The In-N-Out Between Worlds

The desert never really sleeps. It hums. A low, static buzz beneath the stars, the kind of noise you only notice when everything else stops. Out here, just past midnight on the I-15, even the billboards look like they’re dreaming.

She keeps one hand on the wheel and the other wrapped around a gas station iced tea that’s mostly melted now—watered down and over-sweet, like everything else that used to mean something. The air conditioner gave up around Victorville, so she’s got the windows down. Desert wind slips in like a ghost and sticks to her skin. Her arm itches. Her teeth feel too big in her mouth. Her thoughts aren’t staying in one place.

The yellow lines blur. Her mind’s been doing the same for hours. She doesn’t know where she’s going. That’s the whole point. Something about movement feels holy, even when it isn’t going anywhere. You can outrun a lot of things when you’re doing eighty through nothingness. Like grief. Like memory. Like the sound of Aria’s voice saying, “I hope you find whatever it is you’re running from, even if it’s me”…

Signs flicker by, half-lit and half-dead:

GHOST TOWN ROAD

ZIGZAG MOTEL

WORLD’S BIGGEST THERMOMETER

She rolls past all of them.

At some point, her GPS rerouted on its own. It stopped speaking. It just blinked. Now it displays a single straight line with no end, like the road itself is just a pulse. Like it’s waiting for her to code in a destination she refuses to name.

A glowing sign appears just past the bend.

In-N-Out. Exit 178. Open 24 Hours.

Her stomach flips. It’s been hours since she ate, days since anything tasted like food. She tells herself she’s pulling off because she needs caffeine, salt, something to keep her from dissolving into the leather seat. But she already knows what she’ll order.

The parking lot is too lit. Like the floodlights were installed by someone who doesn’t understand the concept of night. The neon buzzes, crackling faintly, even though no one else seems to notice. There’s a beat-up sedan idling near the back. Two truckers nursing milkshakes. The girl working the window looks seventeen and bored, like she’s been seventeen forever.

She parks. The pavement radiates heat like it remembers the sun.

Inside, it smells like grease and sugar and something else—nostalgia, maybe. Or guilt. Hard to tell them apart anymore.

She orders at the counter without thinking.

“Grilled cheese, fries, Neapolitan shake.”

It comes out smooth. Practiced. It was Aria’s order.

The girl behind the register doesn’t blink. Just types it in, hits a button. The screen glitches. Flickers. A receipt prints. She takes it without looking.

The dining room’s almost empty. Fluorescent lights vibrate above her head like a chorus of angry bees. She finds a corner booth near the window and sits. Feels the vinyl seat groan beneath her like it’s remembering her weight. Like it knew her before.

She glances down at the receipt. And blinks.

Order #516

0.00

“PAID”

Then, beneath that, in faint gray text:

“Please come to the counter.”

She frowns. She didn’t pay. She knows she didn’t. She remembers handing over the cash but not getting any change. Didn’t even tap her card. The register hadn’t beeped. Hadn’t—

“Order 516,” a voice calls.

Not a shout. Not a fast-food yell. A soft, steady intonation.

“Order 516, please come to the counter.”

She turns her head. Slowly. The girl at the register is staring directly at her. But something is… off. The fryers are silent. No one else moves. The truckers don’t sip. The bored teenager with headphones by the door doesn’t blink. The clock on the wall shows 12:31. The second hand has stopped. It’s like someone pressed pause on the entire scene—except her. She stands. Her receipt crumples in her fist.

“Order 516, please come to the counter.”

The lights dim, just for a moment. The smell of salt and sugar turns sharp. Like ozone. Like something burned. She steps forward. The tile under her feet squeaks once, then forgets it ever made noise.

The girl behind the counter—same one from before, same red visor—smiles, but it doesn’t reach her eyes.

“Your order’s ready,” she says.

But there’s no tray. No food. No bag. Just a folded slip of receipt paper in her outstretched hand.

She takes it. Unfolds it.

