Derek nodded, then stopped and grinned. “Actually, no, not really.”
“Right,” she grinned, waving a finger at him. “High school.”
“Sadly,” he responded, even as he started picking up dirty plates from the table closest to him and stacking them in a little tower. “What were you going to do?”
“Hmm?”
“In University. What were you going to do?”
She paused a moment, a dirty glass still in her hand as she piled them into a grey bin. “A kindergarten teacher, actually. I don’t know why, I just always loved kids.”
Derek bobbed his head as he listened, bringing his leaning tower of plates over and laying them carefully in the bin.
“I like how eager they are to learn at that age... you know? No offense, but kids your age would rather be anywhere than in the classroom. I don’t envy the teachers who have to deal with it.”
“Me either,” he agreed, thinking of the number of times he’d given Mr. Miles a hard time in the past few years. He was actually fairly certain that he was the reason the old Brit was growing grey. “So, what happened?”
“Well, you know,” she shrugged. “Bills, really. First it was full-time school with a part-time job. Then I needed more money, so it became part-time school with a full-time job. Then I started missing classes because I was so tired, or I’d be embarrassed to go with the same assholes I’d been serving the night before... you get the picture.”
Derek sighed, putting the last of the dishes away. “Maybe someday.”
The brief smile she had worn faded as she stared off into nothingness for a moment. She thought of the ‘night crowd’ that would be slowly pouring in. Somewhere in the back of her mind she got the impression that tonight wouldn’t be a good night for tips. The college folk weren’t likely to tip big unless they were trying to get a girl in bed. More than once, before she’d trained herself to hide her smile, that girl had been her. But she’d found that the guys actually worth going home with had a tendency to forget her name the next time they came in. She eyed Derek up and down, realizing that for all his sweetness he’d probably be another one of them in just a few short years.
“Thanks for your help, Derek,” she said in a faraway voice as she picked up the plastic bin and walked behind the counter.
Derek watched her go with a solemn look on his face, then turned and walked towards the exit.
Robert Miles ran a hand through his thinning chestnut hair, struggling to see the paper in front of him as more and more light was sapped from the room by the setting sun. The words scrawled onto the white, lined paper had become so hazy and moist that he had a hard time seeing them at all, let alone read them. Frowning, he grabbed his glasses by their golden rims and brought them into the light from the lamp, examining the tiny flecks of dirt and grime on them and wondering, not for the first time, how they had gotten there to begin with. He pulled a bright red handkerchief from the breast pocket of his suede jacket and started to rub the lenses with it vigorously, stopping once to examine the glass before wiping at it one more time and sliding them back onto his face. It was a little better, but no amount of cleaning, no matter how vigorous, could run out the effects of exhaustion and hunger.
He turned back to the paper in front of him, taking a sip from the long-cold coffee next to him on the desk as he did so. There was a slow tapping sound at the other end of the vacant classroom that made him stir his eyes away from it for a moment, gazing out upon the empty desks that stood silently in the shadows like soldiers ready to open fire on a condemned man. He watched them for a moment, then turned back to the page.
His eyes darted along the words for a moment, a smile slowly growing over his lips.
“The Elmbert-Eaton Dynasty,” he read aloud, scanning down over the page. “Felix Mason turned on his clock radio with a sudden switch of the dial. He liked this song, had ever since he could remember, and turned the volume up... to eleven.”
He wasn’t sure if ‘to eleven’ was supposed to have been a dramatic moment in the story, but when he read it aloud he did so with a deep, monotone voice that made it sound dire. He chuckled again at the passage, skimming down through the rest and then laying it aside.
- tak -tapptapp- tak -
There was the sound again from just beyond the veil of shadows cutting him off from the rest of the classroom, like the old electric heaters cutting in or a drape flapping in the breeze from an open window.
But he didn’t feel either the warm soothing flow of heat or the bitter chill that usually came with night air.
Miles stared into the darkness for a moment, then frowned and picked up the next sheet, and book report on Faust by Sara Johnson. He smiled, reaching for his red pen and circling her last name as a spelling error. For some reason the act itself made him sad, the word acting as a weight attached to his chest and bringing down his entire body.
-tak!-
“Hello?” he called out finally, standing up abruptly and letting the page fall back onto the desk.
The darkness just loomed back at him, only the desks and chairs from the first few rows visible before they became entrenched in darkness.
“Is someone there?” he called again in his thick British accent, stepping out from behind his desk with his head cocked to one side and one
