Two sparse forests thin enough to see a neighboring highway twisted along either side of Deb’s Diner. The constant exhaust emissions added additional walls to the natural seclusion the broccoli-like trees created, making Deb’s invisible even with a head-on view.
Cars puttered by the North Carolina highways, slowing only to see if this stop would be the oasis, the end to the shrill, car-seat cries of hunger or the constant complaints of needing to use the restroom from a teenager who was, according to their father, “too old for these shenanigans.” The nearest towns were two hours west, one hour northwest, and 30 minutes south. Occasionally, the waitresses and fry cook had the gift of silent entertainment from the people who passed through, thankful to stretch their legs.
Sometimes Deb’s got plumpy men who inhaled Diet Coke with their cigarettes and sides of bacon. Indoor smoking was allowed, when no other customers were around to complain. Sometimes there were neat, four-person families hoping to continue heading south to Disney World, and the moms wearing pink shorts hitting above the kneecap would muster a whispered “table for four?” as the kids would chase each other to the bathroom and the dads would throw their heads under tables and say, “I’ll be darned, who chews highlighter yellow gum?” Occasionally, there were people on the move: a teenager who avoided eye contact and paid in back-pocket, crumpled bills; men in business suits in the middle of the day who left their briefcases in the car and turned phones on silent after ignoring three phone calls; and cardigan-wearing grandmas in floral blouses who would talk about how nice it was in the summers when the grandkids used to come visit.
And rarely, but sometimes, there was Andy.
I leaned against the glass, looking outside at the boiling gray clouds coming over the diner. On stormy days, we never had customers, because no one thought to look for the diner through water curtains. Poor timing, too, because I needed the money to do laundry.
While my thoughts snagged on the lingering stench of my clothes, I couldn’t stop watching the clouds roll against each other. “The sea of the sky” was what Andy told me one time. Last time I’d seen him, leaves blushed in his presence and swooned to the ground; now the rain was coming to complete the rampant humidity.
Eh. Maybe “swoon” wasn’t the right word. Nature didn’t swoon for Andy, the noodle-limbed man who bleached his over-grown hair despite the blackening roots. No, nature cowered, bowed, and quivered to Andy, in his orange-fleece, quarter-zip sweater and faded dad-jeans he bought from a nearby thrift shop. Andy wished that conditions worked out for him, but they just didn’t. Even weather conditions like this, the clouds charging overhead with the force of Zeus, would recoil.
I turned around, looking at the little diner I tolerated. It had graying walls covered in 1950s record covers and movie posters, as if an original theme would turn the diner to dust. Becky, the other waitress on shift, always avoided wiping tables by looking at her phone in the corner; small pools of ketchup and syrup with little butter-pat hills stood out against those reflective, silver tables. There was no jukebox. I was there when that one motorcycle gang threw a man headfirst into it. However, Frank Sinatra Pandora pulsed through the restaurant, adding to the drowsy hum of the gray day.
Then he returned, preceded by the smell of pine trees, cheap deodorant, and Sharpie.
Andy wore an over-large, second-hand UNC sweatshirt that had thumb-holes cut into the sleeves. The sound of his combat boots punctured the silent workday we’d been having, and immediately everyone came out to meet him. The fry cook, Buck, waved for him to come behind the bar and see the new stove. This gesture equaled rolling out the red carpet at Deb’s. He would have none of it today, though.
He looked at me. “Can I ask you a favor?”
“Hi. Long time no see.”
“I’m sorry. I need $50.”
“Are you actually kidding me right now?”
Becky started to chime in. “I’ve got $25 on me here!” He snatched that without even looking at her. He looked at me, not with those initial feelings that led to lustful scenes in a back closet. He looked like a cornered kid.
I didn’t look at him as I pulled the last three $10 bills I had from my front pocket. I wanted to spit on the shiny toe of that combat boot, with the same light-blue jeans tucked into them. He took it without breaking eye contact or changing his facial expression.
Out he went, as quick as he had come. As he left, the storm started to dissipate. I don’t know if it was following him or repulsed by his presence, but either way I was jealous the storm knew where the hell he was headed.
Marty owned Deb’s Diner. It was a little contradictory, I always thought. I don’t think Deb ever existed, but putting a woman’s name on this diner made it seem more inviting. I could only imagine the responses to our secluded, lurking dive being named “Marty’s Diner.” People would have kids avert their eyes and shake off the shivers of the creepy man-lair.
My double shift had started around 8 pm that night when Marty walked in. He always dressed in a blazer and khakis, but the blazer’s color would change depending on the day. With today being Friday, he wore plum.
