Hitchhikers (14 page)

“Stop being so cold, Danny,” she whispers.
“Your stubbornness is turning me on.” Her hands return and her body
presses against my back again.

I don’t really need the blanket right
now.

“Just loosen up.” Her breath blows in my
ear.

Then she’s kissing me, her lips warm and
moist on my neck. She traveling up along my jaw line then finally
gets to my mouth. By that time I’m kissing her back.

She slides on top of me. It feels nice to
kiss a girl. I’ve never done it before. I let myself go until Candi
comes up for air. “Now that’s more like it,” she purrs. Then she
hooks her fingers into the waistband of my jeans.

I shove her away. She lands at the end of the
mattress. “Don’t do that,” I tell her.

It was instinctive. My heart is hammering
away and my fingers dig into the fabric beneath me. What was I
thinking? What if I had lost control… blacked out? I have no idea
what would happen if I had sex. All I know is I’ve spent nights in
hotels with men that I don’t remember, except for the blood bath
after.

“What’s your problem,” she snaps. “Are you
gay?”

“Just because I’m the first guy you’ve ever
met who doesn’t want to fuck you right away doesn’t make me
gay.”

Candi crosses her arms and puts on her pouty
face. “Don’t you find me a little bit attractive? A teensy weensy
little bit?”

“Well, sure,” I say uncomfortably.

“So what’s the problem?”

“Look, I… I just don’t think it’s a good
idea.” In fact, I think it’s a really bad idea.

“Why?”

I go over in my head the reasons that I can’t
tell her: I’m a werewolf, I might kill you, you’re a prostitute,
you might have an STD, you might get pregnant… actually…

“You might get pregnant,” I say.

She laughs. “Yeah, right. I take
precautions.”

“Like what?”

“Well, I have some condoms if you’re really
worried. I also know where the Planned Parenthood is and they’ve
given me the morning after pill a bunch of times before.”

“That sounds safe.”

“And, I mean, even if I did get pregnant, so
what? You’re kinda cute. Our baby would come out cute. We could get
some money from welfare. Lots of the other girls have babies.”

“What other girls?”

“You think I’m the only girl working a
corner? Have you lived in a cave your entire life?”

I don’t say anything.

Candi pulls the blanket around herself and
curls up in it, facing away from me. Now I’m the one in the cold.
That’s fine. I need to cool off.

“You know,” Candi says, “it kind of hurts my
feelings that you don’t want to have babies with me.” She giggles.
“It is SO obvious you’re a virgin.”

My face burns. I turn so my back is to
Candi’s back.

I am anything but tired.

“Have fun while I was gone?” Kayla announces,
waking me out of a bored doze. Nothing else to do but sleep. Too
cold. No food. Several times I wished for that book I’d stolen from
the library in Broken Bow. Too bad it was in my backpack, with
Kayla, the whole time. Too dark to read now anyway.

“I finally got more clothes.” She drops the
crammed backpack on the mattress. I notice she’s wearing a new pair
of fuzzy gray mittens that smell like the bottom of a box left in
storage. Between her knit hat pulled down over her ears and
forehead, and the fleece scarf that covers her mouth, all I can see
of her is her red nose and brown eyes.

The backpack oozes other scents just as
strange. Smoky car seat. Mothballs. A faint gardenia-scented
perfume. “Socks. Long underwear. Regular underwear.” Kayla pulls
these garments from the backpack as she names them. “Flannel-lined
jeans. Fleece shirt. Down vest.”

She looks at me. “What are you waiting for?
Start stripping.” She grins. “Now.”

I smile back, but wait to see what else she
has.

“You think I’m kidding? Come on. You need to
put this stuff on.”

“Okay.” I feel more than a little weird
taking off my clothes in front of Kayla. Plus it’s freezing, so I’m
hopping around trying to get my pants down as fast as I can. I grab
the long underwear.

“Daniel, you need to put on the new
underwear.” She shakes the package at me. “Yours smells like… well,
let’s just say I can tell you haven’t done your laundry in a few
weeks.”

“Okay,” I say, accepting the underwear. She
continues to watch me. “Um… maybe you could turn around or
something?”

“What, are you shy?” Kayla grins. I suddenly
get the idea that she was hoping to see me take off my underwear.
But she turns around.

