Chapter Three

Stuck in Time

No one ever would accuse me of being spoiled.

Not as a kid, anyway. We were poor growing up, the kind of poor where getting clothing for Christmas didn’t make us cry. At the moment, I’m feeling a little on the spoiled side but it has nothing to do with money or getting everything I want. No, I’m a little grumbly that I’m driving up north instead of teleporting.

Or rather, we are driving.

I’m not personally behind the wheel at the moment. Anthony got his permit and he wanted to get some practice in. Surprisingly, it doesn’t bother me at all. This is one of those ‘makes you feel old’ moments. ‘Holy cow, my child is driving’ situation. Most of the time, any sign of my kids growing up hits me pretty hard. Then again, Ant learning to drive is pretty tame compared to ‘hey, Ma, I’m gonna be an angel.’

The reason we’re in the van is primarily to blend in, and a little bit of laziness. I don’t want to bother thinking up an excuse for how we got to my parents’ place without a vehicle. At least, assuming the Momvan makes the trip okay. It’s getting kinda old for a car at this point. Probably not the smartest idea to just pick up and drive a few hundred miles in a vehicle of this age without at least taking it in for a mechanic to go over first.

If it dies out on the road somewhere, oh well. Then I’ll teleport us the rest of the way.

Tammy—and we’re an hour into the trip at this point—is still laughing at how her brother couldn’t figure out how to start the engine. The way he looked at the key I was trying to hand him got her going on and on about writing a script for a movie where an angel tries to live among mortals but is completely clueless how anything works.

Obviously, my son is not a celestial being—at least not in the sense that he’s never seen the mortal world before. The boy should know how a traditional key works. I can’t help but feel I failed as a parent in that department—even if the car he drove for his driving school course had a push-button start and an electronic key fob. The boy should still know how the key works in this van. Hadn’t he seen me start it a million times? Sheesh. Anyway, like any respectable parent would, I had sat there quietly watching him search all over the dashboard for the push start button that this van does not have without saying a word until he finally asked why he couldn’t find it.

When we get home, I think I’m going to give the kids a crash course on Gen-X technology.

So, me and mine are driving up now. Mary Lou and her brood should be not far behind us. She’s still trying to reach Clayton and River.

For all we know, the brothers might already be there at the house. Another reason I decided against just teleporting us there. Not that Mom would even notice if people appeared out of thin air right in front of her. Clay might think he’s hallucinating thanks to his drug habit. Don’t really know how River or Dusk would react. Haven’t had a lot of contact with them since they moved out. Being the youngest of my siblings, I was the last one stuck living at home.

Don’t tell anyone, but I really hated not having Mary Lou around for the last couple years I lived at home. She moved out when I was sixteen, since she’d met Rick and they got married young. At least I’d been old enough to mostly take care of myself at that point.

Truth was, I just kind of stumbled along until I met Danny. Took me a long time to grow into a proper adult. Even past the age of eighteen, I still had this thing where I was afraid to make decisions and needed to feel like I had someone there taking care of me. To this day, I still can’t pinpoint the moment it changed or what finally gave me a smack upside the head. Looking back, it probably happened during my first couple of months with HUD. Kinda hard to go through assertiveness training without becoming at least a little more assertive.

Like I said... we’re on the highway.

Despite the grimness of the occasion, the mood of a family road trip is pretty strong. For the time being, it doesn’t feel like we’re on our way to say final goodbyes to an elderly family member. We’re merely on the way to visit . Paxton doesn’t have much of a duck in this race since she’s not related to my parents and had never met them. I have some vague memories of taking Tammy to see them once. I don’t really remember if Anthony was around at that point in time or not. If he was, he’d have been a baby. Tammy doesn’t remember them. The only thing I really remember about that trip was Danny spending the whole ride home giving me crap for bringing our kids into the presence of more drugs than he’d ever seen.

