Hitchhikers

          When I was sixteen, the thought of driving alone scared me. Everything used to scare me, so this wasn't unusual. Being involved in a hit and run (I was the one hit, not the one who ran) shortly after getting my license didn't do much for my confidence. But then I bought my Jetta, a shiny, black, five-speed with a detachable-face stereo tape deck (that was super cool back then). I loved that car. It was my first taste of real freedom, and I cherished it. I don't know if it was the car or if I was headed that direction before it came into my life, but I became more emboldened and reckless in everything I did. I may have started to believe I was invincible, or maybe I just didn't care what happened to me anymore. I wanted to escape my life. Subconsciously, any way out was acceptable. A romantic fairytale or a horror film ending were equally welcome, maybe I wanted an amalgamation of both. I needed an escape, and my Jetta was the vehicle for that.

            At seventeen and eighteen, I would drive around Anna Maria Island and the westernmost part of Bradenton alone in my Jetta. The windows would be down and my long, dark, unstyled hair would tangle in the salty 45-mile-per-hour wind. Those areas of my route weren't as built-up with homogenous subdivisions, modern mansions, and storefronts as they are now, and there were long stretches of beach visible from Gulf Drive. The rhythmic lapping of the waves I could hear from my beachfront drives were a soothing sound from my childhood, my early childhood. The long grasses in the open fields along Fifty-Third Avenue and Seventy-Fifth Street in Bradenton bent in the wind like my thoughts and desires.

            Then I started picking up hitchhikers.

            They weren't all hitchhikers, per se, just guys walking down the road – any road. If they were moderately attractive, if they reminded me ever so slightly of my unrequited love – a man I’d let disappear from my life, a man I’d worshipped and wished I’d had the courage to offer my chauffeur services –, I'd pull over and ask if they wanted a ride. Shirtless was my preference. What teenage girl wouldn't mind a half-naked guy in the seat next to them as they drove? And there were fewer places to hide weapons if they weren't wearing many clothes. Made sense at the time. I had romantic fantasies that I would pick up a stranger, we'd look at each other, and we'd fall instantly in love, and we'd live happily ever after or at least have a passionate rendezvous. Never happened. The guys I picked up were generally shy. Maybe they were worried that I was a murderer. After all, I was wearing a shirt and had more places to hide a weapon.

            In February 2009, I was up in Durham, North Carolina, hobnobbing with a bunch of immunology Ph.D. candidates at a Duke University function in a local bar. My brother-in-law is in the program and my sister told me it would be an inimitable social event, my word, not hers. It's a unique experience when physically attractive, intelligent, and socially adept women, i.e. my sister and I, mingle with scientific geniuses –quintessential geeks. Clearly, we both enjoyed this type of thing as we’d each chosen to marry a scientist.

There was an open bar for guests at the event, which made it even more enjoyable. With the false sense of self-assuredness that can only be provided by alcohol consumption, I decided to pretend that I was also a scientist, an immunology Ph. D. candidate, for a little while. No one bought it. I could have pulled it off had I been sober, I told myself. Then my sister introduced me to one of the Ph. D. candidates, Jeremy. Jeremy was a dark haired, attractive guy with an urban style. I picture him now with a backwards baseball hat, but I'm not sure if he was wearing one or, if in retrospect, I just assumed he would. By that time, I was on my third glass of wine, so the details are foggy.

            “You have to hear this story,” my sister Angie told me. “You won't believe it.”

            Jeremy shrugged.

            “Tell her about the guy you picked up that night.”

            Jeremy took a swig from his beer, and began with his story. The dim banquet room of the bar was becoming more crowded and the noise level escalated with it, so I moved in closer.

            “Okay, I'm from the coast of California and I used to smoke a little, ya know, ganja as an undergrad. So one night a friend and I were driving along the coast and smoking out,” he said. I don't remember where he said he was going or where he was coming from, but I remember very clearly the meaty parts of the story.

            He continued, “We were in a pick-up truck, me and this guy, and we saw some dude on the side of the road sorta flag us down. I asked my buddy if we should stop, and he said why not, so we pulled over. The guy got in, and it was a little uncomfortable, I mean three guys squeezed into the cab of a little pick-up.”

            I nodded, anxious to hear where the story was going to go.

            “The weird thing was that this guy totally smelled like gasoline. I mean, it just radiated off of him. Even though he had this smell all over him, he apparently could still smell what we had going on. So he was like, 'You guys like to smoke weed?' We kinda chuckled. Then he asked us if we wanted to blow up a car.”

            “What?! Are you serious?” I asked, as I took another sip of my red wine.

            “Yeah, he asked if we wanted to blow up a car. So my buddy and I looked at each other and were like 'Nah, man. We're alright.' So we dropped him at this gas station up the road, and didn't think much about it. The next morning, I turned on the TV and there was breaking news about a woman's body that was found in the trunk of a burning car right near where we'd picked up that guy.”

            “Holy crap!” I said. I'm not much of a swearer.

            “They suspected the girl's ex-boyfriend in the crime, and they showed a picture of him on the news.”

            “It was the guy you picked up,” I said, clenching his bicep with a sort of retrospective, vicarious fear.

            “Yeah, so I called my friend and told him about it. We had this guy in our car minutes after he'd killed that girl. That's kind of mind blowing, you know? We knew we had to call the police and tell them what happened.”

            As he told me the story, I couldn't help but think how lucky I'd been twelve years earlier. So lucky, fortunate, blessed. . .whatever. . . that something like that or worse hadn't happened to me. My final resting place, my final escape, could have been in the trunk of that Jetta I loved so much. Fortunately, the Jetta died long before I ever would.