To be safe, I turn my back to her while I
change. When I’m done putting on the underwear and the socks and
the long underwear and turn back to get one of the new pairs of
pants, Kayla’s watching me with that grin still on her face.

I can feel myself blushing and I can’t seem
to meet her eyes. I have a harder time than usual putting on a
simple pair of pants. As I’m fumbling with the button on the fly,
Kayla’s fingers dance up my spine.

“You need some help?”

“No!” My voice is a little too loud and I
jump away from her touch. There is a tense moment.

“Here’s a clean shirt.” She hands it to me. I
glance up at her eyes. She avoids mine and her smile is gone.

I take off the scraps of the shirt I’m
wearing.

“You’ve healed up pretty quick,” Kayla
remarks. I raise my eyebrows. She gestures to her neck. “The
bruises. They’re gone.”

My fingers explore my neck, pushing where
only yesterday it was so sensitive. No pain at all. How long since
I had that rope around my neck? Has it really only been two
days?

“Yeah. I guess they’re all healed up.” I pull
the thermal shirt on. I feel warmer already.

“You need to eat more,” Kayla says, eyeing my
ribs. “And I don’t mean broccoli soup.”

I lean over to see if she has anything in the
backpack I haven’t sniffed out yet. There’s a faint trace of
hamburger but it’s coming from Kayla’s breath. “You didn’t bring
any food back?”

“I barely had enough money to get clothes for
you. I had to steal the socks and underwear.”

“But you had enough money to go to
McDonald’s.”

She stares at me. “It was Wendy’s. I guess
you don’t need any training for your sense of smell.”

My stomach growls. Or maybe
I’m
growling at her.

“Look, see? Now you have warm clothes and we
can both leave here and get something to eat. Okay?”

My eyes narrow, but not before the darkness
pulses in and out.

“Daniel, calm down. Changing now isn’t going
to help anyone.”

I swallow the bile that has risen up in my
throat. That faint wisp of hamburger slathered with special sauce
and tomatoes is driving me crazy.

Daniel.

I blink and squint and blink. My vision’s
gone blurry.

Daniel, calm down.

A wave of warm, happy feelings shudders
through my system and suddenly I can see clearly again. I suck in
deep breaths. No nausea. I feel great.

“Feeling better?” Kayla looks at me with
raised eyebrows.

“Yeah,” I say. “I thought I was gonna black
out for a minute there but now I’m fine. Wow. I can’t remember the
last time I felt this good.” I look around at my surroundings like
I’m seeing them for the first time.

“Here’s what we’re going to do,” Kayla says.
“You are going to finish getting dressed. Then we are going to
decide where you want to eat.”

“Wendy’s sounds good to me.”

Kayla snaps her fingers at me. “Come on. Put
that sweatshirt on. And the vest. And the coat.”

“What’s the rush? Why can’t we talk about
dinner while I get dressed?”

“One thing at a time.”

I don’t like her tone and that good feeling I
had before is starting to wear off. I yank the sweatshirt on over
my head, hearing the sound of a seam ripping. “I’m just hungry,” I
snap, jerking my arms through the vest. “All I’ve had to eat lately
is a can of soup, and that was yesterday.”

“Button it,” Kayla says, pointing to the
snaps on the vest as I’m reaching for the jacket.

I glare at her.

She smiles sweetly. “Please.”

I continue to glare as I snap each button
closed. After shrugging on the jacket, I zip it up to my nose.
“Happy?”

“Very.”

“Now can we talk about food?”

“Hat and gloves first.”

Finally, all suited up, I growl, “Food.”

“Okay.” Kayla takes a deep breath and smiles.
“Food.”

“Yes.”

“You have two options. We can head into town,
which is about an hour on foot, and see what’s still open and where
we can steal some food from.”

The idea of stepping out into that frozen
tundra does not exactly appeal to me. Now that I’m finally warming
up, I’m realizing exactly how cold I had been. “What’s option
two?”

“We can go hunting.”

“You have a gun?”

“No…” She raises her eyebrows, looking at me
like I should know what she means.

“Hunting. As wolves.”

“Bingo.”

“That’s not an option.”

