After that, I drove to the sporting goods store where the jock manager didn’t look interested in hiring me and looked super uninterested once I told him I didn’t have a cell phone where he could reach me. I do have a cell phone, but it usually sits on my desk or in the bottom of my backpack, uncharged. What did it matter? It’s not like people ever called me. There was a sign outside the fast-food taco shop saying they were hiring, but the greasy teenager behind the counter gave me a creepy look, so I walked right back out.
That’s when I decided to spend the rest of my day driving around aimlessly and making up places I could tell my mom I’d applied.
I ended up in Layton, and that made me think of Lizzie, and that made me think of how she’d worked at some diner. Since I was already in town, I decided to look for it.
It was actually pretty easy. Layton only has a few major streets running through it, so there wasn’t a lot of area to cover, and I only saw one diner that fit the newspaper’s description of where Lizzie worked. The Sunshine Café. I pulled into a parking spot.
The café was a sad brick building at the edge of an even sadder shopping center. It looked like it had been painted yellow a billion years before and never touched again. The name of the diner was written on the side of the building next to a big, orange, smiley-faced sun, and the specials sign in the window still said it was June.
A bell jingled when I stepped in, and I was relieved to see the inside was a little more inviting. It was a small place, with a single row of booths along one wall and a counter along the other. The kitchen was behind the counter, and I could see into it through the window where food was set out to be delivered by the waitresses. Waitresses like Lizzie. I tried to picture the Lizzie Lovett I knew working there. It was sort of impossible to imagine.
The only patron was an old man hunched over the far end of the counter, doing a crossword puzzle. I was deciding where to sit, or if I should even stay, when a girl came out of the kitchen. She was in her midtwenties and had bouncy curls and a big smile. She looked like the kind of person who’d been friends with everyone when she was in school, even the nerdy, weird kids no one else wanted to talk to. I smiled back at her, even though I’m not usually the type to smile at strangers.
“Hi!” she said. “Let me grab you a menu.”
“Uh, actually, I was wondering if you were hiring.”
The girl seemed thrown off. I was too. The words had come out of my mouth without getting permission from my brain.
“Well, I guess we are,” she laughed. “You have good timing. Let me tell the manager you’re here.”
She disappeared into the back, and I sat down on a stool at the opposite end of the counter from the old man. I didn’t have a plan. I didn’t know why I’d said anything about a job. I’d only wanted to see where Lizzie worked. I wanted to prove to myself that she did work, since Lizzie seemed like someone who could go her entire life without having responsibilities.
I was thinking about jetting out the door, but I hesitated too long. The waitress bounced over, saying Mr. Walczak would be out in a second, and he’d act really stern, but he was totally laid-back, and I should just be myself, and then the job would likely be mine.
“I’m Christa, by the way.”
“Hawthorn Creely.”
“Hawthorn. That’s an interesting name.”
I made a face, and she laughed.
“Do you live in Layton?”
“No, Griffin Mills. No one’s hiring there though.”
Christa rolled her eyes. “There’s no one hiring anywhere. I got lucky. Half my friends have to drive all the way to Pittsburgh for work.”
“There’s an opening here though, huh?” I said, as if I didn’t know why there was an opening. I patted myself on the back for casually working that into conversation. I told myself I was awesomely sneaky and maybe, probably, had what it took to be a secret agent.
Christa got a look on her face, which I was super familiar with from my time at Griffin Mills High School. Her eyes went wide, and she cast furtive glances around the dining room. It was the look of someone who wanted to gossip. She lowered her voice and leaned over the counter. “You know about Lizzie Lovett, right? The girl who’s missing?”
I tried to keep my face neutral, as if Lizzie was just a name from a newspaper article.
“Sure,” I said. “Everyone knows about her.”
“Well, she worked here.”
“Really?”
Christa nodded. “At first, Mr. Walczak was holding Lizzie’s job for her, ’cause we all thought she’d come back. Then yesterday, he started talking about putting a listing in the newspaper just in case.”
“Wow. That’s crazy. So you think she’s gone for good?”
Christa lowered her voice even more. “I don’t know for sure, but I think her disappearance has something to do with her boyfriend. I always thought he was a weirdo.”
I wanted to tell her weirdo and killer aren’t always the same thing, but that would likely blow my slick super-spy cover, so I didn’t.
“You think he killed her?” I asked.
“I’m not saying he killed her. Not for sure, anyway. I just think it’s all a little suspicious.”
“Like her being in the woods in the first place,” I said. “She doesn’t seem like the outdoorsy type.”
“Oh, no.” Christa shook her head. “That part isn’t suspicious. Lizzie is totally into camping and hiking. She went out in the woods all the time. Looking for wolves or something.”