Survive the Night Read online

  “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?”

  “Sure.”

  Charlie scoops up the wallet and stuffs it in her coat pocket before rushing back to the car and opening the driver’s-side door. Josh then hands her a coffee cup so big she has to hold it with both hands as she slides into the passenger seat. Back inside the car, both of them cradle their steaming cups. Charlie takes a few small, scalding sips to show her appreciation.

  “Thank you for the coffee,” she says after another demonstrative sip.

  “It was no problem.”

  “And I’m sorry about earlier.”

  “It’s fine,” Josh says. “We’re both dealing with shit right now. Emotions are a little raw. Everything’s cool. Ready to go?”

  Charlie gives the pay phone outside the store a brief, disinterested glance and takes another sip of coffee. “Yeah. Let’s roll.”

  It’s not until Josh has started the car and is backing it out of the parking spot that Charlie notices the lump in her coat pocket. Josh’s wallet, all but forgotten. She holds it up and says, “What do you want me to do with this?”

  “Just set it on the dashboard for now.”

  Charlie does, the wallet sliding a few inches as Josh turns the Grand Am onto the main road. It slides agai
n a few seconds later when they veer to the right, hitting the entrance ramp to the interstate. It keeps on sliding as Josh shifts into second gear—a sudden jolt of speed. The wallet drops off the dashboard and into Charlie’s lap, flapping open like bat wings taking flight.

  The first thing she sees are credit cards tucked into individual slats that obscure everything but the tops of Visa and American Express logos. On the other side of the wallet, snug behind a plastic sleeve, is Josh’s driver’s license.

  His license photo is enviably good, the shitty DMV camera somehow managing to highlight his best assets. The jawline. The smile. The great hair. The picture on Charlie’s license makes her look like a stoned zombie—a secondary reason she chose not to get it renewed.

  Charlie’s about to close the wallet when she notices something strange.

  Josh’s driver’s license is issued by the state of Pennsylvania. Not Ohio, which would make sense, considering that’s where he’s from. Even more logical would be a New Jersey license, seeing how Josh told her he’s worked at Olyphant for the past four years.

  But Pennsylvania? That just seems wrong. Even if he lived there before moving to Ohio with his father, it would have expired like her own.

  Charlie’s gaze darts to the date when the license was issued.

  May 1991.

  As current as you can get.

  Then she sees the name printed at the bottom of the license and all the air leaves her lungs.

  It says Jake.

  Not Josh or Joshua or any other variation of the name.

  Jake Collins.

  Charlie snaps the wallet shut and tosses it back on the dashboard. A sinking feeling overwhelms her, as if the car is coming apart and at any second her heels will start scraping asphalt. Her gaze flicks to the road ahead, just in case such a scenario is actually happening and she needs to know what to expect. Ahead of them is a dark ribbon of highway stretching toward the horizon.

  They’ve reached Interstate 80.

  The road that will take them out of New Jersey, all the way across Pennsylvania, and into Ohio.

  And Charlie has no idea who the man driving her there really is.

  TEN P.M.

  INT. GRAND AM—NIGHT

  Charlie keeps her gaze fixed on the highway ahead. There are other cars on it, but not many. Certainly not as many as she thought there’d be. Taillights glow red in the distance—too far away to provide any comfort. The same goes for headlights behind them. A quick glance in the side mirror reveals only one car on their tail. Charlie estimates it’s a quarter mile away. Maybe more.

  It only reinforces the feeling that she’s alone.

  In a car.

  With a stranger.

  “It’s quiet in here.”

  Charlie’s so distracted by the highway and the license and the wallet sitting on the dashboard that at first she doesn’t hear Josh.

  Or Jake.

  Or whoever he is.

  It’s only when he says her name—a curt, curious “Charlie?”—that she snaps out of it and turns his way.

  “What did you say?” she says, studying Josh, double-checking to make sure it really is his picture on that driver’s license, even though there’s no reason he’d be carrying another man’s license. No good reason, that is. No legal one.

  “I said it’s quiet in here.” Josh flashes his killer smile, inadvertently confirming for Charlie that, yes, he is the man pictured on that license. Few people have a smile like that. “Were you watching a movie?”

  Charlie doesn’t know what to do. Once again, her film knowledge—a guidepost for most of her mundane actions—has failed her when she needs it most. She thinks about Shadow of a Doubt and that other Charlie, her namesake. What would she do in this situation?

  She wouldn’t be stupid, that’s for sure.

  She’d be smart. She’d be plucky.

  That was good old Movie Charlie.

  And being plucky means being brave and facing the situation head on. It doesn’t mean throwing open the passenger-side door and flinging herself out of the car, injuries be damned, which is Real Charlie’s first instinct. Her fingers have wrapped around the door handle, even though she doesn’t remember moving them there. She forces her hand into her lap.

  Another thing Movie Charlie wouldn’t do is let Josh know she knows he might be lying to her, which goes against common sense. Most people, if stuck in this scenario, would just flat-out ask if his name is really Jake Collins.

