Hitchhikers Read Online Free Page A

as she
smiles up at me.
    “Nice of you to let me get the brunt of it,”
I complain, but when she nudges my hand I absently scratch her
ear.
    A faded white sign with an upward pointing
arrow indicates the way to the state highway. The sun is near to
setting, though I’ll be awake for a while yet. Might as well get
closer to the highway, then tomorrow I might be able to hitch a
ride.
    “You won’t be able to come if I can get a
ride,” I say to the animal beside me. “You might as well cut out
now.”
    Her ears prick forward while I talk, like she
understands, but she doesn’t understand, because she keeps on
walking beside me.
     
* * *
     
    It’s long past sunset before I find a good
place to sleep: in some lilac bushes near a small cottage-y house.
The yard is neat and clean, which means there’s no little kids to
scatter their toys around, or indifferent teenagers half-mowing the
lawn and parking their cars on the grass. There’s one small red car
in the driveway with a handicapped license plate. From the road I
can hear the television blaring, the light shining through the
closed curtains.
    The bushes are taller than I am, and I crawl
inside
    we’re giggling and pretending to be bears or
wolves crawling into a cave
    The smell is so overpowering it immediately
gives me a headache. The space underneath isn’t quite as big as I
remember. When the stray crawls in after me we’re on top of each
other, but at least I feel warmer in this small hidden space
    it’s our secret place
    no one can see us
    no one can smell us
    I curl up with my fist under my chin, roots
for a pillow, a furry blanket warming me.
    “ Let’s pretend I’m the bride and you’re
the husband.”
    “ What do husbands and wives do?”
    “ Kiss each other.”
    Accompanied by these bittersweet memories, I
drift into sleep.
     
* * *
     
    When I wake into the still darkness,
something is different.
    Beneath my hand I feel smooth hair instead of
fur. Smell woods and heat and earth instead of wet dog. I crack
open my eyelids and peer around.
    The girl looks back at me with wide brown
eyes, her golden brown hair falling into her face. She looks like
my cousin Kayla, not like what Kayla looked like when I took off
three years ago, but what Kayla might look like now, if the round
softness of Kayla’s face became sharper, her eyes further apart,
that untamable hair of hers grown long and flowing.
    “Daniel,” she says. Her voice is low and
musical.
    “Kayla?”
    “You have to come back, Daniel. We need
you.”
    “I can’t go back. I don’t want to get
arrested.”
    “It will all be okay. We need you. You can’t
run forever.”
    You have to come back.
    With a start I wake up.
    Sunlight is burning through the lilacs in a
purple haze. Though I’m sweating, the stray is right there, where
Kayla was lying just moments before.
    My hand remembers her warm skin.
    Did I just dream about my cousin being
naked?
     
* * *
     
    All day long the dream lingers in my
thoughts. “There’s no way I can go back,” I tell the dog. “No
reason, really.”
    (although I would like to see my mother and
Kayla again)
    “The cops would be waiting for me. They would
arrest me for sure.”
    (isn’t that what I want?)
    “What I want isn’t important.” I’m a monster.
A killer. Things would be better if I just disappeared.
    I have disappeared. No one knows who I am. I
wander like a ghost.
    (that’s not good enough)
    I’m a danger to everyone. Maybe I want food
and someplace warm, but it doesn’t matter. I need to be locked
up.
    “I’m going south,” I tell the dog. “I’ll find
some deserted town in Texas and live like a hermit. I’ll grow a
garden and trap my own food. Lots of people have done it, become
self-sufficient. I won’t need to go near other people then.”
    In the hot mid-afternoon sun I stop to rest
in the shade of a cottonwood tree. As my eyes begin to droop, I’m
still talking. “You smell like those lilac bushes still.”
    I rest my