Immortal City

It loomed huge and silent on the hill, perfectly framed by Maddy’s bedroom window. She sighed. The final remnants of the dream faded to nothing, replaced by the reality that she was still living in Los Angeles. Still stuck in the Immortal City.

She swung her legs out of bed and tried to shake the remainder of the sleep away. Kids at school complained about first period starting at 8 a.m., but for Maddy, the day started at five. Every day. She groped for a pair of jeans off the floor and pulled a striped long-sleeved tee from her closet and changed into them. Nothing fancy, and that’s the way Maddy liked it — simple and comfortable. She didn’t have the time — or the money, for that matter — for much else. She grabbed her favorite gray lightweight hoodie before leaving the room. Then she brushed her teeth and ran a comb through her hair before heading quickly down the stairs.

The light outside was fuller now, and she could tell by the way it illuminated the haze that her uncle, Kevin, would already be plating the first orders. This was their routine and had been since Maddy’s freshman year. He would wake before Maddy and open the restaurant, taking the first orders so she could get a few more precious minutes of sleep.

Then he would put on his apron and take up his position in the back as cook. It was Maddy’s responsibility to bring the orders out and work the rest of the morning shift until she had to leave for school. Like most mornings, she would be the only waitress on duty. Maddy was used to it, though.

And even though it could get annoying to spend most mornings working after late nights up doing schoolwork — especially in the winter, when it was totally dark through a lot of her shift — it still made her feel good to help Kevin, to be the one he really counted on. She knew he appreciated it.

Maddy grabbed her backpack off the living room couch, which was covered in laundry, and quickly scanned the room to see if she was forgetting anything. Knickknacks and pictures lined the walls, hanging over the worn furniture and haphazard laundry-folding job Kevin had apparently started the night before and then stopped halfway through. The home was modest and could’ve stood a remodel in 1987, but it was all she had ever known — and, to be honest, all she’d ever really needed. Satisfied she wasn’t leaving anything behind, Maddy dashed out the door and down a narrow path that led from the front door through the sloping yard to the back door of Kevin’s Diner.

When she was eleven, she had tried to get her uncle to change the restaurant’s name to something more original, but Kevin was a bit of a traditionalist, and Kevin’s Diner it remained. She went in through the back door, slipped into the tiny office, and changed into her waitress uniform, which she kept in the office so she could head straight to school at the end of the shift. The uniform couldn’t be more traditional either: a simple pin-striped dress and white apron. The waitresses were theoretically supposed to wear pumps with the outfit, but most of the time Maddy managed to sneak her black Chucks past her uncle, who always seemed to look the other way.

Maddy could already smell the sharp aroma of fresh brewed coffee, sizzling bacon, and freshly poured pancakes as she emerged from the back and walked down the narrow hallway toward the kitchen. Just as she expected, Kevin was already hard at work behind the counter, plating the first three orders of the day. Maddy shoved a notepad and pen into the pocket of her dress and pulled her hair into a ponytail.

“Morning, Mads,” Kevin said, slapping butter on some whole-grain toast. “These go out to four and seven.” He indicated the plates. He was an average-looking man, if a little more weathered than most, but the lines of worry that cris-scrossed his face were offset by a smile that always crackled with resilience and optimism.

“Cool,” Maddy said, yawning and deftly stacking the plates up her outstretched arm — a seasoned pro at seventeen.

“And Mads?” Kevin added. “Get yourself some coffee.

On the house.” He winked. Maddy laughed sleepily, then, balancing the plates on her arms, swung out of the kitchen and into the dining room.

The dining room was like the rest of the restaurant — old and unremarkable, with fluorescent lights flickering over a scuffed black-and-white linoleum floor. The diner was laid out like an L on its side. The long part was bordered by a counter and stools on one side and cracked beige vinyl booths on the other. The booths ran along the windows that looked out to the street. The short part of the L faced back toward the house and the hill, giving those booths, like Maddy’s room, a near-perfect view of the famous Angel City sign. Maddy dropped off the orders to tables four and seven, then turned to head back for the water pitcher and coffee carafe to refill drinks.

“Excuse me, miss?” an overweight woman in one of the booths asked as Maddy passed. “Can you fix the TV?”

Maddy looked up at the ancient Magnavox propped in the corner. On the screen was nothing but rolling static, which tended to happen a lot. The woman’s cheeks were flushed, and her face wore the expectant expression of a child. “Didn’t you hear? There was a save last night in Malibu.” She emphasized the word save as if it was the most exciting, most important thing in the world.

“Oh, really?” Maddy murmured noncommittally. She placed one knee on the woman’s table and reached up, banging on the side of the set. After a moment the signal came in, and the diner filled with the sound of ANN — the Angel News Network. If it were up to Maddy, she’d rather watch anything else, but the customers always insisted on hearing the latest news about the Angels, and so ANN it was.

“A terrible accident but a dramatic save in a two-car collision in Malibu last night — and the Guardian had one of the NAS’s trial Angelcams!” announced the news anchor, her face obscured by smears of dust on the Magnavox.

“We’ll have first-person, thrilling footage of the save and an exclusive interview with Archangel Mark Godspeed coming up within the hour, right here on ANN.”

At the word Angelcams, the woman in the booth sat up straight and watched the screen with wide, excited eyes as it previewed the tantalizing footage of a misty hairpin curve on the Pacific Coast Highway.

“Oh my gawd! Can you imagine?” she said, her eyes fixed on the screen. “Can you imagine having one of them Guardian Angels always watchin’ over you, keeping you safe no matter what? And wakin’ in in their big, strong arms, with everybody having seen it?” Her eyes remained on the TV. “One day I’ll be saved.”

But Maddy was already walking away. The truth was, she just didn’t understand the big deal about Angels. Ever since they had revealed themselves to the world over one hundred years ago — the Awakening, as they called it — and turned their lifesaving abilities into a business, the Immortals seemed to be the only thing anyone cared about. Everyone, that was, except Maddy. It’s true she lived in Los Angeles — the Angel capital of the world — but she had never been able to go along with the crowd around her and get caught up in the mystique of their fame, fortune, and lavish lifestyles. She didn’t buy clothes from their clothing lines or sample their Angel-themed perfumes, and she certainly didn’t read about them in Angels Weekly. When you can’t afford any of that stuff, it’s just easier not to be sucked in, she had long since concluded.

The morning rush passed quickly, Maddy expertly wielding her pen and notepad to scratch down orders, dealing plate after plate of eggs, French toast, and sausage to the steady breakfast crowd. Near the end of her shift, when Maddy went back to the kitchen, she found another steaming plate of food waiting for her on the counter. There was no ticket with it. She frowned and looked at her pad.

“Kevin? Who ordered this?” she asked, flipping through her tickets. Kevin looked at her over the counter and smiled, the skin crinkling like paper around his eyes.

“You did.”

Maddy looked down at the plate again, her mouth flooding with water. Scrambled eggs with seared peppers and onions. It was her favorite dish at the diner.

They sat in one of the booths in the back, the customers having thinned enough that Kevin could hang up his apron for five minutes.

“Thanks again,” Maddy said as she scooped another forkful of egg into her mouth. “You didn’t have to cook for me.”

Kevin shrugged as he glanced out the window. He took a sip of coffee. “Sometimes I still can’t believe you’re a senior, and that you’ll be graduating in the spring. You’ve always been my little Mads, but you’re not little anymore.

My niece has grown up into a smart and beautiful young woman.”