by Riley Sager
Charlie tightens her grip on the door handle, partly to steady herself as the Grand Am careens through another hairpin curve and partly in case she decides to risk it and jump anyway, even though that would be tantamount to suicide. The mountainside is so close to the car—a presence as unnerving as Josh and likely more dangerous. Chunks of stone litter the road’s narrow shoulder. The remains of boulders that have fallen from the hillside and crashed to earth.
That’s what her skull would look like if she jumped.
Broken bits of bone strewn among the rocks.
Within seconds, they’ve reached the bridge that spans the Delaware River, and leaping onto the side of the road isn’t even an option. There’s no side of the road to jump to. Just a thin strip of gravel-studded blacktop and concrete bridge railing. Beyond that, dozens of feet below, is dark water.
Jumping now would be suicide.
But there’s light ahead. A beacon Charlie had completely forgotten about until this moment.
A toll plaza.
Six lanes of booths blocking the entire westbound highway just on the other side of the bridge.
Josh will have no choice but to slow down.
And when he does, Charlie will make her move.
As the Grand Am continues across the bridge and the toll plaza lights get brighter, Charlie runs through the motions in her head. An action movie of her making.
Wait for Josh to slow the car.
Fling the door open before he brings it to a complete stop.
Then run.
Out of the car.
Into the next toll lane.
Then the next and the next and the next.
She’ll run screaming and not cease until another car stops for her or a tollbooth operator grabs her or she reaches some place that’s safe. There are other roads nearby. Ones with houses and businesses and onlookers who’ll hopefully come to her rescue.
The toll plaza is closer now, their lane crossed by one of those flimsy wooden gates that serve as symbols more than anything else. A car could smash right through it, something Charlie fears Josh might try to do. But then he taps the brakes and the speedometer plummets from sixty-five to forty-five to twenty-five.
Charlie squeezes the door handle.
Waiting.
Waiting.
Waiting as the car slows to fifteen, ten, five.
Now, a voice in Charlie’s head shouts. It might be her mother’s voice. It might be Maddy’s. Most likely it’s a combination of the two, their message loud and clear. Run now.
Charlie’s body tightens. Getting ready. Preparing for the sprint.
Run! Maddy and her mother keep screaming in her skull. Now!
Another voice joins them.
Josh.
Speaking calmly from the driver’s seat.
“Charlie?”
INT. GRAND AM—NIGHT
Charlie hears music.
The opening chords of a song she thought they already started listening to.
Nirvana.
“Come as You Are.”
“That must have been one hell of a movie,” Josh says.
Shock stills Charlie’s hand. She finds herself turning to face Josh, even though she knows she should be doing the opposite.
Opening the door.
Running to safety.
But what Josh just said holds her in place, forcing her to ask, “What do you mean?”
“A movie in your mind,” Josh says. “You just had one. I could tell.”
He brings the Grand Am to a full stop at the tollbooth. He then reaches across the console, his arm invading Charlie’s side of the car, and for a split second she thinks he’s about to reveal his true nature.
One she started to suspect minutes and miles ago.
She flinches, waiting.
But all Josh does is retrieve his wallet from the dashboard. If he notices Charlie’s reaction—and how could he have missed it?—he doesn’t show it. He simply plucks a five-dollar bill from the wallet, rolls down the window, and nods to the toll collector, a stout woman stifling a yawn.
“You look as tired as I feel,” Josh says, oozing charm as he hands her the five and palms the change. “Hope you got some strong coffee on you.”
“I do,” the toll collector says. “I’m gonna need it.”
Josh stuffs the cash back into his wallet, arranging it. He then shoves the wallet into his back left pocket. Charlie watches him do it, her body buzzing with uncertainty. What was Josh talking about? There was no movie in her mind.
Right?
Charlie’s fingers flex against the door handle, urging the rest of her to just pull it, just get out, just get away. She can’t bring herself to do it. She needs to know what Josh meant.
“Shift just starting?” he asks the toll collector.
“Yeah. Long night ahead.”
“Hope it goes quick for you.”
As Josh rolls up the window, Charlie’s hit with a desperate need to yell to the toll collector for help. Her mouth drops open, but she doesn’t know what to say. Josh just said she experienced a movie in her mind, and she has no idea why or what it could mean. And now it’s too late, because the window is shut and the car’s in motion again. The Grand Am passes the gate and leaves the toll plaza, its lights receding in the rearview mirror as the car picks up speed.
Fifteen miles per hour. Twenty-five. Thirty-five.
It’s not until they hit fifty-five that curiosity gets the best of Charlie. She clears her throat, trying to rid the fear that coats her tongue like drying paint, and says, “What were you talking about back there?”
“You went to the movies,” Josh says. “Your eyes were open, but you were totally zoned out.”
But that doesn’t make any sense. When Charlie sees a movie in her mind, the second it’s over she understands it was all in her mind’s eye. That it wasn’t real, even though it felt like it. It feels like being nudged awake when you fall asleep in class. Disorienting only for the tiny sliver of time it takes to understand what happened.
