Page 56 of Hellbent

She held up her hands. “We’re here, aren’t we? And they’re not.”

The sugary scent of the syrup roiled his stomach. “This isn’t—can’t be—good for you.”

“I can handle it.”

“You’re sixteen.”

“What were you doing at sixteen?” She glared at him. “Well? Was it good for you? Or is that different? Because, you know, I’m a girl.”

“I don’t care that you’re a girl. I care that you’re safe. And where I’m going? It’s not gonna be safe.”

A patter of footsteps announced the waitress’s approach. “I just started my shift, and already I’m winded trudging all the way to you two back here.” She grabbed her ample chest, made a show of catching her breath.

Evan managed a smile.

“Anything else I can get you or your daughter, sweetie?”

Evan touched her gently on the side, not low enough to be disrespectful. “Just the check, thanks.”

“It’s really nice, you know, to see. A road trip. I wish my daddy spent time with me like that.”

As she dug in her apron pocket, Joey gave her a look that bordered on toxic.

The waitress pointed at her with the corner of the check. “Mark my words, you’ll appreciate this one day.”

She spun on her heel, a practiced flourish, and left them.

The bill had been deposited demurely facedown. Evan laid two twenties across it, started to slide out.

Joey said, “I didn’t do it.”

He paused. “What?”

“The duffel bag. The guy. I didn’t do it. I couldn’t pull the trigger.”

Evan let his weight tug him back into the seat. He folded his hands. Gave her room to talk. Or to not talk.

She took her time. Then she said, “I stood there with the gun aimed, Van Sciver at my back. And I couldn’t.”

“What did he do?”

“He took the gun out of my hand. And showed me…” Her lips trembled, and she pressed her knuckles against them, hard. “The mag was empty. It was just a test. And I failed. If I’d done it, if I’d passed the test, I could’ve been like—” She caught herself, broke off the thought.

“Could’ve been like what?”

“Like you.”

Silence asserted itself around them. Kitchen sounds carried to their booth, pots clanking, grills sizzling. In a booming voice, the short-order cook was telling the staff that he hadn’t had much luck with the rainbow trout but he had a new spinning lure that just might do the trick.

“Van Sciver unzipped the duffel, let the guy out. He was acting all along. Probably some psyops instructor. Van Sciver said he was gonna walk him out, that I should wait there for him. But the thing is?” Her voice hushed. “I noticed something standing there, looking down at the duffel bag. It had a smudge of blood on the lining. And I knew that I hadn’t just failed the test. I’d failed Van Sciver. And at some point it would be me in that duffel bag and another kid outside it. And when that happened? The gun wouldn’t be empty.”

She sat back, breaking the spell of the memory. “That raised office in the hangar, it had a window with a shitty lock. I kept a hairpin hidden in my hair. I thought it’d be wise to GTFO before he got back. So I did. I was on the run eleven months until Jack.”

“How’d Jack find you?”

The distinctive ring sounded so out of place here among the retro candy-apple-red vinyl and Elvis clocks and display counter up front stocked with Dentine. It was a ring from another place, another life, another dimension.

It was the RoamZone.