Page 46 of Survive the Night

The woman huffs. “You weren’t lying.”

“And no, I don’t know if he killed someone,” Charlie says. “But the fact that I think he might have—even a tiny, little bit—means I shouldn’t get back in the car with him, right? That I should be worried?”

The woman, done with it all, including the idea of using the stall she’d been eyeing, pushes past Charlie and heads to the door.

“If you ask me,” she says, “he should be worried aboutyougetting back in that car. Whatever shit you’ve been drinking, I suggest switching to water. Or coffee.”

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 wassomething 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—whichisn’t Ohio; not even close—Charlie’s with a stranger, maybe right now sharing her suspicions.

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