by Riley Sager
The woman pushes through the door and, just like that, is gone. Alone again in the foul-smelling bathroom, Charlie looks around, checking for any signs Maddy might still be there. The faint idea that she could still be around—that what Charlie had seen was something beyond a mental movie—proves to her just how unmoored from reality she’s become.
She goes to one of the sinks and stares at her reflection in the mottled mirror above it. Each flash of the overhead light brightens her skin, washing out her complexion, as if she were ill. Or maybe, Charlie thinks, maybe it’s not the light. Maybe this is how she really looks. Sapped of color, turned pale by uncertainty.
No wonder that woman fled the bathroom. If Charlie saw someone looking the way she does, saying the things she said, she’d leave, too. And she’d likely think the same things the woman thought of her.
That she’s drunk. Or crazy.
But she’s uncertain. And anxious. And no longer capable of trusting what she sees. That’s what she should have told the woman instead of saying she didn’t trust Josh. She should have flat-out stated that it was herself she didn’t trust.
Tired of staring at her reflection, Charlie splashes cold water on her face, not that it helps, and hurries to the door. She wants to leave the bathroom before Maddy has another chance to reappear. But Charlie knows that no matter how fast she leaves, there’s a chance Maddy will show up somewhere else. Or that she’ll think something’s happening when it’s actually not. Or that another movie in her mind will spring up out of nowhere and she won’t even be aware it’s happening.
For all she knows, it’s happening right now.
Movie after movie after movie. Like they’re on the bill at a mall cineplex so tightly scheduled the ushers don’t even have time to sweep up the spilled popcorn between shows.
The frequency of these visions worries Charlie. For the first time in her life, she thinks it could be a sign she’s slipping deeper into psychosis and that one of these times she’ll never snap out of it. She’s heard of such things happening. Women who disappear into their own worlds, lost in a land of make-believe.
Maybe she’s already there.
Charlie pauses before opening the bathroom door. She needs to compose herself a moment before returning to Josh and the Grand Am, which she has to do. She went into the bathroom knowing she needed to make a decision.
It turns out the decision was made for her.
If she can’t trust herself, then she needs to trust Josh.
EXT. REST STOP PARKING LOT—NIGHT
He was still stretching when the woman arrived. Arms over his head, fingers laced, trying to ease out some of the tension tightening his neck and shoulders. Then the car arrived. An Oldsmobile with a lousy muffler and a tailpipe that looked like it was about to fall off.
The car parked on the other end of the lot, under a streetlamp exactly like the one where the Grand Am sits. The woman got out and gave him a nervous glance before hurrying up the sidewalk to the restrooms.
She needn’t have worried. She’s not his type.
Charlie, on the other hand, is very much his type, which poses a problem.
Another problem: that the woman in the Oldsmobile entered the restroom five minutes ago. Now he’s concerned she and Charlie have got to talking. He shouldn’t have let Charlie go off alone like that. He should have followed her inside and pretended to peruse the vending machines while she went to the bathroom.
There’s a lot he should have done tonight. Starting with keeping his damn mouth shut.
Twenty Questions was a mistake. He realizes that now. But Charlie was asking so many questions and he was getting annoyed and he thought it would be amusing to make a game of it. But making his object a tooth, well, that wasn’t the smartest move. Curiosity made him do it. He wanted to see Charlie’s reaction when she figured it out. He should have known it would set her off a little, make her suspicious. Now she and the Oldsmobile chick are in that bathroom, talking about God knows what.
That’s all his fault. He’s man enough to admit it.
Until tonight, everything had been easy. Staggeringly easy. An easy he wouldn’t have thought possible if he hadn’t experienced it firsthand. He’d been on campus less than an hour before finding her. When he showed up sporting a university sweatshirt to try to fit in, he thought it would take days to track her down and a bit of old-fashioned force to get her into his car.
Instead, all it took was a Diet Coke in the campus commons. There he was, sipping his soda and scoping out the crowd, when she appeared at the ride board with her sad little flyer. It only got easier from there. Lie about going to Akron, flash her a smile, let her size him up and think she knew exactly what type of guy he was. It’s a gift, his looks. The only valuable thing his father ever gave him. He’s handsome, but not memorably so. A blank slate onto which people project whatever they want. And Charlie, he could tell, just wanted someone trustworthy to drive her home. She practically jumped into his car.
So incredibly easy.
He should have known things would eventually go wrong after that. That always seems to be the way. Sure, he messed up with Twenty Questions. But shit luck is to blame for everything else that happened tonight. So instead of cruising to their destination—which isn’t Ohio; not even close—Charlie’s with a stranger, maybe right now sharing her suspicions.
And she is suspicious. She got that way as soon as his wallet flopped open in her lap. He knows she saw his driver’s license because she got all nervous immediately after.
Honestly, the only thing that’s gone his way tonight is Charlie’s mental state. He knew she’d be a little messed up. After what she went through, it would be weird if she wasn’t. But this—this was unexpected.
Movies in her mind?
Talk about serendipity.
