It's Not Me, It's You

Vanessa’s breath caught in her throat as she watched the car in front of them fishtail and skid off the narrow highway, down the embankment, and stop short of the icy river.

           “Dear Lord,” she said, leaning forward, gripping the dash. “Todd, we need to stop.”

           Todd chuckled. “They’re ok.”

“I’m calling 911,” she grabbed his phone, raising an eyebrow at him as she made the call. They cautiously advanced through the sleet and snow that had enveloped most of New England in the season’s worst blizzard. After the call, she slammed the phone into one of the cupholders.            

           “What?” he asked.

           “Just because you grew up here doesn’t mean you don’t need to have compassion. A little human decency. They could have been hurt.”

           “People need to learn how to drive.”

           She crossed her arms over her chest.

           “That’s so like you, just to assume everyone else is doing it wrong, and you’re doing it right. That you couldn’t make a mistake. What if you went over the embankment? Wouldn’t you want someone to stop?”

           “It would serve me right.”

           She huffed at him then, looked out her window, gazed at the icebergs on the river that followed the road. They sat in silence, neither one saying anything about the accident, or what they’d really come up here for in the first place. The steady lull of the car put her to sleep, maybe for an hour, maybe for twenty minutes, she didn’t know. When she noticed they were no longer moving, she sat upright.

           A long row of cars, red tail lights glowing, wound in front of them. Todd had driven up close to the bumper of the next car, just to be a jerk, Veronica thought.

           “What’s going on?”

           “Radio said a dump truck skidded. Blocking both lanes. Hit some cars. We might be here a while.”

           Emergency lights and sirens blared behind them, using the shoulder to get through, spitting snow and salt on their windows. The windshield wipers cleared their view. Once the vehicles passed, the quiet of their breathing felt too loud.

           “Did you mean what you said?” he asked.

           “What did I say?”

           “That I don’t think I can make mistakes. Do you think I’m egotistical? That I don’t care about anyone but myself?”

           She faced him; he faced her. The car was in park, and his hands were in his lap. Soft, artists’ hands. His eyes were brown, often gentle, but sometimes, they got a hard glint to them, when he was convinced he was right about something. Or he wanted something. She brushed a strand of hair behind her ear.

           “Well, sometimes. I mean, yeah. I think you can be that way.”

           He looked away, out the front window, into the distance. She knew he wanted to get out of the car, but there was nowhere to go. It was below freezing and it wasn’t safe to walk among traffic, even if it wasn’t moving – even Todd knew that.

           “We’ve got to finish this,” he said.

           She knew what he was talking about. Why they’d come to Vermont in the first place. There were only so many reasons one goes to a desolate place in the middle of a blizzard with a man who some might consider a sociopath. There was unfinished business.

           “We’re not going to make it to the cabin before he freezes to death,” she said, her upright palm toward the traffic.

           “That would probably be the best outcome. Save us from doing the wet work.”

           “Jesus, Todd,” she shuddered. “I thought we agreed we were going to let him go.”

           “No, you agreed. He saw our faces.”

           The whole thing had been a stupid mistake. He was angry, but he hadn’t planned it. Todd showing off with his gun. She didn’t know anything about guns. Literally nothing. It could have been a .45, or a – a what? She didn’t know what else it might be.

           Todd had stormed into that convenience store wearing a rubber mask and kidnapped the clerk, stolen the petty cash and a few beers. Veronica had been surprised when Todd came back and screamed at her to drive. They’d tied the guy up in Todd’s desolate cabin, Veronica crying the whole time. That was four days ago, but it was time to finish it.

           “Todd –” she said now.

           “Veronica, don’t start. We need to get rid of him. We can’t have this coming back on us.” He hadn’t told her the worst part. The worst part was that there had been another guy in the convenience store that night. Another guy that Todd had made sure hadn’t left alive. He’d needed to actually try the gun, after all.

           “No, Todd, look,” Veronica gestured out the window to a tall, thick police officer, and his equally thick, but shorter, partner who was holding the leash of a police dog. They were going from car to car, tapping on windows, checking each vehicle. For what? Hadn’t there only been a dump truck accident?

           “What’s going on?” Veronica breathed.