Could be one of the reasons I turned into such a clingy mom… because I didn’t want my kids to distance themselves from me like I did to my parents. It’s on my parents, though. If they wanted us around more, they shouldn’t have spent the first eighteen years of my life acting like they couldn’t care less if we existed or not. And they certainly could have come down to visit—or invited us up (which they never did).

Ugh. I’m getting bitter again.

Haven’t thought about my feelings toward the parents in years. I thought I’d been over it… over them, but I suppose imminent death has a habit of peeling up scabs and causing some wounds to ooze again. There’s not really much point as far as I can see to ‘examine my feelings’ toward Mom and Dad. Maybe it’s on the cold side, but is it worth trying to reestablish a relationship with a man who’s going to be dead in a month? Especially when said man has shown me more or less nothing but ambivalence?

What if it’s not his fault? I mean it is pretty unusual for a parent to be like that, right? Aren’t we genetically wired to love our kids? By ‘not his fault,’ I mean, what if he has some sort of mental problem? When people talk about ‘attachment disorder,’ it’s usually in the context of neglected children who never emotionally attach themselves to a caregiver. Is it possible for an adult man to have it and fail to form proper attachments to his kids?

I dunno.

Again, is it really worth debating?

Around a quarter-to-two in the afternoon, we pull in to a rest area for some lunch, to stretch our legs, and use the bathroom. I do grab a chicken sandwich for appearances, though my actual meal comes from the collected consciousness of the twenty or so people in the food court around us. Maybe it’s a little cruel of me, but I lean on the employees more than visitors. Everyone here who doesn’t work at this place is almost certainly at some stage of a long road trip. Wouldn’t want to make someone with hours of driving ahead of them unusually tired.

The kids head to the bathroom while I wait for the food to come out. Soon, we’re at a table, eating together like any other traveling family. Can’t help myself, but I occupy the time looking around at everyone in case any of them gives off a psychic poke. Watched too many movies or true crime stories about abductions. Every kid in here that looks even remotely unhappy gets me worried. Thankfully, nothing reaches out and slaps me in the psychic feelers.

And now that my mind reading has been returned... I dip into the minds of some of the sketchier looking adults. Most have normal frontal thoughts: Do I have enough gas to make the next station? Hell, do I have enough money for gas? Where’s little Ricky and Sue? Oh, there they are.

The buried thoughts I don’t worry about, mostly because it would take too much time to unpack them.

Once we’re done eating, we wander around for a bit to do the whole leg stretching deal. Finally, we make our way back to the Momvan. I take over driving duties. After a brief second stop to get more gas ourselves, we’re back on the highway. It’s crazy to think that going a few hundred miles is taking so long when I’ve teleported thousands of miles in an instant. Hell, millions of miles. Yes, I’m looking at you Mars! And maybe even the Sun, though the latter, I’m not so sure about.

Pax isn’t a little kid, though I’m glad she brought her tablet along. It’s keeping her occupied. No idea what she’s doing on it but… she’s absorbed. And yes, I got a car adapter thing so her battery doesn’t die. The Momvan has those round plugs for old school cigarette lighters, but never came with the actual lighter component. These ports are fully intended to support electronic devices. I suppose one could have bought the lighter insert as an option. Not for me, though. I used to be a somewhat heavy smoker—especially, if I went out in the sun.

But I quit.

Ha. Of all the things fate did to me, I am really glad to have caught that break—being a psychic vamp, that is .

It’s one of the crappy parts of how the mechanisms of creation somehow respond to human consciousness. If enough people believe something, it tends to manifest. Hence the whole sunlight burning the undead vampire thing. Seen a movie or two where sunlight didn’t bother them at all. There are even fictional vampires who simply lose their powers during the day, but don’t catch fire.

This is where I would have grumbled about the majority of people thinking vampires should burn in the sun if I still happened to be undead.

Small favors.

One hour melts into another.