It allowed him to get out of the sticky situation caused by that game of Twenty Questions. Again, his fault. But he recovered quickly. He’s good at thinking on his feet. He has to be.
When he saw that Charlie was about to jump from the car at the toll plaza, he decided to turn the stereo back on, restart the song, and pretend everything in the previous ten minutes—Twenty Questions, the mention of the tooth, those tense taps on the brakes when that damn state trooper came up behind them—hadn’t really happened.
It was a wild, ridiculous idea. More of a Hail Mary pass than a rational plan. Yet he thinks Charlie really might have bought it. Thank God for small miracles, as his mom used to say.
Opening the Grand Am’s driver’s-side door, he slides behind the wheel and opens the center console. Inside, sitting among the empty plastic case for the Nirvana cassette, a scattering of loose change, and a pack of Juicy Fruit gum with one stick remaining, is his wallet. He grabs it and flips it open, coming face-to-face with his New Jersey license, which bears the same fake name as his New York and Delaware ones. He slides it out of its plastic sleeve, revealing another license behind it.
Pennsylvania.
Jake Collins.
He’d managed to switch them at the toll plaza. While chatting up the woman in the booth, piling on the charm, he had his wallet in hand, swapping out the real license with the fake one. Then he made sure Charlie saw it, hoping that, combined with her own fragile mental state, she’d believe everything else he told her.
And she did.
Possibly.
He’s still worried about what might be going down in that bathroom, what Charlie might be saying to the Oldsmobile chick, what he might need to do because of it.
He gets out of the car, opens the trunk, and shoves aside Charlie’s box and suitcases. He’s certain that when she finds out where they’re really going, Charlie will regret packing so much.
With her belongings out of the way, he grabs the things he wanted to keep her from seeing when he loaded her stuff into the trunk.
His own boxes.
> One is cardboard, inside of which are license plates from New York, Delaware, and Pennsylvania. Unlike his driver’s license, he remembered to switch those before heading off to pick up Charlie. He assumed she’d freak out if she didn’t see a New Jersey plate on the car. Turns out she never even looked.
Beneath the license plates are several loops of rope in various lengths. Stuffed into a corner of the box is a white cloth that’s longer than a handkerchief but shorter than a towel.
His trusty gag.
Next to the cardboard box is a metal tool kit. The same one his piece-of-shit dad kept in the garage when he was a kid. Now his dad is dead and the toolbox is his. He opens it and sifts through everything inside, pushing aside the claw hammer, the screwdrivers with their chisel-sharp tips, the pair of pliers.
Finally, he finds what he’s looking for.
A set of handcuffs, the keys to which hang on the keychain in his pocket, and a knife. The knife isn’t big. It’s definitely not a hunting knife, although there’s one of those sitting somewhere inside the toolbox.
This is a classic Swiss Army Knife. Suitable for every occasion and easy to hide.
He takes the cuffs and the knife and shuts the trunk. Before heading to the restrooms, he slides the knife into one front pocket of his jeans and the handcuffs into the other.
He doesn’t want to use them.
But he will if he has to.
ELEVEN P.M.
INT. REST STOP BUILDING—NIGHT
Josh is there when Charlie leaves the bathroom.
Right there.
Inches from the door, his hand raised in a knock that never happens.
Charlie shrinks back, startled. A replay of the blond woman in the bathroom when she found Charlie in the stall.
“A woman outside said I should check on you. She said you’re shit-faced.” Josh pauses, thrusting his hands deep into his pockets. “So I have to ask. Are you, um, shit-faced?”
Charlie shakes her head, wishing she were. That, at least, would explain what’s happening inside her head. But instead of drunk, she feels unmoored. Caught on a tide dragging her out to sea, even though she’s paddling as hard as she can toward shore.
“It was just a misunderstanding,” she says.
Josh responds with a curious head tilt. “A movie misunderstanding?”
“Of course.”
They step outside, and Charlie sees that it’s started snowing again. More flurries. As wispy as dust. Josh stops to catch one on his tongue, which is how Charlie knows the snow is real and not just her own personal snow globe à la Citizen Kane.
The fact that she’s not even capable of discerning the weather on her own tells Charlie she’s made the right decision. Yes, she has her suspicions about Josh, but they fade with each step taken toward the parking lot. He’s still catching snowflakes, for God’s sake, his tongue hanging out like a dog’s. That’s not something killers do. Kids do that. Nice people do that.
And Charlie’s leaning into the idea that Josh could be nice, once you see past the lies he told her. Lies that he clearly regrets. Because before they climb back into the Grand Am, Josh looks at Charlie across the snow-dappled roof of the car and says, “I’m really sorry, by the way. I shouldn’t have lied earlier. I should have been up front with you about everything, starting with when we met at the ride board. You have every right to not trust me.”
“I do trust you,” Charlie says, even though she doesn’t. Not implicitly. The simple truth is that right now she trusts herself less.
As for Josh’s lies, she chalks those up to loneliness and not malice. Charlie understands being lonely, having cut herself off from everyone but Robbie and Nana Norma. So she and Josh might as well be lonely together.
