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Ones different from what Josh has been feeding her all night, but lies nonetheless. Meager excuses to hide the truth: that part of her doesn’twantto get away from Josh.
Not just yet.
Charlie had left home with only a vague understanding about all the dangers young women face. Youngstown wasn’t Mayberry. Bad things happened there all the time. Date rape and abuse and ahundred tiny threats directed at women. But Charlie hadn’t given them much thought. Not even after her high school health teacher did a lesson on sexual assault. Or on the day she left for Olyphant and Nana Norma gave her that tiny pink bottle of pepper spray. Or during the self-defense class every female Olyphant student had to take the week of orientation.
It took Maddy being killed for her to understand the brutal truth that there are men out there who won’t hesitate to hurt women.
Men like Josh.
After Maddy’s murder, Charlie had assumed there was nothing she could do about it. She loved Maddy and Maddy loved her and they would have been friends forever, no matter what Robbie thought. But then she was gone and all that remained was a burning rage. So Charlie internalized it and blamed herself.
For leaving Maddy behind.
For telling her to fuck off as she departed.
For not being able to identify Josh after she saw him outside the bar.
She blamed herself and hated herself and punished herself because that’s what women are taught to do. Blame themselves. Blame the victims. Tell themselves that since the Angela Dunleavys and Taylor Morrisons and Madeline Forresters of the world had sat through the same lessons on assault, received the same tiny bottles of pepper spray, and endured the same self-defense classes, it must have been their fault they were attacked. Or raped. Or killed.
No one tells women that none of it is their fault. That the blame falls squarely on the awful men who do terrible things and the fucked-up society that raises them, molds them, makes excuses for them. People don’t want to admit that there are monsters in their midst, so the monsters continue to roam free and the cycle of violence and blame continues.
A thought pops into Charlie’s brain, so sudden and jolting she can actually hear it. A light click at the back of her head as her synapses explode like fireworks.
If Josh leaves, she’ll be safe. But nothing will stop him from hurting someone else. Someone like Maddy. The world is full of them. And none of them are safe while Josh roams free.
Marge was right. Thereisa special place in hell for women who don’t help other women. Charlie knows it well, having spent the past two months dwelling there. Now it’s time to get the fuck out.
Something in Charlie’s chest begins to harden.
Her heart.
Shattered after Maddy died, it’s now being put back together, its jagged pieces fitting into place, bound together by anger.
Another look in the mirror confirms it. Sheischanging. Her face has gained some color. A pink flush—brighter than the bathroom walls—spreads across her cheeks, her forehead, the bridge of her nose.
Like her heart, her eyes have also hardened. Where once she had seen only despair, Charlie now sees a flicker of fire.
She feels bold.
Fearless.
Dangerous.
Wrapped in Maddy’s red coat, she feels almost possessed by all the tough women she’s admired in movies. Stanwyck inDouble Indemnity. Hayworth inThe Lady from Shanghai. Crawford in, well, everything. The kind of women men don’t know if they want to kiss or kill. Women who claw and scrape through life because they have to.
Now it’s Charlie’s turn.
She’s no longer the scared, self-loathing girl she was when she left campus. She’s something else.
A fucking femme fatale.
She’s going to leave this bathroom, then the diner, and get back into the car with Josh.
She doesn’t know how and doesn’t know when, but she’s going to make him pay for what he’s done.
And she intends to enjoy it.
“Charlie?”