The booths are tucked up against the wall, and the large sheets of glass that make up the upper half of the outer wall let warm sunshine in. A handwritten sign propped on a folding table says, “Please Seat Yourself,” and beside the sign is a large pile of sticky notes made specifically for the diner with a watermark on each page: “Nysa Diner.” I see that you’ve taken a booth in the far corner, the same one the four of us always used to sit in. Of course you did.

I walk over and sit down. The booth’s seats have that same brittle plastic feeling. There is a jukebox between us and the server’s area behind the bar, but I can see the cord has been unplugged and the selector buttons are coated in dust.

A waitress comes out from the kitchen, the door swinging behind her. She’s about my age, I think, wearing jeans and a red T-shirt. Her gray hair is pulled up in a ponytail, and she speaks through a throat tuned by years of cigarette smoking. She drops a few sticky menus down on the table in between us.

“You ever plug that old thing in?” I ask, smiling, trying to be friendly.

She stares at me like I’m speaking a foreign language. “Anything to drink?” she asks.

“Hi,” you say with a smile.

Mild surprise shows on her face.

“I’ll have a water,” I say. “Pearl?”

“Do you have lemonade?”

“We do, but it’s not very good.”

“Oh. Root beer?”

The waitress stares at you. “Coke, Diet Coke, Sprite,” she says, listing them off in tart fashion.

“I’ll have a water,” you say, still smiling at her like you’re expecting some kind of gift or surprise.

“You ready to order food?”

“I think we’ll need a minute,” I say. You nod.

The woman scribbles something on her notepad, although seeing as how we only ordered two waters, I’m convinced she’s writing down all the ways we’ve annoyed her so far. Thinking that makes me grin, and I smile at you as she walks away.

“This is where you grew up?” you ask in a hushed voice. Your eyes are wide.

“This is it.”

“Is this how it was when you were little?”

“Yes and no,” I reply. “Everything seems a lot older. But the diner is the same. Actually, my friends and I used to sit in this very booth.”

“Really?”

I nod. “We’d better figure out what we want to eat before our waitress comes back.”

You smile, and your eyes scan the large menu. I glance over at the men at the bar, and they barely move. Every so often one of them will turn the newspaper page, and it makes a crinkling sort of wispy sound. I look longingly at the jukebox. It’s much too quiet in here.

The bell above the door rings again, and we both turn to see who is coming in. Another older man, but he seems friendly. He catches my eye and nods, gives a half smile, walks over to the bar, and sits beside the man wearing the ball cap.