Hitchhikers (Wolf Point #1)

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Libraries can be tricky. Some are small, and if you look school-age and the librarians see you hanging around all day, they start to ask questions. Others are big, and have security guards there to keep people from stealing stuff and taking baths in the men's room, and they're pretty alert for truants and homeless people, of which I am both. An adult they'd just kick out, but me they'd have to call the police.

There are some libraries, though, that don't ask questions and don't mind me hanging around all day reading, libraries where the bathrooms aren't locked and I can wash up, libraries that let you use the computers even if you don't have a library card.

These are the libraries I like.

Normally I don't like spending a lot of time around other people, especially places that would eventually notice me. Gas stations, diners – these places are full of anonymous faces, passers-through. Libraries, on the other hand, are full of local people who notice if you're not from around here. But in those quiet spaces I don't have to worry so much about blacking out. I'm calm and the beast sleeps.

My first winter on the road I spent a lot of time in libraries. It was warm, and even though my stomach was so empty it felt like a cave between my ribs and my hipbones, I could pretend for a few hours that I was normal. Lost in a book, I was a normal kid with normal problems like a school bully or a suicidal friend or anorexia. I never found a book where the kid has my problem: waking up to find that he's murdered a bunch of people and possibly eaten them. Then again, I never read horror books.

On some really bad days, I hid in the library all night rather than face the cold winds and seeping wetness and the certainty of blacking out.

I arrived in Broken Bow, Nebraska late last night via a trucker who offered his bed to share at the truck stop motel. He was lucky that he made this little proposition after he'd pulled into the parking lot, when I could just jump out. He was lucky that he was just a sad man offering out of loneliness and not perversity. He had also been willing to take Lila along.

I chose instead a bed of trash bags beside a dumpster, located outside of a Chinese food restaurant, with Lila as my blanket. My pillow smelled of dim sum. The trucker had bought me dinner at a fast food window several hours back, otherwise I might have ripped open that garbage bag and made a meal of it.

Nights like that make early mornings. Although I'd like to lose myself in a book after the pace Lila has set for me, I need some answers, and there's only one place I know to get those. Lila has disappeared, but somehow I know that she will find me.

The library is only a block away. I sit on the stone wall that surrounded the building, watching people come and go. It's a quiet place, or maybe just a quiet morning. I only know the days when I look at newspapers. I decide to take a chance and walk inside.

Bathrooms unlocked, that is a good sign. I wash off the odor of trash, then decide to use a computer.

It's been a while since I used the internet. When I first hit the road, I checked for news about what I'd done. I was sure there was going to be a manhunt, or at the very least a missing persons report. There was. It was worse than I could have imagined, headlines splashed on all the newspapers about the massacre, although it had taken the police three days to find the bodies. By then, I'd gotten out of Montana and was halfway across South Dakota.

They weren't looking for me yet, but I was sure soon they'd make the connection, find some DNA evidence and then there'd be wanted posters. I stole a box of hair dye from a CVS and dyed my brown hair black in a gas station bathroom. I stopped going near people.

Today, however, I'm not checking for news.

The trucker last night had rambled some story about his wife and how she found a tumor and diagnosed herself on Web M.D.

I open up Google, then type in "web md" and click on the site.

I select my symptoms: headache, dizziness, nausea, blackouts.

The website pops up a list of possible afflictions. Most I can immediately rule out: migraines, sinusitis, heat exhaustion, diabetes. I click on labyrinthitis and cryptococcosis, but the illnesses are not nearly as mysterious as they sound. I doubt that anemia or kidney disease would cause what I have. That leaves the psychiatric sicknesses like panic attacks and anxiety disorder.

I stare at the screen until I grow concerned that others are watching me, thinking me crazy, as I now think myself crazy. I close the internet browser, move to a catalog computer and type in "psychiatric disorders." I get a Dewey Decimal number, which I copy onto a slip of paper and head into the stacks.

I never knew there were so many ways a person could go crazy. My fingers graze over the spines. Finally I find a thick book, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. This will take a while.

There are comfortable looking chairs in the periodicals area, where several people sit reading newspapers. One is an old man with half moon glasses. Another man sits with a newspaper over his face. His clothes are dirty and he smells like I did this morning. If the librarians are letting him sleep, perhaps they will not notice me sitting here, either.

Each disorder has a checklist of symptoms. It is long past lunchtime, as my stomach reminds me, when I come across Dissociative Identity Disorder.

"The primary characteristic of this disorder is the existence of more than one distinct identity or personality within the same individual. The identities will 'take control' of the person at different times, with important information about the other identities out of conscious awareness."

Though the only physical symptom is blackouts, this sounds more like what is happening to me than panic attacks. I sense no panic until I feel the darkness coming.

"Often triggered by physical or sexual abuse."

Check.

"Patient may experience blackouts or missing time, but are usually aware of having done things during these blackouts."

Check.

There's no mention of the other personality sometimes being a psychotic killer, but I'm sure it's very rare.

Unfortunately, the manual doesn't explain how to get rid of a multiple personality. Years of expensive therapy, probably – nothing I can ever afford. If I get arrested maybe they can use the insanity plea, and then I could get therapy for free.

I was hoping for something easy, like a lobotomy or an exorcism. At the very least, some idea of how to control the other personality.

Suddenly I feel tired. There are no answers here. I drag myself to the fiction section and listlessly browse through the books. What am I doing? I've done this before. Stolen library books. Usually I end up returning them at some other library down the road, once I'm done reading, yet I still feel guilty. My eyes flicker toward the librarian at the desk until I give up. I can't do it. I am about to leave empty-handed when a title jumps out at me.

Wolf Point.

I snatch the thick paperback off the shelf and shove it into my jacket pocket.

Then I wander around the fiction section. That is the key to shoplifting: never hurry off. They will always suspect you if you run away. By lingering, they can't imagine you would stick around when you have just committed a crime.

When I see Lila's face through the glass front doors, I head out. She wags her tail at me before she bolts off toward the north.