It reads:

Coordinates–

33.3922° N, 115.8387° W

Nothing else. No name. No slogan. No total. Just a destination.

She looks up. The girl is gone. So is everyone else. The whole restaurant is empty. Outside, the lot is vacant. Her car sits alone. The streetlights hum louder now, like they’re whispering. Or warning.

She walks outside. The GPS in her dashboard is on again, even though she never touched it. It displays the coordinates. One route. One line. One glowing arrow. Nowhere else exists.

She slides into the driver’s seat. Grabs the wheel. Starts the engine. Desert air slips through the vents, cold now. The receipt flutters in her lap.

She should turn around.

Go back.

Go home.

Go anywhere else.

But she doesn’t.

She puts the car in drive and lets it carry her into the dark. Aria’s name hovers in her throat like a song she can’t remember the lyrics to. And for the first time all night, she lets it stay there.

The desert unfurls like a film reel left too long in the sun—cracked, curling, overexposed. The GPS bleeds light from her dashboard, that single arrow blinking like it’s keeping time with her pulse. Or maybe Aria’s. If Aria even has a pulse anymore. If Aria even exists anymore. The coordinates lead nowhere familiar. Nothing on the signs matches the map. No exits, no landmarks. Just mile markers that tick down like a countdown.

Every song on the radio sounds like it’s been remixed by a haunted 2000s iPod: distorted vocals, too-slow beats, lyrics she’s sure she never heard before. One track repeats a woman whispering “stay with me” over synths that sound like heartbreak. She turns it off. The silence is worse. The sky is huge and full of static. She’s not entirely sure she’s still in California.

It happens just after mile marker 122. She blinks—and suddenly she’s in a memory. Or no. Not in it—next to it. A flicker on the side of the road. Aria, barefoot, dancing in a field of sun-bleached tumbleweeds. Aria, leaning against a payphone that’s not supposed to exist. Aria, floating five inches off the ground, laughing, then gone. She doesn’t slam the brakes. Doesn’t veer. Just stares straight ahead and whispers her name.

“Aria.”

It tastes like cotton candy and battery acid.

The air shifts. Hot turns to cold. The desert wind changes direction. She checks the receipt again.

Coordinates– 33.3922° N, 115.8387° W

Still there. Still waiting.

She passes a rusted-out sign that reads “DINER” in peeling letters. She’s never seen it before. It has Aria’s handwriting. Literally. Loopy letters, the little star she used to draw over her i’s. A man walks backward across the road in a trench coat made of maps. His face is made of receipts. She doesn’t stop.

Her phone buzzes. No signal. But the screen lights up anyway.

Text from: ARIA

hey

i’m not mad anymore

u look tired

She nearly drops it. Blinks. The messages are gone.

The road narrows. Shrinks. Gets soft, like driving on memory foam. Like it’s absorbing her.

She remembers the first time she kissed Aria—behind a shuttered mini-mart in Palm Springs, both of them sticky with soda and neon dust. Aria had leaned in like it was a joke. But it wasn’t.

“You taste like strawberry,” Aria had said, brushing her thumb along her lip.

“You taste like dare.”

Another flicker. The windshield melts for a second into ripples.

Then: A drive-in screen rises from the horizon, huge and sudden, like it grew from the sand. No speakers. No projectors. Just the screen.

It’s playing a clip.

Two girls in a car. One driving, one in the passenger seat, legs on the dash. Laughing. Singing badly. Her chest caves. It’s her. And Aria. On some trip she doesn’t remember. Or maybe one that never happened.

She drives closer. Can’t help it. The GPS spins and dies. The coordinates disappear.

She’s suddenly aware of everything she’s forgotten. How Aria used to trace stars on her shoulder while they lay in the dark, whispering about running away to somewhere where no one had last names. How they used to rate motel art on a scale of 1 to divine intervention. How they used to make fake names for themselves in every new town.

“If I vanish,” Aria said once, “promise you’ll look in the wrong places.”

