The Scattering

by Kimberly McCreight

  I close the book and take a deep breath. I need to talk to Kelsey. I need to understand what she knows and figure out why she gave me the book. I mean, obviously she knows this is something we share, but what is it she wants me to do with this information?

  Before I worry about that, though, I need to call Jasper and my dad. If I can’t, or can’t reach them, there can be no waiting—not for my dad to get back from DC or for Rachel to kick up a fuss. Or to find out whatever it is Kelsey really wants me to know. I need to go now. We all do.

  THE HALL IS empty and quiet when I finally step out of my room and make my way down to the common room. I hope to find Dr. Haddox there. Hope that he is not too angry at me for running after Kendall, that he will be willing to overrule the Wolf and let me call my dad again and then Jasper. At this point even leaving another message for Jasper will be better than nothing. And I’ll start with an apology to Dr. Haddox. It can’t hurt to start there. Even if I don’t really feel sorry at all.

  I’m hoping to see Kelsey stretched out on the couch, too. I imagine what I’ll say to her. Everything from: “So, hey, cool book,” to “So you’re an Outlier, too.” It all feels so totally awkward and wrong, especially when there’s a good chance she’s never even heard the word “Outlier.”

  But when I finally enter the common room, I am startled by the utter silence and the almost dark. There is no Dr. Haddox, no Kelsey stretched out on the couch. There is no one anywhere. The common room is empty. Not pitch-black, but the overhead lights are off. When I turn toward the windows, it is night outside.

  It couldn’t have been much past three or four in the afternoon when Kendall walked in. I was knocked out much longer than I realized, hours even. Who knows what could have happened since then?

  “Hey, you okay?” A man’s voice. When I turn, there are two new guards at the windowed doors. At least neither is the Wolf.

  “Where is everyone?” I ask.

  “Um, asleep?” the guard on the left with the full beard and the thicker waist says. He looks at his watch. “It’s past two a.m. You need us to get a doctor or something?”

  Mostly he’s hoping I’ll go. I can feel that much. I am making him nervous being here. And he doesn’t even know that I am the one who tried to run. He’s afraid of something happening, of things ending badly. He does not trust himself to be restrained. These men, whoever they are, are not regular hospital security. It is not until that moment that I am sure.

  Maybe I’ve been seeing this entire situation wrong. Maybe there isn’t one thing going on, one group of people. There could be—like Kendall said—many moving parts. There’s Dr. Haddox—and his boss, the fame-chasing Dr. Cornelia. There’s the NIH and the guards who seem more like Agent Klute and his friends. Who’s to say they aren’t each on their own team?

  The thought of my problems multiplying in that way makes me shudder hard. And that makes the other officer step forward. He is thinner and with a beard, too, but his is spotty and mangy. “Something wrong with you?”

  Yes. No. Yes. Such a simple question has become unanswerable. I shake my head too hard and too many times as I back toward the door.

  “No, I’m fine,” I say, sounding far from it. “Is Dr. Haddox anywhere around? Because I was hoping to use the phone.”

  The guard with the full beard raises an eyebrow at his partner. This asking about the phone has shifted something. “It’s two a.m. Like I said. He’s home asleep. And you’ve got to get clearance from him for the phone.”

  “You sure you don’t need help?” his partner asks, but like his “help” is not going to be a thing I actually want.

  “No, I’m fine,” I say again.

  I spin around and head back the way I came.

  BACK OUT IN the hallway, I look up and down the row of closed doors. I want to find Kelsey’s, but I have no idea which room is hers. And following up my tackle of the “NIH doctor” with waking everyone up in the middle of the night probably isn’t going to help my situation.

  Instead, I head back to my room, crawl into bed, and turn on my side. Curled up into a C, I try not to think. But my mind spins anyway, and straight to Jasper. Is he really okay? Did Dr. Alvarez actually even speak with his mom? Deep down, I still do feel like he is okay. I believe it. But I’d feel a whole lot better if I had actual proof.

