by Riley Sager
It’s the kind of rage that makes Charlie, like Marge before her, want to do unthinkable things. The only difference is that Marge had directed it at the wrong person.
Now Charlie has a chance to do it right.
She shifts the car into drive and lets it start to roll.
“What are you doing?” Robbie says.
“Driving.”
“Where?”
“Away from here.”
Charlie glances in the rearview mirror. Sitting in the back seat, right behind Robbie, is her father.
“Remember, never drive more than five miles over the speed limit,” he says in that father-knows-best voice Charlie couldn’t stand when he was alive but misses like crazy now. “Cops won’t bother you. Not for that.”
Her father pauses, locking eyes with Charlie in the rearview mirror.
“But sometimes,” he says, “sometimes your only choice is to drive like hell.”
Charlie nods, even though her father’s not really in the back seat. Even if it was just a movie in her mind, it’s still good advice.
As her father’s voice echoes in her head, Charlie doesn’t just press down on the gas pedal.
She floors it.
INT. VOLVO—NIGHT
The Volvo takes off down the winding drive like a bottle rocket, its rear tires squealing on the blacktop.
When the car nears the first turn, Charlie doesn’t tap the brakes. Instead, she lets the car keep picking up speed on the approach before cutting the wheel to the left at the last possible moment.
The Volvo fishtails around the bend before regaining a grip on the road as it straightens.
“Slow down,” Robbie says.
He reaches for the steering wheel with his left hand, getting the briefest of grips before Charlie slaps it away.
“Charlie, slow down.”
They reach another sharp turn, and Charlie does the same as before, jerking the wheel, sliding through it, on the thinnest edge of control.
The pliers slide from the glove compartment and plink to the floor.
It distracts Charlie just enough for Robbie to lunge for the steering wheel again. This time, he grabs it tight, giving it a pull. The car almost jerks off the road.
Charlie lets go of the wheel with her right hand and swings at Robbie, her knuckles connecting with his cheek and whipping his head sideways.
“Fuck you,” she says.
The Volvo approaches a third turn. The one with the stone wall close to the waterfall. They come in fast, screaming around the turn, the roar of falling water all around them. Charlie cuts the wheel a second too late and the driver’s side of the Volvo scrapes the wall, grinding against the stone wall. Sparks spray past Charlie’s window.
In the passenger seat, Robbie yells, “Are you trying to kill me?”
“Isn’t that your plan for me?” Charlie says.
Although the Volvo is now flying down a straight section of road, up ahead is the last bend before they reach the bridge. Instead of slowing down, Charlie hits the gas.
“Tell me, Robbie,” she says. “Your plan now is to kill me, right? Because I know who you are. I know what you’ve done.”
The turn is closer now.
A hundred yards away.
Just beyond it is a cluster of trees so dense that the car will be smashed to bits if it crashes into them.
“Admit it,” Charlie tells Robbie.
The turn sits before them.
Now fifty yards away.
Now twenty-five.
“Admit it!” Charlie shouts. “Or I’m going to drive this car straight into those fucking trees!”
“Yes!” Robbie yelps, gripping the dashboard for support as Charlie hits the brakes and, with a death grip on the wheel, skids the Volvo around the corner.
“Yes what?” she says.
“I’m going to kill you.”
Charlie slams the brakes. The Volvo slides to a stop.
When Robbie speaks, his voice is unnervingly calm.
“I don’t want to do it, Charlie,” he says. “I need you to know that. I love you. You might not believe me, but it’s true. And I’m sorry for what I have to do to you. We could have had a wonderful life together.”
Charlie can’t bear to look at him, so she stares out the windshield. Just down the road is the bridge at the base of the waterfall. A short rickety span crossing the ravine. Beneath it, black water churns. It’s nothing compared to the fear rushing through Charlie’s body. Her terror is twice as dark and twice as volatile.
She only thought she was scared earlier. Leaving the diner with Josh. Being tortured by Marge. That wasn’t even a fraction of the fear she feels now.
Because now she wants to live.
Really live.
The way Maddy had lived. The way she had tried to get Charlie to do. Maddy saw what Charlie couldn’t: that she had spent the past four years being an audience member to her own sad existence.
Movies are my life, she had told Josh. It should have been the other way around. Charlie should have been able to say, My life is like the movies.
And now that she realizes it, she’s terrified Robbie is going to take away her chance to do something about it.
With her fists around the steering wheel and the car humming under her, Charlie stares at the bridge over the ravine. In that moment, she understands that she’s in charge of her own destiny.
She’s Ellen Ripley.
She’s Laurie Strode.
She’s Clarice Starling.
She’s Thelma and Louise, kicking up dirt in a final fuck-you as they choose freedom over life.
Their choice. No one else’s.
Now it’s Charlie doing the choosing. Robbie can’t be the one in control.
She reaches for her seat belt, pulls it across her chest, snaps it into place.
She takes a deep breath.
Then she slams the gas pedal against the floor.