“You’re going to have to learn sooner or
later,” Kayla says. “Right now, you’re in a pretty deserted area,
so we’re unlikely to come across any people. And considering we
don’t have any money… it’s free food.”

I swallow and stare outside. “I think later
is better.”

Kayla nods and puts her own mittens back on.
“Then back into town we go.”

“You’d rather go hunting.”

Kayla looks at me. “This isn’t about me. This
is about you. You don’t feel comfortable going hunting, and that’s
fine. We’ll try it later. Right now, we need to get you some food,
okay?”

I look away and follow Kayla outside without
saying anything. I feel weak, like it took all my strength to keep
from succumbing to that change a few minutes ago. The cold cuts
into every chink in my winter armor. All I can do (besides shiver)
is trudge behind Kayla along the little path she’s made with all
her trips into town through the snow.

It isn’t snowing, and in the darkness I can
see for miles along the flatlands. An occasional tree, bowed under
the weight of the frost. A dark ribbon through the snow that is a
road, with headlights flaring and blinding me.

Kayla keeps away from the road.

Over a low hill the town throws off an
electric glare that turns the sky a faint pink above its rooftops.
When I look up at the clear starry night I realize there is no
moon. And no streetlights anywhere nearby. Only that faint pink
glow from several miles away.

I don’t mention my observation to Kayla.
She’d think I was dumb, only now noticing that I can see better in
the dark than normal people. I bury my nose into my scarf and keep
walking.

My scarf smells like wood fires.

The noises are not alarming at first. Of
course, it’s so silent out here that the crunching of our boots
through the snow deafens me. Once my ears become accustomed to that
sound, I pick up the whishing of tires across that road half a mile
away, and Kayla’s breathing, which is silent except for a little
whistle when she inhales, then her heartbeat, a relaxed BOM-bom
BOM-bom. I tune into that sound and follow it, my eyes closed to
keep the wind from freezing the tears against my eyeball.

Then I hear the snuffling.

It reminds me of when a dog smells food under
the couch. He sniff sniffs, then snorts out so his nose is clear to
sniff again. Sniff sniff snort. There’s some heaving breathing too,
panting. And there are a lot of mouths breathing and noses
snuffling.

Kayla doesn’t do anything so for a while I
ignore it. Probably some animal, some harmless animal burrowing
under the ground, a herd of bison or something

(doesn’t sound underground, doesn’t sound
that big)

until I can’t ignore it anymore. It sounds
like a pack of something running. I pull my nose out from the scarf
and snort myself a few times

(“This thing stinks,” I tell Kayla when she
looks back at me)

and inhale a big double lungful of icy cold
air.

The thing about icy cold air is that most of
the time it makes it hard to smell anything. Frozen things don’t
have a smell.

The other thing about icy cold air is that
when everything else has no smell because it’s frozen solid, you
can smell heat-pumping creatures that much better.

This smell puts my nerves on edge. It’s like
that night in the playhouse all over again. The smell, the sounds –
I know it’s a pack of wolves coming up on us, and fast.

“Watch it,” Kayla says. I’ve walked into her,
not paying attention to where I’m going and thrumming with nervous
energy.

“Do you smell that?” I ask her.

She sniffs the air.

“I don’t smell anything.”

I shove my nose back into the burnt wood
scarf.

“What was it?”

Kayla sounds so patient. I shrug. “Nothing, I
guess.”

We continue.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m so crazy hungry
for food that I’m hearing things. Smelling weird stuff. Kayla
should be able to smell that. If she’s not worried, I shouldn’t
be.

For the next half hour walking to town, my
muscles burn with alertness.

“How’s that sandwich?”

My mouth is too full to answer. I bob my head
up and down and tear another bite before I’ve swallowed.

We’re sitting on a fire escape in a dark
alley, away from the streetlights and the chances of a police car
patrolling the area for kids out past curfew. The fire escape is
near the exhaust pipe from a 24-hour laundromat, which means warm,
damp air billows around us in clouds. While I’m warm now, I know
once we leave the cloud the dampness will turn to ice and I’ll be
even colder than before. It doesn’t make me eat any slower, but
since we managed to steal a foot-long sandwich from the convenience
store, I still have plenty of sandwich left.