"We're here!"

Her attention shifts back to the present as the car comes to a stop. Her friends climb out of the other 3 doors, and she sluggishly follows suit. She stands beside the car, a hand shielding her eyes from the sun, and scans slowly across the expanse of the mall.

"Oh, wouldn't this look cute on me?"

"Yeah!"

"Are you gonna buy it?"

"I dunno... why?"

"Well, it might look good on me too."

"It might."

"What do you think, 'Lizabeth?"

Elizabeth glances over absent-mindedly. "Yeah, it looks good."

Her friends pay little attention to her response. "Ah, I can't really afford it right now. I'll skip."

"Are you gonna get it?"

"No, I'll pass too. It's not that nice."

Elizabeth sighs lightly. She glances slowly about the mall, until her eyes stop suddenly on something in the distance.

"I'll be right back."

She dashes across the mall hallway, away from her friends, and grabs a boy by the arm.

"Liam!"

Liam spins around, startled, then recognizes her. "Jesus, where did you come from?"

"I was just here with my friends when I got this sudden urge to get away from them, and there you were."

She looks up at him, a strange kind of excitement in her eyes, and he feels a little confused. "Why are you here with them, then?"

"I don't know... we used to do this all the time. Come to the mall, hang out, shop without buying. It used to be fun. Just giving it another shot, you know, trying to get back the old days. Hey, do you wanna meet them?"

Before he can express his disapproval, she takes him by the arm and drags him down the hall. They arrive back with Elizabeth's friends.

"Guys, this is Liam. He just moved here." Some greetings are exchanged, and for a moment everyone is silent. "So, me and Liam were gonna go do some stuff. Don't worry about waiting for me, I'll find my own way home."

Elizabeth's friends look a little surprised. "Okay, sure. See you later, then."

"Bye!" She quickly turns and they disappear into the mall.

When they're out of earshot, Liam repeats, "Me and Liam were gonna go do some stuff?"

"It's the best I could think of." She looks over at him. "What, don't you like stuff?"

"More than Ralph Wiggum himself."

"Hey, you wanna get some food?"

Her sudden presence still has him a a little off-balance, but he says, "Yeah, sure."

"The only thing is I don't have any money."

"No sweat, I'll cover it."

"I've known you one day and already you're buying me food." She sits down at one of the tables of the food court. "You can go order it, too."

He grins. "What do you want?"

"Whatever."

She watches him as he goes and stands in line, but he doesn't look back at her. Eventually he returns with a tray of food.

"Here you go. Salad."

"Salad?"

"I had this feeling that if I came back here with hamburgers you'd tell me you were a vegetarian."

"They're called vegans now."

"Whatever."

"I probably would be one," she says, stabbing a fork into her salad, "Except that this stuff tastes like shit."

"Plus I just noticed that there's chicken in this. Hey look, there go your friends."

She keeps her head low and says, "Don't stare at them. I'd really prefer they not come over here."

He watches her for a silent moment. "So what makes a person hate her friends?"

"Hmm, yeah," she chuckles and continues eating, until she realizes that he's being serious. She looks at him incredulously. "You must be one of those kids who moved every few years, huh?"

"Pretty much, yeah."

"And you never had anybody you hung around with that you didn't like?"

"Of course not. If I didn't like them I didn't hang around with them."

"Well, when you live around the same people your entire life, you end up with friends who you used to like but who end up bugging you. But you can't just tell 'em to take a hike, 'cause they're your friends. So you're stuck thinking about leaving town just to get rid of them."

"Leaving town? That sounds a little extreme."

"I dunno... get a bookbag, toss in a select few CDs and books, and just walk. It's got some appeal."

"Except for the lack of food and shelter, sure." He takes a bite of his salad. "So what happened with these friends? Did you just grow up before them? Too cool for the mall and all that?"

"It sounds bad the way you say it. But the truth is just that I don't get anything from them. They don't hold much value for me any more. They've become who they've become, and I can't see them getting any more interesting any time soon. Plus they bend over backwards to find things wrong with themselves."

"Like how?"

"Well, they never seem to be really happy. I can never imagine them waking up in the morning and smiling, just feeling glad to be alive. There's always something that's not good enough about them, and it's always something stupid. They get hung up on little things that don't really matter."

"So when you wake up, you're happy? Just like that?"

"Not all the time, but sometimes, yeah. Have you ever fallen asleep excited, like you just can't wait for the next day? Nobody seems to."

"Well, I did when I was a little kid."

