Author's Notes: To Sky and Stars: I was going to put what happened to Heather in this chapter, but I forgot to. She was just out with some of her newer friends.
Chapter Four - Careful
By that Saturday, I knew it was time for me to get a job.
Ciara never starved us or anything like that, but we never had anything in the house. And of course it was up to me to buy everything but food - clothes for CJ and myself, books, school supplies, whatever. Considering that we needed a lot of things besides food, I needed to get income somehow, and fast. Really fast.
The only place I could find that would hire me was a store called Dan's Groceries. I thought that the name of the store was stupid, and Dan himself was stupider, head full of dust and tumbleweeds and stereotypes. He reminded me of Heather.
When I came into Dan's for my interview, the assistant manager immediately grabbed my arm and dragged me off to Dan's office. From two nearby cashiers, Paul and Seth waved at me. I waved back, having had no clue they worked here. Paul pointed at me and shrugged his shoulders, evidently wondering why I was here. I mouthed 'Job' and Seth nodded at no one in particular.
Dan was a round guy with bald spots all over his head and a blindingly green tie on. His office smelled like way too much cologne. He noticed my casual clothes - band t-shirt, scuffed sandals, yellow skirt, and frowned. I just sighed inwardly and thought, Here we go again. Another person who things he's too good for me.
"So. Your name is Willow, am I mistaken?" He had a severe voice that sounded like a car's tires rumbling over gravel.
"Yes, sir."
"How old are you?"
"Fifteen."
Dan sifted through a bunch of papers on his desk and finally pulled up one. I could see 'Minor Employment' written at the top. He read through it and threw it back down. "Fifteen. Okay. You can be legally hired."
"Yes, sir."
"How much experience do you have at this sort of job, Willow?"
"I worked at Target for five months."
"Hmm." Dan stroked his chin thoughtfully. "You do realize that I can only pay you minimum wage, as you are still a minor."
"Yep, I do."
"And you won't get an attitude with any of the customers, no matter what the circumstance, correct? Because if you do, you'll be out of here in a heartbeat."
At least he was being honest about it. "I won't, sir. I'll treat everyone with as much respect as if they were the governor."
He looked at the clock for what must have been fourty million years. Then he said gruffly, still not looking at me, "You're hired. You start Monday."
"Thank you!" I just about ran out of the office - the cologne was about to burn my nose right off - and smiled all the way to the front door.
"Hey!" shouted Seth from behind me. I turned to face him; a good fifteen people were waiting in line for him, grumpy and impatient, but he couldn't care less. "Did you get the job?"
I gave him the thumbs-up and he grinned. "I start Monday!"
Paul turned around and raised a confused eyebrow at the both of us. "Say what?"
I giggled at him and left.
Monday came soon, seeing as I was busy taking care of CJ and trying to fight off Heather when she complained about some friend of hers all weekend. The assistant manager was waiting for me again; she brought me over to a register and said, "This is where you work."
The registers had those little things where they aren't seperated one by one, but have two back-to-back doors. The register I was working at was right next to Seth's; he turned around and smiled at me. From another register over, Paul waved.
"Well, whaddaya know? Hi, Willow," said Seth.
"Hey, Seth."
"Did Mrs. P tell you what you need to do?"
I guessed Mrs. P was the assistant manager. "Yeah. I've already worked at grocery stores before, though."
"Oh. Well, if you need any help..."
"...I'll ask you, I know. Thanks."
The next few hours passed with a store's usual madness - customers saying they needed to return stuff when they didn't even have the receipt, kids screaming over candy, wrong prices. By the time the lunch break came, I had a headache that made me feel like my head was going to break open. Seth and I plopped ourselves on a bench outside - Paul had chosen to take his break at another time - and stuffed our faces with junk food.
"How do you like La Push so far?" Seth asked me after a moment.
"It's pretty cool, I guess. Nice scenery."
"Yeah." Seth gazed into the horixon at something I couldn't see, and eventually turned his gaze back to me. "I've always liked it here."
"Well, that's because you've lived here your whole life."
"I know. But...it's just nice. Kind of comforting, I think. Or maybe it's just me."
"It's not."
I liked Seth. Not in the boyfriend-type way, but as a friend. He was nice and was the first person I could ever remember who actually listened to what I said. I wasn't used to the respect he treated me with and was constantly waiting for him to say something rude or let me down like everyone else. But he never did.
Of course, I was careful stepping into the world of friendship. I already knew that La Push would be forgotten as soon as we moved out (most likely about three weeks from now), smoothed over, as though we'd never been there. I would be upsetting Seth if we became friends and I zoomed out of La Push some weeks later. And even though I wanted to push him away, I just couldn't.
I knew, not only from Ciara but also from Heather, that the only thing boys wanted was to get in your pants. The endless pervert jokes I'd heard over the years could easily stack up into the millions. Never did I hear, however, anything like this from Seth. Ever. But of course he could just be trying to lure me in with the whole 'innocent' mask going on. I felt differently about him than any other boy I'd met, and had hope that he might not pull a Moving Guy Greg - or worse. But of course I was always on the alert for this.
The next week passed quickly. I actually liked work, though maybe only because I had Seth to talk to. We had a lot in common: liked the same music, same type of movies (action so extreme it looked faker than Barbie), same food. We even agreed that the new sofa Quil had was the ugliest thing on the face of the planet.
Our similarities made absolutely no sense at all, considering the fact that our personalities were completely opposite. Seth was the sweetest of the sweet, every girl's dream boyfriend. He was always so cheerful and easygoing, as if he had no care in the world. I, on the other hand, was a physco straight out of Hell, enough so to scare any old lady and have anyone who ever met me talk about me behind my back ("Did you hear what Willow was saying yesterday! God, she's so freaking weird!") I slumped around angrily and was generally a bitch to everyone who stood three yards close to me. I made people hate me on purpose just so I wouldn't stomp all over their heart when we moved again. Seth, on the other hand, naturally attracted friends. I didn't understand it.
One afternoon, Seth and I were sitting outside of Dan's as usual and eating our lunch. Paul had finished his seconds later and was going back inside. Seth held up a DVD and said, "I just bought this. Look at it."
The title was Car Crash, splayed all over the top like CJ had painted it with watercolors. A picture of a car wreck and general chaos was in the background, and in the front was a guy looking to the right with a gun in his hand. I took it from Seth and read aloud, "Ninety-three minutes. Rated R."
"They're only good if they're rated R."
"I know it." I handed Seth back the DVD and said, "Sounds like fun."
"Yeah. Do you wanna watch it?"
"How? There's not a DVD player out here," I said stupidly.
Seth laughed at that. "Duh, smarty. I meant at my house. After work."
Well...
"I'd like to, but I have to watch CJ today." Like I did every day of my pathetic life.
"Oh. Well, you can bring him over. Sue would love to watch him for a few hours. She adores babies."
The only thing I had planned for that afternoon was doing the laundry. I'd much rather be at Seth's house watching explosions and gore than that. "Of course."
Seth grinned. "Four o'clock, then."
"It's on."