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Charlie’s mind starts whirling, clicking like an old movie projector. It spins out a thought. One that should have arrived much sooner.
“Come as You Are” had just started playing before she dropped into that long, vivid mental movie and was still playing when she woke from it.
That makes sense. Charlie had once read that dreams that feel like hours can pass in mere minutes, and she assumes the same is true for movies in her mind. The song started, the movie unspooled in her thoughts, and when it was over, “Come as You Are” was still playing.
But when Charlie snapped out of the alleged movie in her mind, it was still the beginning of the song that she had heard. That definitely doesn’t make sense, especially since Josh told her she’d been zoned out for more than five minutes.
Then there’s the distance they traveled during that time. On themap at the rest stop, it would have been about the width of her index finger, which meant it was miles when blown up to full scale. Far more ground than can be covered during the course of a single song, let alone a few seconds.
Which means the music hadn’t been continuous.
Josh had indeed turned off the stereo.
Charlie watched him do it. It hadn’t all been in her head, like he led her to believe. It was real. Ithappened.
And if that was real, then what immediately followed might also be real. Including Twenty Questions.
Let’s play, Josh had said.
Those questions might not have been just her thoughts. They might not have been only dialogue in her mind.
There’s a chance that she trulyspokethem. Which means there’s also a chance Josh answered them until she winnowed it down to a single object that on the surface is so innocent but turns out to be terrifying with the proper context.
A tooth.
“You’re just what?” Josh says, reminding Charlie that she never finished her sentence.
“Tired,” she says. “So tired.”
The word clouds the window. Just a tad. In that wisp of fog on the glass, Charlie can make out the edge of what appears to be a letter.
Her eyes go wide.
In shock.
In fear.
Her heart does the opposite. It contracts, shrinking into her chest the way a turtle retreats into its shell, trying to avoid the threat it senses is coming. But Charlie knows it’s too late. The threat is already here.
She confirms it by saying three more words heavy on the sibilant syllables.
“Just so exhausted.”
The fog on the window grows. An expanding gray circle.
Inside it, clearly scrawled by her unsteady finger, is a single word. Written backward. Readable to someone on the outside looking in.
HELP
INT. GRAND AM—NIGHT
Charlie stares at the word, her right eye twitching, as if it no longer wants to look at it. It’s the twitch that tells her this isn’t a movie in her mind.
That doesn’t keep her from wishing, hoping, praying, begging that she’s wrong. If there’s one single right time to have what she’s experiencing not be real, now is that moment. But the snow is still smacking the windshield and the wipers are still moving and Josh is still behind the wheel and the fog on the window is still receding and the word is still clinging to the glass and Charlie knows that all of it is real.
It’salwaysbeen real.
Josh lied to her. About everything.