The road ends. Just like that. The pavement runs out like a thread pulled too tight. Ahead, a crumbling parking lot. Faded stripes. The remains of a snack stand. The massive screen still playing their ghost lives on loop.

A sign flickers at the entrance:

NOW SHOWING: THINGS YOU PRETENDED YOU FORGOT

She parks without thinking. The second she opens the door, it smells like fry oil and cigarette smoke and Aria’s favorite lavender spray that never really masked the weed.

Wind kicks up old ticket stubs. Some have her handwriting. Some have her birthdate. The ground crunches under her sneakers like something’s buried beneath it. She walks toward the screen.

New clip. Aria, alone. Sitting on a motel bed. Holding something in her hands. A letter? A polaroid?

Aria says:

“You could’ve come back. I left the lights on.”

Then the screen glitches.

New clip. Aria, dancing with someone else. A stranger. No—wait. That’s her. But not her. A different haircut. Confident. The version that stayed. The version that didn’t run.

She drops the receipt. The wind doesn’t take it. It slithers into a crack in the pavement like it knows where it belongs.

The air smells like cotton candy left in the backseat of a hearse. She steps past a velvet rope that wasn’t there before. The sky has cracked open like a jawbone—pink and blue bleeding into each other, soft at first, then violent, then tender again. Clouds shaped like motel signs drift slowly above her. One says “SORRY”. Another says “STAY”.

The desert has rearranged itself to make room for this place. The drive-in theatre is real. Or at least real enough to haunt her. Faded speakers hang from rusted poles, long dead but humming anyway. The ground crunches beneath her feet—old popcorn kernels, lost receipts, cigarette filters, the ghost of a fingernail painted lavender. The screen glows enormous in front of her, tall as memory and just as cruel. She walks toward it. It flickers. Stutters. Then begins to play.

No sound. Just vision.

Aria, backlit by motel light.

Aria, smiling through cracked lip balm.

Aria, in a hoodie that wasn’t hers, dragging a Sharpie across a diner placemat.

Aria, looking directly at the camera.

Then—

Her. Herself. Unfiltered.

Sleeping with her mouth open. Hair stuck to her cheek. Ugly. Uncurated. But Aria is watching her with a kind of devotion that hurts.

She stumbles back like she’s been struck. Her heel hits something metal. Not something dusty, something fresh.

A shopping cart, half-buried in the sand, filled with objects that never should’ve left her life:

Aria’s polaroid camera, the one she claimed could capture souls.

A diner coffee mug shaped like a heart.

A sock that still smells like peach lotion and cheap whiskey.

A pack of matches with “ARIA” written in Sharpie over the restaurant logo.

The screen shifts again. Aria is standing at the foot of a hotel bed. Crying. Holding a postcard.

She flips it over. It reads:

“If I vanish, pretend I was never real.”

The camera doesn’t move. It lingers. Aria tears the postcard in half and drops it into a soda cup. She whispers something—inaudible—but her mouth shapes the words “I waited.”

The narrator wipes her eyes with her sleeve. She didn’t mean to cry. She didn’t mean to see this. She came here to forget, or to forgive, or to be forgiven, though she’s not sure for what.

Another reel spools. This one’s stranger.

Aria—older, different hair, a silver streak at her temple—dancing with someone else.

A woman who isn’t her.

The scene is domestic: a living room, fairy lights, socks on hardwood.

They laugh.

They love.

Aria looks happy.

Radiant.

But then the camera shifts and suddenly the stranger is her.

But not her-her.

A different version.

The one who stayed.

The one who said, “I’m scared but I’m going to try anyway.”

The one who never ran.

She almost throws up in the sand.

She turns. Behind her, the snack stand is open now. Steam curls from a broken popcorn machine like incense.

A menu board flashes:

TRUTH

MEMORY

POSSIBILITY

REGRET

FORGIVENESS

All free. No substitutions.