“Cindy,” he barked, “just the girl I wanted to see. You’ll never believe what I found back in my office.” He reached into his pocket for his pack of Camels and hit it with the palm of his hand before waving around a glossy piece of paper. Marty owned this diner, but he worked an hour away as an accountant in Raleigh. His office was a mystery to us, but this was his escape. We could tell by the way he treated us or by the daily commutes to the diner, each day at a different time. I had no idea what in his accounting office would overlap with my life.
My white Keds squeaked against the tile (which I scrubbed yesterday during my second shift) as I scurried to him. Between the scent of cigarettes, black licorice, and new car, Marty smelled like a gas station. I went for the picture in his hand, and at the sight of the image my heart stopped. I stood for a second, not absorbing the photo as he probably assumed but trying to plan a reaction. It took a couple seconds to thank Marty with a hug, and I tucked the picture into my waitress apron. We both knew it belonged to me, no questions.
Like most of the crew here, I had been around for a while. I had grown to know everyone’s quirks: Becky’s laziness drove her to paint her nails every two days to shirk cleaning, Maria had gum stuck in her hair three different times due to her perpetually slack-jaw stance, Buck would occasionally discuss politics and life lessons with cooking analogies, and Sammie enjoyed sweeping the entire diner. Though Marty was there a fraction of the time we spent together, there was a certain, paternal loyalty to him. He knew the diner’s failing finances weren’t our fault, and he thought it “imposturous” to talk about money in front of the employees, even if to refuse an extra 20 he slid their way. “Where you take your talents shouldn’t be hindered by an idea of financial success,” Marty told me when I was too little to think there would be a time for limited options and lowered standards.
How long had it been since I started working here? I lost count, but I guess in the high-school summers I was here, and I was nearly 24 now. Before that, my mom had run around here watching us and making sure customers’ coffee came to them on time. Jack and I would sit under the booth plotting our own worlds from fantasies to day dreams to futures. At 10, the two of us promised our mom we could look after ourselves. That summer we met Andy.
What a string bean Andy was back then. He still is, I remembered, based on what I saw today. Back then, he had his black hair cut neatly to his head, saddle shoes fitted tightly around his wide feet, and polo shirts with fraying hems. He was wearing someone else’s clothes even then, but his mother wanted him to wear the clothes in style with the rest of the town. Andy was new that summer, and his mother wanted the family’s transition to be as smooth as possible. However, there was nothing his mom could do about his bright, blue eyes and his sharply pointed nose that made his face stick out.
He and Jack, from what they told me, met in the river in our backyard. Andy was trying to take off his shoes and put his bare feet in the water, hoping the pain would wash downriver. Jack, out with his BB gun, put it down after he could see the tiny tears coming from this stranger’s baby blue eyes. After that, Jack screamed “hey” and threw his arm over Andy’s shoulder: “Follow me.” After that date, they couldn’t be separated. Luckily, I was allowed into their clan once puberty hit. The summer we were 14 we ran around sneaking into drive-in movies, smoking cigarettes, “borrowing” lollipops from Mrs. Cranshaw’s convenience store, and making spaghetti for lunch most days. We were a crew. Therefore, it was my picture.
It was 9:30 pm, and there had only been one group of customers. They couldn’t have been older than 16 years old, experimenting with new driver’s licenses, curfews, and freedom’s limits. They only ordered two plates of fries and a round of milkshakes. The tip wasn’t that bad. It could’ve been stingier. A solid $5.
As soon as it quieted down again, Maria plugged in her headphones and started humming along to a Rihanna throwback. Maria was roughly the same age I was when I started working here, around 16 or 17. For me, it started as a way to work alongside my mom and earn extra cash. At that point, I had basically grown up in this diner’s lap and learned all my values from Buck’s stories of “Fry and the Eggs.” Throwing myself into the wild world of waitressing was the formal initiation into the cloth of the diner’s dynamic. From waking up early to scrubbing the stove to turning off the outside lights at closing, the newness excited me.
My mom and I drove home together late at night when we both had the late shift. We would reek of burger grease and blue-plate specials, and for the whole ride, we would talk about the different dinners we might make. By the time we got home, my mom sat on a couch to unlace her sneakers and slowly soaked into the couch. This was my cue to make a grilled cheese before her eyes shut completely, and her body became an unmovable rock.
I woke myself out of my funk to see the clouds had stayed, but the sky only got darker. The clouds growing overhead apparently also couldn’t find Andy.
10:30 pm. The laundromat would’ve been closed anyway, and though I knew that going into the shift, my dirty shirt made me self-conscious. It seemed like bad luck to wear a dirty shirt.