  My mom is probably the only person who could really convince me that everything is going to be okay anyway. And she won’t be convincing me of anything ever again, of course.

  So instead of feeling any better, I toss and turn. For so long that eventually I pray not for sleep, but just for dawn.

  “I’M TELLING YOU that I have a bad feeling about him, that’s all,” I heard my mom say as I made my way up the stairs a few weeks before her accident. I braced myself thinking that I was overhearing my parents having yet another of their increasingly frequent fights.

  But when I finally got to the top of the steps and peered in the door, they were the picture of domestic bliss. My dad was folding laundry, my mom cross-legged on the bed, surrounded by a ring of photographs. She was in between actual assignments, which meant she had to be working on one of her freelance projects, which always involved trying to expose one injustice or another that never seemed to fully materialize. Having spent so much time in war zones, she was especially obsessed with the military and proper oversight. So far, none of my mom’s extracurricular activities (“conspiracy theories,” my dad had teased) had gotten very far. But that had only made her more intent. Her thick black glasses were halfway down her nose as she selected shots, inspected them, and then discarded each, one by one.

  I sat down on the landing, close to their bedroom door, curious now. It wasn’t anger I had heard in their voices, but it had been something.

  “He’s in AA,” my dad said. “Don’t people always go a little overboard at first? It’s like part of the program.” My dad laughed a little. “The program. See the little pun I made there. And the kids say I’m not funny anymore.”

  “It’s more than AA,” my mom said, then shuddered hard. “I’m telling you. When Vince came here to get Cassie today, I didn’t even want to let her go with him. He seemed, I don’t know, deranged.”

  “Deranged?” My dad laughed again.

  “Okay, fine, maybe deranged is a bit much,” she said. “But seriously off. I even considered calling Karen about it.”

  “You didn’t, though, right?” my dad asked nervously. Things between my mom and Karen had occasionally been rocky. My mom had thought “fitness camp,” in particular, was a terrible idea, especially for Cassie. And she told Karen as much. Their relationship had never fully recovered.

  “No, but only because she must already know what he’s like, right? This isn’t the first time he’s been back from the Keys.”

  “I’m sure she knows,” my dad said. “And everything is relative, you know? Karen is probably glad Vince isn’t an angry drunk anymore.”

  “He got ordained, too, did you hear that?” she said. “Some kind of online thing.”

  “There are worse things than becoming an internet minister.”

  “I know,” my mom said quietly. “And I’m not trying to be judgmental. But I just—he gave me such an awful feeling. Like hair standing on end. He seemed so angry underneath all that Zen. And at us, Ben. Why would he be angry at us?”

  “He wouldn’t be. He’s not,” my dad said. “Listen, Vince has always had issues. Maybe he feels like we took Karen’s side in the divorce. We kind of did.”

  “I don’t know, I still—maybe we should warn Karen,” she said. “We might regret it if we don’t.”

  “And we could regret it if we do,” my dad said. “I mean, things with Cassie and Wylie—I don’t think we want to rock the boat any more than it already has been.”

  I winced. I had been hoping I was imagining that things between Cassie and me had been falling apart. It hadn’t even occurred to me that it was so bad my parents had noticed.

  “Obviously,
Cassie and Wylie are what’s important here,” my mom said. “Anyway, it was only a feeling. And it’s not like reality and my feelings always go together.”

  “I don’t know,” my dad said. “In my experience, sooner or later they usually do.”

  “WYLIE, IT’S ME.” A whisper, only three words.

  I’m awake now. But confused. I must have been dead asleep. And it’s— there’s something pressed over my mouth. So hard I almost can’t breathe. I reach up in the dark, feel a hand clamped down. Kendall? I was wrong. He’s come back to kill me after all?

  Suddenly, there is a glistening set of eyes only inches away.

  “Don’t scream.” It’s a voice I recognize. One that makes my heart leap.

  As the hand finally lifts, I squint. Try to make out more of the face in the dark. Afraid I am replacing some stranger’s face with one I would so much rather see.