“Can you stop at the next rest stop?” asks Tammy. “I gotta go. Drank too much tea.”

“We’re out in the middle of nowhere.” Anthony gestures at the window.

Tammy fidgets for a moment, then climbs over the seat into the back part of the van, out of sight by the rear hatch.

Rustling sounds tell me she’s getting undressed.

Oh boy. I know exactly what she’s doing. I am not surprised when a black wolf head pops up over the rearmost seat.

I pull over to the side of the highway so we can let the ‘family dog’ do her business in the weeds. Anthony finds this absolutely hilarious. Paxton is mortified, even though Tammy races so far off into the brush no one can see her.

It doesn’t take long for her to come trotting back over and climb into the van. A few minutes after I rejoin traffic, she’s changed back into her human form, gotten dressed, and hopped back in her seat.

A few hours later, it’s getting on toward early evening. By now, everyone except Tammy is in serious need of a rest stop. I keep asking them to hang on a little longer since we’re almost there… until Paxton demands I stop right now so she can ‘water th e grass’.

Apparently, the situation is critical.

Okay then.

We’re in a rural sort of area and it looks like there’s a super tiny town coming up. When I point out that we’re likely two minutes away from a proper bathroom, she admits she can hold it a little longer.

We end up stopping at a little gas station. It’s the sort of place where I expect the one guy working here to be named Cletus or Bubba. A white board with black painted letters indicates they have bait for sale. Of all the weird things a gas station could branch into for side money… bait? We’re not exactly at the coast here. Guess there are a lot of creeks and lakes around here. I kinda forgot how rural the area I grew up in was. It’s been a while since I’ve come up this way, so I don’t really remember the lay of the land right here.

I pull up to the gas pump. Might as well top off.

Tammy and Paxton jump out and run for the gas station building while I open the gas cap. The girls find a door on the side of the building, open it… and stare inside. Both of them lean back as if recoiling from an elder demon. Tammy one-hand swings the door shut hard. They stand there staring at the closed door for another few seconds before darting around behind the place. Oh wow. Just how gnarly was that bathroom?

While I’m pumping gas, a man emerges from the office. True to my expectations, he’s wearing overalls and a pale Army-green T-shirt. His outfit does not have a nametag. This man may or may not fit my Cletus-Bubba theory. He looks late thirties, sorta shaggy brown hair and a matching beard. His hands have a coating of dark grime, as if he’d been working on an engine a day or two ago and never bothered to wash up.

“Evening,” says the guy with a nod of greeting.

His energy is friendly and nonthreatening. His mind is at peace. Not that I’d be particularly afraid of a single mortal human, no matter his intentions. Still, I get the feeling the guy just came out to talk due to boredom or a sense of being hospitable.

“Howdy,” I say.

We make small talk for a few minutes, mostly about the van. He hasn’t seen one of them in a while. Apparently, minivans were all the rage in the Eighties or something, but they’re on the rare side now. These days, everyone wants an SUV. The guy—whose name is Bill—thinks I’m the oldest among a group of siblings. He’s assumed my kids are my brother and sister, and Paxton is probably Tammy’s friend. I don’t bother correcting him. He’s obviously thinking I’m a lot younger than I am, but my ‘young’ is still quite obviously an adult… so he’s not giving me any sort of hard time about ‘where are your parents.’ The guy’s powers of observation are pretty good, though. He’s apparently aware that Paxton is not biologically related to any of us.

Paxton and Tammy emerge from behind the gas station building and hurry back over to the van.

Bill waves at the girls, then looks back to me. “Mind if I ask where you folks are headed?”

With a loud click , the pump stops.

“Klamath.” I squeeze the gas pump handle a few times, trying to round it off to an even number. Of course it overshoots to $28.02. “More or less.”

“You might want to be careful,” says Bill while eyeing the meter on the pump. “Kinda dangerous up that way.”

