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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.
The blow is hard.
A firecracker of pain.
Charlie’s head smacks against the driver’s-side window.
She sees stars as Robbie leaps on top of her.
“Shh,” he says. “It’ll all be over soon.”
Then he grabs Charlie by the hair and shoves her head underwater.
INT. VOLVO—NIGHT
Robbie keeps Charlie’s head submerged, although he doesn’t want to do it. Not this. Not to her. Not while she’s kicking and thrashing and flailing just below the surface.
She’s special. Exactly like him—even though she refuses to admit it. And people like them are rare. They hide their specialness under a bushel, only revealing it to others who are special.
Robbie thought Charlie knew this.
He assumed she knew they were kindred spirits.
But some people don’t realize they’re special—a problem Robbie never had. He knew from an early age who he was. A genius. Athletic. Golden. One look in the mirror and it was clear he was a rarity.
Charlie, though, is different. She doesn’t know how blessed she is. What a gift she has—being able to disappear into fantasy whenever reality gets too painful. People would pay for that kind of ability.
She’s not like Katya, the girl from his neighborhood who strutted up and down the sidewalk like she was hot shit when she wasreally just trash. Her family was the poorest in the neighborhood, their house a wreck, the parents always screaming at each other in the front yard. But Katya thought that she was better than everyone else. It didn’t matter that she was chubby and showed too much skin and was so loud Robbie could hear her coming from two blocks away.
The police still think she ran away from home because he’d buried her body so deep in the woods it’s never been found.
Charlie’s not like Angela, who threw herself at him while working at that bar. As if Robbie would ever deign to fuck someone so worthless. Special girls don’t need to show off in too-tight shirts and too-high skirts. To get his attention, they don’t need to write their number on a napkin and slip it with a wink into his lap.
He offered her a ride back to campus when her shift was done. After she was dead, he took her tooth because he regretted burying Katya so deep and wanted something to remember Angela by.
Charlie’s not like Taylor, who mocked his purchases at the bookstore she worked at, trying to flirt by pretending she was smarter than him when she clearly wasn’t. “I bet I read more than you,” she said, as if he cared a whit about any aspect of her life. A common mistake among people who aren’t special—that they’re worthy of care.
But he pretended to be interested. He waited around after she casually told him her shift was ending soon. By the end of the night, he had a second tooth in his collection.
And Charlie’s definitely not like Maddy, that attention whore. From the moment he met her, he couldn’t stand her. Dressing like that. Talking like that. Doing any pathetic thing she could just to be noticed.
That Robbie found her like he did was a happy accident. He’d been roaming the streets, looking as he always did for those who were special like him and judging the many who weren’t. He headed down the alley, lured by the awful music coming from inside the bar.
And there she was.
Clutching her gaudy purse and fumbling with her lighter.
She whined to him about her awful night, even though he didn’t care. But then she mentioned Charlie, how they’d fought, how she was worried she’d fucked up their friendship for good.
That was when Robbie knew what he had to do. Get rid of Maddy. Have Charlie all to himself.
He’d spent the past year getting to know Charlie, learning from her, even loving her. He had planned their life together. Marriage, kids, careers. They would grow old and be special together, and everyone would envy them.
With that in mind, he didn’t hesitate to kill Maddy, even as she begged for her life.