sophie.

Chapter 5

One good thing about wearing a black boot is the fact that, when I'm dressing for a break-in, it matches the rest of my outfit. The bad thing is that it kept me from climbing up to Adrien's second-floor window unless I had an accomplice. And the only person I knew that would be crazy enough to assist me was Sawyer, who was busy treating a date that night. That left me unable to do anything, really, in regards to finding the truth for a good twenty-four hours. I received a text from Jean Bailey.

Sophie Quinn, are you still too handicapped to come into work tomorrow? // 8:46 12/8/13

I lowered the phone and looked at my leg, wishing it would still hurt to stand on. But it was to my understanding, walking up the stairs after dinner, that the pain had receded to a numbing. Which meant, yeah, I was able to work. I couldn't lie to Jean Bailey.

No. // 8:47 12/8/13

It took her a few minutes to reply back.

You have your usual hours. // 8:50 12/8/13

Well, that was that. There was nothing left to do with myself, so I thought about the Garrison Diner. Jean Bailey, and the guy that owned the restaurant, were married. Jean managed the place while her husband, Garrison, worried about all of the finances and the like. I was actually looking forward to seeing them, and moreover, seeing the damage left over from the wreck. It was just out of curiosity, honestly. What I wasn't looking forward to, though, were the people. I wasn't lying when I said that I loathed approximately ninety percent of Polo's population.

Nothing else really happened that night. It's suffice to say that I was pretty restless and didn't get to sleep until late thinking about Adrien and Sawyer and even Brady Warren, who wasn't exactly in my life but still a looming presence who I thought about in the absence of anything else. I wondered if he questioned my not visiting him, or had forgotten about me.

DECEMBER 9TH, 2013

Having set my alarm clock, I woke up at ten thirty with a will to kill anyone. The morning wasn't my friend; it was, however, the reason why I had such an uninhibited dislike with everything in the earlier half of my work day. The latter half, it was just a groaning desire to go home. This routine I expected fully, and didn't exactly try to make myself feel better in the thirty minutes I had before my shift started. I simply threw my hair in a ponytail, put on the tacky polo with the Garrison Diner logo, black pants, and one worn out left-foot converse shoe.

Driving a car wasn't as hard as you might think with a boot on your foot. I decidedly and carefully drove the car with my left foot, the good one, to a nearby parking lot just outside of the neighborhood, where I thus proceeded to test out left-foot driving. By the time I got the hang of it, I had two minutes left before eleven, and looking at the clock, I freaked out and put my new skills to use, blazing through Polo as if I were fleeing from the cops. I drove into the parking lot a bit haphazardly, and hobbled to the front door rather than the back, seeing as I knew I would be late by the time I got behind the Garrison Diner.

"You're spot on," Jean Bailey said to me as I walked in. She and I smiled.

"My clock says she's late," said this girl, Chelsea Salmon. And from the lack of context, her comment sounds like it would be some sort of joking camaraderie, but no, it wasn't. She was completely serious. A way that, to me, it was a jab, but to Jean Bailey, it was simply a statement. Chelsea Salmon was good at that.

She was responsible for a large fraction of my dislike for the general population. I knew my only good response for her was not to respond at all.

So I stepped behind the counter and gave Chelsea Salmon the dirty look that she knew she deserved, and walked over to some white aprons hanging from a nail. Pulling one off, I looked over and saw, with a look somewhat shocked, the sight of the crash. What was once a window had been shattered and was now boarded up with plywood. Where there was once a pleather booth, there was nothing but tile. I sighed; it was like Adrien had been following me around, everywhere I went. First at home with my parents, and now here, at work, where it was hard to think both about Adrien and the separate (and somewhat large) group of people I generally loathed. But then again, I wasn't exactly trying to avoid him.