She’s never, not once, thought that what she experienced was still real after the fact.
“For how long?” she says.
“Awhile, I guess.”
Charlie scans the dashboard, hoping to see a clock that might tell her what Josh can’t—or won’t. But there isn’t a clock on the dashboard. No surprise there. Maddy’s car didn’t have a clock, either. Only fancier cars do, like the tan Mercedes Nana Norma inherited from one of her elderly boyfriends who’d passed away two summers ago.
“I need you to be more specific than that,” she says.
“Why does it matter?”
It matters because she has no idea what really happened and what was just a dark, twisted fantasy occurring only in her mind. One that still might be occurring, although Charlie has her doubts. She assumes she’d have snapped out of it by now. Then there’s the fact that everything currently feels depressingly real. The movies in her mind are usually stylized. Life amplified. This has the dullness of reality.
“Just give me a time,” she says.
She finds herself hoping Josh will give her an outlandish figure. One long enough to erase every unsettling thing she’s experienced during the drive. It could easily happen. A long drive. Nothing to see out the window but night. Boredom settling in, just like it did when she was a kid. Her thoughts drifting, turning the drab reality of a car trip into something exciting, something new.
“Five minutes,” Josh says, sounding like he picked that number simply because he thinks it will please her.
“You sure?”
“Maybe six. Or longer. I honestly don’t know.”
Charlie wonders if Josh is being vague on purpose. That he knows he slipped up by mentioning the tooth and is now trying to cover it by confusing her. Then
again, it’s also possible he truly doesn’t know how long she was lost in her own head and is trying to be helpful.
“You have to have some idea of how long it lasted,” she says. “I was sitting next to you the entire time.”
“I don’t get why you’re asking me all these questions,” Josh says, growing annoyed. “It’s been nonstop ever since we hit the highway. If I’d known this would become an interrogation, I wouldn’t have offered you a ride.”
This is, in its own backhanded way, helpful. Charlie hopes that through Josh’s experience of the drive she’ll get a better idea of her own.
“So I did ask you all those questions?” she says.
“Yes. About my dad and where I grew up and my damn work schedule.”
Since that part was real, so was everything that came before it. Including her seeing Josh’s driver’s license, which prompted all those questions in the first place. That particular worry hasn’t changed.
It still exists.
It’s still potentially dangerous.
As if to underscore that thought, Josh says, “Are you scared of me, Charlie? I get the feeling I make you nervous. Can’t say I blame you. Considering what happened to your friend and all. In fact, I’d be surprised if you weren’t nervous. You don’t know me. Not really. Don’t know what I’m capable of doing.”
Charlie eyes him from the other side of the car. His expression reveals nothing. It’s just a blank slate facing an open road. She hates how unreadable he is. So maddeningly opaque. Yet she’s jealous, too. She longs to know how he does it. How it seems so easy for him to hide his emotions when it feels like her every thought and feeling are visible, like an image projected onto a movie screen.
“Yes,” she says. Since he clearly suspects it, there’s no point in denying it. “You make me nervous.”
“Why?”
Because her best friend was murdered and she thinks Josh is the man who did it and if she can’t even trust her mind, then she sure as hell isn’t going to trust him. He’s lied to her, after all. This uncertainty about the movie in her mind doesn’t change that.
“Because I know you’re lying,” she blurts out. “I know your name isn’t Josh Baxter. I saw your driver’s license.”
Josh furrows his brow. “I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about, Charlie.”
“I saw it, Josh. Or should I start calling you Jake?”
The furrow across Josh’s forehead grows deeper—a ridge of confusion stretching from temple to temple. “Who’s Jake?”
“Your real name,” Charlie says. “Which I saw on your real driver’s license. When your wallet fell off the dashboard, it flopped open and there it was. Jake Collins.”
Josh laughs. A low, incredulous chuckle.
“Is that what you really think? That I’ve been lying about my name?”
“And other things,” Charlie says, finally releasing the suspicion she’d been holding back since Josh first steered them onto the highway. “You didn’t work at Olyphant. Because if you did, you’d know that there really is a Madison Hall there.”
Josh grows quiet, which Charlie takes as a sign he knows he’s been busted about at least one untruth.
“You’re right,” he finally says. “I never worked at the university. I never went there, either. I made all of that up. For the past four years I’ve been working at the Radio Shack just off campus. We passed it as we were leaving.”
Charlie nods, taking it in. Truth at last. A small, tiny, inconsequential bit of it.
“Obvious question,” she says. “Why did you lie about that?”
“Would you have agreed to get in a car with me if I told you the truth?”
“No,” Charlie says, not needing to even think about it. Of course she wouldn’t have. No student in their right mind would ride with some random stranger not associated with the university. “Another obvious question: Why did you need to lure someone into your car?”