The Volvo streaks toward the bridge, shuddering, out of control. Tires screaming. Engine screaming. Robbie screaming. All of it blending into a single scream that’s part human, part machine.
The car thumps onto the bridge, roaring over it.
Halfway across, Charlie yanks the wheel to the right and the Volvo careens toward the bridge’s wooden railing.
A second later, the car smashes through it.
Wood scrapes against metal. An earsplitting friction.
The bridge beneath the tires disappears and the car seems to take flight, although Charlie knows that what it’s really doing is falling.
Arcing over off the bridge and crashing toward the water below.
Charlie lurches forward, her chest pinned against the steering wheel a moment before she’s jerked backward by the seat belt.
Robbie, on the other hand, is thrown like a rag doll against the dashboard.
When the car hits the water, Charlie’s head snaps against the back of the seat. The impact sends a shudder through her body. And as a rush of water engulfs the car, a wave of darkness does the same to Charlie until both she and the car sink beneath it.
INT. VOLVO—NIGHT
Water on the windshield.
That’s what Charlie sees as she regains consciousness.
A line of it runs right across the glass. Above it is night sky and streaks of stars. Below is murky water illuminated by the Volvo’s headlights. Charlie guesses it’s about fifteen feet deep and that the Volvo, pitched forward, will be reaching the bottom sooner rather than later. Water gushes into the car from below, already up to her lap.
Charlie looks to the passenger seat.
Robbie’s still there, wide awake and watching. The slam against the dashboard has left him bruised and bleeding. A large red mark covers half of his face. Blood trickles from his right nostril.
>
“Is this what you wanted?” he says. “To kill us both?”
“No,” Charlie says. “Just you.”
She unhooks her seat belt, not worried about getting out of the car. She knows what to do. Wait until it fills completely with water, which alters the pressure against the side of the car, then open the door and swim out.
She knows because she saw it in a movie.
The water, up to her chest now, keeps rising. As the car fills, it makes a worrisome groaning sound and tilts even farther forward. The Volvo’s headlights sweep across the bottom of the ravine before flickering and going out.
In that newfound darkness, Charlie doesn’t see Robbie’s bent elbow coming right toward her face. She’s only aware of it after the fact, when his elbow slams into the bridge of her nose.
The blow is hard.
A firecracker of pain.
Charlie’s head smacks against the driver’s-side window.
She sees stars as Robbie leaps on top of her.
“Shh,” he says. “It’ll all be over soon.”
Then he grabs Charlie by the hair and shoves her head underwater.
INT. VOLVO—NIGHT
Robbie keeps Charlie’s head submerged, although he doesn’t want to do it. Not this. Not to her. Not while she’s kicking and thrashing and flailing just below the surface.
She’s special. Exactly like him—even though she refuses to admit it. And people like them are rare. They hide their specialness under a bushel, only revealing it to others who are special.
Robbie thought Charlie knew this.
He assumed she knew they were kindred spirits.
But some people don’t realize they’re special—a problem Robbie never had. He knew from an early age who he was. A genius. Athletic. Golden. One look in the mirror and it was clear he was a rarity.
Charlie, though, is different. She doesn’t know how blessed she is. What a gift she has—being able to disappear into fantasy whenever reality gets too painful. People would pay for that kind of ability.
She’s not like Katya, the girl from his neighborhood who strutted up and down the sidewalk like she was hot shit when she was really just trash. Her family was the poorest in the neighborhood, their house a wreck, the parents always screaming at each other in the front yard. But Katya thought that she was better than everyone else. It didn’t matter that she was chubby and showed too much skin and was so loud Robbie could hear her coming from two blocks away.
The police still think she ran away from home because he’d buried her body so deep in the woods it’s never been found.
Charlie’s not like Angela, who threw herself at him while working at that bar. As if Robbie would ever deign to fuck someone so worthless. Special girls don’t need to show off in too-tight shirts and too-high skirts. To get his attention, they don’t need to write their number on a napkin and slip it with a wink into his lap.
He offered her a ride back to campus when her shift was done. After she was dead, he took her tooth because he regretted burying Katya so deep and wanted something to remember Angela by.
Charlie’s not like Taylor, who mocked his purchases at the bookstore she worked at, trying to flirt by pretending she was smarter than him when she clearly wasn’t. “I bet I read more than you,” she said, as if he cared a whit about any aspect of her life. A common mistake among people who aren’t special—that they’re worthy of care.
But he pretended to be interested. He waited around after she casually told him her shift was ending soon. By the end of the night, he had a second tooth in his collection.
And Charlie’s definitely not like Maddy, that attention whore. From the moment he met her, he couldn’t stand her. Dressing like that. Talking like that. Doing any pathetic thing she could just to be noticed.
That Robbie found her like he did was a happy accident. He’d been roaming the streets, looking as he always did for those who were special like him and judging the many who weren’t. He headed down the alley, lured by the awful music coming from inside the bar.
And there she was.
Clutching her gaudy purse and fumbling with her lighter.
