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So this was... This was it, huh? The moment they'd all been waiting for? The singular moment that everything had been building up to over the last year? The reason she and Landon had up and fled Pittsburgh for some random town in Ohio? Her sister was right in there! Or, well, supposedly... She could be, like, out at the store or something, but still! That apartment building right there was where she lived, and if Madison just went up to her door and knocked, then she would be meeting her for the first time. This was crazy! "What if I'm related to serial killers?" she asked Landon -- her accompanying moral support personnel -- while shutting the door on the rental car and taking the first few steps towards the building. "What if she's in there boiling bunnies and wearing her... our dead mother's wig?" Having blood relatives was still kind of surreal for her. With her first family, she had been an only child, and after that it was all foster house and another adoption. When she finally decided to figure out where she had come from, and she discovered there was honest-to-god blood family out there, she had the immediate urge to meet them. But now that she was there and meeting at least one of these unknown sister was mere minutes away, she was kind of freaking out. A lot. She didn't know this girl or what kind of person she was or how accepting she would be of her. She didn't know if she was a closet bunny boiler either! Maybe she was psyching herself out right now, but who wouldn't be nervous in this situation? She could hop a state border to meet a stranger no problem, but then actually getting around to meeting her was kind of scary. "We could be delivering a double homicide to her doorstep. I'm just saying."
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Madison stared up at him as he tried to shake some sense into her -- literally -- and though she was still nervous, it helped a little. Lima seemed like a relatively sleepy little town, and if they were going through some crazy serial killer ordeal, you'd probably know about it. The media loves that kind of stuff. Nowheresville Rocked by Murder Crazed Family! News headlines, books, movie deals... They'd have a heyday with it. So, okay, she shouldn't be jumping to the psychotic conclusion just yet. That didn't mean there weren't other things to worry about! But she could try not to freak out so much. "Just FYI, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre happened in a cow town too." She had to get that last little bit in there to defend her nerves before they were back on their way to the apartment. That walk didn't last more than two seconds before he was expressing his hopes for a hot girl and Madi probably looked more disturbed then than she did when talking about boiling bunnies. "Ew!" Her elbow jutted out and jabbed him in the side. "I swear, if you hit on her..." Landon was a good guy; she loved him like a brother, but he was a "ladies man," to put it nicely, and the last thing she needed right now was Landon screwing around with her before she even got a chance to know him. "We'll find you a sexy milkmaid later. Just be good." She pointed at him as she gave him the order, just for good measure. Before she even realized it, they were standing outside the door with the apartment number she had written down. The conversation along the way had been sufficiently distracting, but now she was nervous again. "Well, we made it! Good for us. Want to go get something to eat? I am starving!" She shrugged her shoulders and her expression said something along the lines of "Oh well! We tried!" as she turned and tried to walk away.
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Reid never considered herself a clean freak. That was, until she moved into her own apartment away from her siblings and Alice. She'd been so used to her aunt keeping things in some sort of order around their house when she'd grown up, she'd never quite grasped the concept that a place could actually become messy. One night in her freshman year of college, she'd come back to the startling realization that her place was an absolute dump. She'd decided then and there that she'd always devote one day a week to keeping the place spick-and-span. With her hair braided down her back, armed with a bottle of furniture polish, a rag, some gloves, a mop, and various other cleaning products, Reid had started the weekly ritual earlier that morning, the radio blaring as she worked. She'd been at the chore for several hours already, her fingers becoming somewhat stiff. Placing the mop back in the bucket, she walked over to the radio and turned it down a bit, the fingers of her free hand pulling the braid from her hair when a knock sounded on the door. If that was Ethan, she'd strangle him. She owed her cousin an ass-kicking, anyways. Marching from the kitchen to the living room, pulling the door open with a sarcastic comment on the tip of her tongue. "Look, Salvango, I know I promised to kick your ass, but I have a schedu-" Okay, so it definitely wasn't Ethan. Some guy who didn't look much older than herself, and a girl who looked a little younger than herself. And damn did she look familiar. "... Can I help you?"

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Madison was all ready to run far, far away from this apartment until a time in which she wouldn't be freaking out.. Maybe in a year? Two? When she was 95? That age sounded perfect! She'd be too lifeless to be nervous then! But this plan was completely and utterly destroyed by that annoying ass her best friend's hands simultaneously yanking her back towards the door and knocking on it. "What th-- You can't just...!" She could barely get her words out. He had just knocked on the door! HE KNOCKED ON IT. Now she'd be forced to do the thing she came here to do in the first place! And, you know, logic aside that was a pretty scary thing. "We have to go right now!" She kept her voice low and gripped his arm this time, intending to drag him away kicking and screaming if need be. "We have to go, and I have to kill yo--" And the door opened. "Hi!" A big smile plastered itself on her face and her hands fell to her sides (instead of, you know, strangling Landon like she really wanted to right now). The first thing she noticed upon seeing the girl in front of her was the definite family resemblance. That had to be her: Reid Huitt. Either that or she was going to start questioning how many children those dead parents of hers had given away back in the day because those looks were way too similar to her own to be a coincidence. Did they get those cheeks from their mother or their father? She was so caught up in the similarities, that eventually she caught herself staring and she didn't know how long she'd been doing that for. Way to choke, Madi. "Uh, sorry! Brain freeze... Um..." She looked to Landon, her eyes desperately pleading for some kind of help that he undoubtedly wouldn't give her. What was she supposed to say now? "Hey, we have the same dead parents, want to catch a movie?" No. She tried to formulate something meaningful and honest, something to introduce herself to her older sister, but instead she continued to fail miserably and all that came out was a really stupid excuse. "We are from the... University... Survey... Society... And, uh, we're tracking down some students around town and... asking them things to help the school really get to know their students..." Oh, God, someone please shoot her... Just run out with a gun and shoot her right now. "Do you have time for a few questions?" See. They should have just gone to get food...

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