I remove the gas nozzle from the van and hang it back on the pump. My brain is refusing to accept the word ‘dangerous’ in reference to the little town I basically grew up in. Yeah, we lived way out in the weeds but… Klamath was the nearest ‘downtown’ to us and the place we’d always do our shopping, or occasionally go to the movies. Occasionally, as in maybe twice a year… at least until I got old enough to bike myself there and sneak in via the back without paying. Can’t imagine ther e’s enough in this area to attract the interest of gangs, or any serious criminality.

“What does ‘dangerous’ mean?” I finally ask.

“Well… there’ve been a few people found dead. County sheriff came in, didn’t do much about it.”

Huh. Odd. “Why wouldn’t a sheriff do anything about it? Multiple people? How many are we talking about here?”

“Reckon about five, maybe?”

“Five dead people and the sheriff didn’t do anything?” I blink. “That sounds kinda sketchy.”

He shrugs. “It’s just what I hear people talking about. Don’t rightly know myself since I ain’t about to go up that way if the stories are even half true.”

What gets me is the apparent sincerity in his eyes. Now, I almost have the feeling he came over to talk because he wanted to warn us away from the area. I dip into his mind. Yup, that’s exactly why he came over. He’s genuinely worried for our safety. Whatever rumors someone shared with him, he’s taken them to heart.

“What do the rumors say is happening?” I ask.

“All sorts of crazy things.” Bill chuckles. “Some thinking it’s aliens. Some say Bigfoot. Even a few folks out there claiming it’s a bear… or mountain lion.”

“What do you think is going on?” Tammy leans her head out the side door of the van.

Bill winces slightly, and gives her a shy look like he doesn’t want to scare her. “Well, I reckon it’s just a man with some screws loose.” He looks back to me. “If I can’t get you to change your minds about going there, you ought’a get done whatever you need to get done fast and get going again.”

“Thanks. Wasn’t really planning to stick around too long.” I shake his hand.

“Be careful now.” Bill waves before meandering back to his office. He gets about halfway there before pausing to look back at us.

Poor guy seems to be debating whether or not he should try harder to talk me out of going to Klamath. I don’t give him the chance to make things awkward and drive off before he can turn the rest of the way around.

He doesn’t try to chase us or shout or anything. I do spot him in the rearview mirror shaking his head as if to say ‘damn tourists… I tried to warn you.’

Five dead? Oh boy. This is going to be fun.

I don’t think the average Bigfoot is going to randomly kill people in town—especially having met two Bigfoot brothers years ago. They couldn’t have been more spiritual or advanced. If humans—or vampires, in that case—don’t go out into the woods to mess with them, they generally leave people alone. As far as aliens go? I suppose it’s a remote possibility. Aliens—from my limited experience—wouldn’t make a habit of leaving bodies around, though. They tend to abduct and keep. Gotta remember that we’re dealing with rural people out here. Lots of hippies, preppers, conspiracy types, and so forth. At least, it seemed that way when I was a kid.

Then again, I’m the one claiming to having come across Bigfoot and having been abducted.

Of course, they’re just the tip of the iceberg...

“That was creepy,” says Paxton. “Like the opening scene of a horror movie where the people are going to a cabin in the woods… and the local dude tries to warn them away but they’re so dumb they go anyway and all die.”

“Right?” Tammy chuckles. “Whatever’s going on… if something is going on, that guy sure believes it.”

“He was worried about us.” Paxton squirms in her seat. “Is something really out there? ”

“The truth is out there,” says Anthony, doing his best Agent Mulder.

Tammy laughs.

Paxton doesn’t… probably because she’s never seen The X-Files .

“Now I’m not the one who doesn’t get it.” Anthony flicks at the keys hanging from the steering column.

“Ma?” Tammy tilts her head. “Is the gas station dude paranoid or is something really going on?”

She’s asking if I took a peek inside his head. I nod. “Something is definitely going on, or so he believes.”

