Hunger (Creatures of the Night #1)

Chapter One

Jenny

The grill fights me every night. I scrape the flattop with the long-handled spatula, dragging it through carbonized grease and charred onion.

The spatula catches on a ridge of burned cheese and I have to lean my weight into it until it gives with a wet pop.

Underneath, the steel is almost silver. Close enough. Dale won't leave a note.

"You missed a spot."

I glance over my shoulder. Tammy's leaning against the register counter, arms crossed, watching me with the look she gets right before she says something she thinks is funny.

"Where?" I look back at the grill.

"Everywhere." She pushes off the counter and starts wiping down the soda fountain. "That grill has been cursed since before I started here. You could scrape it with a blowtorch and it'd still look like that in the morning."

I dump the grease trap into the waste bin. The smell hits me fresh. Hot fat and old meat and the chemical sweetness of industrial degreaser. Above us, the fluorescent lights buzz their flat sixty-cycle hum. One of the tubes in the far corner has been flickering for three weeks.

"Did you put in another request about that light?" I ask, nodding toward it.

Tammy doesn't even look up. "Twice. Jerry from maintenance said he'd get to it." She pauses to give me a meaningful look. "Jerry's been getting to it since Thanksgiving."

"Last Thanksgiving?"

"The one before that."

I snort and turn back to the grill. The food court is empty.

Has been for over an hour. The Orange Julius across the way is dark.

So is the Corn Dog Factory. Mr. Burger always closes last because we're closest to the movie theater corridor.

Dale's theory is that people leaving late shows will want burgers.

They walk past with their eyes straight ahead every single night, moving toward the parking structure, in a hurry to be anywhere else.

Tammy finishes the soda fountain and moves on to restocking the napkin dispensers. She's got a system. Soda fountain, napkins, condiment station, then the front counter. I've watched her do it in the same order every closing shift for eight months.

"Kayla called in again," she says, stuffing napkins into the metal holder with more force than necessary.

"That's the third time this month."

"Fourth." Tammy shakes her head. "Girl's going to get herself fired, and then Dale's going to make one of us cover her shifts." She glances at me. "Guess which one of us it'll be."

I don't answer, because we both know it'll be me. Tammy's got a six-year-old at home and a babysitter she can only afford three nights a week. I've got nothing but free time and a willingness to say yes to things I should say no to.

"You want the rest of this?" Tammy holds up a paper cup of Coke she poured herself an hour ago. The ice has long since melted.

"No, thanks."

She dumps it in the sink and rinses the cup. "You eat today?"

I think about it. A granola bar from the vending machine in the break room around two. "Sort of."

Tammy gives me a look. It's the same look she gives her son when he tells her he brushed his teeth and she knows he didn't. "Jenny."

"I'll eat when I get home."

"You always say that."

"And I always do." I eat. Just not much, and not with any real interest. Food is fuel and I'm a car running on fumes most days. But Tammy worries, and I don't want to give her another reason.

She lets it go, which is one of the things I like about her. We finish closing in comfortable silence, moving around each other in the cramped space behind the counter with the ease of two people who've done this hundreds of times.

I mop the floor while Tammy counts the register. The mop water turns gray immediately. I wring it out and go again, slow passes until the tiles look passable.

"Forty-seven dollars," Tammy announces, closing the register drawer with a click.

"Big night."

Tammy shakes her head. She pulls her coat off the hook by the back door and shrugs into it. A puffy red number she got at the Goodwill on Route 6. She wears it every day and I've never once heard her complain about it.

I grab my bag from the shelf and pull my own coat on over my uniform.

I'll smell like fry grease until I get home and shower, but the Mr. Burger polo reeks no matter how many times I wash it anyway.

The smell's worked its way into everything I own.

My car, my coat, my hair. Tammy says she can't smell it on me anymore, but Tammy's been working food service for six years. Her nose surrendered a long time ago.

"Ready?" she calls from the hallway.

"Coming."

We walk the service corridor together. It stretches ahead of us, long and dim. Half the lights are burned out and the ones that still work cast everything in a sick yellow. Our footsteps echo off the concrete.

"You doing anything this weekend?" Tammy asks as we pass the loading dock.

"No."

"You know, the word 'no' doesn't have to be your answer to everything."

