Be careful.

“Smells Like Teen Spirit” ends, replaced with another song Charlie’s heard only through the dorm room wall. She waits a few beats before saying, “Sorry about all the questions. I’ll stop, if you want me to.”

“I don’t mind,” Josh says, a hollow ring in his voice telling Charlie that might not be the truth. He might mind quite a bit.

“I’m just curious,” she adds. “I’ve only seen Olyphant as a student. I think it’s interesting to get a picture of the place from the side of someone who worked there.”

“Even though you’re not going back?”

“I might be,” Charlie says. “At some point.”

“Well, I can’t say it’s all that interesting from the other side.”

“I don’t remember seeing a lot of janitors around,” she says. “What kind of hours did you work? Nights? Weekends?”

“Sometimes. Also days. My hours were all over the map.”

“And you worked in classrooms?”

“And offices. Everywhere, really.”

Josh turns away from the road again to give her another maybe-suspicious-maybe-not look. It’s more than just his answers that are vague, Charlie realizes. It’s his whole persona. Everything about Josh is hard to read.

Now she needs to use it to her advantage.

“What was your favorite building to work in?” she says.

“My favorite?”

“Yeah,” Charlie says. “Everyone has a favorite building on campus. Mine is Madison Hall.”

Josh squints, uncertain. “Is that the one—”

“With the thing on top?” Charlie says. “Yeah.”

“That’s right,” Josh says, nodding along. “I like that one, too.”

Charlie waits a beat. Considering her options. Weighing which is smarter, braver, more careful. Finally, she says, “There is no Madison Hall on campus. I was just messing with you.”

Josh rolls with it, as she hoped he would. Slapping a hand to his cheek, he smiles and says, “No wonder I was confused! You were so convincing, yet I kept thinking, Is she making this up? I’ve never heard of Madison Hall.”

And there it is. She tricked him at last, a fact that provides Charlie with no sense of happiness. The opposite happens. She feels worse knowing that her fears are if not proven, at least justified. Josh is lying to her. At least about working at Olyphant University. And probably about everything else as well.

Because there is a Madison Hall on campus. Right in the center of it. A massive, multicolumn structure that hosts graduations, concerts, and performances. Every student knows of its existence. Which means every employee would, too. Even a janitor.

This leads Charlie to an unnerving conclusion. One that creates the same lump of worry in her gut she got as soon as she saw his license.

Josh doesn’t work at Olyphant.

He never has.

And if he’s not a student and he’s not an employee, then who is he?

And why was he hanging around the ride board in the campus commons?

And—the biggest, scariest question—what, if anything, does he want with Charlie?

INT. GRAND AM—NIGHT

Josh shifts the car into a lower gear as they reach an incline. The beginning of a hilly area that will take them over a ridge and then down through the Delaware Water Gap and into Pennsylvania. With the change in elevation comes fog, wisps of which begin to envelope the Grand Am the higher it climbs. Soon the car is surrounded. Charlie looks out the windshield and sees only thick, gray swirls ahead of them. A glance in the side mirror shows the same thing behind them. Any cars that might be in the vicinity are lost in the mist. A sense of isolation settles over Charlie, drifting around her like the fog.

It’s just her and Josh.

All alone.

The song ends and another begins, startling Charlie, who’d stopped noticing the music. She had been too busy thinking. Wondering about Josh. Who he is. What he wants. Lost in her own mental fog, during which her right hand had once again found its way to the door handle at her side. This time, Charlie lets it stay there.

The new song has a slinky bass riff that slightly reminds Charlie of the surf guitar rock her parents listened to constantly. She knows the title of the song, though she’s not sure how.

“Come as You Are.”

Josh shuts off the stereo, and the car is plunged into silence.

“Let’s play,” Josh says.

“Play what?” Charlie replies, trying hard to keep from sounding as nervous as she feels.

“Twenty Questions. If we’re going to play the game, we should do it right.”

Charlie continues to study the side mirror, hoping a car will speed into view behind them. She’d feel better with another set of headlights in sight and not just a muted glow in the distance. It would mean there’s someone else nearby if things go bad. She’s seen enough movies to know how situations can change for the worse in a split second. And she’s had enough life experience to back that up.

Not that she’s certain Josh wants to do her harm. When it comes to the man sitting a mere foot away, nothing is certain. But it’s a possibility. Enough of one that she slides a little closer to the passenger door, trying to put an additional inch between them. Enough to keep her checking the side mirror, looking in vain for those headlights. Enough for the same six words to keep repeating through her head like a good-luck chant.

Be smart. Be brave. Be careful.

“I wasn’t really playing a game,” she says.

“Seemed like it to me.” Josh gives a little shrug, the lift of his shoulder cut short by his grip on the steering wheel. “Seeing how you were messing with me just now. I mean, I assume that’s why you did it. Because we’re playing a game.”

Charlie makes another minuscule edge toward the door. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“Oh, I know,” Josh says. “I’m not mad. I get it. We’re stuck in this car together. Running out of things to say. Why not ask some questions and kid around a bit. So now it’s my turn. Twenty Questions. You ready?”

“I’m really not in the mood right now.”

“Humor me,” Josh says, cajoling. “Pretty please?”

Charlie relents. It’s the right thing to do. Play along, keep him occupied, hope the fog clears and more cars start to surround them.

“Fine,” she says, forcing a polite smile. “Let’s play.”

“Great. I’m thinking of an object. You’ve got twenty questions to figure out what it is. Go.”

Charlie knows the game. She played it on road trips with her parents, back when she was a little girl and they used to drive everywhere. Kings Island and Cedar Point, which were every-summer destinations. But also places outside of Ohio. Niagara Falls. Mount Rushmore. Disney World. Charlie spent every drive slumped in the back seat, sweltering because her father claimed that using the air conditioner wasted gas. When she inevitably got too bored and whiny, her mother would say, “Twenty questions, Charlie. Go.”

There was a standard question she’d always ask first. One designed to narrow things down immediately. Only now, at the start of a very different game, she can’t remember it to save her life. That lump of worry she still feels in her gut tells her Josh isn’t playing this just to amuse himself.

There are stakes involved.

Ones much higher than when she was a kid.

“You going to ask a question?” Josh says.

“Yeah. Just give me another second.”

Charlie closes her eyes and pictures those road trips like grainy home movies. Her father behind the wheel in ridiculous oversize sunglasses that clipped over his regular glasses. Her mother in the front seat with the window down, her hair trailing behind her. Her in the back seat, her sweaty legs sticking to Naugahyde, opening her mouth to speak.

The memory works. The mandatory first question pops into her head, fully formed.

“Is it bigger than a bread box?” she says.

Josh shakes his head. “Negative. One question down. Nineteen to go.”

Charlie’s memory hums like a film projector, quickly giving her the second question she’d always ask.

“Is it alive?”

“Interesting,” Josh says. “I’m going to say no, but someone smarter than me might say yes.”

Charlie considers his response, thinking hard, knowing that if she does, it might push aside all the other thoughts slithering through her brain. Scary thoughts. Ones she doesn’t want to think about. So she focuses on the game, pretending it really is just a game even though she knows it’s not.

Not for her.

“Is it associated with something alive?”

“Yes.”

“So it’s part of something.”

“Yes,” Josh says. “And I consider that a question even though it wasn’t phrased as one. That wouldn’t pass muster on Jeopardy!”

“Animal or vegetable?”

It’s another one of the standard questions she’d ask her parents on those long-ago road trips. Even though it was technically two questions, her mother always let it slide. Josh, on the other hand, calls her out on it.