Chapter Text
Schroeder Felton should not have been here.
He should not have been kneeling on a stained linoleum floor, stacking cans of motor oil beneath buzzing fluorescent lights in his father's gas station. The place smelled faintly of gasoline, damp cardboard, old rubber, and mildew that no amount of scrubbing ever seemed to remove. The floor was always a little sticky near the counter, no matter how often it was mopped. Dust gathered in the corners. The glass on the front windows never looked fully clean. By the end of every shift the odor clung to his clothes and followed him home, settling into his jacket, his hair, even the pages of whatever book he had tried to read during lunch.
The station itself seemed built out of repetition. The same cracked concrete apron outside. The same faded price sign by the road. The same rattle of the door whenever someone came in for gas, cigarettes, or a quart of oil. Most days there was nothing to do but wait for the next customer, wipe down the counter, straighten the shelves, and pretend the hours were moving faster than they were. Schroeder knew every sound the place made. The hum of the refrigerator in the back room. The click of the register drawer. The low hiss of the coffee machine that never seemed to make good coffee. Even the old clock above the door had a tired, uneven tick, as if it too had given up on keeping time properly.
He should have been in New York.
The thought arrived so often it scarcely felt like a thought anymore. It was simply there, beneath everything else, constant as breathing. He should have been at Juilliard. He should have been practicing scales in a narrow rehearsal room with bad acoustics and a piano that was slightly out of tune. He should have been carrying sheet music under his arm, hurrying across a campus full of people who understood why music mattered. He should have been listening to lectures on counterpoint, arguing with professors about Beethoven and Bach, losing track of time in a practice room until the sun went down outside the windows. Instead he spent his afternoons arranging motor oil and windshield fluid while October drifted past outside, the leaves turning gold and brown beyond the gas station windows as if the whole world were moving on without him.
Every day followed the same shape. Open the station. Sweep the floor. Check the pumps. Stock the shelves. Count the cash drawer. Smile when customers came in. Say yes sir and no sir and have a nice day. Then do it all again tomorrow. There was a kind of numbness to it that frightened him more than anger would have. Anger at least meant something had not been accepted. This was worse. This was routine. This was becoming normal.
And that was the part he hated most.
He could feel the life he was supposed to be living somewhere just beyond reach, like music heard through a wall. He knew exactly what it ought to sound like. The discipline. The pressure. The possibility. Instead he was here, in a town that had already decided what he was going to be, trapped in the stale air of a place that smelled like gasoline and resignation.
At least his father was gone for the afternoon. That meant he could finally do something about the music. The old man insisted on playing whatever pop records happened to be climbing the charts. He claimed customers liked them. Schroeder doubted any customer had ever chosen a gas station because of the record player.
He slipped the album from the turntable and replaced it with a Beethoven symphony. A moment later the first notes drifted through the store, filling the stale air with something that felt, if only briefly, like dignity.
The bell above the door jingled.
Schroeder barely looked up. He was lowering the needle onto the record when he heard a familiar voice.
“Schroeder?”
He turned automatically.
“Yes?”
The word escaped before he remembered his father's preferred greeting.
The young woman standing by the door stared at him with the same mixture of surprise and disbelief he felt himself.
Lucy van Pelt.
For a moment, the years between them seemed oddly difficult to account for.
The last time he'd really spoken to her, well he couldn’t quite remember. Back then she had spent half her time interrupting his practice sessions to announce that they would someday be married. He remembered finding her impossible to ignore and impossible to take seriously.
She looked different now.
Not unfamiliar, just older. More self-possessed. Her dark hair fell neatly to her shoulders, held back by a blue headband much like the one she had always worn. There was a confidence in the way she stood that hadn't existed when they were children, the easy certainty of someone who expected to be heard when she spoke.
Neither of them spoke as the orchestra swelled softly behind the counter.
Lucy studied him with curious brown eyes. Schroeder met her gaze, suddenly aware of how long it had been since they'd held an actual conversation. They had crossed paths from time to time after grade school, usually in the company of mutual friends but exchanging little more than greetings. The afternoons she'd spent listening to him play felt as though they belonged to another life.
For several seconds they simply stood there, two people connected by memory and separated by everything that had happened since.
“You work here now?” Lucy asked with a confused lilt in her voice.