Tammy stares at me. “I guess I coulda just Googled... ‘Murder in Klamath’.”

“Do it,” I say.

“M’kay, hold on.”

Sure, a ‘please’ would have gone a long way, but Tammy works for me now, and I’ve gotten kind of used to bossing her around a little. My other two kids look up at me, but Tammy saves me the explanation. “She always talks to me like this. I’m used to it.”

Pax breathes a sigh of relief, while Anthony says, “Well?”

“Hang on, I’m not getting the best service here. We are, after all, in BFE.”

“What’s BFE?” asks Paxton.

“Nothing,” I say, jumping in. “Well, Tammy? Anything?”

“There. Yes, lots of articles and headlines about mysterious deaths around here. No known suspects.”

“Cool!” says Ant, rubbing his hands like a fighter about to enter the ring. He’s up for the challenge, apparently.

“Mommy,” says Pax. “I’m scared.”

“Really?” says Tammy. “You’re in a car full of Avengers, and you’re scared?”

“Well, no one knows who’s doing the killing. And I’m just thirteen. ”

“What does your gut say, Ma?” asks Tammy. “Any hits?”

It’s a good question, and after a moment of staring ahead at the road disappearing under my hood, nothing’s come to mind other than a faint sense of caution. This might just be normal for driving. It’s inherently dangerous to hurtle along at highway speeds inside a metal box. Maybe it means whatever’s going on in Klamath is a thing but not particularly dangerous to me—or for us. For all I know it might even be lunch not sitting well. Not sure. Like I’ve said already, this psychic thing didn’t come with an instruction book.

“Nothing strong enough to say for sure.”

We don’t have much conversation over the next like twenty minutes as we head along a series of progressively smaller roads. We’d left the ‘highway’ behind an hour or so before finding Bill’s gas station. Hate to say it, but without the GPS on my phone, I wouldn’t be able to find my way. It’s been roughly twenty-seven years since I’ve been to Klamath. Okay, to be fair, it’s closer to sixteen… but the time we visited with toddler Tammy didn’t involve much time downtown… and Danny did the driving.

Thanks to modern technology telling me where to turn, the winding single-lane road I’ve been following eventually brings me to more familiar surroundings. We pass a ‘welcome to Klamath, California’ sign. I almost feel like I’ve gone back in time. Everything looks pretty much as I remember it looking. The cars are obviously newer.

I can’t help but look around in… awe. It’s shocking how same it is.

And then I see it.

No, not a monster. I mean the Monarch Diner, the place I worked serving tables while in high school. Like the rest of the town, it hasn’t changed at all. Maybe it looks a little older, a little more run down. Course, it always did kinda look a bit run down in that ‘small town in the middle of nowhere’ kind of way. Once you get used to living somewhere like L.A. or Fullerton, places like this always seem neglected by comparison. When I lived here, it didn’t seem that way. Downtown Klamath felt like a rich person’s paradise to me in those days. My parents’ house was not in the best shape. People who lived downtown actually had separate clothing for every day of the week—or so I had heard.

The more I drive along at fifteen miles an hour or so, the eerier this whole place feels. That time Elizabeth sling-shotted my soul into an alternate reality and turned me back into a nine-year-old kid felt less weird than I feel right now. It’s just so bizarre that so little about this place has changed in almost thirty years. Maybe the eeriness is coming from nostalgia, regret, or some creeping sense of dread about what my life might have become had I listened to my father and never bothered with college.

On impulse—since we’ve been driving all damn day and it’s about time for dinner—I decide to pull into the Monarch’s parking lot.

“What’s a diner?” asks Paxton.

“It’s a restaurant.” Tammy scrunches up her nose. “Not really sure what makes a diner into a diner, though.”

I shrug. “That’s a good question. Probably inexpensive food with a lot of variety. They dabble at everything but aren’t masters of anything.”

“Do not order seafood at a diner,” says Anthony.

