She caught my eye and smirked, and I tried not flinch as she stage-whispered to the third girl, who was already studying me with rapt attention. “That’s her. She actually works here, in the place where it happened. Can you believe that?”
The other two giggled, and I felt my cheeks grow hot.
“Ugh,” said Millie, who had as much patience for routine bitchiness as I did. “I’ll get this one. And if they’re not careful, I’ll bring them their menus with a side of my shoe up their …” She trailed off, rounding the counter to attend to them.
I smiled graciously at the back of her head. Gracewell’s Diner mostly catered to people who worked in town or local families who had been coming here for years. But every so often, nosy vipers from school would stop in to gawk at the infamous Michael Gracewell’s restaurant, and Millie would take the hit and serve them so that I wouldn’t have to.
Absentmindedly, I started to fix the errant strings on my apron, looping them into an uneven bow.
“Are you going to do any work today, Sophie?”
Ursula, Gracewell Diner’s assistant manager, had returned from the kitchen. She was nearly as old as Mrs. Bailey but was infinitely cooler because she could rock purple hair and was able to have conversations that didn’t negatively affect my will to live. She gestured toward Millie, who was handing menus to the three girls.
“Oh, come on. There’s no one else here, and I can’t exactly wait on ghost tables,” I protested.
Ursula’s laugh was husky, betraying her enduring smoking habit. “I’m just saying you seem distracted tonight.” She pushed her circular spectacles up the bridge of her nose until they settled and magnified her eyes twofold. “Or should I say more distracted than usual.”
“That’s because she is distracted, Ursula.” Millie was back, and whipping off her apron. She was leaving an hour before me, and in that moment I slightly resented her for it. “We should tell Ursula.”
“Yes, we should,” Ursula echoed, shuffling sideways so she could prop herself against the wall beside me. We were exactly the same height, so she could bore her eyes right into mine very effectively with little effort.
“But I don’t have anything to tell,” I swore.
“Lies!” Millie slipped in front of the counter, hoodie in hand. She shrugged it on, smiling so broadly nearly all of her clear braces were visible at once. She zipped it up and her name tag, MILLIE THE MAGNIFICENT — I don’t know how she had snuck that one past Uncle Jack — disappeared. Then she leaned forward until her hair brushed the countertop, and dropped her voice. Ursula responded like a magnet, coming closer, and training her attention on Millie.
“Well, you probably won’t believe this,” Millie began, gesturing subtly at me with her thumb. “But Sophie has developed a crush on a shadow. A real bona fide shadow-crush. Rare as a solar eclipse, but they do happen. Our Sophie is a shadow-creeper.”
Ursula pulled her eyebrows together until they almost touched. “What?”
“She’s just kidding,” I explained, throwing Millie a death stare.
“Am I, Sophie? Am I?” She smirked suggestively, in the way only Millie could. “Ursula, I’ll need you to take over that table of wonderful specimens now that I’m leaving,” she said, gesturing toward Erin and her friends in the corner, before crossing the diner and shouting, “See you guys tomorrow!”
Once Millie had disappeared, Ursula turned her penetrating gaze back to me. “So what’s this shadow thing all about?”
“It’s nothing, really. There’s this new family living in the Priestly place and I think I bumped into one of them the other night, but then I ran away from him, and now Millie thinks it’s the funniest and most tragic thing she’s ever heard.” I grabbed a cloth and started to wipe down the countertop, which was already gleaming.
Ursula narrowed her eyes as if trying to determine whether there was more to my story, but before she could chase up a line of questioning, the bell above the door jingled.
Against the backdrop of our abrupt silence, two figures swept through the door.
I tried not to gape. One tall, dark, handsome boy is difficult to ignore, but two is near impossible.
They paused inside the door, their broad shoulders brushing as they stood side by side. They began to militarily scan the diner, as though they were looking for something that could have been under any of the tables or swinging from the ceiling fans.
Without meaning to, Ursula and I both took a step forward.
There was something effortlessly fashionable about them — their dark, straight-leg jeans were tailored to break perfectly above expensive leather boots that probably cost more than my entire wardrobe, and they wore designer T-shirts accented by the simple silver chains around their necks.