It was 4am when I heard the sirens and saw the lights peaking out of the windows. I walked to the front porch to see what happened. It must have been foggy, maybe smokey, or just something hindering my view to see across the streets. Other than the screams of sirens it was quiet. I just kind of stood there for a few minutes, might have been longer. Anyways the worry at the moment was figuring out what happened and not being blinding by the police lights.
Moments later, whoever knows how many, my friend Jacob who lived across the street broke the silence trying to whisper to me. He tapped my shoulder and stuttered trying to say there was a fire in the diner that grew to his house. The diner was behind his house on the other side of the road.
So I got the answer to my question, there was a fire. That's why there was so much smoke and police cars.
Jacob kept talking to me. He said everybody was fine but they did't know what caused it. As he kept talking on I overheard some firemen with policemen, so naturally I zoned him out and tried to listen to them over the sirens.
It was hard to tell what they were saying. One of the unknown policemen coughed so hard he could have expelled a lung but continued on with, "Any guess on what caused it? Accident or-"
One of the firemen looked at the ground and took a breath of non smoke filled air and in a deep voice announced, "No. It burned very fast destroying most if not everything. I don't think this could have been an accident. It's 4am - It's not even open."
Still coughing a bit from the smoky air the policemen there said in a commanding tone, "Well, I guess we got a case men, go collect anything that isn't burned and put it into an evidence bag."
After that, I was taken off task by Jacob shaking me because I wasn't listening to him. He kept talking after thinking my attention was back on him. But it wasn't, it wasn't anywhere near him. It was on the diner.
The diner was everybody's second home around here. We all hung out there after school. The owner, Mr. Fanteno, gave us some small things to snack on while doing homework. Himself and the diner was open to anybody who needed it. All I could think of all of the wonderful things that we'd done there and how nice Fanteno was.
Who would want to hurt the diner? This thought kept me up all night. No sleep after that, I would have been better off just drinking a whole pot of coffee to survive the next day, but I couldn't. You want to know why? That coffee pot was at the diner, Fanteno made it the best. So, I attempted to get some sleep. Jacob couldn't since his house was the one on fire, so he stayed with us for a while until his family and house recovered.
