The Outliers (The Outliers, #1)(32)
“Wow, can’t miss that, can you?” Lexi says, pointing.
Floating high in the sky is a huge neon sign that reads Trinity’s Diner, with two red race cars and a checkered flag. It’s way too big, an eyesore out here in the woods. Especially when the restaurant itself is a smallish, rectangular metal trailer. Not the kind of place that’s going to be easy to lose Doug and Lexi inside. Once we start trying to get away, things could definitely get messy. I need to text Cassie, warn her that we could be out of touch for a while.
Ran into trouble. You should text your mom just in case. More important that you’re safe. Just tell her not to call the police. She’ll listen. I know she will. At least I hope.
It isn’t until I’ve hit send and closed out of that message that I see the red exclamation point next to the one I’d sent to my dad. Failed to deliver reads the red message next to it. My signal was already gone. All those choices I’d been mulling over about who to tell what about Cassie—they were no longer mine to make.
As we pull into the parking lot, I turn to Jasper, holding up my phone. I shake my head. No signal. He immediately looks down at his own phone. His face brightens for only a split second before he shakes his head, too. He doesn’t have a signal either.
“I should probably go in also, just in case,” Jasper says as we pull into the parking lot. In case? “I mean, so we don’t have to stop again later.”
Inside, Jasper and I will decide what to do. We can tell someone in the diner or we could ask to use the landline. Inside, there will be safety in numbers. And, after a while, when we don’t come back out, Doug and Lexi will probably drive away with their secrets, and without us. Happy to be gone, to be rid of us. We are a complication they didn’t ask for. Relieved, yes. There’s no reason to think they won’t be. Except as the gravel crunches loud under our tires, I do not believe that. Not at all.
Doug parks in a spot under the glow of the diner windows, next to a brand-new pickup with tinted windows, shiny hubcaps, and some kind of rack on top. For guns probably, given all the stickers: Maine Bears Arms, Terrorist Hunting Permit, an NRA emblem. There’s also a green tarp lashed to a back shelf, the tip of a hoof poking out from underneath. Not exactly who I was hoping to be asking for help.
But when I look up at the table in the diner window above, there are three girls about my age sitting in a booth, eyes locked on the one boy sitting opposite. They’re smiling on the edge of their seats as he talks, arms moving back and forth in a big circle. When he suddenly freezes—on the punch line probably—they all burst out laughing. Totally regular kids, doing totally regular things. They’ll help us. I know they will.
“Actually, I could use a cup of coffee myself,” Doug says as he turns off the car. “No offense, but this little detour is going to add some driving time.” It almost sounds like it could be the truth, like he really just wants coffee. But truth or not, it’ll be a lot harder to talk to Jasper if we’re not alone.
“Well, I’m not staying out here by myself,” Lexi says as she undoes her seat belt and starts to get out. She’s forgotten about the baby they’re supposed to have. I watch Doug catch her eye, see her hesitate as she remembers. “Let me just grab the baby?”
My feet feel heavy as I make my way up the diner’s rickety metal steps. I’m almost at the top when the door swings open and there’s a burst of shouts and jostling as the kids from the window spill out.
“Oops,” the first girl says as they collide into one another. Their voices drop politely as they try to make way for us to pass. “Sorry.”
When I take the door from the last girl, it feels weirdly too light. Like none of this is actually real. Like it is a dream I will wake from. Help, I want to say to her. But with Doug and Lexi right there, I can’t say a word.
“Here you go,” the girl calls cheerfully when I hesitate too long. She is cute and petite with long, black hair. I stare at her and think, Please, don’t go. But all she does is smile a little more before hustling after her friends. At the bottom of the steps, they burst into laughter before they disappear. And just like that, our very best option is gone.
“Now I want a burger, too,” Doug says, positively cheerful now.
“Ugh.” Lexi sounds disgusted as she makes her way up the steps. She has the car seat in one hand, the top of it pulled low so no one can see that there’s actually nothing inside. She’s even doing a decent job of supporting herself with the handrail, as if the car seat is actually heavy. “A burger at a place like this?”
As I step into the diner vestibule, a wave of warm, damp air hits me, pumping out loudly from a radiator next to an M&M vending machine. I move on through a second set of doors into the diner, which is much cleaner and busier than I would have expected at nearly ten p.m. The half-dozen booths along the front windows are filled—teenagers, older people, a family with two young, sleepy boys, and it smells like bacon and apple pie, the walls a cheery bright red.
But not everyone in the diner is happy. One long-faced couple in the middle of the room is surrounded by a circle of empty tables and nestled in a zone of gray; their faces, their clothes, even the air around them seems coated in soot. They are utterly silent, almost motionless, their eyes on the tabletop. The woman has a full plate in front of her that she hasn’t touched, and the man is chewing slow and hard, like he’s trying to gnaw through rubber. They feel like a terrible, terrible omen.