Chapter 7 #2
I drag my feet a little getting ready, not as excited as I could be for tonight’s kid-friendly haunt.
Of course I’m happy to spend the evening with Brynn and Madison, but it’s hard to write content about a place I objectively know isn’t designed for hardcore scare fans like me and not call it mediocre.
It might have to wait until tomorrow morning instead of it being something I can immediately come home and write about.
The drive toward Chicago is more interesting in the evening than it will be coming back, and somehow I manage to miss most of the traffic I’d been wary of.
Sure enough, though, once I’m in what I’d call the outskirts of the city, my quicker than average journey turns into something rivaling Mrs. Elmore’s pace across the road and up my driveway.
It’s hard not to bang my head against my steering wheel, and not for the first time, I remind myself why I prefer where I live, instead of pining for something right outside the city like Brynn and Mads have.
Well, that and I like not having to sell a kidney to pay my mortgage.
At last I make it to the diner we discovered when we drove up here during high school, when we stayed out at a movie festival for long enough that Brynn’s diabetes had made itself known.
And since we’d been out of snacks, we went looking for the first available source of sustenance for our best friend.
Now, as I pull into the parking lot of The Waffle Wagon, I tap my knuckles against my steering wheel and wonder if we’re the only ones to buy the t-shirt out of the strange little gift shop that clutters the front of the restaurant, right when one walks through the door.
Glancing around the mostly empty parking lot, I note with an unsurprised sigh that my friends aren’t here yet.
I’m a few minutes early, after all, and with friends that are notoriously always a few minutes late, I can’t really be surprised.
But it’s been too long of a friendship for it to ruffle my feathers, so I step out of my car and stretch up onto the balls of my feet, my neck feeling stiff from the terrible, gremlin-like pose I spent most of the day in.
I could’ve gotten up and worked at my desk, I remind myself silently as I tug open the diner’s heavy wooden door. But no. I chose to curl up around my laptop, squinting in the dim coolness of my room as I tapped away and went through videos. I can blame only myself for this problem, really.
There’s no one standing at the register, and I continue rolling my shoulders a few times to loosen them, grimacing as I press my fingers to the base of my skull, then wincing at the tightness.
I need a massage, obviously, not that I really have the time or a ton of extra money to get it.
I’m sure if I asked Mads or Brynn to become my impromptu massage therapist, they’d certainly have opinions about my lack of an intimate social life rather than helping.
With the hostess still missing in action, I take a moment to look around the restaurant, the gift shop the opposite of subtle with the racks of miss-matched merch that always make me wonder if maybe at some point in the mid 1800s, this place was actually important.
As per usual, The Waffle Wagon is nowhere near full.
A family is sitting in one of the large corner booths, the parents looking like they’ve been through a war that ended here, while their two kids are glued to iPhone screens.
My lips twitch, the frazzled family reminding me of the vacations Madison’s family took us on that had spanned long trips across the United States to visit the mountains and ski resorts out west. After biting my lip to hide my stupid grin as the mom makes one more attempt to take the phone back from the younger girl, my eyes move to the other side of the restaurant, where the only other patron sits.
He’s facing away from me with his hand on the table, head leaning against the window.
With the way the building is shaped, I can only see his curly, auburn hair that’s redder than mine even after a summer in the Indiana sun, though still a few shades short of actual copper.
It sits lank and wavy on his head, falling just barely below his ears.
His skin appears tan, though from here I can’t see more than the side of his neck and his wrist peeking out from under his long-sleeved shirt.
He shifts a little, and I suddenly worry that he can see my reflection staring at him through the window.
I’m saved from making an ass out of myself by the hostess appearing, chewing gum while she looks me over. Just then the door behind me opens, admitting my two best friends in a hostile conversation over pancakes or hash browns.
“Hey Persy,” Brynn greets, breaking off her side of the conversation. She looks at the waitress, unimpressed by the young woman’s apparent lack of enthusiasm for her esteemed position at The Waffle Wagon. “Three,” Brynn tells her in a no-nonsense voice.
“Booth or table?” The girl sighs, surprising me by asking our preference at all instead of just slapping paper menus down on the closest table.
Judging by Brynn’s pause, she’s just as shocked.
“Booth, please,” she tells her in a friendlier voice than before.
The girl nods, and scoops up three bundles of silverware and maybe fifteen paper menus, for some reason, before trudging to the side with the frazzled family, though thankfully she puts us far enough away from them to give us some illusion of privacy.
“Thank God you’re here,” I greet, sliding down one side of the booth as my friends take the other. “You guys have to be the enthusiastic ones for Dusk House. You know I struggle to care about it.”
“Criminal,” Madison remarks, shaking her head. “It’s adorable. Some of us don’t like the blood and gore and people jumping out at us constantly. It’s not always about that. Chocolate milk,” she adds to the waitress, glancing up with her usual, surface-level-friendly smile.
“What else is it about?” I complain. “Chocolate milk for me too.” I tuck my still freshly dyed auburn hair back behind my ear, realizing I have no idea what I want.
Or rather—what variety of waffles I want.
It feels blasphemous to order anything else at The Waffle Wagon, though I know Brynn doesn’t feel the same way about that as Madison and I do.
“Fun, family, and the power of friendship,” Brynn snorts. “Water,” she tells the waitress. “And some coffee, please.”
I watch the waitress walk away, falling into my comfortable conversation with the two people I’ve voluntarily known the longest, and I feel some of the tension fall from my neck and shoulders.
Even though I won’t come close to being scared or even have a jump scare to make my adrenaline spike, I’m looking forward to spending a few hours with my best friends during my favorite time of the year.