She puts down her fork. "Yeah, but that's bullshit. That's just because the next morning you were going to be able to open some toys or something. It was superficial. I'm talking about really knowing your place in the world, understanding what you want to accomplish and knowing that you'll be able to do it. But there's always something there, in the back of peoples minds that just won't let them."

"So give me an example."

"Okay. Look at my face." She gives him a moment. "Now, tell me what's wrong with it."

"What?"

"Tell me what you see. I know there must to be things you don't like about it, you probably picked them out right away. So go on; tell me."

"I'm not going to tell you what's wrong with your face."

"Why? Because you're too polite? Or because there's nothing wrong?"

He smirks. "What is this, some veiled attempt to get me to admit that I find you attractive?"

She laughs, surprised. "No! I'm trying to make a point here. Okay look, we'll do it the other way. I'll tell you what's wrong with yours." She surveys him quietly for a moment. "Well, let's see... you've got big ears, a crooked nose, a bad haircut, terrible complexion, a beer gut..."

"What? That's not how I look!"

She glances at his hair.

"Okay, maybe the haircut, but you made the rest of that stuff up."

"But if I had said just one of those things, you might have believed it. You might have caught yourself in the mirror tonight and thought, 'Dammit, maybe she was right, if only I didn't have this big nose, everything would be okay.' Except that with most people it's not just one thing, it's their looks, their personality, their body, their brain. Like mother nature had conspired against them just because they don't look perfect. It's ridiculous and I'm tired of it."

"Well, it's a nice sentiment, but the fact remains that you're not ugly. This stuff would be harder to see if you were less attractive. Take today, for instance; it's kinda cool that this girl I hardly know is dragging me around a mall, but if you were just another average girl I'd be counting the minutes until I could get rid of you. You'd turn into an impediment."

She takes a deep breath. "Look at me."

"I am looking at you."

"No." She takes his head in her hands. "Look right at me. Concentrate. I'm not that attractive. I am just an average girl. Look at my mouth, now my chin, my cheekbones, my nose – they're all normal. Whatever you're talking about being attractive is something else. It wasn't straight teeth that helped me come up with these ideas, and it wasn't some well-proportioned nose that decided to impose on you in the middle of a mall. This is my brain."

Liam starts laughing, and she lets go. "I'm sorry," he says, "I'm just thinking of how that speech would have sounded if you weighed 300 pounds."

"So if I weighed 300 pounds you wouldn't want to sit here and talk with me?"

"No. I wouldn't have bought you a salad, either. Well, maybe I would..."

He starts laughing again and she looks away, sighing a little. "Look, I know it's not a perfect theory. I know that the current idea of beauty has got a grip on the world." She turns back to him. "But a few hundred years ago, pale chubby girls were considered beautiful. It's not an absolute thing."

"So why did you pick me out? Because you know for a fact that every other person in this town is boring, and you're hedging your bets on the new guy? Or because you liked the way my ass holds up my jeans?"

This time she's the one who laughs. "Jesus, why don't you flatter yourself a little? I picked you 'cause you were here. Get over it." He smiles at her, and she tries to resist the urge to smile back. "How about this: You've seen super-models?"

He leans back in his chair. "Piles of them."

"Do you find them attractive?"

"Not especially, no."

"But they've got everything in the right place. They're the text-book examples of what this society calls attractive. But they've got nothing, they're just walking shells wearing boring clothes, and they don't even know why they're doing it. They don't have the brain. Without the brain, they've got nothing. I'm not saying that the most terribly ugly person in the world can make it with anybody just 'cause they've got a quick mind, but as long as they're average looking, just average, that's all you need. But they don't recognize that what they need to bring themselves up isn't a million dollars in plastic surgery, it's just some mental activity. It's insane to tie your self-esteem into something that you can't change, and that has no real bearing on anything."

He's quiet for a moment, then says, "Yeah, okay, I'll give you that."

She waits for a moment, but he says nothing else. "That's it? No debate, no counter-argument?"

"Hey, I paid for the salad. I think that's enough."

"I'll consider this a win, then." She smiles. "In psychological combat."

"Is that what we were in?"

"Yes. Well, sort of."

He shrugs a little. "So, what are your other plans for the day, besides eating?"

"I was thinking of going to a movie. You wanna?"

"I don't think I can afford two tickets."

"No problem, I'll cover it."

"You've got money?"

"Sure. Why would I come to a mall without money?" She smiles, and he can't help but grin.

"Well, okay then," he says as he clears the table. "Let's see what's playing."