He’d told her he was a student, hadn’t he? Or maybe she’d inferred that because of the Olyphant sweatshirt he’d been wearing when they met. The same one, Charlie reminds herself, he’s wearing right now.

Josh, apparently sensing her unease, clarifies. “I work at the university. Worked, I guess I should say. I quit today.”

Charlie continues to study him, realizing just how much older than her he really is. Ten years, at least. Maybe fifteen.

“Were you a professor or something?”

“A little less upscale,” Josh says. “I worked in the facilities department. Custodial work, mostly. Just one of those guys mopping the hallways, invisible to the rest of you. You might have seen me and not even realized it.”

Because he seems to expect it, Charlie searches her memory for sightings prior to yesterday, when they met at the ride board. She’s not surprised when she can’t summon one. In the past two months, she hasn’t ventured too far outside the dorm and dining hall.

“How long did you work there?”

“Four years.”

“Why’d you quit?”

“My dad’s not well,” Josh says. “Had a stroke a few days ago.”

“Oh,” Charlie says. “I’m so sorry.”

“There’s nothing to be sorry about. Shit happens.”

“He’ll be okay, though? Right?”

“I don’t know,” Josh says, his tone justifiably melancholy. “I hope so. We won’t know for a few weeks. There’s no one else to take care of him, which means it’s back to Toledo for me.”

Charlie’s whole body suddenly tenses.

“Akron,” she says. “You told me you were from Akron.”

“I did?”

“Yes. When we met at the ride board.”

Because it was a possible means of escape, she remembers everything about that moment. And she’s certain Josh specifically told her he was going to Akron. After he learned she needed to get to Youngstown.

She replays that first conversation in her head. Him sidling up beside her, checking her flyer, seeing her destination clearly typed across the page.

Could Josh have lied about where he was going? If so, why?

Charlie can only think of one reason—to get her to agree to get into a car with him.

The thought makes her nervous. Tiny drops of dread spread across her clenched shoulders. It feels like rain. The first few drops before the storm.

“Now I remember,” Josh says, shaking his head, as if he can’t believe his absentmindedness. “I see why you’re confused. I forgot that I told you I’m driving to Akron. That’s where my aunt lives. I’m picking her up and taking her with me to my dad’s place in Toledo.”

It’s a simple enough explanation. On the surface, there’s nothing sinister about it. But the dread doesn’t fully leave Charlie. A small bit remains, wedged like a blade between her ribs.

“I wasn’t trying to be misleading,” Josh says. “I swear. I’m sorry if that’s how it seems.”

He sounds sincere. He looks it, too. When the car passes under the tangerine glow of a streetlight, it illuminates his face, including his eyes. The darkness Charlie saw earlier is gone. In its place is a glint of warmth, of apology, of hurt for being so misunderstood. Seeing it makes her feel guilty for being so suspicious. His dad just had a stroke, for God’s sake, and here she is doubting him.

“It’s fine,” Charlie says. “I was being—”

She struggles for the best description. Unnecessarily worried? Downright paranoid? Both?

She knows it’s not what Josh has said or the way he’s dressed or how he put things in the trunk that’s made her so jumpy. Her nervousness lies in the fact that because something awful happened to Maddy, Charlie thinks it could also happen to her.

Yet there’s more to it than that. The bedrock truth, as Nana Norma would say. A truth that’s beneath the surface, buried deep. A foundation upon which all the lies we tell ourselves is built.

And for Charlie, the bedrock truth is that she thinks she deserves to have something awful happen to her.

But it won’t. Not here, anyway. Not now. Not in a car with someone who seems to be a decent guy and is just trying to make conversation during what would otherwise be a boring drive.

Again, Josh seems to know every single thing she’s thinking, because he says, “I get it, you know. Why you’re so nervous.”

“I’m not nervous,” Charlie says.

“You are,” Josh says. “And it’s okay. Listen, I think I know who you are. I thought your name seemed familiar when we met at the ride board, but I didn’t realize why until just now.”

