Ghost Girl; Chapter 2

Chapter 2: It Takes Time
The first time he sees her, he's not entirely sure she's real. Surrounded by the most eclectic pack of dogs he has ever seen, gold streaked copper hair that looks like she cut it with a knife, one side cut shorter than the other, the left side is barely below her earlobe, the right side almost an inch below the earlobe. He can see a couple of braids bound in copper wire poking through the rest of her unbound, uneven hair. She is dressed like a boy, the first time he sees her, in basketball shorts that reach her knees and a loose T-shirt that hides the fact that she is female and probably came from a gas station. He can see scars on her legs; her shins are littered with them; two are the most prominent: on her right calf there is a faded one that goes from two inches above her ankle to three inches below her knee, on her left leg there is another that goes from mid-calf and ends somewhere beneath the black shorts.
A greyhound whines and presses against her leg, she rests her hand on it's head. Her eyes never move from him, they are calmer than anything he has seen before. They are beautiful in the way that the brief respite that the eye of a hurricane brings is beautiful, peace in the center of chaos. He wants to speak, he wants to ask her name, what she is doing here, where she lives. He wants to ask her if she is real, this girl who is not beautiful but is. This girl who is feral and tame and full of conundrums. She turns and runs from him, disappearing into the forest like a deer or a dryad, before any words have a chance to come out of his mouth. He thinks that she is a ghost, running with ghostly dogs. Whenever he thinks of this meeting he will think of her as 'the ghost girl'.
It will be three years before he meets her again, three years before he discovers that her eyes are different colors, the left one is deep green and the right one is ice blue. It will be three years before he learns her name. He will know her before then, through rumor and seeing her in the hallways at school, but he will not remember this meeting in the forest. He will only see a girl that no one talks to, a girl who has dyed her hair an iridescent blue, always has headphones in, and always walks with her head down. He will not connect that this girl with blue hair who looks as if she has been beaten by the world is the same girl who looked at him with quiet confidence and disappeared into the forest with her pack of dogs. It will be three years before they meet again in the forest and he recognizes her for who she is.