Not in bed. Not in her dorm room.
She’s in a wooden chair. Creaky. Uncomfortable. Its ramrod-straight back forces her to sit unnaturally upright, her spine pinched from the effort. She tries to slouch but can’t. It’s as if she’s been glued to the chair.
It isn’t until she tries to move her arms that she notices they’ve been strapped down with ropes. They wind around her wrists and the chair’s arms, binding them together, the ropes so tight they dig into her skin and cut off the circulation in her hands. Her fingers have turned white. She wiggles them but feels nothing.
It’s the same with her toes, thanks to rope around her ankles, lashing her legs to the chair.
More rope winds around her upper body in two spots—just under her rib cage and again at the base of her neck. It’s so tight that she struggles to breath. Panic fills her like water, threatening to drown her.
“Help!” she yells, her voice gurgling, like there really is water in her lungs. “Someone please help me!”
Marge speaks in the darkness, her voice husky, hushed.
“No one can hear you, sweetie. No one but me.”
A light is switched on. A single bare bulb hanging from the ceiling that casts a bright, unsparing light on her surroundings.
A small room.
Perfectly square.
Along the walls, shelves stretch from floor to ceiling. Filling them are cans and boxes and cartons and bins. Marge leans against one of the shelves, watching her.
“Welcome back,” she says.
Through the doorway behind her, Charlie can see a walk-in refrigerator on the other side of a narrow hallway. Its door is shut tight, a steady hum muffled behind it. To the right of the fridge is a stack of wooden crates, beyond which Charlie can see a sliver of kitchen.
She’s still in the diner.
She has no idea why.
Charlie struggles beneath her restraints, the chair bucking. “What’s going on?” she says.
“It’s best if you stay quiet,” Marge says.
That’s not going to happen. Not while Charlie’s tied to a chair in what looks to be a storeroom.
“I don’t know why you’re doing this, but it’s not too late to stop. You can just let me go and I’ll leave and never tell anyone.”
That idea doesn’t go over well with Marge. The waitress scowls and thrusts a hand into her apron pocket.
“Are you going to hurt me?” Charlie says.
“I don’t know yet,” Marge replies. “Maybe. That depends on you.”
Charlie doesn’t know what to do with that information. It sits in her brain like a rock in a stream—heavy and immobile, even though the current swirls all around it.
“What do you want from me?”
A circle of light forms on the refrigerator behind Marge, growing larger. Charlie assumes it’s from a car pulling into the parking lot, its high beams shining through the round window in the door leading to the main dining room. That would put the door and dining room to their left. Good to know for when Charlie tries to escape. If she gets the chance. The ropes around her remain tight no matter how much she strains against them.
The light on the fridge vanishes.
Charlie hears—or thinks she hears—a car door slowly opening. She’s only certain when she hears a telltale slam two seconds later.
Definitely a car door.
Someone’s out there.
And from the look of concern that crosses Marge’s face, she’s not expecting whoever it is.
Charlie’s heart pounds in her ears. This could be help. It could mean rescue. She opens her mouth to scream, but Marge is upon her before she can let it out, stuffing a dish towel into her mouth. It tastes faintly like dish soap. Enough to make Charlie gag as Marge connects the ends of the towel in a tight knot at the back of her head.
Out front, someone tries the diner’s front door, finding it locked. Undeterred, whoever it is raps on the glass.
“Hello? Is anyone there?”
Charlie gasps beneath the dish towel, sending more soap taste against the back of her throat.
She’d recognize that voice from a mile away.
Robbie.
“Hello?” he calls again, punctuating it with another knock on the door.
Charlie goes completely silent and still, wondering if she’s mistaken. There’s no way it could be Robbie. It must be someone else. The police. A hungry motorist. Anyone but her boyfriend, who would have needed to drive more than an hour to get here. She’s proven wrong when the person outside calls, “Charlie? Are you in there?”
It is Robbie.
Charlie thinks: He’s here to rescue her.
She thinks: He can easily overpower Marge.
She thinks: In a few seconds, this will all be over.
But then another thought emerges, one less hopeful than the others.
She thinks: Right now—this very moment—could be another movie in her mind. It doesn’t matter that Marge also hears him, her lips forming an irritated scowl. That might also just be part of the movie. Irrational hope projected onto the backs of her eyelids.
Robbie calls her name again, prompting Marge to reach into her apron pocket and remove what she’s been hiding there.
A pistol.
It’s small. Almost dainty. There’s ivory at the handle and a polished shine to the slate-gray barrel.
“Make one sound,” Marge whispers, “and I’ll shoot him.”
She leaves the storeroom and pushes into the dining room. Left alone, Charlie feels hope and fear collide in her chest as, silent behind the makeshift gag, she listens to Marge unlock the front door and open it just a crack.
“Sorry,” Marge says, using her sassy-yet-weary waitress voice. “We’re closed.”
Charlie pictures her standing by the dessert case, the gun hidden in her apron as Robbie tries to peer around her, deeper into the diner.
“Was there a girl here earlier?” Robbie says.
“Lots of girls come here, hon.”
“How many were here tonight?”
“Can’t say I was keeping count.”
Charlie’s tempted to make noise, whether it’s screaming into her gag or toppling the chair or trying to throw herself against one of the shelves. She knows Robbie could easily overpower Marge. He’s got her beat by several inches and probably fifty pounds of muscle. The only thing keeping her silent is the gun.
Before tonight, Charlie wouldn’t have believed that someone like Marge was capable of doing harm. But in the span of a few hours she now knows better. Now she knows that ordinary people are capable of violent, vicious deeds. Look at her, for example. She just plunged a knife into a man’s stomach and left him to die.