As Easy as Falling Off the Face of the Earth by Lynne Rae Perkins

looked like a dealership for manufactured homes. Remnants of clouds hung low, but offered no clues about what location they overhung.
    Trying to be quiet, Ry crawled over into the front seat and let himself out. As muggy as it was, the air felt fresher than it had inside. It felt a lot fresher than he felt himself. Just checking on that, he took a whiff. Holy crap. To put it politely.
    The parking lot had an abandoned aspect. Weeds grew up verdantly through ruptures in the asphalt, where frost heaves had lifted it then let it collapse. Broken glass, gravel, and litter lay undisturbed on the rolling, buckled surface. A fallen light pole rested diagonally over the weathered paint lines marking out parking spots.
    In the middle of it all was a shopping plaza. Or at least that’s what it had been, once. It looked as if it might be a dead plaza now. Not completely dead—a couple of storefronts seemed to be toughing it out. There were lights on in the Laundromat, and the Something-or-other Diner. Ry squinted. It was the Good Deal Diner.
    A small flock of cars huddled up close to it. Ry watched another car come in off the road, cross the parking lot, and join the flock. The car doors opened wide, people spilled out, the car doors banged shut, the people milled over and inside. Their chatter reached Ry as a cheerful murmur. He turned and looked the other way and up and down the road to see what else there was. Traffic was light. It was one of those roads at the edge of a town where fast food places and quick-lubes and discount furniture stores sprout up in the margins of the farm fields. A homey old farmhouse nestled in a clump of trees a ways back, pretending it was still in the countryside. Across the road was a Home Depot. It could be anywhere. Meaning, so could they.
    Del was still snoring. He had driven most of the night. Ry decided to go to the diner and use the restroom and get some breakfast. He rolled down the window for ventilation, then gently clinked the door shut.
    He tried to wash up a little in the restroom. He couldonly go so far; there was just one sink and people kept coming in and out. The bruise on his brow was fading nicely, going yellow like a leaf in autumn, but not beautiful like that. The swelling was way down, the shape of his eye opening was almost normal. He checked his wallet, went out into the restaurant, and sat on a stool at the counter.
    Breakfast and lunch menus were up on the wall, on black signs with white plastic letters and numbers that could be moved around by pushing them into horizontal grooves. Everything sounded great. Ry glanced at the breakfasts of his nearby fellow diners to see what looked good. It all looked good.
    He ordered waffles. And an omelet. And sausage. As he waited, he let his thoughts wander. His gaze wandered, too, bouncing here and there. It bounced on a sticky circle on the counter where the syrup dispenser had been and stuck there for a few seconds. Followed the fly that also got stuck there, then licked his way free, like shoveling snow from around the tires of a car, and flew off in that drunk-driver fly way.
    He half-listened to a loud conversation in a booth behind him about someone named Bob, who was a bum. Or not. There were two opinions. The people had that Wisconsin way of talking: “Baahhb” for “Bob,” “waahh-ter” for “water.”
    He looked up at the lunch part of the menu on the wall. It listed everything you would expect. At the bottom, in quotation marks, the sign said, BEST BURGERS IN WAUPATONEKA . His eyes reached “Waupatoneka” and stopped dead in their tracks. Then looked out the window. Nothing looked familiar. But, then—
    The waitress brought his food. She had noticed the funny-looking car out in the parking lot when she came in to work. She had seen Ry crawl out of it. She even happened to be looking out the window when he sniffed his armpit, and smiled to herself. She was aware of the amount of time he spent in the little restroom, and