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.