Oh my God is it boring. It is so boring! Everything about it? Boring. Boring, boring, boring, starting with my outfit, which I never get to change. Same dress, same shoes, same road, same same same every night, which, boring.

It’s boring no matter what, whether I get picked up or not, because if I don’t get picked up, I walk along the shoulder all night and there’s nothing to do but, like, kick stones and wait for the sun to come up — I can’t read a magazine, I can’t talk on the phone, obviously, I can’t sit down because…I don’t know, I just can’t. Whatever. So that’s boring.

But then when I do get a ride, that’s boring too, because these guys, I mean, is there another way to say “boring,” because really. Really. So, so boring. Dull. Tedious. Because, see, the kind of guy that picks me up is the kind of guy, he’s going to stand where he’s told his whole life and not really have any, like, bigger thoughts about anything, it’s not that he’s dumb, but he doesn’t know how not to be, like, this dolt who goes to school and goes home and goes to parties and goes home and — just goes and does and doesn’t think about it. Maybe after he picks me up, he thinks about stuff, like that he just rode around for twenty minutes with a dead person, but when I get them, no. “What school do you go to, uh duhhhh, I play football, go you Sherries, duhhhh, nice dress, derrrrr,” ugh. Boring.

It gets to the point, seriously, where I envy Mary Kate, and not just because she gets to hang out now instead of having to go out every night and get her dress caught on those pricker bushes back there — what is the point of the cemetery even having a caretaker if he’s not going to take care of stuff like that? He has a trimmer doodad, so what the hell? Anyway, what was I saying?

Oh, yeah. So I envy Mary Kate because she got to go out when there was a lot of crazy shit going on, when there were still creepy traveling salesmen driving around with guns and booze in the glove compartment and they’d be all, “You know, I have a daughter about your age,” and then they’d, like, lunge across the seat five minutes later and be all hands and jaws all over you — exciting! I mean, gross, too, you know, but if you’re already dead, who cares? He’s not going to kill you or anything, because, too late, and you totally get to fuck with him too, which he deserves because he’s a nasty hog.

And all the hippies and stuff, driving around in their VW buses — it just sounds so fun, to get into the, like, Looooove Van and listen to them talk for a while. Maybe they were going out to California, to the Haight or something, or following the Dead around, or maybe they were all going to live on a commune somewhere, like in — wherever they put communes. Arizona? I think hippies are kind of funny, the way they think about things. I wouldn’t become one or anything, but, you know, riding with them, it would just be something different.

Even if, I don’t know, a family picked me up, coming home from the movies. Just to hear about the movie, even, or ooh, little Billy is getting grounded — something else besides the same boring crap I always hear.

But now, a lot of people just won’t stop at all. Everybody’s seen about a million stranger-danger news reports about how hitchhikers are eeeeevil and just want to stick a knife in your eye and steal your car, so nobody even slows down most of the time. I never stopped for anyone either, really, because yeah, it’s pretty dangerous, but — hello, don’t these people read? Girl in a white dress? Famous story? Vanishing hitchhiker? Dead? Not going to hurt you?

And here’s the other thing, which isn’t boring, it’s annoying — I never get to go home! It sucks! I mean, duh I don’t get to go home, but — I don’t get to go home! And I am dying to see what happens when they get to the door and my parents are like, “Oh, not this shit again,” because my dad was totally the kind of dad who would send you into the store to buy cigarettes and then when you came out to the car, he’d, like, hit the gas every time you reached for the door, and you’d get in the car all mad and he’d be like, “…What?” so I know he’s totally fucking with these guys when they come to the door and, like, bellowing that I’m dead, dead goddammit, and pretending to cry hysterically. And my mom is all, “Jerry! That isn’t nice,” but she’s completely laughing, and then the guy leaves and my dad is all, “Not the sharpest knife,” and my mom is just shaking her head and laughing. “Poor child,” she’ll say, and she’s putting away the cookie plate. I’m sure she gives them cookies, the little Italian butter kind with the pink icing on top. I’m sure.

And that’s what sucks, because I know what they’re doing every time one of these dudes comes up the front walk — I know. And they know that I’m — out here, that I’m bringing these guys to the house. And my dad, he’s proud that I’m the vanishing hitchhiker. My mom thinks it’s sad, but my dad, he thinks it’s cool, that if I had to die, I got this sweet job and I’m famous, and I can hear the conversations they have about it in my head, with their voices and everything, but I can never have a conversation with them about it. I can never sit in the breakfast nook and have cookies, and talk. We just get to know about each other, and we can’t…see each other.

Sucks, man.

Yeah.

So. It’s boring and lame. Which, so was the guy who killed me, actually. Okay, he didn’t kill me, not on purpose, but he was driving and I died, so there you go. Bobby Haddick. Cute, nice, all-state lacrosse, no personality. Good kisser, though, and he smelled great, and every time we went out I’d think to myself, bleh, why am I bothering, but when we were making out…yeeeeeah. A lot of fun.

So I guess he wasn’t that lame, really, and I probably ruined his life by dying in his car so I shouldn’t rag on him, but, I mean, the guy had nothing to say. Nothing! He didn’t think about things, that he saw or read or — well, he didn’t read that much, but that’s not the point. Even if you only read the football parts of Sports Illustrated — why do you do that? What is it about football that you like? Why was that article good? Nope, nothing. Didn’t think that way.

So we’d run out of things to say in half an hour, or I would, because he had nothing to say to start with, and then he’d do that doodly thing to my hair with his finger, and then we’d make out, and nothing against his make-out skills, but sometimes I’d forget to concentrate and I’d start thinking, is this…it? Or is someone good going to happen to me?

And I thought that, and forty-five minutes later I bought it, and now it’s just me and these pinchy shoes and the Bobby Haddicks of the world, so it looks like the answer is no.

My name is Mary Therese Ventura. I died in a car accident May 23, 1986.

March 29, 2004

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