Hitchhikers (12 page)

I stare at the round hole in the little black
9mm. Just last night I wanted to kill myself. A bullet to the head
would just about do it. I close my eyes.

“I asked you a question,” the girl demands.
“Come on. I’m not gonna shoot you. Just don’t attack me or make any
sudden moves or anything, okay?”

I open my eyes. The black hole is gone,
replaced by the face of a young girl – about my age. She has
bleached blonde hair sprayed into a poufy mess, and garishly bright
make up. My eyes are drawn down to her outfit, which is awfully
revealing for such cold weather. A mini skirt and a tube top, boots
with spiky heels.

“Why don’t you take a picture,” she says.

My gaze drifts to the floor. “Sorry.”

“Hey, whatever. I’m used to it.” She puts the
gun into a little plastic purse, bright purple, and sits down on a
mattress in the corner to pull off her boots. I get a nice view up
her skirt and I turn my whole body away, my face turning hot.

“You don’t have to be shy. You’re squatting
here, right? Me too.” The boots come off and land in a heap on the
floor. She stretches her toes and the joints snap and crackle. “Not
much of a talker, huh?”

“Sorry,” I say again.

“I’m Candi,” she tells me. “What’s your
name?”

“Dan.”

“You got anything to eat?”

“No.”

“Any money?”

I think about the pocket change in my
backpack. “Nope.”

“None at all?”

“Uh, a dollar and some change. Does that make
a difference?”

She screws up her face. “You really don’t
have any money.”

Pulling some blankets over her, she lies down
on the mattress. I don’t know how long that mattress has been out
here, but it stinks. Although it looks a hell of a lot more
comfortable than the cement floor.

“Yeah, so, I’m gonna sleep now.” She closes
her eyes. “I’d offer to share, but you’re broke.”

“Oh.” It doesn’t make much sense to me for a
long time. Maybe because I’m still hungry and out of sorts from
last night. Eventually I realize what she means, and start
apologizing again.

“I–I’m sorry. I guess I’ll take off then?” I
say this quietly because she looks like she’s sleeping. I’ve turned
to go back into the other room to get my backpack when she
speaks.

“You don’t have to go.”

I stop but don’t look at her. I should leave.
She’ll just end up dead

like that little baby like all those
others

if I don’t. I should leave.

I don’t leave.

I crawl into the space under the covers she
makes for me, and I lie there in her cold embrace while she
sleeps.

She wakes up around the time the sun starts
fading. “Hmmmm… what’s up,” she says to me, stretching.

The warehouse has all kinds of hidden
treasures. Candi lights some candles, then pulls out a little
camping stove and proceeds to heat up some soup in the can. It’s
broccoli and cheddar. I never really liked it, but my stomach
growls anyway.

“You hungry or something?” Candi asks with a
smirk.

“I guess so.” I roll over and stare at the
wall. I shouldn’t be hungry. I never want to be hungry again, if
hungry means doing what I did.

“Here,” she says a few moments later.

I flop onto my back. She’s holding out a mug
steaming with hot soup.

“I don’t have any spoons, but you can drink
it.”

The mug warms my hands. Maybe I should let
myself starve to death. Or will my hitchhiker take over when I get
too hungry and kill again? Despite my stomach growling, I don’t
feel hungry. I feel numb.

“You gonna stare it all day or drink it?”

I look up at Candi. Her makeup has smudged
under her eyes, making her look very tired, and her hair is all
frizzed up and knotted in the back.

“Cuz, you know, I wouldn’t mind eating it if
you’re not going to.”

She glares at me until I take a sip.

“That’s better. Man, you’re skinny. I bet you
weigh less than me. What are you doing out here anyway? You a
runaway?”

“I guess,” I say. Maybe three years ago I was
a runaway. Now I’m sixteen and I’m headed back home. Maybe. If Lila
doesn’t come back I’m heading south again. “You haven’t seen a dog
around, have you?”

“What kind of dog?”

“Light brown, about this big. Pointy
ears.”

“Nah.”

“Oh.”

“Did you lose your wittle puppy?” Candi
sticks out her lower lip and juts her hip out at me. “Poor
baby.”