She whined to him about her awful night, even though he didn’t care. But then she mentioned Charlie, how they’d fought, how she was worried she’d fucked up their friendship for good.
That was when Robbie knew what he had to do. Get rid of Maddy. Have Charlie all to himself.
He’d spent the past year getting to know Charlie, learning from her, even loving her. He had planned their life together. Marriage, kids, careers. They would grow old and be special together, and everyone would envy them.
With that in mind, he didn’t hesitate to kill Maddy, even as she begged for her life.
But now it’s led to this.
Now he’s making Charlie go away as well. He has no other choice. Keeping her alive is too risky. His specialness outweighs hers.
One small consolation is that he’ll be able to take a tooth. Something to remember Charlie by. The jewelry box that contains the others bobs in the water near his shoulders, as if waiting for a new addition.
His right arm strains to keep Charlie submerged. His spine bends and twists to keep his head above water. His legs press against the seat and the dashboard, giving him leverage.
Under the water, Charlie goes still.
There’s no more kicking, no more thrashing, no more flailing.
All is calm.
But as Robbie starts to pull his hand away, something cold clicks around his right wrist.
Looking down, he sees it’s now encircled by one end of a pair of handcuffs.
Then, with a horror so deep it pierces his soul, he hears another click.
INT. VOLVO—NIGHT
Charlie hadn’t forgotten about Josh’s handcuffs. They were always present in her thoughts, cold and flat in the front pocket of her jeans. She just didn’t know when—or how—to use them.
It wasn’t until Robbie pushed her under the water that she finally knew.
And as she clicks the other end around the steering wheel, Charlie’s glad she waited.
She emerges from the water into a car that’s almost completely filled. There’s about eight inches of air left. Just enough for Charlie to tilt her head back and speak.
The same can’t be said for Robbie.
Thanks to the handcuffs, he can’t keep his mouth above the surface. The waterline is now even with his nose as he uses those big, Bambi eyes to stare up at her. Mere hours ago, that expression would have melted Charlie’s heart. Seeing it now, she feels only anger.
Robbie keeps looking at her, though, beseeching. It’s clear he thinks she has a key to the cuffs.
He’s wrong.
Even if she did know where the keys are, she sure as hell wouldn’t use them to set Robbie free.
“That was for Maddy,” Charlie says, knowing he can still hear her.
She holds up the pair of pliers she’d grabbed off the floor while underwater.
“And this,” she says, “is for Marge.”
MORNING
INT. HOSPITAL—DAY
It’s quiet inside the hospital. Everyone from the nurses to the clerks to the volunteers in their candy cane pinafores works in a subdued hush, even though it’s not very busy. There’s only one other nonemployee at the help desk—a middle-aged man slumped in a chair by the door with a vacant look in his eyes. Charlie hopes he’s just tired, but she doubts it. He has the appearance of someone backhanded with bad news. Charlie suspects she looks the same.
She had been here earlier, before being taken to the police station. A frantic ambulance ride straight from the Mountain Oasis Lodge—the speed necessitated by the other person in the ambulance with her.
Charlie’s injuries were minor. Some scrapes, bruises, and a broken nose from when Robbie elbowed her
in the face. Now a fat strip of medical tape sits across the bridge of it. When Charlie first saw it in the mirror, she couldn’t help but say, to no one in particular, “Chinatown. Roman Polanski. Nineteen seventy-four. Starring Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway.”
The nurse who’d done the taping didn’t get the reference.
“You need to see it,” Charlie told her. “It’s a classic.”
Then it was off to the police station, where she described her long endurance test of a night—leaving out the bits she didn’t think the cops needed to know. They weren’t particularly concerned about the details of why Charlie was at the lodge and how it caught fire and what the others were doing there. All the cops really cared about was that the Campus Killer had not only been identified but that his corpse was found drifting in a sunken Volvo, handcuffed to the steering wheel.
Charlie didn’t fudge the truth about that. “It was self-defense,” she said, and she meant it.
Mostly.
In return for her information, Charlie was told how someone driving along Dead River Road saw the lodge in flames, went to the diner, and called 911 on the same pay phone Charlie had used earlier. When first responders arrived, they found her drenched and shivering on the side of the road leading up to the lodge.
Charlie ended up being the first person they found. She wasn’t the last.
It’s this last person she’s here to see, having been driven back to the hospital from the police station. She’s dry for the most part, although Maddy’s coat is still damp and in dire need of dry cleaning. Charlie could use a good cleaning herself. Her hair is a mess, swimming pool swill still sticks to her in spots, and she smells like a wet dog that’s rolled in something dead.
Now she’s at the door to a hospital room, taking a steadying breath before entering.
Inside, Marge lays in a hospital bed, looking ten times smaller than she did mere hours ago. She’s hooked up to an oxygen tank. A clear tube runs under her nose and loops around both ears.
Charlie had hoped she’d be asleep, but Marge is wide awake and propped up by several pillows. Beside her is a tray table, the breakfast on top of it untouched.