#craneverse

Hitchhiking had died in the August of 1969, the final summer of love. Where people had once stood on roadsides and gas stations had carried felt markers for signs, there was now nothing but empty curbs and boarded up shops to carry the memory. Jonathan chalked that up to the fear that was associated with hitchhiking. People had started to stop the action with the rise of kidnappings, and once Dahmer’s face had flashed across the television screens accompanied with the story of naive hitchhiker Steven Hicks, the profession was altogether forgotten. 

Not, however, for Jonathan. He liked to think of himself as a rather unassuming figure. Dressed in a cardigan and coat with his hair brushed - for once - and his book bag at his side, he was the picture-perfect image of an innocent traveller. A boy, likely no older than 20, looking for a way home. 

“You are the most likeable person.” His voice rode the winds and he wondered if he said them to reassure himself, or the unseen drivers. He had been standing on this desolate strip with his thumb out for almost half an hour. 

Jonathan could have been home. Jonathan should have been home. Thomas often gave him a ride out to his narrow strip of farmland that he had become so familiar with. But not recently. Not after Meagan. The aftershocks of what they had done to her still resonated in his friend’s mind. Jonathan had seen it in his eyes the night before, glazed over and with a thousand-yard stare that he had become used to seeing after looking in a mirror for so long. Thomas had already left by the time Jonathan was up with not even a goodbye. Thomas had left Jonathan long before then, though. Allison, too, had departed, leaving Jonathan alone in their wake. So he had grabbed his bag, locked the door, and began to walk. And walk. And walk. And now he was here. 

The sun had set and it had begun to snow by the time Jonathan saw a car pulling over the hill. For a highway, there was a ridiculous lack of traffic. In fact, this was the first car that he had seen coming over that hill in well over an hour. 

There must be road closures, Jonathan thought to himself as he watched the car pull near. Its blinkers were already flashing, indicating to both parties that they intended to stop, and soon Jonathan found himself basking in the glow of orange-yellow headlights. Yes, it must be that. 

The car soon came to a complete stop, and Jonathan found himself instinctively moving towards the passenger door. The car might’ve been a deep cherry red colour, but he would need better lighting in order to be sure of that. Jonathan realized after a moment that he was making marks in his mind of distinctive things he saw. He supposed that his survival instinct was better than he had assumed. 

The door pulled open with a solid creak and the interior was soon lit up with a brilliant white light. In the driver’s seat there sat a woman, likely in her late 40’s, wearing a floral dress with her hair tucked behind a kerchief. She gave him a wide smile when he stooped down a bit, and Jonathan felt his throat tightened. She looked like Margot. She looked like Meagan. 

“Need a lift, luv?” Her voice held a faint foreign accent to it, leading Jonathan to assume that she wasn’t originally from Gotham. He gave her a curt nod. 

“Just to the exit towards Hackensack. There’s a gas station nearby that you can drop me off at.” Jonathan neglected to mention Joseph at all because it seemed easier to do so rather than explain the complexities of who Joseph was to a complete stranger. The woman nodded and gestured for him to get in. 

“Well now, I can take ya that far for sure. I’m on my way to Parsippany-Troy Hills, y’know, which is a ways out from Hackensack, but still en-route.” The woman prattled on as Jonathan slid into the seat next to her, closing the door as he went. The interior of her car was cluttered. Books crushed his legs up into an uncomfortable position and there were several bags of luggage in the back seat. To Jonathan, it seemed like he wasn’t the only one on his way home. 

“So whereabouts are you from?” Small talk. He should have expected as much. The woman seemed like the type that really didn’t like sitting in silence for too awful long, which was the exact opposite of Jonathan. He gave her a half-smile. 

“Coming home from university. The semester just ended.” He focused on the snow falling steadily in front of the headlight beam as he spoke. The car rumbled on a few minutes before the woman continued. 

“You headin up to see your folks, or do you got a girl you’re off to visit?” Jonathan stiffened a bit at her last comment. Briefly, visions of the fortnight ago flashed in his mind. A tub, filled with red, and corn stalks blowing in the wind. The smell of decay as rain pounded his yellow poncho. A garbage bag sinking below a lake’s surface. No, several garbage bags. Thomas’ face. Jonathan continued to smile. 

“Oh, I’m just visiting my father again. We haven’t spoken in a while, so it seems fair that I’d come back for the holidays.” He observed in his peripheral the woman nodding in approval, and eased himself back into the seat. It was warm in the car, comforting, and he fixated his gaze out the window again. The first few missing person posters of Meagan had already begun to appear on the campus - white sheets of paper marring the black walls and darkened halls of the suffocating buildings. It was by fluke alone that what happened coincided with everyone taking off for the holidays. It meant that any investigation would be held off, for now at least. The radio crooned Sinatra’s rendition of White Christmas, and Jonathan’s smile became a bit more sincere.