Chapter 6: The Corner Table

Six days after the lawn, I took Poppy to the diner for lunch.

My mother stayed home to sleep, and I wore a clean shirt for the first time in a week.

Ferris Diner was a long room with eight booths, a counter, and a pie case by the register.

Every head turned when I came in.

Every one of them turned back too fast.

"Table in the window's yours," said the waitress. She was already pulling out a high chair for the car seat.

"I don't need a table. I'll sit at the counter."

"The window's yours," she said again, and I saw that she meant it.

Over the pass-through, Caleb looked up from the grill and lifted a spatula.

I sat.

On the wall above my table, someone had hung a small framed card.

It said Reserved, in his square handwriting.

"Since when is that there?" I asked the waitress.

"Since your grandmother's last Christmas," she said. "He never took it down."

I looked at the card for a while.

Then she brought me a bowl of soup without being asked.

It was tomato, with a grilled cheese on the side, cut in triangles.

I ate half of it before I realized the whole diner was quiet.

A man at the counter had his phone out, and I could see my own front lawn on the screen.

Pans in the grass.

A woman in a blue dress being walked down my steps.

"That's got four thousand views," he said, to no one. "Somebody posted it to the Little Pines page."

"Put the phone away, Gary," the waitress said.

He did.

The bell over the door rang.

It was Troy.

He looked like he had slept in his car.