Charlie says nothing, hoping that will somehow make Josh stop talking, that he’ll just get the hint and drop it.

Instead, he shifts his gaze from her to the road, then back again, and says, “You’re that girl, right?”

Charlie sinks back in the passenger seat, the base of her skull against the headrest. A light pain pulses where they connect. The stirrings of a headache. Confession time is here whether she’s ready for it or not.

“I am,” she says. “I’m that girl. The one who let her roommate get murdered.”

INT. GRAND AM—NIGHT

Charlie hadn’t wanted to go out that night. That was her excuse for why she did what she did. Back when she had an excuse. Before she came to understand that her actions were inexcusable.

It was a Thursday night, she had an early film class the next morning, and she in no way, shape, or form wanted to head out to a bar at ten o’clock to see a second-rate Cure cover band. But Maddy insisted she go, even after Charlie had begged off several times.

“It won’t be any fun without you,” she said. “No one else but you gets how much I love them.”

“You are aware it’s not really the Cure, right?” Charlie told her. “It’s just some guys who’ve learned to play ‘Lovesong’ in their parents’ garage.”

“They’re really good. I swear. Please, Charlie, just come. Life’s too short to stay cooped up in here.”

“Fine,” Charlie said, sighing the word. “Even though I’m tired. And you know how irritable I get when I’m tired.”

Maddy playfully threw a pillow across the room at her. “You become an absolute monster.”

The band didn’t take the stage until almost eleven, coming out in Goth garb so over-the-top it bordered on the ridiculous. The front man, aiming for Robert Smith realness, had powdered his face with white pancake makeup. Charlie told Maddy it made him look like Edward Scissorhands.

“Rude,” Maddy said. “But true.”

Three songs into their set, Maddy started dancing with some wannabe Bon Jovi in torn jeans and a black T-shirt. Two songs after that, they were backed against the bar, swapping saliva. And Charlie, who was tired, hungry, and not nearly drunk enough to stay, had had enough.

“Hey, I’m leaving,” she said after tapping Maddy on the shoulder.

“What?” Maddy squeezed out from beneath the random guy kissing her and grabbed Charlie’s arm. “You can’t go!”

“I can,” Charlie said. “And I am.”

Maddy clung to her as she made her way out of the bar, pushing through a dance floor packed with frat boys in baseball caps and sorority girls in belly tees and preppies and stoners and flannel-wearing deadbeats with stringy bleached hair. Unlike Maddy, they didn’t care who was playing. They were just there to get plastered. And Charlie, well, she just wanted to curl up in bed with a movie.

“Hey, what’s going on?” Maddy said once they were outside the bar, huddled together in a back alley that stank of vomit and beer. “We were having fun.”

“You were having fun,” Charlie said. “I was just . . . there.”

Maddy reached into her handbag—a glittery rectangle of silver sequins she’d found at Goodwill—and fumbled for her cigarettes. “That’s all on you, darling.”

Charlie disagreed. By her estimation, this was the hundredth time Maddy had dragged her to a bar or a kegger or a theater department after party only to ditch her as soon as they arrived, leaving Charlie to stand around awkwardly asking her fellow introverts if they’d ever seen The Magnificent Ambersons.

“It wouldn’t be if you’d just let me stay home.”

“I’m trying to help you.”

“By ignoring me?”

“By forcing you out of your comfort zone,” Maddy said, giving up the search for a smoke and stuffing the handbag under her arm. “There’s more to life than movies, Charlie. If it weren’t for me or Robbie or the other girls in the dorm, you’d never talk to anyone, like, ever.”

“That’s not true,” Charlie said, even as she began to wonder if maybe it was. She couldn’t remember the last time she exchanged more than cursory small talk with someone outside of class or the insular world of their dorm. Realizing that Maddy was right only made her more angry. “I could talk to a ton of people, if I wanted to.”

“And that’s your problem,” Maddy said. “You don’t want to. Which is why I’m always the one trying to force you into it.”

“Maybe I don’t want to be forced.”

Maddy coughed out a sarcastic laugh. “That’s pretty fucking obvious.”