Sammie started sweeping methodically across the floor, and I slid into the nearest red booth to watch. She went back and forth, no alteration in pace even when her arms must’ve been tired. Sammie was resilient. She didn’t understand the meaning of the world “challenge” but lived by the word “risk.” One time she told me that doing the things that scare you or push you don’t have to be once-in-a-lifetime opportunities.
“Usually,” she said to me while I watched different muscles in her arm tense and relax with each push of the broom, “it’s just trying to do something different in your everyday routine that’s the most terrifying. When I started going to church for the first time in fifteen years, I was petrified. I thought I was giving up my free will to conform to this set of rules. But look at me now.” She was married to the Protestant minister and had two kids under the age of three. She only waitressed out of loyalty to Marty and for “a deeper understanding of suffering.”
“Don’t say that,” I said to her one time she expressed this philosophy.
“Why not?”
“Because your suffering is my livelihood.”
After that Sammie didn’t talk about suffering. She probably thought it added to her cross. I had always gotten along best with Sammie, and that had been our one bump in the road. I couldn’t forget it, even when I watched her sweep the floor.
Without skipping a beat in her work, Sammie said, “Was this the first time you’ve seen Andy since –“
“No, we’ve seen each other a couple times. There’s always money involved, but sometimes he’s come onto my shifts long enough for me to take his order. I think times are tough for him right now.”
Sammie nodded. “What was it that those two, your brother I mean, used to do?”
I chuckled, the kind of chuckle that comes with nostalgic acknowledgement. “I was thinking about that earlier today. They worked for that car lot for a couple summers learning mechanics.”
“Oh, you’re right, that’s right. Jack was so good at that.”
“I know. He was the Frankenstein of dead cars.”
I started to get up. Most people had gone home, and I was exhausted. I would only get more tired before driving home by staying here. “Alright, I’m going home,” I called over my shoulder and heard several responses call out about seeing me tomorrow. Normally, I would parse out each personal response listening to each vocal thread intertwined in the next – Buck’s deep, friendly tone, Becky’s distracted grunt, Sammie’s “be safe now.” Occasionally, when Marty was at closing, he would say, “keep your head up, kid.” Tonight, it could’ve been a blend of strangers’ voices.
As I climbed into the car, I had to look at the picture again.
It was slightly dusty, and the corners were creased from hiding between furniture and walls. The film was developed from a disposable camera; it was clear from the way the flash dominated the foreground, almost erasing key features like Andy’s sharp nose, and darkened the background.
The photo was from Jack’s and my 18th birthday party. All our friends went to Deb’s and my mom got the night off. Realistically, it was probably a huge profit drainer for the diner, but everyone stepped on board agreeing to work overtime. Marty compensated everyone. I don’t know if he ever had a romantic connection to my mother. I never wanted to think about it like that, because I assumed the favors were from our “work dad,” the only man who smiled at us, looked at us not as burdens on our poor, single mother.
My mom, who spoiled us all morning, got the night off as a surprise. I’m sure Buck had a feeling people would sneak flasks and wanted to give my mother’s heart a break. She understood and couldn’t turn down a date with sleep.
When we arrived, our friends were already there. The lighting was dimmed, and Marty tried hard to make it as much like a speakeasy as possible. I had been going through this flapper kick. Jack had his phase of rebellious substance abuse. Andy was by us for both.
He drove us there that night. We wanted to grab burgers and check on our mom. She had left a half hour before us only to turn around and pass us driving there.
In the picture’s foreground were the three of us smushed into one of those red booths. I knew it as the one in the corner, the farthest from the chaos of the kitchen. We were all smiling like idiots. I held a beer up to my face, a fine, brown Budweiser bottle, and smiled triumphantly and defiantly. Andy held his cigarette poised over a presumably empty beer can, while Jack looked at the both of us mid-laugh. I don’t know what it was that made him laugh. He was prone to smiling.
That picture was magic. I knew as soon as I got a good look at it. There was something so amazing about looking at innocence’s remnants.
It was that night that Jack went home and lit the house on fire with a lit cigarette in his sleep. That was the night I lost everything I had ever and will ever value. That was the night I wasn’t asleep there with them, because I was talking to Andy about our futures and our neglected potential as a couple now that I was going to college.
I should’ve been in that house.
11:30 pm and I drove on auto-pilot to who-knows-where. The accumulating clouds added another layer of black to the sky, blotting out all the pinpricks of starlight. I couldn’t tell where I needed to go. I knew if I just went home to the beat-down apartment I lived in, I would call Lonely Boy Kevin. He was always awake at these hours, and I had developed a bad habit of calling him in my free time, especially when the apartment, which I started renting at 18, seemed full of whispers and ghosts.