“Yeah,” His face felt warm. He became suddenly aware of the grease-stained apron tied around his waist, of the oil beneath his fingernails.
A heavy silence came over the both of them, the obvious question hanging between them: Why? Why aren’t you at Juilliard or some other great conservatory?
“My dad said he could use the help…” he said, as if he were obliged to fill the silence. “He pays me…”
Lucy’s jaw tightened, Schroeder saw it. His dad, that cold, gruff, proud man who never said a kind word about anyone, least of all his son. She’d known him from the time she used to spend around their house. He used to snarl when he saw Schroeder playing his small, red, flea market piano. Never praised him, sometimes yelled at him. That was usually when Schroeder gave her that look that told her she should leave.
“Wow,” she said, voice light but eyes sharp. “That’s awfully nice of him.” She didn’t mean it kindly, it was sarcastic and she knew it.
Schroeder shifted on his feet, still avoiding her gaze. He hated this, the pity in the air even if Lucy didn’t say it outright. He started wiping oil off his hands with a rag like he had something urgent to do with them right now, anything to avoid eye contact and deeper questions about how he really is.
Lucy watched him fiddle with the rag, her chest tightening. She could see it; the quiet resignation in his shoulders, the way he moved like every motion was a chore. Without asking, she grabbed an empty stool near the register and plopped down right across from him. Propped her elbows on the counter like this was a café date.
"You hungry?" she asked in a bright tone again, all business now.
Schroeder looked up.
"What?"
"Eaten."
"No."
"Thought so."
"I'm fine."
"That's not what I asked."
For the first time since she'd walked into the store, the faintest hint of a smile appeared on her face.
Schroeder sighed. Some things apparently survived graduation.
Lucy leaned forward against the counter. "Come get dinner with me."
"I can't."
"Why not?"
"I'm working."
She glanced around the nearly empty station. "I can see that."
"My shift doesn't end until closing."
"So take a break."
Schroeder laughed quietly. Not because it was funny, because she clearly had no idea.
"My dad–"
He stopped.
Lucy straightened. "Your dad what?"
Nothing in her tone was particularly harsh, but Schroeder suddenly felt cornered.
"He expects me to stay here."
"And if you leave for an hour?"
Schroeder didn't answer.
Lucy studied him. Not his clothes. Not the apron. Him.
The silence stretched long enough to become an answer.
Something flashed across her face then. Anger, perhaps, but not at him. At the situation. At whoever had convinced Schroeder that leaving a gas station for dinner required permission.
She rose from the stool and crossed her arms.
"Schroeder," she said, "you're allowed to eat dinner."
He rolled his eyes.
"I'm serious."
"I know."
"No, I don't think you do." Lucy shot back, arms crossed.
There it was. That familiar Van Pelt certainty. The absolute conviction that you were wrong and that she intended to argue until you corrected yourself.
Lucy continued staring at him.
Schroeder knew that look.
It was the same expression she'd worn as a child whenever she'd decided something was going to happen. Facts became irrelevant after that point. Logic only delayed the inevitable.
"No," he said.
"I didn't ask a question."
"You were about to."
"I was."
"Then no."
Lucy sighed dramatically. "You're impossible."
"So I've been told."
"Mostly by me."
For a moment neither of them spoke.
Then, to Schroeder's surprise, she laughed.
Not at him. Just laughed.
The sound felt strangely out of place in the station. The building had become so quiet over the past few months that laughter seemed almost intrusive.
"Come on," she said.
"No."
"One hour."
"No."
"Forty-five minutes."
"Still can’t."
Lucy leaned her head against one hand and looked at him. Infuriatingly Patient.
Schroeder lasted another thirty seconds before realizing she wasn't going anywhere.
He glanced toward the front windows.
The afternoon sun was already beginning to sink. Long shadows stretched across the pumps outside.
No customers.
No headlights approaching.
Nothing.
Just the familiar emptiness.
The station suddenly felt smaller than it had a few minutes ago.
Lucy followed his gaze.
"See?" she said.
"See what?"
"The world won't end."
Schroeder exhaled through his nose.
Against his better judgment, he reached beneath the counter and grabbed a scrap of paper.
"What are you doing?" Lucy asked.
"Leaving a note."
Her eyebrows rose.
