5. JOSIE
JOSIE
When I pull up to the diner on Main Street, two police cars are parked up front. No reason to stiffen at the sight of law enforcement, but most of us do. It’s an instinct, like most students do in front of their teachers and patients in front of their doctors.
I’m tense as a rod when I enter the diner through the back entrance.
“What dragged your pretty face here so early?” Givens asks, flipping hash browns at the kitchen grill and looking over his shoulder at me when I walk in.
Givens is in his forties. How he has the energy to work twelve-hour shifts as a cook here is beyond me. He says he needs the money. Don’t we all?
Since I’ve taken over my grandma’s position as a manager here, I feel entitled.
Sure, I have two years of college, incomplete.
Sure, I have three years’ experience bartending.
I’m from the city. But surprisingly, after my infamous episode that many know about, I still got the job.
I win. Unfair? Go figure. Givens works his butt off, but he makes less than me.
He also loves my grandma, who used to manage this place until a few months ago when she ended up in the hospital for the first time.
I walk through the steamy kitchen, the smell of food so thick you can cut it with a butter knife. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, they say. In the country, in places like this diner, the day often begins before the crack of dawn.
I usually don’t have to show up until ten.
“Audit,” I tell Givens and say hi to Kramer, a high schooler who works the fryers, and Sue, in her sixties, at the serving hatch. I drop off my purse in the office and walk out through the kitchen swinging doors into the main dining area, where we also have the counter with bar stools.
“Oh-ho-ho. How are you, kiddo?” booms the deep voice that belongs to the chief. Steve Zukowski, my grandmother’s old friend, is simply “Chief” to most people who grew up in this town. He is in his sixties and still serving.
“Good, Chief,” I say. “Anything I can get you?”
He and the other two police officers sit at the counter, coffees in front of them as well as condiments.
It’s not my job to serve customers, unless one of the staff doesn’t show up for work, which has only happened three times in the first month of me working here.
We have more servers during breakfast, when the diner is often slammed.
This is literally the first time in a month that I’m out here, in the dining area, before my shift.
It’s barely eight. Usually, when the staff is swamped, I take over the kitchen, the inventory, the washing machine.
It’s a dirty job, hence my habit of wearing pullovers and jeans, but I’m getting paid more than anybody on the staff, so I don’t mind.
The main reason is that I don’t want to show my face out here, in the main dining area.
In my mind, I’m doing what I have to do—taking over Grandma’s job and taking care of her.
In the mind of the locals, I’m “the one who came back.” Coming back to a small town like this before your thirties, after living in a big city, is usually a sign of failure.
As per some of the rumors I heard, I came back “with my tail between my legs.”
That’s partially true. Some know what happened to me several months ago. I let them talk, meanwhile cleaning their dirty dishes and ordering twenty pounds of bacon weekly and hearing every rumor about their personal lives from the kitchen staff.
“I’m good,” the chief answers. “How is your grandmother?”
He and Grandma go way back. I saw him in our house often when I was growing up.
When I returned to Burnville two months ago, he came to check on me, gave me a rundown of what’s up.
To welcome me back, he said, though it was probably to get the details about Grandma’s condition, because she keeps telling everyone, “I’m fine. Getting old is not exactly a prize.”
“She’s good,” I say to the chief. “She’s stubborn, you know? I hope the cancer realizes it messed with the wrong person and takes a step back.”
His chest shakes in laughter, and the two officers next to him smile in understanding. My grandma has always had the reputation of a powerful woman. There were several of them, the women who ran this town. They owned bars. Back in the day, in a place like Burnville, that carried weight.
Since the incident twenty-five years ago, her reputation shifted in a dark direction.
That’s what they call it, the incident back then.
Since the trial, the town’s opinions are split—those who shunned my grandmother and those who weren’t sure what went down the night of the murder.
The Hartzels won’t even set foot in this diner.
Understandable, I guess, considering one of them was the actual victim.
“She is a fighter,” I tell the chief.
“She is. That she is,” the chief says, his expression softening.
“Can I get a refill?” a voice calls from the other end of the counter.
I spin around.
I didn’t see her come in. The girl looks like she’s out of place, maybe took the wrong exit on Interstate 80 and ended up in this place by accident.
She is in her twenties. Dark eyes. Sharp features.
