Page 10 of Survive the Night

“He is.”

“Does he get away with it?”

“No. Charlie stops him.”

“I thought so,” Josh says. “From the way you talk about her, I assumed she was plucky.”

Charlie feels a minor jolt at the word, mostly because she’s notsure she’s ever heard someone say it in conversation before. She’s certain no one has ever used it to describe her. She’s been called a lot of things in her life. Weird? Yes. Shy? Yes. Standoffish? Sad, but true. But never plucky. And knowing she’s not plucky now makes Charlie feel oddly guilty for not living up to the reputation set by her namesake.

“Is that your thing?” Josh says. “Movies?”

“They’re more than just my thing,” Charlie says. “Movies are my life. And my major. Film theory.”

“Like, learning how to make them?”

“Studying them. Learning how they tick. Understanding what works and what doesn’t.Appreciatingthem.”

She’s said all this before, at one time or another. To Maddy, when they were thrust together in the same dorm room the first day of their freshman year. To Robbie, the night they met in the library. To anyone who would listen, really. Charlie is a disciple, preaching the gospel of cinema.

“But why movies?” Josh asks.

“Because they take our world and improve upon it,” Charlie says. “Movies are magical that way. Everything is magnified. The colors are brighter. The shadows are darker. The action more violent and the love affairs more passionate. People break out into song. Or they used to. The emotions—love, hate, fear, laughter—are all bigger. And the people! All those beautiful faces in full close-up. So beautiful it’s hard to look away.”

She pauses, aware she’s been swept up in movie talk. But there’s still one more thing she wants to say. Sheneedsto say it, because it’s true.

“Movies are like life,” she finally says. “Only better.”

She leaves out another truth, which is that you can get lost in movies. Charlie learned that the day her parents died, when Nana Norma came to stay for good.

The wreck happened on a Saturday morning in mid-July. Herparents had left early to go to the lawn and garden place two towns over, waking her long enough to say they’d be back by ten.

Charlie didn’t think much of it when ten came and went and they still weren’t home. Same thing when the grandfather clock in the living room struck eleven. Fifteen minutes later, a cop came to the door. Deputy Anderson. Her friend Katie’s dad. She’d slept over at Katie’s house once when she was ten, and Mr. Anderson made them pancakes the next morning. It was the first thing Charlie thought of when she saw him on the doorstep. Mr. Anderson standing over the stove, spatula in hand, flipping pancakes as wide as dinner plates.

But then she saw the hat in his hands. And the gray tint to his face. And the uncertain half shuffle he did on the welcome mat, as if forcing his legs not to run away.

Seeing all of that, Charlie knew something horrible had happened.

Deputy Anderson cleared his throat and said, “I’m afraid I have bad news, Charlie.”

She barely heard the rest, registering only the most important snippets. Accident. Highway. Killed instantly.

By that time, Mrs. Anderson was there, no doubt brought as backup, pulling Charlie into her arms and saying, “Is there someone we can call, honey? Family?”

Charlie whimpered yes. There was Nana Norma. And then she broke down crying and didn’t stop until hours had passed and Nana Norma was there.

Nana Norma used to be an actress. Or had tried to be. As soon as she turned eighteen, she did the whole hop-on-a-bus-to-Hollywood cliché, like a million other small-town girls who’d been told they were pretty or had talent. Nana Norma had both. Charlie’s seen the pictures of the beautiful brunette with the Rita Hayworth figure, and she’s heard her grandmother singing in the kitchen when she thought no one else was around to hear it.

What young Norma Harrison didn’t have was luck. After a year of checking coats, going on auditions, and not getting even a millimeter past the dream stage, she hopped back on that bus and returned to Ohio a little harder and a lot humbled.

But it didn’t diminish her love of movies. Or pictures, as she still calls them, like she’s a walking, talkingVarietyheadline.

“Let’s watch a picture,” she said to Charlie that first, awkward night, both of them too bowled over with grief to do anything but sit there, silent and shell-shocked.

Charlie hadn’t wanted to. At the time, she wasn’t much of a movie fan, despite always knowing how she got her name. That was Nana Norma’s doing. She had a thing for Hitchcock and instilled that love in Charlie’s mother.

“It’ll make you feel better,” Nana Norma told her. “Trust me.”

Charlie relented and joined her on the couch, where they watched old movies all night and into the dawn. The characters talked tough and smoked and drank glass after glass of whiskey. Even the women. There were murders and double-crosses and stolen glances so scorched with lust it made Charlie’s cheeks turn red.

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