“I didn’t lure you,” Josh says.
Charlie shoots him a look. “Well, I sure as fuck feel lured.”
“I didn’t want to be alone. Is that a good enough answer for you? My dad had a stroke, and I felt helpless and sad and didn’t want to drive to Ohio with nothing but all those bad thoughts to keep me company. So I put on this stupid sweatshirt, went to the ride board, and looked for someone to ride with me.”
Josh’s voice has grown quiet, almost sad. When he looks at Charlie, his expression matches his tone. Enough that guilt starts to gain a tiny foothold in Charlie’s heart. As someone going through her own share of pain, she even understands why he did it. Grief and sadness are horrible places to dwell in alone.
Was it deceitful?
Yes.
Was it creepy?
Hell yes.
But it doesn’t mean Josh is dangerous. It doesn’t mean he wants to do Charlie harm.
“You could have just told me that from the start,” she says.
“You wouldn’t have believed me,” Josh says. “It seems to me like you don’t believe a word I’ve said.”
“You haven’t given me any reason to,” Charlie says. “I know your real name, remember.”
“I gave you my real name.”
Using only one hand to steer, Josh pulls the wallet from his back pocket. He hands it to Charlie, who looks at it like it’s something venomous. A snake ready to strike.
“Go on,” he urges. “See for yourself.”
Charlie takes the wallet, holding it by a corner between her thumb and forefinger, as if she still expects it to bite. She places it in her lap, hesitant. She already knows what she’s going to see. A Pennsylvania driver’s license with Josh’s picture and the name Jake Collins.
But when she opens the wallet, she finds no such thing. Inside, snug behind its clear plastic sleeve, is a license different from the one she saw. The picture’s the same—Josh’s perfect genetics still shining through. But the license itself is a New Jersey one. And printed across the bottom, in letters clear as day, is the name Josh Baxter.
“Now are you convinced?” he says.
“I don’t understand.”
“I do,” Josh says.
Charlie knows what he’s implying—that it was another movie in her mind.
“No,” she says. “I know what I saw.”
“What you think you saw,” Josh says.
Charlie stares at the license in her lap, not blinking, as if that might somehow change it back to the one she saw earlier. Or thought she saw, to put Josh’s spin on it. As she keeps staring, Charlie realizes how ridiculous it is to want Josh to be lying about his name. But the alternative is far more frightening. Because if she’s wrong about the license—and, on the surface, it looks like she’s very wrong—then she could be wrong about everything that’s happened since she got into the car.
Charlie’s head starts to spin—a full-fledged Tilt-a-Whirl that only gets faster the longer she looks at Josh’s license. She slaps the wallet shut, opens the center console, and drops it inside.
“Come as You Are,” which had still been blasting from the stereo, ends and another song begins. The sudden change in music hits a switch in Charlie’s brain.
Josh turned off the stereo right before he started his increasingly uncomfortable game of Twenty Questions. But the stereo was playing when Charlie emerged from the alleged movie in her mind. That makes it likely everything she experienced while the stereo was off might not have happened.
Including the answer to Josh’s game.
A tooth.
Could that also have just been in her head? Could the one thing that made her think Josh is the Campus Killer not be real?
“Did we play Twenty Questions?” she says.
Josh, about to take a drink from his cup of coffee, stops mid-sip. “What?”
“The game. Twenty
Questions.”
“I know what it is, Charlie.”
“So did we play it? After you shut off the stereo?”
Charlie presses the stop button on the car stereo, as if Josh needs a demonstration to fully understand. The sudden quiet in the car is discomfiting. It makes her realize just how long Josh waits before answering. Is that because he has no idea what she’s referring to? Or is it because he knows exactly what she means and is debating whether to lie about it?
“I never turned off the stereo,” Josh says.
“You did. You turned off the music and we played Twenty Questions. I asked. You answered. And I need—” Charlie’s voice catches on the word, dragging it out, making it clear just how important this is to her. “I need to know if that actually happened.”
“Why?”
Because the answer would tell her if she might be trapped in a car with a serial killer, that’s why. Only Charlie can’t say that to Josh. If he knew what she was thinking, then he’d undoubtedly lie. Yes, there’s a chance he could lie even without knowing her suspicions, but Charlie’s not going to make that decision for him.
“Please just tell me,” she says. “Did we play Twenty Questions?”
Josh’s answer comes startlingly fast. No waiting this time. Just an instant “No” tossed at her like a lit firecracker.
The answer she wanted yet dreaded.
“Positive?” she says.
“Yes, Charlie. I’m absolutely certain we didn’t play Twenty Questions.”
Charlie sits with that a moment, letting it seep into her brain like one of those little orange pills she used to take. And should still be taking. Because without them, there’s nothing stopping the movies in her mind from taking over. From not knowing what is reality and what is an illusion. A fucked-up form of Hollywood magic.
No seeing Josh’s real name on his real driver’s license.