“Good advice,” I say, nodding. “It’s probably been sitting in the freezer for months.”

“Eww.” Paxton cringes.

I park. We get out and cross the small parking lot to the front door. To the left of the door, a bunch of ancient handmade posters announce concerts by local bands. I swear some of those exact posters were there when I was a teenager. The only new addition is seemingly a missing person notice for a twentysomething guy who looks kinda like a real-life version of Shaggy from Scooby-Doo . If ‘high on weed’ had a picture in the dictionary, this guy would be it.

The poster indicates his name is Jordan Smith, he’s twenty-two, and he’s been missing for roughly three weeks.

Out of nowhere, the instant I look back up from the text to his picture, I get this crazy notion that I’m going to find him. It’s not a strong drive to go out and search, it’s more a sense of no matter what I do… we’re going to bump into each other. Well, I suppose there are limits to ‘no matter what’ in this case. I mean, if I teleported home right now and stayed there, the odds of me finding him are pretty low. Probably more accurate for me to say that if I keep on doing what I’m doing without any drastic course changes, I’m very likely to find this guy—or he finds me.

Ugh. I really hope he’s not a corpse when we cross paths.

“Ma, are you okay?” asks Anthony.

“Yeah. I’m fine. Just thinking about these old posters. Swear some of them were here when I was your age.”

“You’re starting to sound like an old person.” Tammy snickers. “‘When I was your age…’”

“Right.” Laughing, I pull the door open—the old aluminum frame makes the same squeak it always did—and walk inside the Monarch Diner.

The smell hits me instantly.

It’s not a bad smell. Of course, it’s not a good smell either. It’s just the way this place smells: old wood, grease, and the combination of various foods cooking with an undertone of not-quite-dried wood varnish.

That fragrance immediately makes me feel like I’m a teenager again, dragging myself in here for another shift waiting tables. Strangely, it doesn’t make me want to turn around. Unlike most of the kids back then, I didn’t hate my job or dread going to it. It wasn’t like I could’ve been sitting at home playing video games. We didn’t have any such entertainment. Hell, us kids were happy enough to have the electricity on. Then again, home wasn’t bad enough to make working here feel like going to a safe place, either. I never felt in danger at home, just… ignored.

A vending machine and a jukebox are in the little foyer between the door to the outside and the door to the interior. No damn idea why Mack ever put a jukebox in this spot. You’d have to stand here in this closet-sized space to listen to it. As far as I know, it’s never worked. Maybe he got it with the hope of restoring it or something, then move it inside after it was fixed—only he never had it fixed. The vending machine is the same one from back then. I recognize several prominent scratches. At least the contents—snack chips and cakes—are new.

Paxton holds her hands to her chest as if she’s afraid to touch anything here. Oh, come on. It’s not that dirty. If she’s uncomfortable here, she’s going to hate the parents’ house. I shake the thought out of my head and push open the second door. The smell of frying stuff gets stronger. People around here like their fried food. Not sure if it’s a regional preference or it’s simply harder to screw up deep frying things. Mack isn’t exactly Gordon Ramsay.

We make our way to an open table on the right near the row of windows. This isn’t the fancy sort of place where a host or hostess tells you where to sit. The tables in this row usually attracted the younger crowd—mostly the high school students coming in after school got out.

I look around. I swear, except for the fashion of the people here changing, this could be thirty years ago. The same smattering of people are here, mostly elderly. This diner is a paradox of sorts. It’s busier at one in the morning, than it is now at a little after seven p.m. That’s almost certainly due to it being the only place open at one a.m .

Anyway, I never did work the late shift. For most of the time I waited tables here, I’d been too young for those hours. My last year of school, when I’d been eighteen, it would’ve been legal for me to work the late, late shift. I was, unfortunately, a bit of a chicken back then. A chicken with a long walk home down lonely country roads in the middle of the night. The kind of lonely country roads that do not have street lights. I was too scared to be out in the woods alone after dark. Back then, I’d been afraid of black bears, cougars or serial killers. All valid fears, truth be known.