I just needed to get away, but I had never travelled to “away” before. Since the accident almost seven years ago, I had just kept my head down and tried taking things as they came. “Day by day.” That’s what the therapist my aunt paid for that first year had told me, but what’s the point when the days are long and boring. Your mind wanders to what other paths your life could’ve taken, as if chances to change anything were no longer available. I quit seeing the therapist and insisted on living alone after that. My Aunt Sheila hesitated but couldn’t fight with me. She was a quiet woman content with being a wife and cat-owner (a rare combination). I argued that having me do everyday chores would occupy my mind, and she didn’t know how to refute it without the therapist whispering the right counter-suggestions in her ear.
Tonight, I wasn’t going to go home. I was going “away.”
After the accident, Andy went away. He talked about “away” for as long as I knew him. His feet itched for new soil, his eyes for new sights, and his mind for new adventures.
After that night, he kept his eyes focused on the ground and barely spoke to me. I thought he just had the same feeling of guilt, and I wish we could’ve at least broached that subject together. Ironically, he planned an escape. The boy who wanted to support and take care of me worked in that car lot for two and a half months repairing that damn motorcycle, and as soon as its engine spoke to him, he took off. I was left behind here in the confines of this lifestyle twice.
Where the drive ultimately led me was that creek Jack used to go to when he would shoot his BB gun, Hatchethead Creek. I never thought about the mildly racist implications of the name before. It was always “Jack’s creek.” I moved forward to put my toes in. As I took off my Keds then socks, I thought about how my mother used to believe in “the healing power of a bath.” Whenever she was stressed or when the stranger I presumed to be my father left her voicemails asking for who-knows-what, she would take a bath. My apartment only had a shower, so I had to make do with what I could.
It was freezing. My toes immediately turned red and lost feeling. It was kind of nice to separate myself from my body, even if in a temporary sense. I rolled up my jeans to submerge my whole foot up to my ankle, when I heard a boot snap a branch behind me.
I turned around to see a beaten UNC sweatshirt, dad jeans, and combat boots.
“Hey,” he whispered.
“Is this where you’ve been hiding?” I asked flatly. Part of me expected him. Another part didn’t want him at Jack’s creek.
“Yeah, I’ve made myself a little tent like a mile or so from here. People never thought to look for me here. During the day I’m on the move, so it works out well. Worst case scenario, they find a tent and steal my food. That would be a pretty bad case, actually, but it’s not the worst thing that could happen.” Andy had this problem, I remembered, of rambling when he didn’t know what to say. As he spoke now, he wasn’t defeated; he sounded like he stated facts as a college tour guide. I stayed silent, letting the useless words flow out like blood from a knife wound.
He talked about how he travelled the Carolinas in his free time. He mentioned the one time his motorcycle broke down on the side of a highway, and it took six hours before he realized no one would help him and he should call AAA. He kept an index of important phone numbers written in Sharpie on his arm after that, “like a temporary tattoo – but it actually lasts a while.” He apparently had learned how to hunt and eat squirrel and recommended that it actually be added to the menu at Deb’s. He started winding down once he talked about his theory on modern-day hitchhiking and eventually just stopped.
At this point, my feet were completely numb, but I had gradually walked step-by-step into the river until I was up to my knees. I knew the soaked denim would agitate my skin, but I could feel nothing that the water swallowed. Maybe it was the numbness that prompted my cold question: “Why did you leave?”
He kicked a rock and watched it bounce over itself until it rippled into the creek. “I mean, you know why I left.”
“No, I know why you were upset. But you never once explained leaving, even in the brief periods when I see you groveling. What happened to supporting me?”
“I couldn’t have done that after it happened.”
“After my family died? After Jack basically lit himself on fire? What the hell does that have to do with anything!” I could hear my quickening pulse in my ears, and my face grew warm, even as my legs grew more and more numb.
“It’s not like that–”
“Then what! You don’t make sense. You can’t just run away from your pain. You could’ve stayed.”
He paused for a second. I could see his tongue bulging against his cheek as he inspected his molars. Andy winced like he had a cavity, I thought, but it could the realization of what he said to say: “You just wanted me around for Jack, after that.”
“That makes no sense.” Something inside of me tugged, cueing a defensive mindset.
“You just wanted me around to pull me in. You wanted someone to grieve with, someone to sit with you and hold you when you cried, someone to talk about the glory days with. I know that’s what I would’ve become to you, a memory dispenser. I wanted more than that. And even before that happened – while it was happening I guess, sorry– I laid out this plan for you. And you refused. You never felt the same way about me as I did you, and I didn’t want to manipulate the one chance you were giving me.” It was that same truth-stating tone.
