Every Last Fear(79)

“There aren’t many food options this late,” Matt said.

“You’ll think of something.”

Matt drove the clunker out of the lot, not sure where to go. He could head to Lincoln like the rest of them, but it was already late. He was tired, though he wasn’t sure why. He’d spent the day watching TV and visiting with his aunt.

Kala gazed out the window at nothing. The air was thick. It was already feeling like summer.

“Anything would be great,” she said, still staring outside like she was searching for something on the horizon. “Even that crap fast food you and Ganesh like.”

“You’re really slumming it,” Matt said.

“When in Rome,” Kala replied. It was something she always said, and Matt had picked up the habit of saying or thinking it himself. Funny how you acquire the verbal tics of your friends.

“We could go to Runza,” Matt said. “I think it’s open late.”

“Go to what?”

“You’ve never had a runza?”

She shook her head.

“Oh, you don’t know what you’re missing.”

Soon Matt was veering onto the interstate, keeping his distance from the semis barreling down every lane. He punched the gas, concerned the old tank wouldn’t even hit fifty.

Kala gripped the plastic handle that hung over the passenger window as the station wagon rattled and finally picked up speed.

Ten minutes later Matt pointed out the window. “It’s still there.”

Kala glanced at the glowing green-and-yellow sign atop a long pole designed to be visible from the interstate. Matt took the exit loop and pulled into the lot.

“It looks like a McDonald’s, but green,” Kala said.

“I told you not to get excited. Eat here, or get it to go?”

Kala peered into the restaurant. Empty except for a kid in what undoubtedly was a polyester uniform pushing around a mop.

“Definitely let’s get it to go,” she said.

As Matt pulled up to the drive-through speaker, Kala said, “What exactly are they?”

Matt thought about how to describe them. “A runza is like a warm bun filled with beef, onions, and cabbage. It kind of looks like a Hot Pocket. I know it sounds horrible, but it’s actually good.”

A distorted voice came through the speaker. Matt ordered an original runza, fries, and a Coke.

Kala leaned over Matt and called out the window, “Make that two of everything.”

Back on the road, Kala plucked out one of the fries and bit into it. “Is there, like, a park or somewhere we can eat? Anywhere but the motel.”

“My old school isn’t too far away. There used to be outdoor tables.”

“Ooh, I get to see the institution that shaped Matthew Pine.”

“I’ll spare you the suspense: there was no Dead Poets Society.”

Kala sipped through her straw, her eyes twinkling.



* * *



The benches were newer, but in the same place: across from the outdoor basketball court, next to the gym.

Kala examined her runza with curiosity, poking at it with a plastic fork.

Matt picked his up like a burrito and took a bite. The taste took him back in time. He had no specific memory, just a feeling.

Matt scanned the area. The cliché was true that everything looked smaller. The school was a two-story redbrick building. The front was barren, no trees or landscaping, an empty plain of concrete.

The dark sky lit up beyond the building, lightning in the distance. So far away, you couldn’t hear any thunder.

“What grade were you in when you left?” Kala asked.

“Ninth,” Matt said. “The school goes from seventh to twelfth grade. Not enough kids around here for a separate middle school.”

“So your brother and sister went here with you?”

“Just Danny. Mags was in elementary school when we left. Mom was pregnant with Tommy.”

“Why did you leave town? The documentary made it sound like townsfolk with pitchforks.”

“It wasn’t so dramatic. Just a lot of whispers and stares wherever we went. I actually got in a fight right over there about it.” He nodded at the basketball court. He hadn’t been defending Danny’s honor. A kid had said that maybe someone would take Maggie down by the creek. It had scared him, how he’d lost control and whaled on the boy. And if he could lose it like that, he’d realized, so could his older brother. “And that was it. We packed up and moved.”

“That was pretty selfless of your parents. I mean, your dad leaving his job, your mom giving up her hometown.”

Matt had never really thought of it that way. But she was right. He liked that she didn’t hesitate to talk about his family. He was learning that it was a topic people were finding uncomfortable. Matt liked talking about them. He didn’t want them to vanish as if they’d never existed.

Kala picked up the half-eaten runza and put it and her wrappers in the bag. She cleaned up Matt’s mess, too.

A heavy silence fell between them.

At last Kala said, “Ganesh said that girl at the bar, the one who broke up the fight—that you, like, met her at four in the morning?”

Matt told her about Jessica. How he’d met her at the Knoll the night Charlotte was murdered. He almost told her about seeing Danny in his letterman jacket, pushing the wheelbarrow. But tonight wasn’t about Danny.