The Girl With the Rainbow Hair

Chapter 2

 Another day, another dollar, I think to myself on another slow day at work. I hate working by myself. It gets busy sometimes and I'm only 16, it gets too much for me to handle. Either that or I'm bored to tears. I bend down to look for something under the counter. As I search through a bunch of crap we never use, I hear the bells go off, signaling someone entering the gas station.

"Good afternoon," I greet without checking who it was.

"Hello," a voice replies. Her voice. I jump and bang my head on the counter, swearing under my breath.

"Hey, it's Julie, right?" I ask flustered and try to straighten the SnapBack pulled close to my eyebrows.

"Hey Sam. I'm surprised you remember me," she laughs. Which doesn't make sense because a) I haven't been able to stop thinking about her, and b) she's got bright rainbow striped hair. Kinda hard to forget that.

"Yeah, sorry about yesterday," I grimace.

"Dude, it's totally cool. I'm just going around town trying to learn everything," she idly plays with a pen sitting on the counter.

"Oh, did you just move here?" I ask. No wonder I've never seen this brown eyed goddess before.

"Yeah, but I'm homeschooled," she frowns. "It gets pretty lonely. Moving from the big city to here, it seems there's hardly anyone here."

Taking that as my invitation, I say "well, I'm here a lot, you can always come hang out with me."

"Sweet! I may just have to take you up on that offer," she grins. Before I know it, I notice we've been talking for an hour, stopping only for me to ring customers up. I learn that she's 15 and just moved here from somewhere in California. I didn't even realize any time had passed until the boss showed up.

"Hey Sam. Sorry I'm late," she says. She fakes a smile towards Julie, who smiles bashfully back. She's so adorable. STOP THAT BRAIN. "Who's you're friend?"

"This is Julie. Julie Grace, this is my boss, Miss Linda," I introduce them.

"Nice to meet you, Julie Grace," Miss Linda says. She's friendly enough, but she doesn't seem too happy that Julie is taking up my work time.

"It's just Julie. Nice to meet you too," she smiles back. She's never corrected me when I call her Julie Grace. Weird.

An awkward silence follows before I say "Hey Linda, I'm gonna go ahead and take my 15 minute break."

She gives me that look that says I don't approve of breaks but I put you through daily Hell so I'll allow it. "That's fine," she says in a strained voice.

I grab a soda and sit at a window booth across from Julie Grace. The sun reflecting off her hazel eyes suddenly makes breathing difficult. Soon we go back to talking about books we've read and movies we've seen. She suddenly stops and says "Oh my God! Look at how cute that baby is!" She's looking out of the window, but I can't focus on that. All I can think is Her hand i on my hand. She's holding my hand. Holy crap is this actually happening? She sees me not looking at the kid and notices me staring at our hands. She pulls away, thinking I was bothered by it. But I wasn't at all. And that's what bothered me.

"He's adorable!" I exclaim, trying to recover. We both laugh until the couple with the child walk in. We try to stop, but as soon as we look at each other, we just start laughing again. Her laugh is infectious, sounding like happiness all wrapped up into one person. I think I really like her. Well, now what? Does she like me? How do I even proceed from here?