, though, isn't it? You look amazing. I, uh, especially adore your pigtails. I've never seen ones as long as this."
June smiled appreciatively and pulled one of the pigtails over her shoulder so they could both get a good look at it. "Thank you so much. I'm really pleased with them, too." Was that rude to say, she wondered? She dispelled the thought by tracing her hair's length with her eyes, seeing the incredibly straight, glossy locks trail over her breast, down her front, and drape heavily on top of the flaring skirt of her dress.
Wait, she hadn't grown it out that long. She'd been confused about a lot of things since entering the store, but she was sure she had only grown it down to her waist. Now it was almost a foot longer than that. She quickly tried to think. She changed herself earlier by talking out loud to the mirror. But just now, she hadn't said anything about it being longer.
She felt her heart skip a beat. But Kelan had. He said he'd "never seen" pigtails that long. Her hair was changing to make that the truth. And that also explained why he wasn't reacting with as much shock as she was right now. He might believe that she always looked like this.
June could tell dots were starting to connect in her mind, even more dots than she thought needed connecting. Did this have to do with her memory lapses?
Her thoughts were interrupted when Kelan opened his mouth to say something.