“Did you always live in Akron?”
“I grew up in Toledo, remember?”
Damn. She’d hoped he would be easy to trip up. If Josh can be tripped up. Charlie remains aware that he might not be lying. That there might be a silly, simple explanation for why the license in his wallet says the complete opposite of what he’s telling her now.
“That’s right,” she says. “Toledo. Your uncle lives in Akron.”
“My aunt,” Josh says. “My uncle died five years ago.”
“Since you grew up in Ohio, what brought you to Olyphant?”
“I just ended up there. You know how it is. You get a job. Stay a while. Move on to something else. A couple years go by and you do it again.”
Charlie notes the vagueness of his answer, assumes it was that way on purpose, moves on.
“Did you like it there, though? Being a groundskeeper?”
“Janitor,” Josh says.
Charlie nods, disappointed that she again failed to trip him up. She needs to do better.
“Are you sad to be leaving?”
“I guess so,” Josh says. “I haven’t really thought about it. When your dad needs you, you go, right?”
“How long do you think you’ll be home?”
“I don’t know. It depends on how quickly he recovers. If that’s even possible.” Josh’s voice breaks. Just a little. A tiny crack in his otherwise smooth tone. “I was told he’s in pretty rough shape.”
Another vague answer, although this time Charlie’s not as quick to assume it’s intentional. Josh sounds sincere. Enough to give her a twinge of guilt for doubting everything he’s told her. She considers the possibility he’s telling the truth. If so, what does that make her? Paranoid? Heartless?
No, it makes her cautious. After what happened to Maddy, she has every right to be that way. Which is why she resumes her line of questioning.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” she says. “What happened to him again? Heart attack?”
“Stroke,” Josh says. “I just told you that, like, fifteen minutes ago. Boy, you have a terrible memory.”
He looks at Charlie for the first time since the conversation began, and she notices a shimmer of suspicion cross his face. He’s on to her.
Maybe.
He could also be wondering why she’s suddenly asking so many questions. Or why she can’t seem to remember any of his answers. It makes Charlie add another item to her list of things to do, joining “be smart” and “be brave.”
Be careful.
“Smells Like Teen Spirit” ends, replaced with another song Charlie’s heard only through the dorm room wall. She waits a few beats before saying, “Sorry about all the questions. I’ll stop, if you want me to.”
“I don’t mind,” Josh says, a hollow ring in his voice telling Charlie that might not be the truth. He might mind quite a bit.
“I’m just curious,” she adds. “I’ve only seen Olyphant as a student. I think it’s interesting to get a picture of the place from the side of someone who worked there.”
“Even though you’re not going back?”
“I might be,” Charlie says. “At some point.”
“Well, I can’t say it’s all that interesting from the other side.”
“I don’t remember seeing a lot of janitors around,” she says. “What kind of hours did you work? Nights? Weekends?”
“Sometimes. Also days. My hours were all over the map.”
“And you worked in classrooms?”
“And offices. Everywhere, really.”
Josh turns away from the road again to give her another maybe-suspicious-maybe-not look. It’s more than just his answers that are vague, Charlie realizes. It’s his whole persona. Everything about Josh is hard to read.
Now she needs to use it to her advantage.
“What was your favorite building to work in?” she says.
“My favorite?”
“Yeah,” Charlie says. “Everyone has a favorite building on campus. Mine is Madison Hall.”
Josh squints, uncertain. “Is that the one—”
“With the thing on top?” Charlie says. “Yeah.”
“That’s right,” Josh says, nodding along. “I like that one, too.”
Charlie waits a beat. Considering her options. Weighing which is smarter, braver, more careful. Finally, she says, “There is no Madison Hall on campus. I was just messing with you.”
Josh rolls with it, as she hoped he would. Slapping a hand to his cheek, he smiles and says, “No wonder I was confused! You were so convincing, yet I kept thinking, Is she making this up? I’ve never heard of Madison Hall.”
And there it is. She tricked him at last, a fact that provides Charlie with no sense of happiness. The opposite happens. She feels worse knowing that her fears are if not proven, at least justified. Josh is lying to her. At least about working at Olyphant University. And probably about everything else as well.
Because there is a Madison Hall on campus. Right in the center of it. A massive, multicolumn structure that hosts graduations, concerts, and performances. Every student knows of its existence. Which means every employee would, too. Even a janitor.
This leads Charlie to an unnerving conclusion. One that creates the same lump of worry in her gut she got as soon as she saw his license.
Josh doesn’t work at Olyphant.
He never has.
And if he’s not a student and he’s not an employee, then who is he?
And why was he hanging around the ride board in the campus commons?
And—the biggest, scariest question—what, if anything, does he want with Charlie?
INT. GRAND AM—NIGHT
Josh shifts the car into a lower gear as they reach an incline. The beginning of a hilly area that will take them over a ridge and then down through the Delaware Water Gap and into Pennsylvania. With the change in elevation comes fog, wisps of which begin to envelope the Grand Am the higher it climbs. Soon the car is surrounded. Charlie looks out the windshield and sees only thick, gray swirls ahead of them. A glance in the side mirror shows the same thing behind them. Any cars that might be in the vicinity are lost in the mist. A sense of isolation settles over Charlie, drifting around her like the fog.
It’s just her and Josh.
All alone.