I watched as small fish swam around my ankles and curiously approached my toes. Slowly, I could feel my exterior crumbling. As I started to walk out of the water, I could feel the warm tears running down my face. My feet felt a numb pressure of pebbles digging into my arch, but I didn’t care.
I looked at Andy, gave him a hug, and placed in his hand the $5 tip I had received earlier that night. I didn’t look back, even after I got into the car and could tell he was plainly in my rear-view mirror. I didn’t want to move away; I wanted to move forward.
Once in the car, I had to start driving. Now I wanted to be somewhere familiar and comfortable before all these unwelcome thoughts invaded.
On my 18th birthday, I walked barefoot through one of the forests by Deb’s, letting the dewy blades of grass flatten under my footsteps. Someone had driven my brother home. Most of the guests had left. I offered to help clean up, and there wasn’t much resistance from the staff. Andy also stayed back, promising he would drive me home.
The night was clear, because I remember thinking how beautiful the stars looked, like diamonds on a navy-velvet sky. I said something along those lines to Andy, and he agreed. He talked about what he knew, from constellations to Greek mythology to general astrology. Andy was good about reading all aspects of one topic. That was partly why he enjoyed mechanics. The knowledge never seemed to end when it came to different engines and models and whatever else there was to know. Cars were never for me.
He somehow transitioned into talking about repairing the motorcycle that night. He talked about how he would travel to a different amusement park every weekend on his time off from the car lot once it was fixed.
“You should, you know, come.” On the edge of nerves, he still spoke bluntly.
“I’m gonna be working at Deb’s again this summer. I need money for when I go to UNC Wilmington.”
“I know, I know, but you should have a little fun before you run off to go study your life away.”
I laughed. “All people do in college is study, right? That’s the cliché?”
“I mean, I think that people do a lot of thinking. It’s like summer camp, but instead of archery or swimming you take all these classes to form your future. You’re thinking about your future all the time. It’s future camp.” Andy had this quirk of making everything an analogy.
“Eh, not quite.”
“What are you gonna do in your future?”
I stopped walking for a second and nodded slowly, accepting a new realization. “I have no idea.”
“I want to be in it.” I looked at him, confused. He stared back, undaunted by his own proclamation. We were best friends, so he would be around for me in the years to come, but I didn’t ever consider he felt the way his tone implied. “I don’t want you to, like, move on and forget about me or whatever, you know?”
“I definitely can’t forget about you. I mean, you’ll always be around, right?”
“But that’s what I’m saying. What if I’m running around to an amusement park on the weekends you come home to visit? Then, literally, I won’t be there. But I want you to know, I don’t know, that I am there. I’m not going anywhere. Even if I am. That doesn’t really make sense.” He was rambling. “I think I could provide you with a sense of adventure you’ve always wanted.”
“A sense of adventure?” I challenged. “How are you so certain that’s what I want?”
“The way you look out the window when you’re waitressing. You just observe all these people and wonder where they’re going and who they know and what they do for a living. You have an urge to move beyond the small, fixed setting that you know. I could take you on that adventure.”
A brief silence.
“Okay. Let’s make a deal,” I said.
He nodded, but I could tell that wasn’t a response he predicted when practicing this monologue in the mirror.
“After my sophomore year of college, if I’m still not doing anything, like, romantic with anyone, then we can try things out.”
“That’s not quite what I’m saying.”
“That’s all I can promise you right now, I guess. I don’t know what’s happening next for me, and you don’t know what’s next for you.” I smiled at him, letting him know he was still the best friend I knew him to be. “We should move inside soon and see if they need help finishing the cleaning. I’m tired.”
The clouds started to roll in over our heads, erasing the freckly stars from our sight. “Clouds are like the sea of the sky,” Andy said. “They can never stop moving, and they’re never predictable.”
Driving in my car after coming out of Hatchethead Creek, I started out of my nostalgia to the sound of drumming rain drops on my windshield. I thought about Andy fighting the elements tonight in that tiny, makeshift tent. Then I remembered that weather never played in Andy’s favor. As a matter of fact, we both were ill-bred children of fate, left to piece together the pieces our lives threw at us before the next piece flew in our direction. It made us both at the age of 24 stagnant in the mindsets of our 18-year-old selves. We had never learned how to live alone.
I stopped thinking about it too much and flicked the windshield wipers on. I plowed forward, daring the slippery road to challenge me that night.
This piece was originally published in Kalliope 2016.
For more information on the author, Chloe Cullen, check out our feature on her here.