I tried the tainted art of hitchhiking for the first time yesterday. I’ll admit it was an unwise and potentially lethal decision, but I chose to ignore the cultural stereotype that this particular mode of transportation was a sure-fire way to encounter a deranged serial killer or some other unsavory character. I had no other choice, as my fifteen-year-old Jeep Wrangler was in the shop, and my other chauffeur candidates, a.k.a. my friends and three bonehead brothers, were all fatally busy. Taxis and buses didn’t frequent the tiny college town where I spent most my days, and they had no reason to. The bar and the university, once a Gothic-style monastery, were pretty much all the place had to offer.
Anyways, it was around 11:00 P.M. and I desperately needed to return to my place at the old apartment complex that sat on the grimy boundary between the mind numbingly-bland suburbs and the city. Stepping out of the main building of the university after a particularly brutal calc exam, I set off into the brisk February night in search of the stranger who would either agree to drive me back to my apartment, or leave my mutilated corpse in some muddy roadside ditch. I prayed for the former outcome.
Once the time came, I looked like a well-prepared hiker, with my heavy backpack and caffeine canteen (filled with black coffee to keep me awake during my little excursion), as I made my way to the side of the road. I walked underneath a streetlight so cars could see me in all of my desperation in the blackness of the night, and stuck out my thumb. I took a deep breathe, exhaled, and sincerely hoped this would be over soon.
A particularly stunted part of me wanted to cry, but I knew that if I shed a single tear, I would never respect myself again. I admit the idea of accepting a ride from a stranger was nothing short of terrifying to my otherwise reserved twenty-one year self, and being so glaringly needy injured my pride as well.
In retrospect, it was a ridiculous thing to worry about, given that my pride would be the first thing that ride would cost me. About five minutes into my life as a hitchhiker, a black Chevrolet pulled up. I was hesitant at first, but reasoned that this could be my only option, and the next car could be much worse. A good amount of the Chevy’s fender had abandoned the rest of the vehicle and one tail light glared aggressively as if to compensate for its fallen friend.
Although the car looked as if it had seen better days, I detected a petite, vaguely female figure behind the wheel and so when she unlocked the door, I reluctantly got in. After my eyes adjusted to the offensively bright dashboard lights, what I saw behind the wheel made me wish that I had just decided to get some much-needed exercise and walk the 150-odd miles back home.
“Jilly?!” I exclaimed. It was Jilly, a pretty but notoriously bad-tempered freshman, the kind of girl who felt the mysterious desire to start shit for no other reason than sheer boredom and an acute awareness of the fact that meaningless drama would always result in cheap entertainment. She didn’t come from much money, and worked part-time at the shitty university cafeteria, where I had seen her on several occasions. These days, however, it was rumored that Jilly had been canned for crooning the Western classic “Rawhide” after a horde of fat chicks from the Reject Sorority ™ ordered a sizeable portion of chili cheese fries.
Well-meaning students stayed out of her way, because she was cruel, and witty to a fault, and even some of the bottle-blonde Kappas, renowned for their alleged bitchiness, uttered the name “Jilly” with a certain insidious flair. Although there was a certain quality that I couldn’t identify, but some respected about the bad ole Jilly, I instinctively knew that as a scrawny, socially inept kid, Jilly would eat me alive. She already seemed to regard me with a certain clinical amusement.
“Hi, Teddy. Can I help you?” she asked in a sing-songy, secretarial voice, a smile creeping across her face. She was mocking me with this “Teddy” shit. I could sense it and it made my skin crawl. I wanted out of that car, but I was hungry and tired and needed to get home. I cringed, and finally stuttered, “Th-thanks for picking me up, Jilly. Could you please take me to the apartments on Sixth Street in Pinedale? You know, over by the service road?” I expected her to make sport of me, given that the dilapidated Sixth Street departments were only a step up in quality from the homeless shelter.
However, Jilly’s response took me by surprise. She wasn’t smirking, nor did she have that devilish gleam in her emerald eyes. She just put the key in the ignition, set the car to “drive,” and calmly replied, “Sure thing. I know where the Sixth Street apartments are.” Odd, I thought, that she would know the whereabouts of such an out-of-the-way sort of place, but did I really have any room to question my one and only driver?
She coasted down the freeway, and a strange sense of ease crept over my tense body. Maybe this wasn’t so awful. I had expected to sit in silence in the car with Jilly, an experience that would have been uncomfortable at best and torturous at worst, but we had started a lively conversation about the American Literature course we took together.