  But no, it really is him. It has to be.

  “Jasper?”

  13

  “SORRY,” JASPER SAYS QUIETLY, SITTING NOW ON THE BED A LITTLE DISTANCE away. My eyes have adjusted so that I can see the faint outline of him in the darkness. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  I reach forward and grab onto him, not convinced he’s there.

  “What happened to you?” I ask, finally releasing him. I have so many questions. “Are you okay?”

  “Shh. I’m screwed if someone finds me in here. We both are.”

  He gets up. I can hear him shuffling around near the wall. When the light near my headboard finally goes on, I brace myself. For Jasper’s flesh to be waterlogged, to be peeling off his bones. But even in the gray light of the hospital room, he looks better than he has in a while.

  Jasper smiles and lifts the badge that’s hanging around his neck, then sits back down on the bed next to me. It’s a hospital ID that says Janitorial Staff. “Not bad, huh?” He looks down, admiring it. “I took my mom’s while she was asleep and doctored it. If I hadn’t been so busy with hockey maybe I could have gone into the fake ID business or something.” His smile fades, and all I can think about is how terrified I felt, looking for him in that water below. How relieved I am that he’s okay.

  “Jasper, what happened on the bridge?”

  “I think we should start with what the hell this is.”

  And I think of pushing again, making Jasper explain first, but then I am not sure I’m ready for his reply.

  “Some doctor other than my dad is claiming that the whole Outlier thing is caused by some illness,” I say, much more matter-of-factly than I feel. “I mean, no one’s said the word ‘Outlier’ in here. But that’s the subtext. My dad says this guy’s whole thing is bullshit.”

  “Well, looks like somebody believes it.” Jasper motions to the room. “Your dad must be losing it on them.”

  “He will,” I say, swallowing back my unease. “I talked to him on the phone, but he was in DC. He is coming back, but he hasn’t gotten here yet.” And it makes me feel even worse saying that out loud. More desperate. I consider going into more details—the strep, the PANDAS, the bioterrorism—but that’s not going to help. And there’s only one thing I absolutely need to tell Jasper. “Kendall was here.”

  “What? Where?” He jumps up, fists clenched. And the look on his face: like he will kill Kendall when he finds him. It reminds me of the boy I thought he was. The boy maybe he still is, but only partly. His fists relax like something has occurred to him. “Wait, are you sure it was him?”

  He’s got doubts. And not only about this. Like he wonders if the stress of this situation has me imagining things. And fair enough. Since the day Kendall left us in that cabin, he’s been a ghost. The Seneca police department acknowledged that someone fitting his description had worked for them. And they admitted that they had sent said person up to the camp in search of our missing friend—though they’d made clear they had no idea we’d gone along (which was also true). As it turned out, Kendall was a recent hire—not the lifelong town resident Quentin had claimed or maybe even believed him to be. Who had lied to whom was still an open question, but whoever Kendall was, he had vanished after leaving us at that camp.

  Until now.

  “He was pretending to be some doctor from the NIH, but it was definitely him. I saw him up close. I ran after him and tackled him.”

  “You tackled him?” Jasper looks alarmed.

  “You had to be there,” I say, then hand him the folded note. “He gave me this and told me to get out of here. It’s an address.”

  “Obviously, you should get out of here. Thank God Kendall came all the way here to point that out.” Jasper takes the note but keeps his suspicious eyes on me. He shakes his head and hands it back to me without reading it. “Wait, why are you even giving this to me? How stupid does he think you are?”

  “Yeah, except why would he—”

  Jasper holds up a hand. “No, Wylie. And I mean seriously no. Who cares what he’s doing or why? You need to get out of here. That’s what we need to focus on. That’s why I came. Throw that note away.”

  “He feels bad about what happened,” I say. And I sound so naive. No, not naive—just stupid. Still, I can’t stop with my explanations. “He came here to make up for what happened. That’s why he gave me that note.”

