“Why?”

Robbie says nothing. He simply stares into the open glove compartment, looking at something else inside that Charlie had missed until that moment.

A pair of pliers.

Dried blood stains their tip.

Seeing it conjures an image of that night outside the bar. Robbie approaching Maddy, who smiles because she recognizes a friendly face. He comes in close, his head lowered, hand cupped around her lighter. Seeing it is so terrible Charlie has to close her eyes and shake her head to make it go away.

“I can’t believe I didn’t know it was you,” she says, still shocked and nauseous and waiting for her missing heart to finally stop its stubborn beating. “Did you know I was there? That I saw you?”

“Not until later,” Robbie says, as if that will make it easier for her to bear. “But by then I knew that you also hadn’t really seen me. That something else was going on in that head of yours.”

Charlie drops the teeth back into jewelry box and snaps the lid shut, unable to look at them any longer. The box itself slips from her hands as she wails, “Why Maddy?”

“Because she was too brash,” Robbie says, spitting out the last word like it’s a curse. “Always loud. Always demanding attention.”

“Is that why you killed the others, too?” she says. “Because they were too loud? Too brash?”

“No. Because they thought they were special. They thought they deserved the attention they were constantly begging for. And they’re not special, Charlie. I’ve been waiting a year for you to figure it out. Most people are stupid and useless and pathetic. And those deluded enough to think they aren’t deserve whatever punishment they get.”

Charlie recoils against the driver’s-side door, terrified. “You’re sick.”

“No,” Robbie says. “I truly am special. As are you. Remember the night we met? In the library?”

Of course Charlie remembers. It was her own personal romantic comedy, which means it was likely different from how she remembers it. Now she looks at Robbie, trying to see if she recognizes any part of the man she encountered that night.

She can’t.

He’s a complete stranger to her now.

“I thought I was going to kill you that night,” Robbie says. “Sitting with you at the library, then the diner, then walking you home. The whole time I kept thinking about what it was going to feel like to kill you.”

The matter-of-fact way he says it feels like a punch to Charlie’s solar plexus. For a few seconds, she can barely breathe.

“Why didn’t you?” she says.

“Because there was something about you I was drawn to. You were so—”

“Innocent?”

Robbie shakes his head. “Clueless. You watch your movies and you think that makes you smart. Like you know the way the world works. But all it’s done is warp your brain. You have no idea what the world is like.”

He’s wrong about that.

Charlie knows what the world is like.

Parents leave in the morning and never come back.

You fight with your best friend and tell her to fuck off and then have to live with knowing that’s the last thing you ever said to her, when what you really should have done is thanked her for being by your side and understanding you and loving you for who you are.

After seeing too much of this senseless, brutal, cruel world—far too much for someone her age—Charlie chose to retreat into other worlds. Ones that can’t hurt her.

Life has failed her time and time again.

The movies have never let her down.

“But then there was a moment at the diner when you completely tuned out—just for a minute. That’s when I knew you were different from the others. Special. Like me.”

“I’m nothing like you,” Charlie says, spitting the words.

Something takes hold of her.

Rage.

The same kind Marge had talked about. White-hot and seething.

It’s the kind of rage that makes Charlie, like Marge before her, want to do unthinkable things. The only difference is that Marge had directed it at the wrong person.

Now Charlie has a chance to do it right.

She shifts the car into drive and lets it start to roll.

“What are you doing?” Robbie says.

“Driving.”

“Where?”

“Away from here.”

Charlie glances in the rearview mirror. Sitting in the back seat, right behind Robbie, is her father.

“Remember, never drive more than five miles over the speed limit,” he says in that father-knows-best voice Charlie couldn’t stand when he was alive but misses like crazy now. “Cops won’t bother you. Not for that.”

Her father pauses, locking eyes with Charlie in the rearview mirror.

“But sometimes,” he says, “sometimes your only choice is to drive like hell.”