“Whatever.” I crawl out of bed and head into
the other half of the warehouse.

“Hey! It was just a joke,” she calls out.
“Jerk.”

I look around for my backpack. I must have
stowed my winter coat in there, because I don’t have it on. Of
course, I can’t remember having it on at any point in the recent
past. Another reminder of just how out of my mind I’ve been. I
wonder if I imagined the whole thing with the rope and the noose
and Kayla. It’s completely impossible that Kayla was here. Naked.
In the middle of November in Nebraska.

My backpack is not here.

I slam through to Candi’s end of the
warehouse. She jumps. “Did you take my backpack?”

“What? No. I didn’t even know you had a
backpack.”

“Yeah, right.”

She glares at me. “Look, dickhead. You’re the
one who showed up at my place, okay? I didn’t invite you here. If
you lost your shit, that’s on you.”

“All I know,” I say testily, “is that we’re
the only two people here and my stuff is missing.”

“Dude, I knew I should’ve maced you when you
came in. You’re a fucking psycho!”

I slam back into my end of the warehouse and
wish I hadn’t. The cold is starting to get to me. No winter coat,
and the windows aren’t keeping out the icy air. Tucking my hands
under my armpits I pace back and forth. Where could my stuff have
gone?

Maybe I left them somewhere. It doesn’t help
that the clothes I have on are ripped and stained and tied
together. Lucky my sweatshirt is black or there’d be blood on
it.

For the hell of it I ransack the deserted end
of the warehouse, shoving aside crates and boards and piles of
trash. Nothing.

Then: brilliance! I return to the splintered
chair and close my eyes and breathe. The cold makes it hard to pick
up the scent. Mostly I smell myself, but there it is, a whiff of
Lila. And something else. Lilacs. I laugh softly.

Unfortunately there was nothing in my
backpack that would smell. I follow Lila’s trail anyway. It leads
to the door.

Even the handle is cold, and I only open it
for a second before shutting it again. The wind blows right through
me. That second is long enough for me to see that there is a fresh
layer of snow from last night. No tracks of any kind.

I go back into Candi’s side. She glares at me
and demands, “What?”

“Can I b-borrow your blanket?” I can’t stop
shivering.

“For what?”

“T-to warm up.”

She looks at me, then moves away from the
mattress. “Knock yourself out.”

I wrap the piles of fabric around me and rock
back and forth, trying to stop the chills. I can’t help watching
what Candi is doing. She’s leaning over a cracked mirror,
reapplying her makeup. She’s wearing tight pleather pants now.
She’s got a big bruise on her arm.

“What happened to you?” I ask. She looks at
me in the mirror. “Your arm.”

“None of your business,” she snaps, and goes
back to her eyeliner. “What do you care, anyway? You’re the one who
looks like he got attacked by a wild animal. Did you stick your
clothes in a wood chipper or something?”

“No.” I sound defensive and look down at the
floor.

“And, like, why is your neck all bruised? You
look like someone tried to strangle you. Plus you probably haven’t
showered in forever.”

“What about you? There’s no shower here.”

She snorts. “I smell better than you.” The
smile fades from her face. “Sometimes my clients make me take a
shower before… you know.”

Normally I try to avoid thinking about those
nights when I was younger and took truckers up on their offers. But
now that Candi has reminded me, many of them did ask me to take a
shower. Usually at that point I hoped they were just being nice.
Eat some food, take a shower. Then they wanted something back for
all they gave.

I feel like throwing up.

“That’s rude,” I say finally.

“Really.” She turns from the mirror and looks
at me with one hand on her hip. “What do you know about
manners?”

“Not much, I guess.”

For a few minutes we are both silent,
listening to the tapping of snow on the windows, then Candi pulls
out a small radio and turns it on to a pop music station.

I lie down and watch Candi getting ready. In
the warm haze from the candles and the blanket, I fall asleep.

When I wake up the candles are still dimly
glowing but Candi is gone. In the dark outside the windows, bright
white snow is falling at a fast clip. My mind is curiously free
from worry, although there is much I could worry about: where Lila
is, what I’m going to do in the middle of a blizzard without a
winter coat, even whether or not Candi is okay. I wonder when Candi
will come back, if after dawn is her usual time.

