prologue
And the record begins with a song of rebellion."
- Say Anything, "Belt"
When Austin Jones leaves his home on the back of a motorcycle at the age of twenty, he barely stops to consider that he has been followed. He is wrong not to. Less than a day of driving later, he stops at a diner off of Route 86 and, looking around, begins to have the unfortunate stomach-sinking feeling of seeing someone you know in a place where you thought everyone would be a stranger to you.
The only other customer in the place is a man with mousy brown hair sitting in a corner booth, absently studying the mini-jukebox on the wall through the thick lenses of a pair of horn-rimmed glasses. Austin stands in the doorway and gapes at him. The man smiles - there's a gap between his two front teeth - and waves. For lack of anything else to do, Austin stomps over and sits down on the unoccupied side of the booth, snatching the menu the other man isn't using and burying his face in it.
"What are you doing here," Austin hisses out of the corner of his mouth, gripping the plastic sheets of the menu with white knuckles. This wasn't in his plan at all - not even 24 hours out and he's already running into complications.
Before he can get an answer, a waitress is at the table. She looks tired. Her hair is starting to spill out of its utilitarian bun and her shirt has stains on it.
"Can I get you anything to drink?" she asks, her hand straying to the notepad in her apron. Austin looks up at her from over the top of the menu. He scans her nametag; it's crooked on her breast, and reads Sherri in faded black letters. "Yeah. Two cups of coffee."
"Two-" Sherri stops herself short. "Are you expecting someone else?"
"I guess." Austin shrugs his shoulders. She gives him a weird look, but retreats from the table nonetheless, and he's sure he can hear her whispering about him to the other waitress behind the counter as she starts making the coffee. That's okay. He's used to people whispering about him.
"You know I can't drink that," the man with mousy brown hair speaks up suddenly, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose and giving Austin a once-over.
"Usually it cheers ghosts up when I treat them like people," Austin mutters, snapping the menu shut and laying it down on the table. He sketches patterns into the paper placemat with his index finger, still not looking at the man across from him. "It's symbolic."
"It would cheer me up more if you had bothered to say hi to me."
"Hi Richard." Austin's lips twitch in a small grimace. The ghost of his father, Richard Jones, frowns at him.
"How come you ran away from home, Aust?"
Austin looks up and opens his mouth to answer, but at that moment, Sherri comes back with the coffees. She sets both of them in front of him - obviously, she doesn't see Richard - and he mutters a "thank you", slowly stirring a packet of sugar into his cup until she's out of earshot. The second cup of coffee he pushes away from him, towards Richard's side of the table, where Richard regards it a little wistfully.
"I'm not running away," Austin says finally, staring into his coffee.
"Then what are you doing?" Richard's eyebrows knit together, and he gives Austin a Look over the rims of his glasses - six feet underground for fifteen years and still trying to be paternal. Austin can't find it in him to be annoyed. "Do you even have a plan?"
Austin takes a long sip of coffee, and thinks hard about his answer before lying through his teeth. "Of course I have a plan."
Leaning forward on the table, Richard looks translucent, even to Austin. The fluorescent lights of the diner pass right through him, washing out his pale skin and the dress shirt he was buried in, the sleeves of which are now pushed up to his elbows. "Where are you going?"
"Out west," Austin says under his breath, aware that Sherri and the other waitress behind the counter are staring at him. He's good at gauging that sort of thing. Not that he likes being stared at like there's something wrong with him - not that there isn't, but it sucks when people automatically assume he's talking to himself. He closes his right eye and the image of Richard becomes clearer. "Nevada, maybe. Or Colorado."
"How come?" Richard asks again. His eyes are full of confusion and hurt. Sometimes it's easy to forget that spirits can still emote as well as humans. "Not that I never thought about running away when I was your age, but - your brother -"
Austin bristles visibly, gritting his teeth and forcing himself to finish the rest of his coffee before answering. It gives him time to calm down. "I just need the change of scenery."
He doesn't want to pay with a card, because he can be tracked with that, so he lays cash (with exact change) down on the table for the two coffees, and a slightly larger-than-usual tip to Sherri for the trouble before he gets up from the booth. When he pauses at the entrance to look back over his shoulder, Richard is gone too.
Austin gets the feeling they'll be seeing each other again soon, whether he likes it or not. And he's right.