Page 38 of Road Trip with a Vampire
Then again, he couldn’t have missed it. The sign was nearly as big as the restaurant itself and flashed so brightly it hurt to look directly at it.
“You’vebeenhere before?” I couldn’t believe it. While Big Earl’s looked like the exact brand of camp Reginald and I had gravitated towards back in the day, the thought of Peter—a man who found the Spice Girls unbearable—ever having been here was breaking my brain.
“It’s in my journal,” Peter confirmed. “So I assume so. Gods only know why.”
“Maybe you used to be into wacky tourist traps,” I mused. “Maybe youlovedthem.”
He didn’t dignify that with a response.
As we walked towards the entrance, we passed a cluster of enormous, seven-foot-tall statues of grinning googly-eyed chickens that reminded me of a Bizarro World Stonehenge. Children climbed on and around them, shrieking happily as their grinning parents took pictures.
“Pose with one of these,” I teased, poking Peter in the side. “It might jog your memory.”
He shot me a look that was so withering I nearly burst out laughing.
A massive indoor gift shop was the first thing to greet us when we walked in, its sign proclaiming that one could purchaseany chicken souvenir your little heart can dream ofinside. All I could see over the throngs of shoppers, though, was a wall of bright yellow hats with bills shaped like beaks and googly chicken eyes attached to the front.
“It’s been a while since I’ve had a good hat,” I said. “Do we have time to go shopping?”
Peter pointedly guided me past the shop by the elbow, fingers digging in slightly. “No.”
I wanted to argue that there wasalwaystime for gift shops, but the stony look on Peter’s face told me it would be pointless.
This place’s focus was clearly more on being a cheesy tourist destination than a proper restaurant, but I hoped it actually served food, too. I hadn’t eaten since we’d pulled through a fast-food restaurant near Sacramento half a day ago, and I was starving. My stomach was rumbling by the time we made it to the host stand, and I could’ve murdered for a chicken sandwich.
When the host saw Peter, all the color drained from his face.
“It’s you,” he breathed. The young man’s horrified expression was wildly incongruous with what he was wearing: one of the chicken hats from the gift shop, a white T-shirt that saidCluck Cluck Cluck!in bright yellow lettering, and yellow-and-white-checked pants held up with bright yellow suspenders. But his terror seemed no less genuine for his absurd uniform. His hands were clenched into tight fists at his sides, his teeth buried so deeply into his bottom lip I was worried he’d draw blood.
Peter seemed at a complete loss. He turned to me, as if I might know what to do.
But I had no idea.
“We don’t want any trouble,” the host said. His voice shook. “Please.”
“Neither do we,” Peter said, holding up his hands palms-forward in a placating gesture. “We just want dinner.”
It was the wrong thing to say. Now the young man looked ready to pass out from fear.
“Just…just take what you want and leave.” His eyes werewide. Frantic. “I won’t breathe a word to anyone that you were here. Just—”
He ran out the front door without finishing that thought, nearly barreling over a family of four as he went.
Something here was very off.
“Do you think he might have mistaken you for someone else?” I asked dubiously. I glanced around to see whether anyone had noticed what had just happened. Fortunately, other than the people the guy had nearly trampled in his haste to get away, almost everyone else in the waiting area was either glued to their phones or occupied with their gift shop purchases. No one was paying us any mind.
“I doubt he was mistaken,” Peter said, darkly. “As soon as we walked in, I knew I’d been here before. It’s familiar. All of this.” He gestured vaguely to our surroundings. “I just can’t rememberwhyI was here.”
Another host soon appeared at the check-in counter, a young woman wearing a dress that would fit right in at an Oktoberfest beer garden. If, of course, Oktoberfest servers wore bright yellow dresses and chicken hats.
“Have you been helped?” she asked brightly, as though her coworker hadn’t just literally fled. She wore a name tag shaped like a chicken that declared her name to beVeronicain bright red letters.
“Not yet,” I said. I turned to Peter. “Let’s eat since we’re here.”
“You want to spend time here?” Peter asked, stunned. “On purpose?”
“I thought we’d have dinner.” And then, remembering who I was talking to, amended, “Or at least thatI’dhave dinner. What did you think we’d be doing here?”