Pretty. Not a local, no way, not with those thick long braids, dyed bright neon blue, cascading down to her waist. Stark makeup, eyeliner and dark-green eyeshadow, unusual at this time in the morning.
A black leather jacket zipped up to her neck.
She’s too cool for this town, despite how prejudiced this might sound, but I, of all people, know that country life can make one careless about one’s appearance. She must be just passing through.
I grab the coffee pot from the coffee machine and refill her cup, giving her a quick up-and-down. As I’m walking away, she stops me. “Can I get more creamer? And more sugar? Not Splenda or whatever this fake stuff is.”
The girl waves her forefinger above the sugar caddy with Splenda in it.
“Sure.” I grab a full one and set it next to her. “Anything else? Baileys?” I joke dryly.
The girl smirks. “I wish. God knows I need some. Is BYOB a thing here?”
A rule-breaker, huh?
I’m about to ask her if she wants the menu when the hatching window buzzer rings, and I have to help Sue put the plates with food on her tray, all the while wondering about the girl with the blue hair.
She is an outsider. It’s obvious by the outfit, the attitude, the way she holds herself. A faint scent of incense radiates from her. Bracelets and bangles on her wrists. Rings on her fingers.
She has a story, this one. I bet there’s a reason she is in this town. Most people back in Pittsburgh who know me say that coming back is a downgrade. And no one downgrades these days unless they are losers or in trouble.
I’m here in Burnville, Pennsylvania. And that’s—
“Rough morning, huh?” the chief asks.
He said it. And how would he know?
“No,” I lie.
“Never seen you here so early.”
“I decided to keep an eye on all the suspicious people coming in for breakfast,” I say, narrowing my eyes at him, which gets a low laugh out of him and the other policemen. “Anything exciting going on, Chief? Any despicable crimes?” I ask, cringing at my own words but trying to sound nonchalant.
“All is good,” he says. “All quiet.”
Just like Grandma said. Which means that no body was found.
No body.
No body.
But how?
The logical conclusion is that the man who arranged a meeting with me is still alive. I don’t know how, but he’s out there, and considering he got hit by a car and I witnessed it and didn’t call the police, I might be in trouble.
A chill goes through me. What if he’s out for blood now?
Sue pushes past me with a tray of plates, the thick smell of breakfast saturating the air.
“A stack of pancakes for Chief,” she says, setting one plate in front of him. “All-American breakfast for you, handsome.” She serves the next plate to one of the officers. “And a ham-and-cheese omelet! Anything else I can get you, gentlemen?”
With a practiced smile that quickly disappears and without really waiting for a reply, she takes the tray and walks through the swinging doors back into the kitchen.
I nod to the officers, steal a glance at the blue-haired girl who scrolls on her phone, and walk back into the kitchen, too.
Sue expertly loads the dirty dishes into the dishwasher trays.
She’s nonstop, just like Givens. The busy streak is over.
The other waitress has already finished her shift.
In a minute, Sue will be out in the main area taking more orders, or serving more plates, or having a chitchat with the locals.
She juggles her duties like a Cirque du Soleil performer.
“How’s Karen?” she asks.
Everyone always asks. Daily. It’s like they are waiting for something to happen to my grandmother. Sue has known my grandma all her life. She belongs to the tiny camp of supporters who stuck with Grandma after the incident.
“She’s good,” I reply and walk to the office.
The diner’s office is a small, windowless room, ten by ten feet, with a desk and an old laptop, but mostly filled with boxes, as it serves as a partial storage unit. I take a seat in the chair and pull my phone out.
I want to google “hit and run” in the area, but if worse comes to worst, and the police ever check my phone—that’s highly doubtful, but all sorts of crazy scenarios have been spinning in my head all night—I can’t have the search history like that in my browser.
Desperate for any clues I’ve missed about who the man is, I open the texts from the unknown number.
I scroll through several dozen messages from the days before, rereading them.
One is a screenshot of an old picture, taken in a photo booth.
It’s Mom, high-school age, and a handsome guy next to her, several years older. Is this the “unknown” in the picture?
I read my message underneath:
Me: Who is in the picture?
The evasive response follows:
Unknown: Do not tell anyone that we are talking. ESPECIALLY your grandmother.
And the next one.
Unknown: She is hiding things from you.