The Enigma

Chapter Four - Stupid Questions.

I ripped the plastic packet open with my teeth and shuffled the new napkins in between my fingers. Refilling the napkin dispensers was one of the easier maintenance jobs I had to do at Paul’s, but that didn’t stop it from being ridiculously monotonous. Sure, it kept my hands busy but it left my mind ridiculously free to wander off to topics I had already spent the last twenty-four hours dissecting.

Our high school wasn’t exactly the sort of place you would expect to find someone beaten to a pulp, so the image of my shift partners’ already-bruising face seemed to be on constant repeat.

Call me innocent if you want to, but I saw it as an achievement that I had managed to go seventeen whole years without having to witness something like that first-hand. Sure I had seen those dumb middle-school fights where we would all stand in a circle chanting as two thirteen year olds shoved each other a couple of times, but I had never seen anything like, like that. I desperately wanted to believe it was a ‘You should see the other guy’ kind of fight, but something was telling me that he had been the other guy. And the results had not been pretty.

I snapped the lid down on the last dispenser just as the bell above the door jingled. Pasting my best fake smile onto my face, I gathered a handful of dispensers in my arms.

“Just give me two seconds and I’ll be right on over, please take a seat and have a look at our newly revised menu,” I rattled off, stopping every so often to place the napkins on the plastic tabletops. Straightening a salt shaker, I turned to see a black hoodie disappearing through the swing door.

Considering the chances of someone robbing the diner period, never mind at half three on a Thursday afternoon, were pretty low there was only one other possible explanation. Of course that was also the explanation which caused my heart to jump painfully into my mouth.

He didn’t turn up for his shift yesterday, not that I had expected him to. Having your face smashed in was reason enough in my book to skip work, so I had kept my mouth zipped to Paul and managed on my own. What had worried me however was when he didn’t show up for school that day, believe me I had looked for him. Needless to say Everett hadn’t been too pleased when I dragged him all over campus, everywhere from the library to behind the science labs, without so much as an explanation but I just had to check. I attempted to convince him to just go and wait for me at our usual table, but he just shoved his hands into his jean pockets and followed me with a grim determination.

I swallowed noisily before creeping my way back around the counter. I was gathering up my second armful of dispensers when the door hit the wall lightly behind me, and I heard his shoes squeak along the tiles.

“Just grab these and place one on every table,” I said lightly, edging back out to the main diner. The slight squeaking noise told me he had followed my lead.

Shooting a glance out of the corner of my eye, I had to bite down on my lip to stifle the gasp that threatened to escape. The bruise on his left cheekbone had darkened overnight, his unusually-sharp bone structure hidden beneath a deep-purple bruise. Quickly adverting my eyes, I put down another dispenser before discreetly looking back. I continued the same pattern – look, wince, advert, place, and repeat – until he eventually slammed down his last napkin holder.

“Can you stop that?”

“Stop what?” I asked, feigning nonchalance.

“Staring at me.”

Alright, so maybe I hadn’t been all that discreet.

“I wasn’t staring at you,” I said lightly, brushing past him to pick a rag up from the counter. I began furiously polishing the faux-marble top, anything to avoid making eye contact.