Gas·Gro

Gas/Gro is a small convenience store in Colby that becomes one of the most frequently revisited places in Auden’s nights. At first, it supplies coffee for aimless drives; later, it serves as a rendezvous where Auden and Eli stock up and decide what to do. Its importance grows through repetition: an ordinary stop becomes a meeting point, a source of comfort, and eventually a route to help in a family emergency.

Setting and Everyday Use

Gas/Gro is the closest convenience store on Auden’s nighttime circuit. When the Wheelhouse, roughly thirty-five miles away, proves an unpleasant place to linger—with narrow booths, bleach-smelling interiors, watery coffee, and waitresses who give lingering customers dirty looks—Auden more often chooses the simpler option. She buys a large travel cup of coffee at Gas/Gro and drinks it while driving around Colby. After two weeks of circling the town, she knows its streets backward and forward, though the familiarity has not yet given her nights any purpose.

The store itself is small and clean, with orderly aisles and lighting that is not too bright. Auden heads directly for the full-strength GroRoast, takes the largest cup, and adds cream. The routine is spare and predictable: coffee is what she needs, and the store is where she can get it without turning the stop into an occasion. Later visits add small variations. After walking the boardwalk and meeting the others at the pier, she returns alone for fresh coffee, milk, a stirrer, and, after pausing to consider it, a candy bar. On another supply run, she reaches for two chocolate cupcakes even though she judges them unnecessary and wasteful. The small indulgence registers as a change in her habits: she begins to allow for the possibility that an uncertain night might call for more than the bare minimum.

From Solitary Stop to Social Crossroads

In her first phase of visiting Gas/Gro, Auden is usually alone. Around midnight, after walking the boardwalk and driving a full loop of Colby, she still has hours to fill and heads there for coffee. On one such visit, a beat-up green truck pulls in behind her. Auden recognizes Adam, Maggie’s friend, in the passenger seat and follows him and his companion inside. She gets her coffee while they choose drinks and candy, a brief glimpse of the casual, shared errands that characterize local life.

The store also exposes Auden to a kind of social ease she has little experience navigating. At one visit, Esther and Maggie’s conversation about gum and Tic Tacs turns into a light exchange that Esther says leaves her feeling inspired at Gas/Gro. Auden, by contrast, feels out of place: she has come from the beach and finds herself among girls, possibly even becoming a store-goer. Her friendships with girls from school had mostly rested on academic discussion, not the ordinary, unplanned sociability she is beginning to encounter in Colby. The store’s mundane setting matters precisely because no special occasion is required there; people can talk, linger, and let an ordinary stop open onto something else.

A Meeting Point for Nighttime Adventure

Over time, the store changes from a place Auden visits to fill empty hours into a place where she expects to meet Eli. After work at Clementine’s, they begin meeting there each evening, fueling up on gas and coffee and gathering whatever supplies they might need. Their errands, stops for pie with Clyde, and progress on Auden’s quest take shape around this shared starting point. The store’s purpose is no longer merely to keep Auden awake; it helps organize the night into experiences she would not have found by driving alone.

The change is also evident in the encounters that grow out of the routine. Auden and Eli cross paths at Gas/Gro or Beach Beans after she has spent time talking with the girls from Clementine’s. From there, they go fishing on the pier and watch phosphorescence in the water, visit late-night places, or pursue the everyday items on Eli’s mental list. A stop for supplies can lead to an adventure rather than simply interrupting one. The store’s groceries and coffee remain ordinary, but the pattern of meeting there gives them a different function: they mark the beginning of shared time.

Wanda and the Store’s Wider Connections

Wanda, the older blonde cashier, is part of the store’s night-time familiarity. At a late visit, she is working on a crossword; on another, she is reading a newspaper with a cell phone pressed to her ear. When Auden returns after saying goodbye to the others at the pier, Wanda remarks on the late hour, and Auden answers that her nights are always late. Their brief exchange captures how regular Auden’s visits have become, even as she remains someone passing through rather than a customer with a conventional schedule.

Gas/Gro also brings Auden unexpectedly close to her mother’s separate life. While waiting in Eli’s car during a stop there, Auden sees a little blue Honda pull in and recognizes her mother in the passenger seat. A graduate student goes inside for coffee, gum, and an apple pie, while Auden watches from the car. The encounter makes the store a place where lives that Auden might have kept in separate categories meet within sight of one another. She notices her mother looking Eli over as he leaves with water and Doritos, and recognizes the class judgments she herself might once have made. The short distance between the car and the store becomes a measure of how far her own perspective has shifted.

A Route to Help

Gas/Gro’s connection to Eli becomes consequential when Heidi is in acute distress. Unsure whom to call, Auden instead dials the store and asks for Eli Stock, explaining that she comes in around that time for coffee and describing the situation as an emergency. Wanda answers the phone by identifying herself as the store’s employee, and Auden relies on this familiar point of contact to reach someone she believes can help. The call turns the repeated late-night visits into more than a personal routine: they have made the store a practical link in a network of trust.

Twenty minutes later, Eli arrives at Auden’s home carrying four cups of GroRoast and a pack of cupcakes, accompanied by a woman. The coffee and sweets are the same modest provisions that have recurred at Gas/Gro, now carried out of the store and into a family crisis. Across Auden’s summer, the location therefore shifts in narrative function without changing its ordinary character. It is a convenient place for coffee, a point of accidental and then deliberate meeting, and a dependable connection when Auden needs help. Its repeated presence gives the nights a local center as Auden moves from solitary wandering toward companionship and responsibility.