“I’m sorry,” she says. “I was—”
“Holding that in for a long time.” Josh’s voice is a monotone. His expression is blank. Charlie wonders if he’s feeling hurt or angry or frightened. All are justifiable. If their roles were reversed, she’d be wondering what kind of crazy person she’d just let into her car.
“I didn’t mean—”
Josh stops her with a raised hand. “Let’s just not talk about it.”
“That’s probably for the best.”
No one says anything for the next few minutes. Plunged into silence, they both keep their eyes on the road. The snow has stopped. A sudden ceasing. Almost as if her outburst had frightened it away. Charlie knows that’s stupid to think. It was just a brief November squall, here and gone in minutes, yet she feels guilty all the same.
The car is still quiet when they pass a sign indicating that the entrance ramp to Interstate 80 is two miles ahead. Immediately after that is another sign, this one for 7-Eleven.
The last convenience store before they hit the highway.
If the two of them make it that far. After the way she’s acted, Charlie wouldn’t blame Josh for dumping her on the side of the road and speeding away. Instead, he pulls into the empty 7-Eleven lot, parks near the front door, and cuts the engine.
“I’m getting coffee,” he says. “You want some?”
Charlie notes his tone. Cordial but cool.
“Yes,” she says, speaking the same way, as if she’s talking to a professor she doesn’t like. “Please.”
“How do you take it?”
“Milk and two sugars,” Charlie says, reaching for her backpack on the floor.
“This one’s on me,” Josh says. “I’ll be right back.”
He slides out of the car and hurries into the 7-Eleven. Through the store’s giant front window, Charlie sees him nod hello to the cashier—a kid in a flannel shirt and green knit cap. Behind him, a tiny TV near the ceiling broadcasts the news. President Bush is on the screen, doing an interview with Barbara Walters, as his white-haired wife—a second Barbara—sits beside him. Josh gives the TV a passing glance before moving toward the coffee station.
Charlie knows she should go in with him. It would be the polite thing to do. A signal, however meager, that she’s an active, willing part of this journey. But she doesn’t know how to do that. There’s no cinematic frame of reference for her to follow. As far as she knows, there’s not a heralded I-let-my-best-friend-get-murdered-and-now-I-can’t-function-like-a-normal-human-being movie out there that she hasn’t seen yet.
So she remains in the car, the seat belt still strapped tight across her chest as she tries to pull herself together. She worries she’s going to spend the entirety of the trip like this—nervous and flighty, her emotions as prickly as a ball of barbed wire. It makes her question her decision to leave Olyphant. Not the why of it. She’s certain about that part. What she doubts is how she chose to leave. Maybe it would have been better to wait until Robbie could drive her and not ride with a stranger who, if she keeps this up, really might drop her off in the middle of nowhere. Maybe, despite her urgent desire to leave, she’s just not ready to make this journey without someone she knows.
Outside the car, a pay phone sits a few feet from the convenience store’s front door. Charlie starts to search her backpack for loose change, wondering if she should call Robbie and ask him to take her back to campus. She can even try to make light of the situation, using the code he gave her.
Things took a detour.
Yes, they have. In all manner of ways. Now all she wants is for Robbie to take her back to Olyphant. It’s not that far of a drive. Only thirty minutes. And when they get there, she’ll wait—simply wait—until Thanksgiving.
Then she can go home, try to put all this behind her.
Mind made up and armed with change, Charlie unfastens the seat belt, which retracts with a startling click. When she opens the passenger-side door, the car’s interior light flicks on, bathing her in a sickly yellow glow. She starts to slide out of the car but stops herself when another car pulls into the parking lot. A beige Dodge Omni packed with teenagers. Inside, music pulses, muffled by windows rattling to the beat. The car screeches to a stop two spaces away from Josh’s Grand Am, and a girl immediately pops out of the passenger side. Inside the car, someone shouts for her to grab a bag of Corn Nuts. The girl bows and says, “Yes, my darling dearest.”
She’s young—seventeen at most—but drunk. Charlie can tell by the way she shuffles to the curb on high-heeled boots, hampered further by her skintight minidress. Seeing her gives Charlie a painful twinge. Memories of Maddy, also drunk. The girl even looks a bit like her, with her blond hair and pretty face. And while her clothes aren’t remotely similar—Maddy would never have worn something so current—their attitudes seem to match. Bold and messy and loud.
Charlie supposes there’s a Maddy in every town, in every state. A whole army of brash blond girls who get drunk and do sweeping bows in parking lots and serve their best friends birthday breakfasts of champagne and cake, as Maddy used to do for Charlie each March. The thought pleases her—until she realizes there’s now a town without one.
Making it worse is the music spilling out the Omni’s still-open passenger door.
The Cure.
“Just Like Heaven.”
The same song that was thrumming inside the bar when Charlie spoke those horrible last words to Maddy.
You’re an awful friend. I hope you know that.
Followed by the final two, lobbed over her shoulder like a grenade.
Fuck off.
Charlie recoils back into the car and slams the door shut. All desire to return to Olyphant, even if just for the next ten days, is gone. If this was some kind of sign that she should continue moving forward, Charlie’s noticed it loud and clear. So loud that she covers her hands with her ears to muffle the music, removing them only after not-quite-Maddy gets back into the car with an ice-blue Slurpee, a pack of Marlboro Lights, and a bag of Corn Nuts for her friend.
Josh exits the 7-Eleven as the Omni pulls out of the parking lot. He pushes through the door balancing two jumbo coffees, one stacked atop the other. He uses his chin to steady them, his wallet a buffer between it and the plastic lid of the top cup. When he steps off the curb, the cups bobble and his wallet slides out from under his chin. It hits the asphalt with a splat.
This time, Charlie doesn’t need a cinematic example to understand she must get out of the car and help. So she does, chirping “I’ll get it” before Josh can kneel to pick up the wallet.
“Thanks,” he says. “Can you also get the door?”