The sun was blazing and it was too hot to sleep. It was too noisy. Too stuffy. Everything was going wrong. It was just another day. A young child cried out impatiently and Maggie felt like doing the same. She had been on this grimy, sweaty bus for most of the morning, and it was nearing noon. An old man coughed violently and she wondered if his haggard breaths meant he too was dying of boredom.

The bus's worn breaks screeched as the vehicle halted on the town's main street. There was no neat, black, tar covering the road. Instead, the bus's doors opened to slabs of gray cement, sprinkled with dust and pebbles. The town looked old fashioned and out of touch, with its mom and pop stores lining the pavement. Her hometown had not been extraordinarily big, but this place made her claustrophobic and boxed in.

Out of the blue, its small buildings stood towering over her as she realized she had no inkling of where she should go. Taking a firm hold of her heavy luggage, her eyes scoured the region before her. Her mind was rattled and she anxiously waited for a sensible idea to come to her. The paint-chipped bus sped off in an unknown direction. There was no turning back. She had no money, at least not for another bus ticket. Her hope diminished. Spotting a sidewalk, she set down her bags and reached in her pocket. Retrieving the crinkled bill, she decided her best bet was to feed the growling beast inside her stomach (A/N: she's not pregnant,thats a figure of speech).

Maggie entered the Blue Point Diner at a quarter after twelve, arriving with the rest of the lunch-hour customers. She admitted to herself she looked ridiculous with so much baggage about her arms. She took a seat in the far corner of the room and tried her best to situate her awkward bags. "What can I get'cha?" the waitress asked. She was older, and tapped her foot, as if to say "speed it up, honey". The name tag pinned to the tacky yellow outfit read Francine.

"A coke, cheeseburger and fries please" Maggie said.

"Uh huh, yup" muttered Francine as she scrawled out Maggie's order.
"Thanks" she said halfheartedly. Maggie didn't care what happened as long as the end result was food in her mouth.

Frankly, Maggie would've eaten the napkin holder and its contents if she had to. Thinking and planning became nearly impossible, she was so tired. She gnawed her food ferociously, throwing her manners out the open window. Having finished her meal and paid, Maggie chose to spend the twenty dollars hidden in her suitcase and stay at a cheap hotel. She sipped her coke thoughtfully, her legs not yet willing to trudge across the street to the hotel.

All the regulars seemed to enter the cramped establishment at once. Maggie watched and listened contentedly. A man with stern eyes in his late thirties came through the door. Some of the younger diners stopped their jabbering to look, just as Maggie had done. His slow crisscrossing steps made Maggie think he came into the diner on a reprieve from his latest drinking binge. He slammed his palms against the off-white countertop obnoxiously. "Francie, I wan' an egg n' steak" he said, his speech slurring slightly.

"Coffee?" Francine asked. It certainly looked to Maggie that the man could certainly use some, hell probably the whole pot.

"Yeah, yeah sure" he waved his hand dismisfully. A young man giggled, most likely at the mans apparent need for caffeine. "Hey something funny you little punk?" There was no response from the offending party who did not want to confront the strange man. "Come on you little somebitch." Did he mean to say "son-of-a-bitch" and was so drunk that his words just ran together? Or was that really how he had meant to insult the shaking teenager?

"Aw lay off 'im Ace, he didn't mean nothin' by it" a voice of reason spoke out.

"Alright Bill" Ace said, willing to forget the whole thing. Breathing a sigh of relief and having done enough "people watching" for the day, she exited the diner and set off towards the Castle Rock Lodge.

No one seemed less excited to be working that day than the graying man sitting behind the lodge's front desk. "I need a room" Maggie stated with no emotion. The man made no attempts at making eye contact with her. "I have twenty-two dollars." Money talks.

"That comes to eighteen (dollars), room five." She nodded silently and headed into the long hallways of rooms, unlocked the door with the designated key and slid inside.

A clock on the bedside table noted the time was 1:30 PM on the longest day of her life. Pushing her belongings underneath the bed, she flopped down feeling defeated. Nothing; not the stress her anxious thoughts had caused her, nor the time of day would prevent her from falling into a deep, much needed and deserved sleep.