Work Text:
The air was filled with the sickening feeling of greasy food, as the sizzling of the fryer could be heard throughout the kitchen and the suffocating stench of oil spread across the room. By now, it was just a typical Saturday for Amelia Watson, newly-employed “Team Member” at the local Burger King. Amelia often thought about how things might have gone if she worked somewhere else, but this place was just as desperate for employees as she was for a summer job.
“Ame!” a voice called out before being immediately cut off by a deafening “BEEP” that came from the fryer.
“What?” Ame yelled in response.
“Are you doing okay over there?” the voice, which belonged to her co-worker Kiara, loudly asked.
Despite being the same age in the same grade, Kiara had already been working there for over a year, and was responsible for training Amelia when she first started out. She had bright orange hair, and she was always smiling. Her sparkly and energetic attitude was one of the few things that kept the job from being completely miserable.
“Yeah!” Amelia responded. “It was just really busy earlier…”
“Hey, who do you think had to make all those orders?!”
They laughed together, reminiscing on the lunch rush they had just endured twenty minutes ago while their manager stood outside and ignored the line that wrapped around the building. With just one window, Amelia juggled several orders at a time while the next customers in line demanded service. Not to mention the counter, which she was also running solo. If it hadn’t been for Kiara and her apparent natural gift for this whole “fast food” business, the place would be crumbling!
After all of that, Amelia was dreading the thought of another customer at that point… so, of course, that was the exact moment when another customer walked in.
Amelia hardly paid much attention to any customer’s face, just trying to put on her best “service attitude” and get through each order as efficiently as possible, focusing mostly on operating the register and bagging the food. As usual, she went about her script.
“Hi, how can I help you?”
“Watson?”
It was a familiar voice, but not one she immediately recognized.
“Hey…uh?” Amelia stopped to look at the person in front of her.
It was a girl her age. She had long, silver-colored hair with blue highlights, held up messily into a side ponytail. She wore a light blue t-shirt with a pocket adorned by a pattern of fish bone-shapes, and a dark blue skirt.
“Lots of blue…” Amelia was thinking.
Amelia attempted to make eye contact, but looked away almost immediately. The girl’s eyes were an almost-unrealistically pretty blue color. It reminded Amelia of the ocean, and made her heart jump for a moment.
“Watson! Or, uh…” the girl peered at Amelia’s name tag. “...Amelia! We had English together this year, right? How’d you do on the final? Man, I didn’t know what I was doing! Good thing that class was super easy! I didn’t even read the book!” the girl said nonchalantly.
Amelia started to relax.
“Oh, I remember her!” Amelia thought. “That’s…”
“GURAAAAA!” someone with an exhausted-sounding voice called from the front door, throwing it open and shambling through the door.
It was Ina’nis, one of Amelia’s closest friends! They had known each other ever since they met in the eighth grade, when Ina’nis had her schedule messed up on the first day and ended up in three different language classes.
Her friends just shortened her name as “Ina.”
“Sorry I’m late, I…”
“Ina?” Amelia said.
“Ame?” Ina’nis questioned.
“Ame?” Gura inquired.
“Gura?” Amelia pondered.
“You guys know each other?” Gura asked.
“Ame? I didn’t know you were here.” Ina’nis said.
“They put me in for the morning today, yeah.”
“What a coincidence, huh! You picked the right day to randomly decide on this place for lunch, yeah Gura?”
Gura glanced in Amelia’s direction, then quickly looked away and smiled.
“So, uh…could I have a number one meal? With cheese. Medium size! Oh, and can you give me half-and-half onion rings and fries?” Ina’nis asked as she ordered.
“No can do, sorry! We got in big trouble last time we tried that.”
“It’s true!” Kiara called from the back of the kitchen.
“Oh, hi Kiara!” Ina’nis called in response.
Gura looked surprised to hear Kiara’s voice, but Amelia didn’t think much of it. “ Do they know each other too?” she wondered.
“Well, I guess just the onion rings then!”
“Alright, the total is $11.93, here’s your cup, straws and lids are on the table over there!”
“Thank you Ameeeee!” Ina’nis said as she went towards the soda machine.
“Hey, nice to properly meet you, Amelia!” Gura said, with both her hands on the counter.
“Hey, nice to meet you, fish girl!” Amelia said, looking at Gura’s shirt again. “You can just call me ‘Ame.’ Saying ‘Amelia’ feels so formal.”
“Alright! Well, ‘Ame,’ you work here, what do you recommend?”
“Anything that isn’t a burger.” Amelia said, grinning.
“Aw, what? You just let me order one!” Ina’nis exclaimed from across the store.
“I’m sorry, you didn’t ask!” Amelia responded with a half-apologetic, half-joking tone.
“Alright, just give me eight nuggets and a large drink then!” Gura declared.
“If you say so! It’s $7.34, by the way.”
“Inaaa! You got ripped off!” Gura said.
“I knooow!” Ina responded.
—---------
A gust of wind blew through the drive thru window as Amelia was poking her head through it. The day was cool, cloudy, and a little humid, and the sky looked dark, gray, but a little blue.
“Okay Ame, you’re probably good to take your break now!” Kiara told her, startling her into nearly smacking her own head on the window.
“Yep!” Ame called back. “Can I get something to eat?”
“Of course! I’ll log into the register so you can order whatever.”
“Thanks, Kiara!”
