• • •
Walking home, things felt different. Suddenly she couldn’t help feeling the Angel Stars under her feet. She couldn’t not see the tourist shops and the billboards and the faces of the Angels. As much as she tried, she couldn’t erase those piercing pale blue eyes from her mind.
She was so angry.
For once she welcomed her evening shift at the diner; she was looking forward to it, even. Anything to be distracted from her wandering thoughts. She had just rounded the corner to her street when she stopped dead in her tracks. She blinked, not sure if what she was seeing could be real.
There was a line outside of Kevin’s Diner. There had never been a line. Even on Sundays, there was no waiting to be seated. This was maybe a hundred people, and not regulars, either. These were hipsters with tattoos and piercings, suburbanites, tourists, and preppy Beverly Hills types. Maddy hustled up the sidewalk and slipped in the back door.
“What did I tell you?” Kevin yelled from behind the fryer as she came in. “It’s finally happened. Our luck is changing! I called in extra help.” Maddy smiled as convincingly as she could, then disappeared into the bathroom to change.
The diner was alive with talk about Jackson. Maddy couldn’t avoid it as she ran between tables, scribbling orders and dropping off armfuls of food. Everyone wanted to know about last night. Girls wanted to know how he looked in person. Even ANN on the Magnavox was drowned out by the frenzy of conversation. If Maddy had been looking for a distraction, this was the opposite.
“Is this where he sat?” a girl asked at one point, pointing to a booth. Her mother hovered in the background.
“No.” Maddy sighed. “It was over there.”
“Great!” The girl beamed. “Would you mind taking a picture of me in it?” Maddy did as she was asked. Everywhere she looked, people bathed in the afterglow of Jacks’s presence.
After a few hours they had cleared the line, but the dining room was still packed. Maddy barely heard the jingle of the front door over the din. She looked up.
Ethan stood there in ripped jeans, a T-shirt, and Rainbow flip-flops. Maddy hadn’t seen him since he’d gotten her phone number at school the morning before. He gave a quick scan of the full dining room, not seeing her, then went over and grabbed a seat at the counter. Not knowing exactly why she was doing it, Madd
y glanced at her reflection in the window and straightened her ponytail as she approached.
“Hi,” she said shyly.
“Hey, Maddy!” he said, looking thrilled to see her.
“You haven’t been here in a while. Do you need a menu?”
“Actually,” Ethan said, his eyes on hers, “I heard what happened. I have to meet Kyle and Tyler in a bit, but I was driving by and just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
Maddy was surprised and a little touched.
“I’m fine. Thanks for asking.”
“Great, that’s good to hear. I just . . . I don’t know. I was worried.” He smiled.
“You can’t come in here and not order anything,” Maddy said, pulling out her notepad. She found she didn’t want to see him go. “How about it?”
“I love the food here,” Ethan admitted. “But really, I’m not hungry.”
“How about a cup of coffee on the house?”
“Sure,” he agreed. “That sounds awesome.”
She went back and pulled a mug from the rack, then filled it with steaming coffee. Ethan was nice. And, she had to admit, nice-looking, too. They got along. Both quiet, but neither shy. Still, she wasn’t ready for him to think that she liked him-liked him. She’d have to be careful. She grabbed a bowl of creamers and headed back to where he sat.
“Free cup of joe; I like this place,” Ethan said as he took the mug and sipped from it. “Big night, huh?”
“Tell me about it,” Maddy said, resting her hip on the counter.
“To be honest,” Ethan said, looking around at the excited faces of the dining room, “I just don’t know why people care so much.”
Maddy looked at him, interested. “I thought I was the only one. Well, aside from people like Tyler, who are against it as like a political thing.”
Ethan shrugged. “I mean, I’m not trying to make a statement or anything, I just think we are who we are, and they are who they are. Why worship them?”