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* * *
Podrick and Sansa feel very important in the chain restaurant with its red-and-white checked tablecloths and eclectic décor. They are fourteen and they have lied to their supposed caretakers about where they will be. They know they will not have this opportunity again.
The plasticized menu is huge and offers so many different dishes from so many different ethnicities that they cannot begin to read through all the possibilities—not in the short amount of time they have.
The waitress is probably all of six years older, but she takes pity on them. “Get the burgers. Best thing we do here.”
Sansa frowns.
Pod knows she still cares about nice things, fancy things, but he thinks the waitress is being accurate. “How much are . . .?” He is grateful when the young woman points to the prices. He has enough.
“May we have two Shirley Temples, please? My treat,” she reassures him after the waitress leaves, holding up a tiny leather coin purse embossed with yellow daisies.
He does not know what to expect.
“My parents—they used to order them for us when we were little,” Sansa manages. She looks down then and inhales quickly to stop the tears. “They look like grownup drinks, but they taste better.”
Pod relaxes. They have both been exposed to more than their share of alcohol and neither of them cares for it.
“How badly do you think they’ll punish us?” Sansa asks.
They both know the answer.
“It will be worth it,” Pod decides.
And it is.
* * *
The diner is not a hipster haven. It will never be written up in tourist guides or talked up on local TV or reviewed in the paper, but it is comfortable and more importantly, it is safe. Not even the truckers patronize it—the streets in this part of Gulltown are too narrow. Factory workers seem to keep it going. But at 3:00 AM, it is deserted save for the fry cook and the waitress, both of whom are too tired and too wrapped up in their own woes to care about what Podrick and Sansa are doing here.
“It’s safe,” Pod reassures Sansa for the fourth time. He knows why she is nervous.
“If he figures out I’ve left,” Sansa murmurs. She reaches to the back of her neck where once there was a full head of dyed dark hair before they slipped into a gas station restroom to hack it off. She is clad in an outfit he bought at the Goodwill. With her short, uneven locks and the brown contacts purchased from a drug store, it is hard to see anything of Alayne Stone. What troubles him more is how little of Sansa Stark there is.
He thinks back to their first encounter three weeks ago. He had almost not recognized the too-thin girl in the designer dress and the expensive handbag. The restaurant didn’t hire Pod to fraternize with the customers. He was supposed to park their cars without damage and to appear as deferential as possible. Pod had quickly learned that making eye contact was risky. But as he’d slipped into the leather front seat, he’d caught how the girl had stilled ever so slightly as the man with her started to place his hand on the small of her back.
The way Sansa had learned to freeze around the Lannisters, Podrick thought. Like a doe caught in the headlights of an oncoming car. And then almost as if his recognizing this gesture had made her more aware of him, she had glanced back for the merest fraction of a second and he had known for certain.
Podrick reaches out with his hand. He sees her flinch and he knows she has been through things no one should ever have to endure, but then Sansa exhales and entwines her fingers with his.
“Pancakes and turkey sausage,” the weary waitress says as she places an oval chipped plate in front of Sansa. “Ham and eggs, scrambled, dry. You folks want anything else?”
Pod shakes his head and Sansa tucks into the food as if she’s been starving for years. Perhaps she has.
“It’s safe,” he repeats. “And it’s over.”
“No,” Sansa tells him. “It’s just beginning.”
* * *
Podrick likes seeing Sansa so happy. They’re sitting in the Pentoshi restaurant in the strip mall. It’s the place that’s between the diabetic clinic and the unlabeled office that they think is used for a support group. There’s always an earnest social worker type who leads a meeting where everyone sits in a circle. Every hour, the people stand outside the door and chain smoke, carpeting the sidewalk with cigarette butts without apology. But inside the restaurant, tiny colored light strings are hung around the wall and each table holds a single perfect flower in a glass vase.
The restaurant is often empty, but the food is amazing, cheap, and plentiful.
The cook’s wife who runs the front of house lights up when they come in. They eat here at least three times a week. She no longer bothers with menus. Sometimes she may suggest a new dish, which they always try, but Pod and Sansa are creatures of habit. She calls back their order in Pentoshi and goes back to helping her little daughter with her homework.
Pod sips tea while Sansa takes out a blue cloth-covered blank book from her bag and sketches. He will ask to look later. It always takes a while for the food, because the cook makes everything to order, but they both enjoy this ritual.
Bit by bit, the cook’s wife brings out steaming platters and they eat hungrily, not because they are starving, but because it is all so good.
Sansa spears a dumpling and dips it in the sauce, the one that is supposed to go with the shrimp rolls, but the cook makes for them anyhow, and grins for no reason.
It’s been so long since she’s smiled like that, Pod thinks. He remembers when they were children and she would laugh at the silliest things like flower crowns and elaborately concocted games and the antics of her siblings. Her real smiles dried up sometime between her twelfth birthday and her father’s death. Oh, her lips turned up, but almost always because it was safer for her to feign happiness. The so-called guardians, the people who claimed to be family friends, the ones with power over their lives demanded it. Wasn’t she fortunate, they would sneer, to be under their protection? And Sansa, who had begun to forget what happiness was, smiled on command.
But this, this is real.
* * *