Garth was hungry, tired, and hadn’t peed in at least three states. He’d been trying to test his bladder, maybe build up some endurance, or maybe he just got too bored during his shifts recently. Or maybe he’d seen one too many adult diaper commercials and was having a midlife crisis. He certainly hadn’t seen a toilet outside of a port-a-potty in weeks. This stretch of the interstate was devoid of streetlights and the glowing Cherribeez sign was a beacon in the darkness. Mostly, he just had to go so badly. Like, really go. Like, you don’t even have the energy to hover over a nasty toilet seat, have to go. He swerved to the right onto the exit for the restaurant and rolled towards it, feeling each bump in the road even from the inside of his 18-wheeler.
The lighting in the men’s room was blinding compared to his brief jog around the perimeter of the dining room. The hanging overhead red, green, and yellow lamps rushed by him during his trot, the only substantial sources of light for his path. It was a walk of shame unlike anything he experienced before.
But not even vertigo ruined that moment after he reached the black door under the LED restroom sign. And no one was in there.
He finally leaned back in his bouncy red booth and waited for his appetizer combo. Bone-in buffalo wings, chicken tenders, and potstickers. It had taken some serious will power to order a Pepsi instead of a beer, but he was being paid to be sober. And they were paying for his meal. He was irrationally disappointed when his otherwise cheerful server informed him they only had FizzPop and asked, “would that be okay?”
It was not okay, but the steak he was waiting on would make up for it.
The FizzPop arrived swiftly, along with a straw and silverware rolled in a paper napkin. Garth took a hearty swig and didn’t notice it wasn’t Pepsi.
He had always found the sports memorabilia covering every available inch of wallspace to be cluttered-looking and kind of tacky. Maybe it would be different if you cared about the teams, he thought, but he also couldn’t imagine why anyone would care that much about high school sports and little league. Naturally, his eyes were drawn to the oversized framed team picture adjacent to his booth. His eyes passed absently over the teenage faces topped by baseball caps, row by row. The photo reminded him of his own days on the field, distant as they were. He was never gifted, but Garth’s father had played, and his father’s father had played, and so he at least warmed the bench to make it seem like he was interested. As he glanced over the last row, one of the faces stood out more than the others. The boy was so strangely familiar. And the number on his jersey, 69. What was it about him?
Garth stopped sipping his FizzPop as the memories came flooding back. They hadn’t been friends, but everyone in his hometown had known that face. It had been plastered on every milk carton, for Pete’s sake. Kenny had gone missing the summer after ninth grade. They had both been on the baseball team, but Kenny actually made it onto the field. His disappearance had rocked their entire community, and parents started locking their doors for the first time in his memory. And yet there Kenny was, happy as a clam, beaming at the camera. He was wearing his same jersey number and he looked just the same as he did the last time Garth had seen him.
Garth had grown up halfway across the country from this particular Cherribeez, but there was simply no way that Kenny could have picked up and started at another high school without raising some suspicion. Garth was gaping at the photo when his server walked up to his table carrying his appetizer combo, which definitely took longer than it should have for a bunch of fried meat. She was a little past her prime so he guessed they were probably about the same age, and if she worked here, odds are she also went to whatever high school was plastered all over the walls.
As she set down his steaming plate, he asked, “Did you go to high school here? I could swear that I know this kid on the baseball team, but-”
When Garth looked backed towards the photo to point to Kenny, he froze as his eyes landed on the last row of baseball players again. Kenny was gone. In his place was an equally nondescript looking teenager, but it was not Kenny. He realized after a moment that his mouth was still hanging open, and his server was looking at him with bemusement.
“I went to that high school, but you wouldn’t have caught me with those assholes.” She said, immediately turning around and walking away from his table. Garth looked back at the photo again, and Kenny hadn’t reappeared. And the jersey on the kid in his place bore the number 13, so it couldn’t have been Kenny. But it had been him. After staring at the photo for another few minutes longer he should have, he decided that maybe he really was getting too bored during his shifts recently.
His steak arrived a moment later and he cut into it without another thought. It was cooked perfectly. He ate nearly the whole thing, and half of his fried onions, before he found it. One measly grilled shrimp had snuck under his charred chunk of meat. The offender was small, with that same char, and he almost wouldn’t have seen it but his steak knife had cut it clean in half with his last bite. The light pink flesh his knife had exposed told him he had already swallowed half of it.
The adrenaline rush from the epipen distracted him from Kenny’s picture until he was already in the next state over, barreling past Exit 69.
Cherribeez 