I give her a sideways glance. "What's the question?"

"There's no question. I'm just saying." She adjusts the strap of her purse. "You're twenty-three years old and you spend every night in that apartment like you're eighty."

I've got no answer for that, and I push through the heavy metal door to the back parking lot. The cold hits immediately. The wind cuts across the open lot and finds every gap in my coat. My eyes water and I duck my head.

Tammy hunches beside me. "Lord. I'm moving to Florida."

"You say that every night."

"And I mean it every night." She squints across the lot toward her car, a tan Oldsmobile that's slightly less decrepit than mine. "You parked under the light?"

I nod toward my car. A 1976 Ford Granada, the color of rust, which is convenient, since it's also the texture of rust. It sits under one of the few working lights in the lot, not because I'm careful about where I park but because no one else parks back here and that's the only spot where I can see my keys in the lock.

"Alright." Tammy pulls her coat tighter. "Get home safe. Eat something."

"You too."

She waves without looking back and starts the long walk to the Oldsmobile. I watch her for a second, the red coat shrinking across the dark lot, before I turn toward the Granada.

I'm halfway to the car when I walk into something hard and cold. I stumble sideways and my keys slip in my grip, jangling loudly before I catch them. A person. Very tall, standing still in the dark. I don't look up.

"Sorry."

I keep walking, shove the key into the lock, drop into the driver's seat.

The vinyl is so cold it feels wet through my pants.

Door shut, ignition twisted. The Granada turns over on the third try.

The heater doesn't work and won't work no matter how many times I turn the dial, so I sit with my breath fogging in front of me and wait for the engine to stop shuddering before I put it in gear.

The drive home takes twelve minutes. The same route every night.

Past the gas station on Route 6, left on Maple, through the neighborhood where every house looks the same with its porch light on or off, and into the apartment complex parking lot.

Two stories of brown brick and beige siding.

The sign out front lost a letter sometime before I moved in, so it reads MILLFIELD GARDEN A ARTMENTS.

I pull into my usual spot at the far end of the lot and cut the engine.

The silence is immediate, broken only by the tick of cooling metal.

I grab my bag from the passenger seat and hunch into my coat as I cross the lot to the sidewalk.

The building's front door sticks in the cold, and I have to yank it twice before it gives.

The stairs are cold through my shoes. I take them slowly, my bag bumping against my hip with each step. On the second floor, I fish my keys out and let myself in.

The apartment is warm at least. Lisa's at the kitchen table barricaded behind her textbooks. A half-empty mug of coffee sits at her elbow and she's got a highlighter clamped between her teeth. She glances up when I come in and pulls the highlighter out of her mouth.

"Hey."

"Hey."

"There's mail on the counter," she says, already looking back down at her textbook.

I flip through the stack by the toaster. A credit card offer, a flyer for a pizza place, and the electric bill. Nothing interesting.

Dee's door is closed, which means she's at Kevin's again. A post-it note on the fridge in her round handwriting says Took the last yogurt, sorry!! Will replace!! She won't replace it. She never does. I don't mind.

The first thing I do is shower. The hot water runs over me and I watch the grease sheen swirl down the drain.

I scrub my hair twice, use enough soap that my skin feels tight when I'm done.

The bathroom smells like drugstore shampoo instead of Mr. Burger when I step out, which is the whole point.

I wipe the steam from the mirror and catch a glimpse of dark circles and damp hair plastered to my neck before I look away.

I microwave a cup of soup and eat it standing at the counter in my bathrobe.

It tastes like salt and nothing, but Tammy asked me if I ate and I want the answer to be yes.

Lisa's still at the table when I rinse the mug and set it in the sink.

She's moved from the highlighter to a pen and is writing something in the margin of her notebook with the tight focus of someone working against a deadline.

"Good night," I say as I pass.

"Night." She doesn't look up.

My room is small. A bed, a desk, a dresser with a mirror I try not to use.

Clothes on the floor I should pick up. A stack of pre-med textbooks on the desk I should throw away.

Two years of organic chemistry and anatomy and physiology.

My father's voice in my head, the way he sounded the last time I was home, careful and measured: You had a plan, Jenny. What happened to the plan?

I happened to the plan. That's the answer I never gave him.