Jack Jacobs | seventeen
A lot of good that did, Jack thought, pushing his bike harder up the little hill that separated North Grover from Main Street. He lived the closest to Clover Diner—it was just on the northernmost end of Main Street—but he was also the farthest removed from the rest of town. Grover Park was full of the upper middle class, with the exception of two neighborhoods. North Grover, where Jack lived, was the poorest neighborhood in town, populated mostly by the working class people that provided the town with its manual labor and service workers. Shady Grove, Manny's neighborhood, was on the exact opposite side of town, with manicured lawns and huge mansions where a regular family could live in the same house and not see each other for a week.
The distance never used to make a difference to Jack, even before Manny got his car for his sixteenth birthday. He'd been driving them to school since then, but before that his chauffeur had taken them. Grover Park wasn't that big anyway. It didn't even take an hour to ride across the town and back on his bike.
Jack chained his bike up to the rack in front of Clover and went in, the bell chiming above his head as he pushed the door open. He made a beeline for the biggest booth they had, waiting for him in the back as if it had a reserved sign on it. For how often they came there, it might as well have. Everyone there knew who the table belonged to. He slid into the middle seat—always his spot, since he always got there first.
Colette, the waitress and Jack's neighbor, smiled at him as she set out seven menus. She didn't say anything, and neither did he. He just watched the door, waiting for his friends to show up. His chest ached hollowly, as if everything had been scooped out and put in the freezer for later.
Keith Derringer and Lori Johnston glared openly at him as they left, but he ignored them. He checked his watch.