  That’s what Maddy would have done.

  But Maddy’s dead now, maybe because she did exactly that. Called some guy out. Got him angry. Made him want to hurt her.

  And not just any guy.

  The Campus Killer.

  So Charlie stays silent, even though the question is perched on the tip of her tongue, ready to springboard into the air. She starts to wash it away with a splash of coffee but decides against it before taking a sip. If Josh isn’t who he says he is, she’s certainly not going to drink more from the coffee cup he just handed her. Never accept a drink from someone suspicious. That’s Common Sense for Women 101.

  “I’m just thinking,” she says.

  It’s the truth. She is thinking. About the license in Josh’s wallet. About what it means. About why she hopes there’s a simple, rational, non-scary reason behind it.

  “Is it the coffee?” Josh says. “Did I mess up? Too much sugar?”

  “No, it’s fine. It’s great, actually.”

  Charlie pretends to take a long, satisfied swig. As she does, a thought hits her.

  Maybe Josh’s driver’s license is fake. There’s nothing suspicious about that. After all, Charlie herself has a fake ID, procured freshman year through the friend of a friend of a guy Maddy knew from one of her theater classes. It’s the one the police didn’t care about.

  But unlike her, Josh doesn’t need a fake ID. He’s clearly over twenty-one, which makes Charlie wonder why he has it. Sentimental reasons, maybe. Yet that still doesn’t make sense. Even if she understood the idea of keeping a fake ID from your youth, which she doesn’t, it doesn’t explain why Josh carries it in the spot in his wallet reserved for his real driver’s license. Then there’s the date Charlie saw. It’s current. There’s no way a fake ID from five, maybe even ten years ago would sport that date. Also, Josh looked the same age in the license photo as he does now. Unless he’s a vampire, something else is going on here.

  “Mind if I play some music?” Josh says.

  “Yes.”

  “So that’s a no on the music?”

  “No. On the no, I mean.” Charlie hears the anxiety in her voice. She’s flustered. Knowing Movie Charlie never got that way, she takes a breath and says, “What I mean is yes, play some music. Whatever you want.”

  “You’re my guest,” Josh says. “What do you like? And please don’t say Paula Abdul. Or, worse, Amy Grant.”

  Charlie, who saves all her strong opinions for films, doesn’t know what music she likes. She always listened to whatever Maddy was playing, which meant moody alternative pop. The Cure, of course, but also New Order, Depeche Mode, a little R.E.M. Charlie stole one of Maddy’s mixtapes just before her stepfather arrived to collect her things from the dorm. She occasionally listened to it and pretended Maddy was in the room with her.

  “I have no preference,” she says. “Truly.”

  “Driver’s choice, then.”

  Josh flips open the console separating them. When the lid bumps Charlie’s arm, she recoils, startled.

  “Wow, you’re jumpy,” Josh says.

  Yes. Yes, she is. And it’s showing, which needs to stop immediately. Charlie gives him a tight-lipped smile and says, “I wasn’t expecting it, that’s all. My bad.”

  “No worries.”

  He pulls a plastic cassette case from the console. The cover sleeve shows a naked
baby submerged in water, swimming toward a dollar bill on a fishhook. Charlie’s seen the image before. One of the RAs in her dorm has a poster of it on her wall.

  Josh pops the cassette into the car’s tape deck and presses play. An aggressive guitar riff fills the car, followed by a blitz of drums and, hot on its heels, an explosion of sound. Then everything settles into a drumbeat as quick and steady as a runner’s post-sprint heart rate.

  Charlie knows the song. “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” She’d heard it several times thumping through the wall of the dorm room next door. But now, unmuffled, it feels like a primal roar, urging her to scream along.

  “I love these guys,” Josh says. “They’re awesome.”

  While Charlie wouldn’t go that far, she appreciates how the music fills the car, eliminating the need to talk. Now she can just sit here and continue to think about Josh/Jake/Whoever and his driver’s license.

  Sure enough, another theory presents itself: Josh isn’t a legal resident and needs a fake license to drive. That would explain the date. And the picture. And maybe even why it’s a Pennsylvania license and not from New Jersey or Ohio.

  Charlie thinks back to an hour ago, when Josh picked her up. She didn’t look at the Grand Am’s license plate. It never occurred to her to do so. She was too focused on checking the rest of the car for signs she should turn around and leave. If she had and seen Pennsylvania plates, then she’d know for certain Josh is lying about his name.

  But she didn’t look. Not then and not when he was inside the 7-Eleven. Until they stop again—which could be hours—the only way to find out where the car is registered is to check his insurance and registration cards.

  Which, Charlie realizes, could be anywhere. Her parents kept theirs in the glove compartment. Nana Norma keeps hers in her purse. And Maddy, who drove an ugly orange Volkswagen Beetle she’d dubbed Pumpkin, stashed hers behind the driver’s-side visor.