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Dylan’s chest several times to punctuate his words. Dylan looked…calm, but not at all happy. He didn’t talk back to the police officer until the very end. Whatever he had said stopped the officer cold; the older man got back into his cruiser, calling something over his shoulder before slamming the door and driving away.
    “What can I do for you?”
    The voice startled her and she whipped her head around to see a girl about her age, or maybe a little older, in an honest-to-god waitress outfit, standing there with a pad and pencil in her hand. “Oh! Uh—” She fumbled for the menu. “Is it too late for breakfast?”
    “It’s never too late for breakfast. Don’t order the sausage, it’s gross. Or the fried potatoes, they’re grease-bombs.” The girl grinned at her. Staci blindly ordered what her dad would have called “a good solid breakfast”—toast, scrambled eggs, bacon, juice. As she finished, on impulse, she was going to ask the girl about Dylan, but when she glanced out the window again, he was gone.
    When the girl brought her food, the man who had been nursing that cup of coffee had left, leaving them alone in the diner. “Can you take a minute to talk?” Staci asked, a little desperately. “I just moved here—and—”
    “Sure thing.” The waitress actually sat down across from her in the little booth. “Nobody cares what I do as long as there’s no one here. My name’s Beth Phillips. What’s yours?”
    “Staci. Staci Kerry.” She crunched down a piece of bacon. “I just moved here. I’m staying with my mom.”
    “Okay, so you’re Paula Kerry’s daughter.” The waitress—Beth—nodded knowingly. Oh God, does everyone in town know about my mother? But Beth’s expression was one of sympathy, rather than superiority. “I bet this place feels medieval to you.”
    “I can’t find anything!” Staci almost-wailed. “Where’s the McDonald’s? The Starbucks?”
    “Forget that,” Beth replied, flatly. “This town is stuck in 1950. No big chains, no franchises, nothing but stuff that was started by somebody’s granddad and is being run by the grandkid. This diner’s probably the newest thing in town.” Reflexively, Staci reached for her cell and pulled it out.
    Still no bars.
    “Oh, and if you want any reception, you’ll have to go to Makeout Hill.” She pointed through the window over Staci’s shoulder; Staci turned in her seat and strained her neck a little to see that Beth was pointing to a bluff high above the town that overlooked the ocean. “It’s a long walk. You’d better get a car. Or a motorcycle or at least a bike, or make friends with somebody that’s got a car.”
    There hadn’t been a car parked out in front of the house when Staci had left…which probably meant her mom didn’t own one.
    “Beth!” came a muffled shout from the back of the diner.
    “Finish your breakfast before it gets cold, I’ll be right back,” the girl said, and stood up. “Coming, Ray!”
    In a kind of numb haze, Staci finished the food, nibbling on the last piece of toast when Beth returned, carrying a pad of paper, a separate piece of whitish paper and a red pen. “Here, this is a map of the town,” she said, spreading it out between them. It turned out to be an old placemat, printed with a map and the words Welcome to Silence in one corner. “Here’s the diner,” she said, marking it with a little red dot. “Here’s the pizza joint.” That got marked with a triangle. “Here’s the drive-in, they open at four.” She drew a tiny thing like a burger. “Here’s the movie theater, here’s the grocery store, this is the bookstore that doesn’t kick kids out for browsing, this is the five-and-dime and they get decent magazines in anyway.” These were marked with a movie reel, a bag, a book and a circle with the number five in it. “Everything else that matters is already printed on this, and it’s not as if anything’s changed in the forty years since they made