He ignored the look and scribbled a quick message.
Gone for dinner. Back soon.
He left it beside the register where his father would see it if he returned.
The note looked inadequate the moment he set it down. He knew his father wouldn’t consider it an explanation.
For several seconds Schroeder stood motionless with that familiar knot of anxiety twisted in his stomach.
He could already imagine the questions.
Where were you?
Who said you could leave?
What was so important?
Lucy waited without saying anything.
At last Schroeder grabbed his jacket from the hook beside the office door.
"Let's go before I change my mind."
Lucy's grin appeared instantly. "I knew you'd come around."
The bell jingled overhead as they stepped outside.
Cold September air met them immediately. The sky had begun turning the pale gray-blue that arrived before sunset. Across town, trees burned gold and orange beneath the fading light.
For a few moments they walked in silence through the parking lot. They passed an aging sedan parked near the edge of the property. Its paint was faded. One fender was a slightly different shade than the rest of the car, as though it had been replaced years ago and never properly matched.
Lucy glanced toward it.
"You finally got a car?"
Schroeder followed her gaze. "Oh." The answer came out flatter than intended. "Sort of… I’m borrowing."
Lucy waited for him to elaborate.
He didn't.
After a moment she shrugged and kept walking.
The diner sat only a few blocks away, its neon sign already glowing against the darkening sky. As they crossed the street, Schroeder found himself looking back once toward the gas station.
The building seemed smaller from here. Just another box of concrete and glass beside the highway. For a fleeting moment he considered turning around. Going back and waiting for closing. Doing what he was supposed to do.
Then Lucy pushed open the diner's door and disappeared inside. A second later he followed her.
It didn't take long to find a booth.
The diner wasn't busy.
Few places in town were anymore.
A decade earlier the place would have been crowded with families, factory workers, and salesmen passing through on the highway. Now half the stools at the counter sat empty most nights. Several storefronts on Main Street had paper covering the windows. The grain elevator still operated, the gas station still sold gasoline, the hardware store still opened every morning, but the town seemed to move more slowly than it once had.
It was almost as if it were holding its breath. Just muddling through, as everyone said, as if it were implicit that the small town had something better waiting on the other side if it just muddled a little further.
Lucy slid into one side of the booth while Schroeder took the other.
The waitress appeared with a notepad.
"A hamburger," Lucy said.
"Chicken basket," Schroeder replied.
"Cokes?"
They both nodded.
The waitress scribbled something down and disappeared toward the kitchen.
For a moment they sat listening to the low murmur of conversation drifting through the diner. Somewhere behind the counter, a radio played softly.
"You still order chicken every time we go somewhere."
Schroeder glanced up. Lucy was smiling, different from the concerned one she'd worn in the gas station.
"You remember that?"
"You used to order chicken nuggets at school." Lucy laughed.
Schroeder felt the corner of his mouth twitch despite himself.
The expression vanished almost immediately.
The silence returned. Not awkward exactly, just uncertain.
Lucy traced a finger around the rim of her glass.
"Are you going to school?"
There it was.
The question she'd been circling ever since she'd walked into the station.
Schroeder looked down at the table.
"No." The word came out smaller than he intended.
Lucy waited, not pushing, just waiting.
"Why not?" He stared at the wood grain beneath his hands. "I heard you play at graduation," she said gently. "You were incredible."
Schroeder didn't respond.
"I figured you'd be gone by now." A faint smile crossed her face. "Vienna. New York. Somewhere people talk about sonatas all day."
"Juilliard."
"What?"
"The place you're thinking of."
Lucy nodded. "Right. Juilliard."
The name settled heavily between them. For years it had been less a school than a destiny. The answer Schroeder always gave when someone asked what came next.
"I got in," he said. The words escaped before he could stop them. A reflex, a final attempt to preserve something.
Lucy's eyes widened. "You did?"
Schroeder nodded.
For a brief moment he saw the version of events she'd carried in her head. Schroeder leaves town. Schroeder goes to New York. Schroeder becomes a concert pianist. The story had always seemed inevitable.
"Then why are you here?"
He looked toward the window. Outside, the neon sign reflected faintly against the glass.
A truck rolled slowly down Main Street. The silence stretched long enough that Lucy began to regret asking.
