"Me? Oh, yeah, I'm totally creepy, dude," she says, pulling back a little and tilting her head, her hair falling over her shoulder. "But I'm glad it's working for you, it's not really one of those things you can just stop being if someone doesn't like it." She's never stopped being anything just because someone doesn't like it, which had kind of kept her sane through most of junior high. By high school people had stopped giving her a hard time because of her total dismissal of their bullshit. If she couldn't be ruffled, it wasn't fun anymore, but there had been a lot of cruel comments leading up to that, a lot of places where she could have just tried to fit in, be the normal kid instead of the kid with the freak mother.

But she'd never bothered. And she knows she doesn't need to bother changing now.

"You don't have to go back to a life without me," she tells him with a small shrug and a smile. "I mean... I'm not going anywhere." It's not something either of them can really promise, she knows that. This place might decide to take one or both of them away, but there are some things in her control and she can promise she'll be here as long as the city lets her.