Five Nights at Freddy's: The Silver Eyes(6)

“Not really,” he said. “Around, I guess. Sometimes.”

“I’m surprised they stayed in Hurricane,” Jessica said with a note of worldly disapproval in her voice. Charlie said nothing, but thought how could they not?

His body had never been found. How could they not have secretly hoped he might come home, no matter how impossible they knew it was? How could they leave the only home Michael knew? It would mean really, finally giving up on him. Maybe that was what this scholarship was, an admission that he was never coming home.

Charlie was acutely aware that they were in a public place, and talking about Michael felt inappropriate. They were, in a sense, both insiders and outsiders. They had been closer to Michael, probably, than anyone in this restaurant, yet with the exception of Carlton, they were no longer from Hurricane, they did not belong.

She saw it before she felt it, tears falling on her paper placemat, and she hurriedly wiped her eyes, looking down, hoping no one had noticed. When she looked up, John appeared to be studying his silverware, but she knew he had seen, and was grateful to him for not trying to offer comfort.

“John, do you still write?” Charlie asked.

John had declared himself “an author” when they were about six, having learned to read and write when he was four, a year ahead of the rest of them. At the age of seven he completed his first “novel” and pressed his poorly spelled, inscrutably illustrated creation on his friends and family, demanding reviews. Charlie remembered she had given him only two stars. John laughed at the question.

“I actually do my E’s the right way around these days,” he said. “I can’t believe you remember that. But I do actually, yeah.” He stopped, clearly wanting to say more.

“What do you write?” Carlton obliged with the question, and John looked down at his placemat, speaking mostly to the table.

“Um, short stories, mostly. I actually had one published last year. I mean, it was just a magazine, nothing big.” They all made suitable noises of being impressed, and he looked up again, embarrassed but pleased.

“What was the story about?” Charlie said, and he hesitated.

Before John could speak, or decide not to speak, the waitress returned with their food. They had all ordered from the breakfast menu, coffee, eggs and bacon, blueberry pancakes for Carlton. The brightly colored food looked hopeful, like a fresh start to the day. Charlie took a bite of her toast, and they all ate silently for a moment.

“Hey, Carlton,” John said suddenly. “What ever happened to Freddy’s, anyway?”

There was a brief hush. Carlton looked nervously at Charlie, and Jessica stared up at the ceiling. John flushed red, and Charlie spoke hastily.

“It’s okay, Carlton. I’d like to know, too.”

Carlton shrugged, stabbing at his pancakes nervously with his fork.

“They built over it,” he said. “

“What did they build?” Jessica said.

“Is there something else there, now? Was it built over, or just torn down?” John asked, and Carlton shrugged again, quick like a nervous tic.

“Like I said, I don’t know. It’s too far back from the road to see, and I haven’t exactly investigated. It might have been leased to someone, but I don’t know what they did. It’s all been blocked off for years under construction. You can’t even tell if the building is still there.”

“So, it could still be there?” Jessica said, with a spark of excitement breaking through.

“Like I said, I don’t know,” Carlton said.

Charlie felt the diner’s florescent lights glaring down on her face, suddenly too bright. She felt exposed. She had barely eaten, but she found herself rising from the booth, pulling a few crumpled bills from her pocket and dropping them on the table.

“I’m going to go outside for a minute,” she said. “Smoke break.” She added hastily. You don’t smoke. She chided herself for the clumsy lie as she made her way to the door, jostling past a family of four without saying “excuse me,” and stepped out into the cool evening. She walked to her car and sat on the hood, the metal denting slightly under her weight. She took in breaths of the cool air as if it were water, and closed her eyes. You knew it would come up, you knew you would have to talk about it, she reminded herself. She had practiced on the drive here, forced herself to think back to happy memories, to smile and say, “remember when?” She thought she was prepared for this. But of course she had been wrong, or why would she have run out of the restaurant like a child?

“Charlie?”

She opened her eyes, and saw John standing next to the car, holding her jacket out in front of him like an offering.

“You forgot your jacket,” he said, and she made herself smile at him.

“Thanks,” she said. She took it and draped it over her shoulders, and slid over on the car’s hood for him to sit.

“Sorry about that,” she said, and in the dim lights of the parking lot she could still see him blush to the ears. He joined her on the car’s hood, leaving a deliberate space between them.

“I haven’t learned to think before I talk. I’m sorry.” John watched the sky as a plane passed overhead.

Charlie smiled, this time unforced.

“It’s okay. I knew it was going to come up, it had to. I just—it sounds stupid, but I never think about it. I don’t let myself. No one knows what happened, except my aunt, and we never talk about it. Then I come here, and suddenly it’s everywhere. I was just surprised, that’s all.”