"I didn't get the scholarship."
His voice was barely above a murmur.
"And..." He stopped, the next words felt heavier. "I couldn't afford the tuition."
There it was. Simple enough when spoken aloud. Yet hearing it reduced to a few words somehow made it worse.
Lucy looked down at the table.
She had known, in the abstract, that Schroeder's family struggled. Everybody knew. His clothes were patched more often than replaced. Their family car always seemed a few years older than everyone else's. Their house sat on the poorer edge of the neighborhood where paint peeled from porches and roofs waited a little too long for repairs.
But knowing something and confronting it were different things.
“I have a spot next year if I can get the money together.” He amended with the only hope he had to give.
Lucy gave a small smile at that, though she wasn't sure how much it meant.
The waitress arrived before either of them could think of what to say next. Two plates landed on the table.
A hamburger.
A basket of fried chicken.
Two cokes.
They both began to eat in silence, neither wanting to reopen that conversation.
For a few minutes they ate in relative silence.
The food was hot, the diner warm, and for the first time all day Schroeder found himself relaxing slightly.
Lucy was the one who finally spoke.
"So what do you do these days?"
Schroeder glanced up.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean besides stocking motor oil."
A faint smile crossed her face.
"You still see anybody from high school?"
The smile faded from his.
"Not really." He picked at a french fry. "Most everybody's gone."
Lucy nodded, that was true enough. The town seemed to empty a little more every year.
"Marcie's at M.I.T.," he said. "Franklin moved out to California. And Charlie's..."
The sentence died there. He'd been drafted. No one wanted to say it, but he had. The words existed whether anyone said them or not.
Schroeder remembered the summer afternoon a few months ago when Charlie had told him. The two of them had been sitting on the hood of that old car in a grocery store parking lot.
Charlie had laughed when he said it. Not because it was funny, because there wasn't much else to do.
"I've always had rotten luck."
The memory lingered unpleasantly, like a bruise.
Schroeder looked down at his plate. He disliked talking about the war, disliked hearing about it, disliked seeing it every night on television.Partly because it felt impossibly distant and partly because it didn't.
The draft board knew his name too.
The thought sat quietly in the back of his mind, waiting.
Lucy seemed to understand, she didn't press. Instead she asked softly, "Does he write?"
"Sometimes."
For the first time all evening, Schroeder's expression brightened slightly. Not much. Just enough for Lucy to notice.
"He cuts everybody's hair."
"What?"
"In his unit."
Lucy blinked.
Schroeder shrugged. "He says nobody trusts the army barbers."
A reluctant laugh escaped her. "He would."
"He says he's getting plenty of practice."
The corner of Schroeder's mouth lifted. "He keeps telling me he's ready to take over the barbershop when he gets back."
The laugh that followed was brief and fragile, but genuine.
Lucy wrapped both hands around her glass.
"He writes Linus constantly."
Schroeder nodded. "I figured."
"Sometimes he asks how everybody's doing." A pause. "Sometimes he asks about me."
For a few moments they simply sat there. Two old friends surrounded by half-finished meals and memories of people who had left town.
Schroeder finished the last piece of chicken. The diner suddenly felt very quiet, as if every conversation in the room existed several feet away from them.
Life had scattered all of them in different directions. College, jobs, the military. Cities they had once only read about in newspapers. Growing up had seemed exciting when they were children. Nobody had mentioned the loneliness or the anxiety.
Lucy's gaze drifted toward the front window. Across the street, beneath the glow of a streetlamp, sat the faded sedan from the gas station parking lot.
Recognition flashed across her face. "That's the blockhead's car, isn't it?"
Schroeder followed her gaze then he nodded. "Yeah."
"He finally sold it to you?"
"Not exactly."
Lucy waited.
"He gave it to me before he left."
Schroeder stared out the window.
"He said I could use it."
A pause. The next words caught in his throat. "He said it was mine until he got back."
Neither of them said anything else.
The check arrived a few minutes later, Schroeder reached for it automatically. Lucy reached too but his hand got there first.
The total came to $2.58.
"Schroeder."
"I've got it."
"You don't have to."
"I know."
She opened her mouth again. Then stopped. There was a certainty in his voice she hadn't heard all evening. Not confidence exactly, but pride. The familiar, stubborn kind.
