Page 12 of Missing Moon

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 ofway. 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 feltlessweird 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 atwentysomething guy who looks kinda like a real-life version of Shaggy fromScooby-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 homeplaying 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 notthatdirty. 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.”

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