I was too timid to ever speak to anyone in class, a trait I wasn’t particularly proud of, and I couldn’t help but feel that I had missed out. Jilly was a truly hilarious and interesting person, a rare commodity in my not-at-all humble opinion. She waxed lyrical about The Great Gatsby and Fahrenheit 451 for about twenty minutes, and we even had a heated debate over whether or not Ignatius Reilly was a true American hero.
The car ride lasted well past midnight, and once we got off the seemingly endless, forest-lined ribbon of interstate at Exit 42, I began to feel a bit anxious despite the fact that I was enjoying my unexpectedly pleasant ride with Jilly. I tried to shake the feeling, reminded myself that claimed to know where she was going, and so far, she had taken all the right turns and was still driving on the familiar route that my brothers and I took to school each morning. It was late, and after I had lulled myself back into a cloudy sort of comfort, I felt sleepy. The conversation had started dying down as Jilly began to focus on our route and my eyelids grew heavier and heavier. Then, out of nowhere, for no apparent reason, I felt inexplicable jolt of panic the moment before my muscles and mind relaxed into slumber.
It seemed every bad scenario had materialized in my brain, and images of the Chevy veering off the overpass into the black waters of the lake beneath us, or of Jilly, her eyes widened in a manic rage, suddenly pulling a switchblade on me, flashed through my relentless imagination. My limbs twitched and I must have looked pretty freaky because Jilly broke her intense focus for a second to glance over at my lanky, disoriented self.
Embarrassed and a bit disgruntled, I sat up, but somehow, my anxiety only intensified. My heart pounded so violently that I foolishly feared my ribs would break, and I I had never felt this lightheaded since the three years ago when I eventually passed out, black-out drunk, at my best friend’s birthday. The black and white interior of the Chevrolet merged into a grey blur, and horrified, I realized I was short of breath, as if I had suddenly aged about sixty years. As if that wasn’t enough, my stomach turned, and prayed that I wouldn’t regurgitate the curry I had foolishly had for lunch.
I grabbed the door handle, peered out the window, and saw nothing but the concrete receding into an abyss, blurred by the velocity of the car. It felt like we were moving at least 90 mph and pulling about 6 G’s. Forget “up the creek without a paddle,” I felt as if my damn canoe had capsized into the rapids. I wanted to scream. I had to make sure I knew what this girl was doing and that she knew what was she doing, or I was screwed. I had never wanted to be back at home, curled in between my sheets and dead asleep, so badly before. I tried to calm myself, telling myself not worry, it was a Friday, and Jilly was smart and didn’t even need a G.P.S...She knew the way, she had it right, this was the route...My sloppy attempt at self-imposed cognitive behavioral was of no help. Eventually, the snarling demon who had been conjuring up my many fears spoke.
“Jilly, are you sure you know where you’re going? I mean, this is kind of a weird route, and if you fuck up one turn, you end up in East Jerusalem and it’s a total pain in the ass to get back. I need to know this, Jilly, or else I’m stuck...” Without shifting her gaze from the road ahead, Jilly interrupted, “Come on, Teddy. Grow a pair. I already told you I know the way. Why can’t you just accept that? Is it cause it’s dark outside, you think I can’t see? Don’t be stupid, we’re going in the right direction. Look, see that sign? For Merchant’s Fish Shack? Recognize it?” I did, but for some mystical reason, I wasn’t convinced that I would make it home.
I continued to pester her, and I admit that at this point, I was partially motivated by some petty, childish sort of defiance. She was right, but I so desperately wanted my baseless fears to appear at least slightly justified. I reacted in the same way a little kid would react when his mother told him that yes, she would in fact come back to pick him up after a taxing day at kindergarten. “I know what you said, but I just want to make sure, Jilly. Like I said, it’s a tricky route, and if we don’t see Calliope Falls when we make this turn, it’s gonna be a big problem…” I knew that she was losing her patience, but for some reason I felt the desire to continue to badger her. Some troublesome little voice in my head squealed, “don’t trust eeevil Jilly-you’ll never get home!” Jilly decided to shut that voice up.