Charlie nods, even though her father’s not really in the back seat. Even if it was just a movie in her mind, it’s still good advice.

As her father’s voice echoes in her head, Charlie doesn’t just press down on the gas pedal.

She floors it.

INT. VOLVO—NIGHT

The Volvo takes off down the winding drive like a bottle rocket, its rear tires squealing on the blacktop.

When the car nears the first turn, Charlie doesn’t tap the brakes. Instead, she lets the car keep picking up speed on the approach before cutting the wheel to the left at the last possible moment.

The Volvo fishtails around the bend before regaining a grip on the road as it straightens.

“Slow down,” Robbie says.

He reaches for the steering wheel with his left hand, getting the briefest of grips before Charlie slaps it away.

“Charlie, slow down.”

They reach another sharp turn, and Charlie does the same as before, jerking the wheel, sliding through it, on the thinnest edge of control.

The pliers slide from the glove compartment and plink to the floor.

It distracts Charlie just enough for Robbie to lunge for the steering wheel again. This time, he grabs it tight, giving it a pull. The car almost jerks off the road.

Charlie lets go of the wheel with her right hand and swings at Robbie, her knuckles connecting with his cheek and whipping his head sideways.

“Fuck you,” she says.

The Volvo approaches a third turn. The one with the stone wall close to the waterfall. They come in fast, screaming around the turn, the roar of falling water all around them. Charlie cuts the wheel a second too late and the driver’s side of the Volvo scrapes the wall, grinding against the stone wall. Sparks spray past Charlie’s window.

In the passenger seat, Robbie yells, “Are you trying to kill me?”

“Isn’t that your plan for me?” Charlie says.

Although the Volvo is now flying down a straight section of road, up ahead is the last bend before they reach the bridge. Instead of slowing down, Charlie hits the gas.

“Tell me, Robbie,” she says. “Your plan now is to kill me, right? Because I know who you are. I know what you’ve done.”

The turn is closer now.

A hundred yards away.

Just beyond it is a cluster of trees so dense that the car will be smashed to bits if it crashes into them.

“Admit it,” Charlie tells Robbie.

The turn sits before them.

Now fifty yards away.

Now twenty-five.

“Admit it!” Charlie shouts. “Or I’m going to drive this car straight into those fucking trees!”

“Yes!” Robbie yelps, gripping the dashboard for support as Charlie hits the brakes and, with a death grip on the wheel, skids the Volvo around the corner.

“Yes what?” she says.

“I’m going to kill you.”

Charlie slams the brakes. The Volvo slides to a stop.

When Robbie speaks, his voice is unnervingly calm.

“I don’t want to do it, Charlie,” he says. “I need you to know that. I love you. You might not believe me, but it’s true. And I’m sorry for what I have to do to you. We could have had a wonderful life together.”

Charlie can’t bear to look at him, so she stares out the windshield. Just down the road is the bridge at the base of the waterfall. A short rickety span crossing the ravine. Beneath it, black water churns. It’s nothing compared to the fear rushing through Charlie’s body. Her terror is twice as dark and twice as volatile.

She only thought she was scared earlier. Leaving the diner with Josh. Being tortured by Marge. That wasn’t even a fraction of the fear she feels now.

Because now she wants to live.

Really live.

The way Maddy had lived. The way she had tried to get Charlie to do. Maddy saw what Charlie couldn’t: that she had spent the past four years being an audience member to her own sad existence.

Movies are my life, she had told Josh. It should have been the other way around. Charlie should have been able to say, My life is like the movies.

And now that she realizes it, she’s terrified Robbie is going to take away her chance to do something about it.

With her fists around the steering wheel and the car humming under her, Charlie stares at the bridge over the ravine. In that moment, she understands that she’s in charge of her own destiny.

She’s Ellen Ripley.

She’s Laurie Strode.

She’s Clarice Starling.

She’s Thelma and Louise, kicking up dirt in a final fuck-you as they choose freedom over life.