“We’re good, then?” Josh says.
“I guess,” Charlie says, which is about as honest an answer as she can muster.
“Then let’s go.”
Charlie gets into the car. Even if she does have lingering reservations, there are no other options. The one other car at the rest stop, an Oldsmobile idling on the far end of the parking lot, belongs to the woman Charlie encountered in the bathroom. She stands next to the car, smoking a cigarette, watching them leave.
As they pass, Charlie notices the concerned look on the woman’s face, appearing and receding in a plume of smoke. It makes her wonder what else the woman told Josh while she was still in the bathroom. Did she mention Charlie’s distrust? If not, does she now regret it? Should Charlie regret getting back into this car?
She tells herself no. That everything is fine. That she should follow the woman’s advice and have some coffee to clear her head. Then she’ll settle in for a long, uneventful trip home.
Josh apparently has other ideas.
“So what kind of movie was it?” he says. “Must have been a doozy if that woman thought you were on the sauce.”
Charlie can still picture Maddy standing before the mirror, putting on that lipstick as bright as blood. Even worse, she can still hear her voice.
You shouldn’t have abandoned me.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she says.
“Must have been a bad one,” Josh says.
“It was.”
Charlie wants to forget all about it. And she certainly has no intention of rehashing it with Josh.
“Be honest now,” he says. “Was it really that bad? Or do you not want to tell me because you still don’t trust me?”
“I trust people I know.”
“Then get to know me.” A genial smile creeps across Josh’s face. “Maybe we really should play Twenty Questions.”
Charlie doesn’t smile back. She’s still too unnerved by the fact that she imagined an entire game of Twenty Questions. That a movie in her mind lasted that long. That a whole chunk of time was lost.
“I’d rather not,” she says.
“Then let’s do one question each,” Josh suggests. “I ask you something, and then you ask me something.”
“You already know enough about me.”
“You haven’t told me about your parents.”
“What about them?” Charlie says.
“They died in a car accident, right?”
Charlie’s jolted by the question. To mask her unease, she takes a sip of coffee and focuses on the snow hitting the windshield. “How did you know that?”
“I didn’t,” Josh says. “I just assumed it.”
“Fine. How did you assume that?”
“Because you mentioned that you live with your grandmother, which tells me your parents are no longer alive. You also said you don’t drive, which I assumed was a choice and not because you’re physically incapable of it. Putting all that together, I came to the conclusion that you don’t drive because your parents were killed in a car accident. Turns out I was right.”
A prickle of annoyance joins Charlie’s sense of unease. That’s a lot of assumptions on his part. That they’re all true doesn’t make it feel any less intrusive.
“By that logic, I’m going to assume that since you haven’t mentioned your mother, it means she’s dead, too.”
“She might be,” Josh says. “I don’t know. She left when I was eight. I haven’t seen or heard from her since.”
Charlie doesn’t know what to say to that, so she says nothing.
“It was Halloween,” Josh says. “I remember because I dressed up as Batman that year. And it was a real costume, too. Not one of those cheap masks and plastic capes you get at the drugstore. My mother spent weeks making it for me. She was good with a sewing machine, I’ll give her that. She made a great costume. I was so excited to show it off, you know? I couldn’t wait for people to see me as Batman.”
“Why all this excitement about Batman?”
“Because he was the coolest.”
“Batman?” Charlie says,
incredulous. She’s seen both the cheesy sixties TV show and the dark, dour Tim Burton movie. Neither of those Batmen struck her as particularly cool.
“To an eight-year-old, yeah,” Josh says. “Especially one who felt a little weird and awkward and whose parents wouldn’t stop fighting.”
His voice grows soft, confessional.
“When I’d see my dad start drinking and my mom get that disapproving look in her eyes, I knew it was only a matter of time before a fight broke out. So whenever that happened, I’d grab some Batman comic, crawl under the covers, and pretend I was inside that comic book, moving from panel to panel. It didn’t matter if I was scared that the Joker or the Riddler was trying to get me. It was better than being in that house with those people screaming at each other downstairs.”
“They were like movies in your mind,” Charlie says.
“I guess so,” Josh says. “My version of it, yeah. So I was desperate to actually be Batman for a night. I put the costume on and my dad took me out trick-or-treating and I got more candy that year than I ever had before. And I knew it was because of that costume. Because of how great it looked. When we got home, my arms were tired from carrying all that candy.”
Josh gives a small, sad chuckle.
“And my mother, well, she was gone. While we were out, she’d collected a few things, threw them in a suitcase, and left. She wrote a note. ‘I’m sorry.’ That’s all it said. No explanation. No way to contact her. Just that meager apology. It was like she had just vanished. And I know, that’s what all deaths feel like. The person is there and then they’re not and you have to adjust to life without them. But what made it so hard was that my mother chose to leave. She planned to go that way—without a goodbye. I know because of the costume. She’d never spent that much time on one before, and I think it’s because she had already made up her mind that she was going to leave. And so she put all her love and attention into that one stupid Batman costume, because she knew it would be the last thing she ever did for me.”
