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.
No state trooper riding up beside them to rescue her like a cowboy in a John Ford flick.
No huffing hot breath onto the window. Or writing “HELP” on the fogged glass. Or plotting a daring leap from the moving car.
Is such a thing even possible? Could she have gotten so lost in her own specific brand of make-believe that it’s started to bleed into reality?
That’s never happened before.
Until now, Charlie had thought of the movies in her mind as brief moments. Small windows of time in which fantasy eclipses harsh reality. No different from the way cinematographers used to rub Vaseline on the camera’s lens to give the leading lady a gauzy glow.
And when one ends, Charlie knows it’s over. Her body snaps back to the present—the equivalent of the credits rolling and the theater lights coming up.
But the past hour was more like a fever dream. Real and surreal and alive.
The idea that some of her memories, her past, her life might not have occurred the way she assumes they did is almost as unnerving as thinking she’s in a car with a serial killer. It’s so concerning that she’s reluctant to believe it. Why should she trust Josh over her own mind?