I don’t recognize anyone here, either customers or staff. Three guys and five girls who all look about high school aged are waiting and bussing tables. There’s one waitress who’s probably forty or so. No sign of Mack, the owner. Maybe he finally hired another cook so he could rest his feet.

Eventually, a perky bleach-blonde girl who was probably seventeen give or take a year in either direction approaches our table and introduces herself as Avril.

I can guess what music her mom listened to as a kid. And yeah, that blonde hue is totally fake. Not only does it look unnatural, I can still smell the dye on her. Not judging. Just saying. I also have a good sniffer.

“Do you have any vegetarian stuff?” asks Paxton.

“Just the lasagna,” replies Avril. “On the last page at the bottom.”

Paxton flips through the menu and takes a look. “Is it any good?”

“Dunno. Never tried it.” Avril looks around to make sure no one is watching her, then leans close to whisper, “It’s frozen out of a box. We just microwave it.”

Oof. That sounds like Mack alright. The exotic stuff he didn’t know how to cook, he’d buy frozen from the grocery store. At least he only marked it up by like a dollar or two. After all, he wanted to offer variety, not scam people .

Anthony opts for a burger, as does Tammy.

Good choice. The two things this diner cooks fresh—or at least used to when I worked here—were the burgers and any form of sandwich, including the melts. I remember the Reuben being popular, though I’d never ate one myself.

Paxton gives me the ‘what do I do’ look.

The ‘vegetarian lasagna’ is twelve bucks, I see. It’s the only thing on the menu other than the salads that count as vegetarian. Pax isn’t militant about that sort of thing. She just feels bad for the animals, as most farmed livestock aren’t treated particularly well. However, if there is absolutely no other option, she’ll tolerate eating chicken or fish.

“If you want it, get it.” I shrug. “If it’s bad… get something else.”

“Okay. I’ll try it.” Paxton smiles at Avril.

I also get a burger… and a blasted onion. Mack couldn’t call it a ‘blooming onion’ because he didn’t want to get sued, but it’s basically the same thing.

At this point, after Avril walks away with our order, the kids start asking me about the place, what it was like when I was a kid and so on. Story time. I basically tell them about my experiences here at their age, trying not to sound like an old woman who walked to school barefoot in the snow both ways.

When Avril comes back with refills for our iced tea, I catch her eye.

“Is Mack here?” I ask.

“Who?” Avril frowns. “I don’t know anyone named Mack.”

Her confused expression makes her look even younger. Might even be fifteen for all I know. If I had to guess, she’d been working here a few months. She’s comfortable enough not to seem new and doesn’t have another person shadowing her to make sure she doesn’t mess anything up.

“Mack’s the owner.” I smile. “When I was your age, I worked here. He did most of the cooking. ”

“Oh, wow.” Avril whistles. “That must’ve been a while ago.”

Tammy laughs.

“Oops.” Avril grimaces. “I didn’t mean to call you old. Sorry.”

I wave dismissively. “It’s fine. I didn’t take it that way.”

The older waitress sidles up beside Avril, looking at me. She’s wearing a little name badge with the word ‘Tanya’ on it. “Mack, umm, disappeared.”

“Him, too?” blurts Avril.

“Happened before you started.” The woman scratches a fingernail over her left eyebrow. “He just up and vanished, like the rest of them. Gotta be about six months ago now. They never found him. Poor Gwen.”

“Gwen?” I blink up at her. “You mean Gwendolyn Pickett?”

Avril makes an ‘I’ll leave you guys to your conversation’ face, and scoots off.

“Yeah.” Tanya looks me over. “You know her?”

