Survive the Night by Riley Sager
INT. REST STOP BATHROOM—NIGHT
Charlie jerks back to life, her body spasming, as if her head really had been smashed into the sink’s edge. She can still hear the ghastly sound the impact made. Bone banging off porcelain.
But there was no sound like that.
Not one that could be heard by the other woman in the bathroom. And there is only one other woman here. Maddy’s gone. Where she once stood is just a patch of grimy tile caught in the unremitting flash of the overhead light.
Next to it, the woman in the stone-washed jeans says, “Hey. Are you okay?”
Charlie’s not sure how to answer that one. She just saw her dead best friend in the bathroom of an interstate rest stop. Of course she’s not fucking okay. But the woman didn’t see Maddy. As always, the movie in her mind played to an audience of one.
“No,” Charlie says, conceding the obvious truth.
“Have you been drinking?”
“No.”
Charlie says it the way a drunk person would. Too loud. Too emphatic. Overcompensating in a way that makes it obviously not true, although in Charlie’s case it is. But she knows that’s not the vibe she’s giving off and tries to course correct.
“I just need to get home.”
Charlie moves to the woman. Quickly. Closing the gap between them in three big strides, which only makes things worse. The woman shrinks away, even though she’s backed all the way up against the sink with nowhere to go.
“I can’t take you.”
“Please.” Charlie reaches out to grab her sleeve, prepared to tug and beg, but thinks better of it. “I know that this is going to sound weird. But that guy out there? I’m not sure I trust him.”
“Why not?”
“There’s a chance that he might have killed people.”
Instead of surprise, the woman gives Charlie a wary look. As if this was exactly what she expected and is now disappointed to be so unsurprised.
“Might?” she says. “You don’t know?”
“I told you it was going to sound weird.”
The woman huffs. “You weren’t lying.”
“And no, I don’t know if he killed someone,” Charlie says. “But the fact that I think he might have—even a tiny, little bit—means I shouldn’t get back in the car with him, right? That I should be worried?”
The woman, done with it all, including the idea of using the stall she’d been eyeing, pushes past Charlie and heads to the door.
“If you ask me,” she says, “he should be worried about you getting back in that car. Whatever shit you’ve been drinking, I suggest switching to water. Or coffee.”
The woman pushes through the door and, just like that, is gone. Alone again in the foul-smelling bathroom, Charlie looks around, checking for any signs Maddy might still be there. The faint idea that she could still be around—that what Charlie had seen was something beyond a mental movie—proves to her just how unmoored from reality she’s become.
She goes to one of the sinks and stares at her reflection in the mottled mirror above it. Each flash of the overhead light brightens her skin, washing out her complexion, as if she were ill. Or maybe, Charlie thinks, maybe it’s not the light. Maybe this is how she really looks. Sapped of color, turned pale by uncertainty.
No wonder that woman fled the bathroom. If Charlie saw someone looking the way she does, saying the things she said, she’d leave, too. And she’d likely think the same things the woman thought of her.
That she’s drunk. Or crazy.
But she’s uncertain. And anxious. And no longer capable of trusting what she sees. That’s what she should have told the woman instead of saying she didn’t trust Josh. She should have flat-out stated that it was herself she didn’t trust.
Tired of staring at her reflection, Charlie splashes cold water on her face, not that it helps, and hurries to the door. She wants to leave the bathroom before Maddy has another chance to reappear. But Charlie knows that no matter how fast she leaves, there’s a chance Maddy will show up somewhere else. Or that she’ll think something’s happening when it’s actually not. Or that another movie in her mind will spring up out of nowhere and she won’t even be aware it’s happening.
For all she knows, it’s happening right now.
Movie after movie after movie. Like they’re on the bill at a mall cineplex so tightly scheduled the ushers don’t even have time to sweep up the spilled popcorn between shows.
The frequency of these visions worries Charlie. For the first time in her life, she thinks it could be a sign she’s slipping deeper into psychosis and that one of these times she’ll never snap out of it. She’s heard of such things happening. Women who disappear into their own worlds, lost in a land of make-believe.
Maybe she’s already there.
Charlie pauses before opening the bathroom door. She needs to compose herself a moment before returning to Josh and the Grand Am, which she has to do. She went into the bathroom knowing she needed to make a decision.
It turns out the decision was made for her.
If she can’t trust herself, then she needs to trust Josh.