Just as Amelia went to get her food, it started pouring outside. The wind was howling, and the rain came down hard on the front of the building.
“Guess there definitely won’t be any new customers for a while, huh?”
Ame sat near the window and watched the rain fall as she poked at the mushy fries on her tray and took a bite out of her burger.
Just in that moment, a familiar figure emerged in the dark and stormy world of the outdoors.
“Gura…?”
The door flew open and Gura walked in, dripping with water, her clothes and hair soaked from the rain. She didn’t look prepared for this kind of weather.
“Oh, heya Watson! I mean… Ame!”
“Gura? Hi! Wait, what are you doing? It’s a mess out there!”
“Oh, you know…I was just in the area and I got hungry so, here I am!”
“You were out there in this weather?” Amelia asked, now walking towards the back of the store.
“Hey, I didn’t know it would get like this! Not like it matters, anyway! I can handle a little water! I could probably live in water if I felt like it!”
“Yeah, alright. Here, at least put this on. I can’t imagine anyone being comfortable in a soaked outfit like that,” Amelia said as she reached into a box and tossed Gura an extra employee “uniform”, which was just a t-shirt.
Gura sat across from where Amelia was sitting, and they talked for a while.
“How’s your summer going, Ame? Going on a fun vacation or anything?”
“Well, I’ve been here for most of it. Can’t really go anywhere else when you have a place to be!”
“Aw man, seriously? Not even a single day at the beach or anything? Have you gotten to go swimming even once?”
“Swimming in frying oil, maybe.”
“That stinks.”
“Yeah, being here all summer kinda sucks, haha.”
“It does! You should totally quit.”
“I can’t! I gotta have a job, or I won’t get to do any of the other things I want to do this summer!”
“Have you actually gotten to do any of those things?”
Amelia thought about this for a minute.
“Y’know…” Gura started to say, “...having money is great and all, but what’s the point if you don’t get to use it on the things you wanted it for?”
“I guess that’s true,” Amelia said. “But…”
“I know it’s important, but come on, Ame! If you don’t let yourself enjoy your time, you’re gonna run out of summers! Graduation is in less than a year now, remember? Then we’ll go to college, and we all might be too busy to hang out at all, not even like this!” Gura said, looking around the store, then back at Amelia, who looked conflicted, and a little saddened.
“You’re right…” Amelia said. “Where’d the time go?”
“Watson…I didn’t mean it like that! We still have plenty of time!”
“Yeah, but it’s still true! Everything is moving so fast! And here I am, sitting in this place, covered in grease !”
“Oh, that’s what that smell was? I didn’t wanna say anything,” Gura said, grinning.
The two of them looked at each other’s faces and stopped talking for a second, then started to laugh.
“Hey, speak for yourself, fish breath!” Amelia jokingly retorted as an alarm on her phone started ringing. “Oops, my break is over. I gotta get back in there, sorry.”
“Wait, give me your phone for a second!” Gura said as she grabbed Amelia’s phone before getting an answer.
“Uh…?”
“Here! It was nice to see you again!” Gura exclaimed, then saluting and saying “good luck in there, soldier.”
“I won’t let you down, Colonel Fish-for-Brains!”
“See ya later, stinky!”
As Gura ran out the door, Amelia looked down at her phone and smiled. Gura had added her phone number to the contacts list under a nickname.
“Fish girl…” Amelia thought, laughing to herself. “She didn’t even order anything.”
—---------
The sky was a bright blue and there were just a few clouds. It was sunny and warm, with the perfect breeze to keep Amelia and Kiara from melting inside the kitchen. Though, this time, they wouldn’t have to worry about it for much longer.
“It’s almost noon, Ame!” Kiara said, peeking her head out of the kitchen. “Are you almost ready to get out of here?”
“Yep!” Amelia said excitedly. “My bag is under the counter, don’t let me forget about it!”
“I won’t! Ina says they’ll all be here soon, we don’t wanna let this day go to waste!”
As luck would have it, Amelia and Kiara managed to get the perfect schedule for the day, in exchange for coming in at eight in the morning. Once the clock hit twelve, they got to spend the rest of the day however they wanted!
However, at 11:59, technically not time to leave, the drive thru light turned on. A customer?
The car drove past the microphone and up to the drive thru window, and the driver rolled her window down and looked into the kitchen.
“Hey, Amelia! Kiara! You two better hurry up and get out here or we’re gonna leave without you!”
“Calli!” Kiara exclaimed, running over to the window.
“Hey, the beach isn’t going anywhere!” Amelia said.
“Yeah, but you are! It’s basically twelve already, let’s get outta here!”
Amelia and Kiara hurried and grabbed their things, clocked out, and headed outside to meet Calliope, Ina’nis, and Gura at the car. Calliope was the only one of the five with her own car, so she was the driver for the day!
As Kiara got into the passenger seat, Amelia climbed into the back where Ina’nis and Gura were sitting.
“Hi Ame!” Ina’nis said happily.
“Hi Ina!” Ame said.
“Long time no see, stinky!” Gura said.
“Hey, you were here two days ago!”
“Haha, yeah.”
As they drove down the highway with the windows down, the wind blowing on their hair, Amelia thought about how excited she was to finally spend some time with her friends outside of work, Gura’s words from the other day ringing out in her head. She looked over at Gura and into her ocean blue eyes, and Gura looked back at her and smiled.