Behind the counter stands the girl who looks like Aria but isn’t. Almost-Aria. Ghost-Aria. The version of Aria her brain stitched together from dreams and regrets.

“You’re early,” she says.

“I don’t know what I’m doing here,” the narrator says.

Almost-Aria tilts her head

“You ordered something.”

She reaches below the counter and places a paper bag down. It’s heavy.

Inside:

A hoodie. Soft. Worn. Smells like the desert after rain. A scrapbook of poems. All written by Aria. None of which she’s read before. A melted Neapolitan shake in a Styrofoam cup. Strawberry on top. A receipt.

The narrator pulls it out.

Order #516

“Paid in full.”

Then:

“You left this behind.”

She stares at the items. Her hands shake.

“I didn’t mean to—” she starts.

“Doesn’t matter,” says Almost-Aria. “Meaning is for the living. Memory is for the hungry.”

The projector begins to spin faster. The screen glitches.

“You want to go back?” she asks.

The narrator swallows. Almost-Aria slides her a new receipt.

ONE FREE ENTRY. FINAL SCREENING.

She takes it. Behind her, the screen changes again. This time, it’s not the past. It’s not even memory.

It’s possibility.

Her. Aria. A beach house.

Books scattered across the table.

Coffee boiling over.

A dog asleep at their feet.

She’s painting something.

Aria’s on the phone, laughing.

They look tired.

Happy.

Real.

The image distorts.

A final frame:

Aria, on a rooftop, looking at the stars.

She turns and looks directly at the camera.

“You can’t stay here.”

The world begins to shimmer. The air folds in on itself. The screen begins to burn.

Almost-Aria smiles sadly. “It’s time.”

The narrator backs away. The hoodie tucked under her arm. The scrapbook clutched to her chest.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t know how to stay.”

Almost-Aria nods. “Then maybe you know how to go back.”

The ground beneath her pulses. The lights go out. The popcorn machine explodes into glitter. The sky peels open.

A voice—not Aria’s, not hers, but both—says:

“Order #516, please come to the counter.”

She’s back in the car, but she doesn’t remember getting there. The windows are fogged with desert breath. Her fingers ache like they’ve held too many memories all at once. She thinks she might be crying, but it feels more like sweating from the soul.

The drive-in screen is still glowing behind her, just visible in the rearview mirror. It’s playing a new reel. She’s in it. Walking through an In-N-Out. Her hair is shorter. Her posture open, brave in a way she doesn’t recognize. There’s a paper bag in her hands. Fries poking out. Shake in the crook of her arm. Hope blooming like a bruise beneath her eyes.

Then—

A cut.

She’s outside Aria’s front door. The stucco she remembers. The cracked planter. Her finger hovers over the doorbell.

She breathes in.

Steps back.

Turns around.

Leaves.

The film glitches. Loops. Repeats. The version of her who almost stayed. The version of her who didn’t knock.

The screen goes white.

Her GPS comes to life, the robotic voice suddenly kind again:

“Return to the counter.”

The road back feels shorter. Like it’s been waiting for her to make up her mind.

The In-N-Out sits in the dark like it never left, just a glowing white box on the edge of nowhere. The neon buzzes differently now—less like electricity, more like a heartbeat. She parks. The lot is empty. Not quiet, just listening.

Inside, the lights flicker, stutter, hold. The tables are cleared. The fryers are off. The soda fountain drips cherry syrup in slow, rhythmic pulses. No one is behind the register. But the counter glows like an altar. And the receipt printer begins to whirr.

“Order 516, please come to the counter.”

She steps forward. Her palms are damp. Her breath catches somewhere behind her ribs. On the counter sits a single paper bag. Folded shut. Still warm. Still waiting. She doesn’t ask who made it. She doesn’t ask what’s inside.

Somewhere, a screen is still flickering. Somewhere, Aria might be living a life where she didn’t leave. But here, now, in this moment, she knows what she didn’t do. And what she still can.

She picks up the bag. This time, she takes it.