“Theo!” she exclaimed, quickly poking my arm with her three-inch acrylic nails to ensure she now had my full attention. “Look around you. Seriously, tell me because I need to make sure you’re not some crazy fucker I need to ditch at the next exit, does this shit look familiar? Even though it’s dark?” Although I knew that Jilly was, in fact, traveling on the right interstate, in the right lane, with all the right road signs, she was wrong about one thing. We were nearing the suburbs, and it wasn’t very dark at all anymore. Now, the interstate was illuminated with the cartoonish logos of fast-food restaurants, street lights reflecting off large green road signs, and the mismatched array of lights from the little clusters of houses and buildings along the way.
We were about thirty minutes from home. Not bad for a gal who enjoyed launching cruel verbal attacks on unsuspecting customers, who already had to endure the subpar meals of university cafeteria. “You’re on the right route. I’m sorry, Jilly girl, I just got...stressed. For no reason,” I admitted, feeling like the village idiot who thought he would get promoted to court jester some sunny day. “It’s cool,” said Jilly flatly. We were about fifteen minutes from home and the mood had taken on a less tense, but subdued tone. Jilly was still moderately agitated, and I have to admit, she was a pretty noble girl for not dumping her pesky passenger at the nearest Seven Eleven.
Eventually, we reached the seedy apartments that graced the outskirts of the beige haze of the suburbs, where the streets were lined with bodegas with signs proudly proclaiming “WE SELL LIQUOR,” gutted mattresses put out to pasture, and the rusty remains of discarded bicycles. If were granted three wishes by some especially generous genie, I’m sorry, but Theo’s Wish Number One wouldn’t be for world peace or ending hunger...it would be to live anywhere but here. Maybe Wish Number Two would be my humanitarian request.
Anyways, my brothers and I didn’t have the easiest lives with our parents, who maintained a nearly religious devotion to being as unpredictable as possible. They once randomly left us with nothing but twenty dollars and a box of Diet Cokes to sustain us while they embarked on a romantic vacation to Thailand for several weeks. At least the two loons had found love, I guess. It got the point where, at about age thirteen, I was done with their stupid shenanigans and frequent bouts senseless bickering. I had moved out at fifteen, and with my minimum wage job at Northwestern Sports Supply, the dim, one-room apartment complete with flickering lights and a broken padlock (of all things), was all I could afford.
Now here I was at twenty-one, and though no less broke, after several years of college, hopefully a bit smarter. However, I was still plagued by a creeping sense of shame regarding my shabby abode, and as much as I hate to admit it, I secretly hoped and prayed that Jilly wasn’t judging me. I slumped back on the worn leather of the seat, and pretended to read texts from my many, many lovers to avoid conversation, silently cursing my middle school-esque desire for acceptance. After a few moments spent in silence, my pasty, gaunt face illuminated by the blue glow of my phone whilst I typed sweet nothings to ghosts, Jilly asked, “This is it, Teddy-T?” I looked out the window, and there it was, my dusty, meth-head riddled, red brick palace in all its glory. An orgy of all things unsightly and foul. “Yep,” I said.
Jilly sighed, and suddenly, seemed rather...forlorn, almost. She set the car to park, and then sat quietly and looked down, studying her fluorescent nails. She didn’t seem to be sneering at the glorified crack house that I called home, or complaining that if she stuck around for too long, she would end up shot (as my grandmother so often did). Maybe she was fatigued from the journey? Or still a bit annoyed after my pointless little tantrum? I recalled my argument with her and felt bad once again. She had done an exceptionally kind deed, and I had acted like a depraved three-year-old whose mother refused to buy him gummy bears.
I apologized several times again, a habit of mine that inspired my older brother Nicky to christen me “Pissybaby.” “Jilly, I’m really sorry I was such an asshat a few minutes ago, I just want to let you know that I really appreciated this drive. It was nice, and I liked talking to you. I don’t like talking to many people” She laughed, and it seemed she had been lifted out her momentary funk. Her gleamed and she responded, “I’m not mad at you anymore. I was never really angry with you, Theo, because I knew your resistance was just a sort of fickle immaturity, and I admit this sounds kind of motherly, but I wanted best for you. The interstate, and the trees, and buildings and everything was right in front of you, and you said that the sights and turns were all familiar, but you kept doubting me. Sometimes, I gotta say, I thought you had too much to drink or something before I picked you up. But, at the end of the day (quite literally), you trusted me, and what I said would happen, happened. I told you I would get you home.”
Submitted February 09, 2019 at 06:28PM by bloatedandalone1971 http://bit.ly/2SjBQV6
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