“Sorta.” I lean back in my seat. “She came in here all the time when I waited tables in high school. We talked a lot. She was not in a great place.” As I think about her, my memory goes right to that whole thing where she went into the bathroom here and shot herself dead. Of course, that only happened in the alternate dimension. Whether or not the real Gwendolyn Pickett was on the verge of suicide or had a gun with her the night we had talked, I’ll never know. I’d like to think she didn’t… we’d been talking for months at that point. I was her confidant, her source of hope. She didn’t have that in the alternate world. The version of me there was kind of a selfish bitch.

“Yeah, Gwen and Mack ended up getting married.” Tanya smiles wistfully. “They were good together. His death hit her hard. ”

“He’s dead?” I gawk. “You didn’t say that… just that he went missing.”

“Oops, I mean…” Tanya lets out a long sigh. “They never found him, but everyone around town thinks he’s dead. He wouldn’t stay away from Gwen—or his diner—this long otherwise.”

From what I remember of him, he was a really decent guy. Used to let me eat for free once he found out how poor I was. He expected honest work out of me, but he was definitely willing to help if he could. The idea he might be dead gut punches me almost harder than the news my actual father is on death’s door.

How messed up is that?

About as messed up as a summer job boss caring more about me than my own father, I suppose. Or at least acting like he cared. For all I know, Dad did care about us, simply couldn’t show it well.

I talk with Tanya for a while more. Apparently, Gwen is now the owner of the diner. She runs the register in the morning and goes home around three or so in the afternoon. They hired a guy named Edwin as a cook. Also, Tanya tells me the rumors are true. Edwin is an ex-con who killed a guy. However, the man he killed was trying to abduct his daughter through her bedroom window at night. What turned it into a prison stay for Edwin wasn’t defending his daughter as much as it was that he chased the guy for half a mile and beat him to death in the street. It went from defense to vigilantism. Judges don’t really like that.

Still, even though he killed a guy, no one in town really holds it against him. There’s even a running joke here that he cooks a ‘killer omelet.’

Who am I to judge? I broke a guy’s neck less than a week ago for trying to murder a teenage girl. Granted, he was literally in the process of stabbing down at her when I kicked him. And… I wasn’t trying to kill him. Sometimes I forget my own strength, especially when my emotions are high.

Our food arrives. One of the waiters helps Avril out by carrying the big tray. She takes everything plate by plate and puts it in front of whoever ordered it. Paxton’s ‘vegetarian lasagna’ looks… somewhat reasonable. At least Edwin the killer cook took it out of the aluminum tin, so it’s not obviously a frozen entrée that’s been microwaved.

“All good? Does anyone need anything else?” asks Avril before looking at the boy. “Thanks, Jim.”

The waiter nods at her and hurries off with the empty tray.

“Ketchup, please,” says Ant.

Avril does the same thing I used to do while working here. She spins around and swipes the ketchup bottle from an empty table in the next row and puts it on our table.

Ant grabs it, smiling. “Thanks.”

We all end up staring at Paxton as Avril walks away.

“What?” she asks.

“We’re waiting to see if it’s edible,” I whisper.

“Whatever was done to that eggplant is a crime in Italy.” Anthony shakes his head.

Paxton sighs. “You can’t say that without tasting it.”

“I can smell it.” He dumps ketchup on his fries.

Yeah, my son is a food snob. At least as far as anything with Italian tomato sauce is concerned.

“Ant.” Tammy leans toward him. “We are in the middle of nowhere at a diner. That they even had vegetarian lasagna is a miracle.”

“Miracle is not exactly the word I’d use for that.” Anthony winks.

“Well, taste it.” Tammy pokes Paxton.

Kiddo makes a show of slicing off her first forkful.

Her facial expression upon eating it says ‘ passable.’

We eat. All of us pick at the giant battered onion in the middle of the table.

They say ‘you can’t go home again’ and I suppose they’re right. To a point, anyway. Everything about this place feels the same—except for the people. Downtown hits me like we’ve crossed into an alternate reality.

Yeah, my life is weird.