scarlett didn’t think she’d met someone with this level of enthusiasm before. sure, she tried to talk to people. to be friendly, though her efforts weren’t always the most successful. but hayley was almost magnetic. she couldn’t keep the smile from her face as they talked. especially when hayley began to laugh over the backpacks. covering her own mouth, scarlett let out a soft laugh. “i’ve never had to do the fancy thing before!” she defended herself, though there were laughs dispersed between every other word. “this is my first, like, party party. i didn’t know what to do so.. the backpack.” at the mention of her whole life being inside it, scarlett managed to get her giggles under control. “have you already been traveling for a while then?”
she had been worried that comment had been going a step too far. but.. thank god it hadn’t. scarlett didn’t know why, but this was someone she absolutely did not want to scare off. “good. i’m.. i’m glad.” she felt a blush on her cheeks, trying to push it down. especially at the mention of finding whoever she was looking for. scarlett took a breath, mostly to calm her own nerves. “i’m sure you and shinx’ll be a great help. i’m terrible at picking out my own clothes so.. if shinx could help me figure that out, that’d be great.” she joked, pushing her hair from her face. and the idea of going on a journey to try and find herself. to figure out who she was, a goal.. it was kind of incredible. “i’m sure they’d be proud to know they raised a daughter like you.” scarlett reassured her, her thumbs twiddling a bit nervously. “i’m.. actually trying to find mine. my parents.”
“Never?” Hayley asked incredulously. “But... high school proms! Weddings! Boring awards ceremonies! Church!” she rattled off, thinking of all the times she’d been shoved into fancy dresses and expected to behave. She’d found ways to entertain herself -- doodling, daydreaming, even just wandering around and exploring art and architecture at a place -- but it had happened so often that it was hard to imagine a life without it at all. “Mind you, some of those things are more fun than others. This party’s like... medium. We’ll have to take you to something more fun and fancy someday instead, so you get the real experience,” Hayley declared. Maybe it would happen, maybe it wouldn’t, but it was fun to imagine, if only for a moment. “And sort of! I did some backpacking around Sinnoh for a few months, then went home and... well, kind of couldn’t wait to leave again. After you’ve been on the road for a while, you get stir-crazy stopping in one place for too long!”
Never mind that that one place had always been a little suffocating. It may be the largest city in Sinnoh, but it had never felt large enough for her to escape her sibling’s shadow. It had never felt big enough for her to be just Hayley and have that be enough. She’d been so worried about this party, bumping into people that knew the reputation of the other Adams, of starting off on the wrong track, but there had been nothing but good so far, and she knew when she looked back on that night, meeting Scarlett would be part of the reason for that. “Oh, wow,” she breathed, amazed that the other girl had admitted such a thing to her. “That’s a big deal! Do you know for sure that they’re here in Kanto somewhere, or are you just like... following a feeling?” Hayley wanted to ask a thousand questions, all at once, but she didn’t want to scare her new friend off, either. She’d never been good at toeing the line between interested and nosy, but she was trying very hard not to overstep, and she chewed on her bottom lip, keeping all her other curiosities at bay.
