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Charlie doesn’t smile back. She’s still too unnerved by the fact that she imagined an entire game of Twenty Questions. That a movie in her mind lasted that long. That a whole chunk of time was lost.
“I’d rather not,” she says.
“Then let’s do one question each,” Josh suggests. “I ask you something, and then you ask me something.”
“You already know enough about me.”
“You haven’t told me about your parents.”
“What about them?” Charlie says.
“They died in a car accident, right?”
Charlie’s jolted by the question. To mask her unease, she takes a sip of coffee and focuses on the snow hitting the windshield. “How did you know that?”
“I didn’t,” Josh says. “I just assumed it.”
“Fine. How did youassumethat?”
“Because you mentioned that you live with your grandmother, which tells me your parents are no longer alive. You also said you don’t drive, which I assumed was a choice and not because you’re physically incapable of it. Putting all that together, I came to the conclusion that you don’t drive because your parents were killed in a car accident. Turns out I was right.”
A prickle of annoyance joins Charlie’s sense of unease. That’s a lot of assumptions on his part. That they’re all true doesn’t make it feel any less intrusive.
“By that logic, I’m going to assume that since you haven’t mentioned your mother, it means she’s dead, too.”
“She might be,” Josh says. “I don’t know. She left when I was eight. I haven’t seen or heard from her since.”
Charlie doesn’t know what to say to that, so she says nothing.
“It was Halloween,” Josh says. “I remember because I dressed up as Batman that year. And it was a real costume, too. Not one of those cheap masks and plastic capes you get at the drugstore. My mother spent weeks making it for me. She was good with a sewing machine, I’ll give her that. She made a great costume. I was so excited to show it off, you know? I couldn’t wait for people to see me as Batman.”
“Why all this excitement about Batman?”
“Because he was the coolest.”
“Batman?” Charlie says, incredulous. She’s seen both the cheesy sixties TV show and the dark, dour Tim Burton movie. Neither of those Batmen struck her as particularly cool.
“To an eight-year-old, yeah,” Josh says. “Especially one who felta little weird and awkward and whose parents wouldn’t stop fighting.”
His voice grows soft, confessional.
“When I’d see my dad start drinking and my mom get that disapproving look in her eyes, I knew it was only a matter of time before a fight broke out. So whenever that happened, I’d grab some Batman comic, crawl under the covers, and pretend I was inside that comic book, moving from panel to panel. It didn’t matter if I was scared that the Joker or the Riddler was trying to get me. It was better than being in that house with those people screaming at each other downstairs.”
“They were like movies in your mind,” Charlie says.
“I guess so,” Josh says. “My version of it, yeah. So I was desperate to actuallybeBatman for a night. I put the costume on and my dad took me out trick-or-treating and I got more candy that year than I ever had before. And I knew it was because of that costume. Because of how great it looked. When we got home, my arms were tired from carrying all that candy.”
Josh gives a small, sad chuckle.
“And my mother, well, she was gone. While we were out, she’d collected a few things, threw them in a suitcase, and left. She wrote a note. ‘I’m sorry.’ That’s all it said. No explanation. No way to contact her. Just that meager apology. It was like she had just vanished. And I know, that’s what all deaths feel like. The person is there and then they’re not and you have to adjust to life without them. But what made it so hard was that my motherchoseto leave. She planned to go that way—without a goodbye. I know because of the costume. She’d never spent that much time on one before, and I think it’s because she had already made up her mind that she was going to leave. And so she put all her love and attention into that one stupid Batman costume, because she knew it would be the last thing she ever did for me.”
He stops talking, letting his story—that long, sad tale—linger in the car like smoke.
“Do you still miss her?” Charlie says.
“Sometimes. Do you still miss your parents?”
Charlie nods. “And I miss Maddy.”