"Feltons don't take handouts."
Lucy looked at him for a second.
Something about the sentence unsettled her. Maybe it was how quickly it had come out. Maybe it was how much it sounded like his father.
She let go of the check. "Fine."
Schroeder paid.
A few minutes later they stepped back into the cool evening air. Night had settled fully over town. Storefront lights reflected against dark windows. Traffic had dwindled to almost nothing.
The town seemed to fold inward after sunset. They walked together in comfortable silence. When they reached Lucy's car, still parked in the gas station parking lot, both of them stopped. For a moment neither seemed eager to leave.
"It was good seeing you."
Schroeder shoved his hands into his jacket pockets.
"You too."
Lucy smiled. "I'll be back."
He raised an eyebrow. "Why?"
"This is the only gas station I'm using from now on."
"That's a terrible reason."
"I know."
Before he could respond, she stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him. The hug caught him completely off guard. For a second he stood frozen. Then, awkwardly, reluctantly, he hugged her back.
She pulled away first. "See you around, Schroeder."
"See you."
Lucy climbed into her car.
The engine turned over.
Schroeder waited until her headlights disappeared down the street before turning towards the gas station entrance.
The station looked exactly as he had left it. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, the pumps stood empty. The note remained beside the register. For a brief moment, Schroeder allowed himself to believe he had gotten away with it.
Then he noticed the office door was open.
His stomach dropped.
The sound of footsteps echoed from the back.
A moment later his father emerged. The older man still wore his work shirt, sleeves rolled up to his elbows. Grease stained his hands. His face looked permanently carved into a frown, as if years of disappointment had settled there and never left.
His eyes immediately found Schroeder.
Neither spoke.
The silence was somehow worse.
Mr. Felton picked up the note from beside the register. "What the hell is this?"
Schroeder swallowed. "I went to get dinner."
His father's jaw tightened. "I can read, boy." The note crumpled slightly in his fist. "What I want to know is who gave you permission."
Schroeder looked away.
Nobody.
His father scoffed. "Unbelievable." The word hung in the air. "I leave you alone for one afternoon and you decide the rules don't apply anymore."
"No customers came in."
"That's not the point." The response arrived instantly. Sharp and practiced. As though the argument had occurred a hundred times before. "You had a job to do."
"I was only gone an hour." The moment the words left his mouth, he regretted them.
His father's expression darkened. "An hour. You think because you're eighteen you can do whatever you want?"
Schroeder stared at the floor. The anger inside him stirred immediately. Familiar and dangerous. He knew better than to let it show.
"You think the world owes you something?"
No answer.
"You think responsibility disappears because you don't like it?" Mr. Felton stepped closer. "Let me tell you something."
His voice dropped, that was always worse than yelling. "You've spent your whole life with your head in the clouds. That damn piano." The old man spat. "And where'd it get you?"
Schroeder's hands tightened into fists inside his pockets. The question hurt because it had found the wound exactly. Not New York. Not Juilliard.
Here.
His father gestured around the room. "This place feeds your family." His voice hardened. "Not music, not Beethoven."
Schroeder felt his face burn. For a second he imagined saying everything. How music could have gotten him out of here, how he had gotten into Juilliard. But his father had refused to help, and now every day in this station felt like another piece of his future being chipped away.
The words crowded together behind his teeth. None of them escaped. They never did.
His father shook his head. "Take off the apron."
Schroeder blinked. "What?"
"I closed up already." The older man grabbed his coat from a hook. "You can be useful tomorrow." Mr. Felton brushed past him toward the door. "Lock up when you leave."
Then he was gone. The bell jingled softly as the door shut and silence returned to the station. For several moments Schroeder stood motionless. The fluorescent lights hummed overhead. Somewhere in the back, an old refrigerator rattled.
He could still hear Lucy's voice echoing from earlier. The memory seemed impossibly distant now. He was mad, at her for convincing him to leave, at himself for being so easily convinced to leave. And at his father for everything he’d never say.
Slowly, he removed the apron and set it beside the register. Then he crossed the room and switched off the lights one by one. Darkness spread through the station.
Outside, the autumn wind rattled against the windows. Schroeder locked the door behind him and started toward Charlie Brown's car.
Tomorrow would look exactly like today.