  Jasper’s nostrils flare. “He said that to you?”

  “No.” I hold his stare. “I felt it.”

  Jasper starts shaking his head. “Wylie, that’s crazy.”

  Crazy. I don’t want the word to hurt my feelings, but it does. “Awesome,” I say quietly.

  “I didn’t mean—you know what I meant, Wylie. Crazy to listen to Kendall. Not that you’re . . .”

  He doesn’t finish the thought and I stay quiet, staring down at the folded note. Jasper’s doubt is fair. Completely. But that doesn’t make him right. I have to trust my instincts. It’s all I have. I want to let him off the hook, though, especially when he’s already done so much for me. “It’s not your problem. I mean, I am not your problem.”

  Now that he’s okay, all that intensity I felt for Jasper in the past hours feels like a fever dream, exaggerated and outsized because of my fear. Jasper and I are friends. I care about him. But that’s all. Anything else is just me being confused.

  “You are not my problem, huh? Wow, thanks so much. That makes everything so much better,” Jasper says, obviously hurt. But he shakes it off. “Listen, Kendall’s right that you should get out of here. When I first went to the main part of the hospital looking for you, they totally denied that anyone was even in this part. Even after I told them I saw you brought in here. I think they actually believed it. Whatever this is, it’s messed up enough for them to be hiding it really well.”

  “How did you even know I was here?”

  “I followed the ambulance from the bridge.”

  “So you were on the bridge?” I ask, feeling this weird mix of dread and relief. It brings all those other feelings for Jasper right to the surface again, the wrong, confusing ones. I jam them back down harder this time.

  “Yeah. I was on the bridge.” Jasper frowns and nods, looking down.

  “Why?” I ask.

  “I was thinking about, you know, taking a time-out.”

  The fact that he can be so nonchalant seriously pisses me off.

  “What the hell does that mean?” I snap. “Actually, no. Don’t—don’t even say it.” I cover my face with my hands and try to swallow back the burn in my throat. This conversation is not making it easy to keep those wrong feelings in their rightful place. “Jasper, how could you even—”

  “I don’t want you to feel bad or anything. Trust me, it was—you are, like, the only good thing in my life.” He pauses and it gets awkward fast.

  “Was it the pages from Cassie’s journal that . . . ?” I ask, but I don’t even want to specifically say what I mean. It will just make it more real. “I saw them in your room. That must have been awful to read that after— Who do you think is sending them?”

&nb
sp; “I don’t know. Maia, maybe,” he says. “She said something about cleaning up Cassie’s room with Karen. And then she kept coming by and wanting to talk about how upset I was. Like maybe she was hoping I’d need her.”

  The thought of Maia doing that to Jasper makes me way angrier than it ought to. Like it’s something she’s doing to me.

  “That’s sick,” I say. “She’s sick.”

  “Yep. But it wasn’t just the journal anyway. And it wasn’t even just what happened to Cassie at the camp. It was way more complicated than that. It was a whole bunch of stuff: my mom, my dad, the future, the past, now. Suddenly it got all mashed together in my head and it felt like too much.”

  “But you changed your mind,” I say. “And that’s the important thing.”

  He nods and smiles with half his mouth. “Because of you.”

  “Don’t say that.” This time I snap at him so hard it surprises me. But I can’t be responsible for saving Jasper. I am already such a mess. And I have such a shitty record of the people around me surviving. “Please, don’t . . .”

  Also, this whole conversation is making it harder to stay in the friends zone where we belong. I squeeze my eyes shut. Hope that I don’t cry.

  “I didn’t mean it like that,” he says, though he kind of did. I can feel it. “But you coming to the bridge helped short-circuit the whole thing. I was up there and I was thinking hard about it, but then I got worried it might not be a clean fall. Or that the bridge wasn’t tall enough.”

  “Jasper,” I whisper. It’s terrifying to hear him sound so matter-of-fact.

  He and I stare at each other for a minute more, and I feel a hard tug toward him.