Hours pass. The candles flicker.

I can’t say whether I sleep or not, but
suddenly I become aware of someone opening the door in the other
part of the warehouse. I must have been asleep – how else could I
have missed the sound of footsteps crunching through snow?

I’m on all fours, crouching beside the door
that separates the two halves of the building, peering through the
crack between the door and the frame before the intruder has even
fully opened the door. My entire body is ready and tense. Cold is
no longer an issue.

Practically in slow motion, the outside door
swings all the way open. I strain to get a view of the intruder but
all I see is a sliver of jeans, a slice of long hair. Another girl?
The wind blowing in offers more than my vision. A girl. A familiar
girl, wrapped in my scent.

“Kayla?”

My voice is high and squeaky. I push open the
door and stare. Kayla. She’s here

(it wasn’t a dream)

And she’s wearing my coat, my extra pair of
jeans. Probably my extra t-shirt under the coat. Carrying my
backpack, too. But mostly I’m staring at her face.

She’s real. I have to walk right up to
her

See what’s in front of your eyes

and put my hands on her face, feel her skin,
smell her woodsy scent, before I am sure: this is real.

(how much else is real?)

“You’re really here,” I say. A smile is
growing on my face.

“Duh,” she says.

“You took my coat. I was cold.”

She stares at me. “I would have frozen to
death going to get help for you if I didn’t.”

I’m so happy to see her that I don’t
understand why she sounds angry. “What’s wrong?” I ask.

“What’s wrong? God, Daniel!”

She drops the backpack to the floor and shuts
the door, starts peeling off the gloves.

“First, you can barely take care of yourself.
Second, you refuse to control yourself. And third, you freak out at
the drop of a hat. You can’t even figure it out after three
freaking years. Seriously, it’s like you’re blind. Or
retarded!”

Shut up you little retard – slap –

“Don’t call me that,” I snap at her. I blink,
trying to keep away the blackness that suddenly pulses in and
out.

Kayla takes a deep breath and says through
gritted teeth, “Let’s both just calm down, okay?”

More deep breathing from Kayla. I clench my
fists up tight and then let the tension go. I don’t want to hurt
Kayla. I was so happy to see her – why did she have to ruin it?

“It’s good to see you,” I tell her.

She looks up at the ceiling and laughs.
“Yeah. Good to see me. Okay.”

I’m so confused. “How did you get here?”

At this she rubs her face with her hands,
like she’s wiping away a smile. “Okay. Let’s go sit down. There’s a
bed, in there, right?” She indicates Candi’s room.

“Uh, yeah – ”

“Come on.”

Pulled along by my sleeve, I follow Kayla
into the warm glowy room and sit beside her on the smelly
mattress.

“Well, this is cozy,” Kayla says, looking
around.

“Yeah, this girl named Candi lives here.”

“Girl? You mean prostitute?”

“Yeah, I guess that’s what she does.”

“No kidding. I could smell it a mile away.
Disgusting.”

I’m not sure what to say or do. Luckily,
Kayla takes over. She turns to me abruptly.

“Look, Daniel. I know it was traumatic for
you and all, but do you remember anything about what happened that
night you… that night my dad and your dad and Uncle Buck died?”

“What do you mean? I don’t remember killing
them, but I know I did.”

Kayla bites her lip. “Um, okay. How about if
I ask it like this: did they look any different before you killed
them?”

I know what she’s talking about but I can’t
bring myself to say it. “I was sick. What I saw… it wasn’t real. I
was hallucinating or something.”

“What did you see, Daniel?”

my father curling up, his arms growing and
thinning and his face too, his mouth stretching and his joints
bending in ways they should never bend, all the while his eyes on
me… his yellow eyes

“No. It wasn’t real.”

“
What did you see?”

“He– he– ” I grip the thin quilt. I shake my
head but that image stays with me. “He turned into a monster. He
was a monster!”

“Not a monster, Daniel,” Kayla says gently.
“He turned into something. What did he turn into?”

“A wolf,” I say.

“That wasn’t so bad, was it?”