           Todd said nothing, but his mind whirred at a hundred miles an hour. Cars were in front of him, behind. He didn’t have enough room to turn and speed in the opposite direction, not enough to turn onto the shoulder and proceed forward, ram whatever roadblock they had surely set for them. He was trapped.

           Todd looked at Veronica. That phone call. The call she’d made to 911. They knew. The police knew all about them, and they were looking for them. For murder, for kidnapping. The color drained from his face.

           “What, Todd? What is it? Is it us?” The panic crept into her voice.

           The big officer approached their car, his head covered in a giant hat. They knew how to keep warm up here. He tapped on the glass with his gloved knuckle. Todd sat, frozen. Veronica made a movement like he should open it. He did nothing. The officer tapped again.

           Todd looked at him, and though Veronica couldn’t see, she could imagine. It was probably that innocent smile he sometimes wore. The one she fell in love with at first. Boyish and sweet, but deceptive, she now knew.

           But no, that wasn’t the face at all. Because Todd didn’t open the window. Instead, he threw the car into reverse and slammed the car behind them crunching metal against metal, the officer leaping out of the way, too startled even to scream. Then they were squealing toward the guard rail and the embankment, toward the river.  

***

           “So, are you breaking up with me?” he asked, in the glow of the gas station lights.

           “Todd –”

           “Are you? Are you going to break up with me because you think I’m some sort of sociopath?”

           “I never said you were a sociopath.”

           “You might as well have. You come with me on this weekend in Vermont, let me pay for everything, and then you’re breaking up with me?”

           “Todd, there’s someone else.”

           Todd laughed then. A good, hearty laugh.

           “Oh, there is, is there? Who is he?”

           “It doesn’t matter.”

           “Who is he, Vanessa!?” Todd roared and lurched toward her in the car. Vanessa squealed and pushed him off her, but he was only reaching for something in the glovebox.  

           “You said I was a sociopath –”

           “I never said –”

           “Now you’re going to see just how crazy I can be.”

           He pulled his mask on, the one that had been sitting in the back of the car since Halloween, and ran into the convenience store.

***

The guardrail, rusty and old, caught the car with a sickening lurch; a gnashing, grinding sound as repulsive as bone on bone, then let go, dropping them down the embankment and dangling them close to the river.  Blood trickled down Veronica’s brow, and Todd’s arm screamed in pain.

“What did you do?!” Veronica demanded, she turned to see the officers standing in road, calling for help, a curtain of white snow swirling behind them.

“I was trying to save us.”

“You’re trying to kill us!”

“Stop over-reacting. We’re fine. They’ll get us out.”

“Unless they don’t. Unless they leave us here to die, like you did with that last car. With that poor guy in the cabin.”  She was getting frantic now, rewinding it all in her mind, trying to figure out what, exactly, had gone wrong that night. How it had all ended up like this.

The snow was getting worse. It was getting harder to see the officers, harder to see whether they were still watching to make sure everything still looked okay, and whether or not they were slipping closer to the river.

Veronica tried to open the door. She could climb the embankment back to the road, find a police officer, or someone who would let her into his warm car. But the door wouldn’t open. The car slid a little, like it was perched on an icy slope.

“My God, what have you done?”

“You were the one that made that phone call to 911. If it weren’t for that, they never would have found us.”

Her mouth went dry. There just wasn’t anything to say. Todd would never take any responsibility. Not for the convenience store, for this accident, for their relationship before that.

“You’re right,” she said. “But for now, let’s just get out of here alive.”

“Nah, I’m not interested in going to jail. This serves us right.”

He was doing this. It was him.

“Unlock the doors,” she said.

He smiled, a wrong, wicked smile.

“Unlock the doors!”

They had the same thought at the same time. Veronica perhaps a second earlier, and they both lunged for the glove box. There was a deafening sound. The people who had gathered at the twisted guard rail to watch whether the car would plunge into the glacial river and slowly sink, taking its occupants to their graves before anything could be done about it, would later say that they expected a second shot, thinking that the people inside were so afraid of drowning that they preferred to take their own lives.

That didn’t happen.

Instead, from the road, a lone figure could be seen emerging from the car.

“Are you alright, miss?” An officer said. “What happened?”

Wiping some blood from her cheek, she said, “I just ended things with my boyfriend.”