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 a hundred 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. There is a 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. She is changing. 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 in Double Indemnity. Hayworth in The 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?”

INT. DINER BATHROOM—NIGHT

Charlie shudders back to the present at the sound of her name. It’s Marge, who punctuates it with a rap on the door.

“Everything still okay in there?”

“Yes, I’m fine,” Charlie says. “Just freshening up.”

She checks her reflection in the mirror. She’s still the pale, fragile wraith she was when she walked in. All the tough personas she wore in the movie in her mind have peeled off like snakeskin. The only similarity between that Charlie and the one she sees before her now is the understanding that she can’t let Josh leave.

Not alone.

She’s not sure if she actually thought that or if it was part of the mental movie. She assumes it doesn’t really matter, seeing how it came from her brain either way. A realization is still a realization, even if its delivery is unorthodox.

And the realization consuming Charlie is that Josh needs to be stopped. And she’s the one who must do it. She can’t rely on the hopeful notion that Robbie called the police and that any second now a cop will show up and arrest Josh.

Nor can she enlist kindhearted Marge for help. The waitress might be quick with a cup of scalding-hot tea, but that means nothing when Josh has a knife within reach.

Earlier, Charlie had toyed with the idea that fate is what led her into Josh’s car. She assumed it was punishment for how she’d treated Maddy. But now Charlie suspects that if fate did have a hand in creating the situation, it’s for an entirely different purpose.

Not punishment.

Redemption.

Right now, Charlie has a chance to clear her conscience. The guilt that’s consumed her for two months could be gone in an instant. Her slate thoroughly wiped clean. All she needs to do is make sure Josh doesn’t ride off alone.

She owes it to herself.

And to Maddy.

And to Maddy’s family. And to the other women Josh has killed. And to those he might kill in the future if she lets him get away.

But she’s not going to let that happen.

She’s going to leave this bathroom, then the diner, and get back into the car with Josh.

It’s not smart. It’s not careful. It’s probably not even brave. Right now, it doesn’t really matter. It’s what Charlie feels she must do. And at this point, she has nothing left to lose.

She takes one last look in the mirror, hoping to see that her eyes have hardened just like they did in the movie in her mind. On the contrary, they’re moist and red at the edges. No hardness there. Her whole body, in fact, feels soft and vulnerable. But that doesn’t keep Charlie from flinging open the bathroom door and stepping back out into the main part of the diner.

Josh is still at the table. He leans over his coffee cup, staring into it, waiting for her return as the jukebox plays the last notes of a Rolling Stones song.

“Sympathy for the Devil.”

Ironic, seeing how a devil currently occupies the corner booth. And he’s anything but sympathetic.

Charlie pauses at the jukebox and flips through the selections. Classic rock, mostly, but a few current songs by Bryan Adams, Mariah Carey, and, to Josh at least, the twin scourges of Amy Grant and Paula Abdul. Charlie considers playing the two of them back to back, just to irritate him. A different idea forms when she sees another song. One she absolutely has to play.

She drops one of the quarters Josh gave her for the pay phone into the jukebox and enters the record number. A second later, music fills the diner.

A guitar riff she’s heard twice before that night.

“Come as You Are.”

Josh lifts his head when he hears it. Slowly. Like a movie villain who knows he’s just been found out. Raymond Burr in Rear Window when he realizes he’s caught in Jimmy Stewart’s telephoto lens.

He turns his head a little bit, listening, making sure his ears aren’t deceiving him.

“Great song, isn’t it?” Charlie says as she slides back into the booth. “Do you want to wait until it’s over? Or should we leave now?”

“We?”

Charlie swallows, knowing she’s about to cross some invisible threshold that might forever change the course of her life. It might even end up getting her killed. But there’s no avoiding it.

She can’t wait for others to stop Josh.

She needs to do it herself.

Even though she has no idea how.

“Yeah,” she says. “As in you and me getting into your car and driving to Ohio like you agreed to do.”

“That’s not happening,” Josh says. “And I already explained why, Charlie.”

“And I’m explaining that you’re not going to get rid of me so easily.” Charlie’s body hums with fear as she talks. She’s doing this. She’s actually going ahead with it. “Here’s the way I see it. The situation hasn’t changed. I need to get home. You can get me there. Now, we can stop wasting time and leave or we can wait until the police get here.”

“What police?”

“The ones that my boyfriend called after I used that code you were so smart to pick up on,” Charlie says, even though she has no clue if Robbie did any such thing. She assumes that if he had, a cop would have shown up by now.