Wonderful

The first time Hugh sees The Girl she’s making a customer cry.

To be fair, the other girl, the one that’s crying, isn’t actually a customer. She is one of those girls who hangs out at the anime section, a pair of cat ears on top of her head at all times, for some strange reason. She’s one of the ones that never buys anything, but the books she and her friends leaf through always end on the floor, giving him more work. Granted, the work provides some distraction from his mostly boring routine, but he still resents the rudeness.

Hugh had been heading toward the back room to eat his lunch when he hears sobs and an annoyed, clipped female voice.

“You’re acting very childishly, Millie, and it’s making me very uncomfortable,” The Girl says, very matter-of-fact. “There’s absolutely no need to cry; I was simply trying to catch your attention.”

“By tearing the head off of my teddy bear?” the other hysterical girl - Millie - wails.

“I’ve been calling you for twenty minutes, and you wouldn’t answer - very rude, by the way. I need your undivided attention if we’re going to be working together, Millie, so I took drastic action.” She says this calmly, like explaining long division to a twelve-year-old. “Besides, why would you even bring a teddy bear to school? You’re seventeen, for Chrissake.”

“It was a gift from my boyfriend!” Millie screeches. “He lives in Minnesota, and I never get to see him!”

“You have a boyfriend?” The girl seems just as surprised as Hugh feels. “And he gave you a pink teddy bear?”

“Ugh, yes, so what?”

“No, nothing. Look, I’ll fix this... thing, and we can just get on with our project. I’ll write our report, and you can... handle the creative aspect or whatever. I was thinking a video, maybe? I don’t know. We should talk about this.”

“What, so I’m just supposed to forgive you and pretend this never happened?”

“Why, that is exactly what is going to happen, actually. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to look for books on the Panama Canal.”

And just like that she’s in front of him, almost bumping into him. She’s wearing a pressed white button-up and a plaid skirt and has got this huge powder blue purse hanging off the crook of her elbow.

“Maybe I can help you with that,” Hugh says, playing the part of dutiful employee quite admirably. “It is my job, after all.”

The girl stops on her tracks and stares at Hugh with wide-eyes. It’s off-putting, especially since he just heard this exact same girl go off on someone.

“Books on the Panama Canal should be by the non-fiction aisle... obviously because it’s non-fiction, but -”

“I have to go, actually,” the girl says quickly. “To school. Where I go to. I - we have a library anyway, so - “

“Yeah, duh,” Hugh says out loud, of course they have a library. Why would she waste perfectly good money on a book that the top-of-the-line library of her very expensive private school?

She nods and walks around him and out the door. It’s that quick. She literally speed-walks to the door.

That’s the first time Hugh sees the girl. It’s also not the last, but it is the only time they actually interact until about three months later, when she starts their very weird and convoluted relationship.

But that’s getting a bit ahead of the story.