The Scattering

by Kimberly McCreight

  “Yeah, except all these girls are going to come out eventually,” Jasper says. “Even if the parents are being quiet now, they probably won’t be once their kids get home and tell them about all this bioterrorist whatever. Everyone’s eventually going to know about this.”

  “Unless,” I say, and already I know I’m on to something. “The girls don’t come out.”

  Jasper makes a face. “And how would they explain that?” he asks. “‘Sorry, I know we said we were bringing your daughter back, but . . .’”

  “How about something like a tragic fire that burns the hospital to the ground, accidentally killing them all?”

  That’s it. That is what I’ve been worried about: the girls—all of us—being erased. The fire might not be it, but something terrible is about to happen to those girls. Something permanent. And I need to get them out before it does. Me. Because I’m the only one who knows.

  I feel so sure of it, too. It’s the same way I felt about Jasper and the bridge. The way I felt about my mom that last night when she walked out the door for milk. Like something awful had already happened. I was right then, all those times. I’m not always right to worry—not by a long shot—but I’m sure that I am right now.

  WE SIT IN silence for a minute more—or maybe five or ten. It feels like a long time as I scan right and then left across the edge of the building, still looking for Kelsey. But I don’t feel anymore like we are going to find her. In fact, I feel like Kelsey is gone. The only people we see are two women speed walking down the driveway, a groundskeeper, and two nurses headed toward the main entrance for their shift, bags over their shoulders, coffee in hand. I push up so I can get a look farther down toward the emergency room entrance. If I were Kelsey, I might head over there—more people, more places to hide. But the only person hanging out in front is a heavyset guy smoking.

  “Oh wait, I have something for you,” Jasper says, digging around in the piles of trash in the backseat—food wrappers, newspapers and magazines, empty soda cans. He seems happy to be able to focus on something that won’t be upsetting. “Sorry it’s such a mess in here. I’ve been kind of camping out since I saw you.”

  “This whole time?”

  “Yeah, I mean I went to your house. But then I came back here to the parking lot. I wasn’t sure when you’d make it out, so . . .” he says. But trying to make it seem like no big deal.

  Something more than gratitude swells in me so fast I blush. Despite myself.

  “Thank you, Jasper.” It feels totally inadequate. And also incomplete. “For everything.”

  “I said I would be here when you got out.” He sounds offended I’d doubt him. He’s still digging around his trash-covered backseat. “Ah, here it is.”

  When he turns back, he is holding out Kelsey’s copy of 1984.

  “Oh, thanks.”

  But the book feels so much less important now compared to getting the girls out, finding my dad. I will read what’s inside, and I will figure out what it all means at some point. If and when I find Kelsey again, maybe she and I can even help each other somehow—or maybe she can just help me. Maybe that’s the truth. When I take the book from Jasper’s hands, something falls out. It isn’t until I pick it up from the floor that I realize it’s Kendall’s note.

  I take a deep breath as I stare down at it. Just when I was wondering what we should do next: an answer.

  “Can you take me somewhere?” I ask Jasper.

  “Sure,” Jasper says without hesitating. He’s so glad to leave the hospital. “Where?”

  “Someplace you are not going to want to go.”

  17

  WE DRIVE INTO CAMBRIDGE, PAST THE IMPOSING IVY-COVERED BUILDINGS OF Harvard and the packs of jostling students so filled with all that promise and possibility. I fixate on one girl walking alone. She is tall and slim with short jaggedy hair, but cut intentionally that way unlike mine. She even has a backpack like the one I used to carry. It’s amazing how she and I could look so similar and yet the gulf between us is infinite. Permanent maybe, too, I beginning to realize.

  By the time we park in an alley a few blocks off Harvard Square, a full-blown summer storm is overhead. There is a distant rumble of thunder, and the air feels heavy and wet, even inside the car.

  Without pressing for details, Jasper drove all the way to the address I gave him following the GPS on his phone, pulling into one of the only open parking spots a couple blocks away. He was so happy that I’d agreed to leave the hospital that he probably would have gone anywhere. But I could feel him getting more anxious the farther we went into the Cambridge side streets.

  “Okay, now you have to tell me where we’re going,” Jasper says as he turns off the engine.

  “To the address I gave you,” I say. And I know it’s stupid to delay the inevitable, but I do anyway. “That’s where we’re going.”

  He rolls his eyes. “Yeah, I got that part. I mean what’s at this address?”

  Really, I shouldn’t drag Jasper into—well, that’s just it. I don’t even know what I’m dragging him into. I can’t do that without telling him what’s going on.

  “It’s the address that was on the note Kendall gave me.” Even without looking at him, I can already feel Jasper’s anger in my toes.

  “The same Kendall who locked us in a cabin in the middle of the woods so some maniac could try to saw open your brain? I get it, you want to help the other girls, Wylie, but this is—”

  “I believe him,” I say. “The way Kendall looked at me and handed me that note. Listen, I can try to explain what it’s like to have this Outlier thing. How sharp and clear it can be. Maybe someday when my dad gets all his research done there will even be some way to measure it. To hold it up for everyone to see. But right now, it’s only a feeling. My feeling. And I can’t promise you that it’s right.” I turn to look at Jasper. “Also, technically, I don’t think Quentin was going to saw open my brain.” I smile, trying to lighten the mood. It’s not working.

  “Do you think this is some kind of joke?” he snaps.

  “Listen, you don’t even have to come—”

  “Don’t give me that bullshit,” he says. And he is angry. Angry because he is worried. “Obviously, I’m going to come. And you know it.”

  Do I know that? Did I realize that when I made Jasper drive me here? Maybe.

  I will do this on my own, there’s no question about that. But I would prefer to have somebody with me when I knock on this door. And I would prefer for that person to be Jasper. I feel how much he wants to hear that. He needs me to say it: that I want him with me.

  “To be clear, I would like you to come with me. You specifically because I trust you and you make me feel . . . better.” I wince. Wow, for someone who can feel everyone else’s feelings, I am still shit at talking about my own. Even the ones that I am willing to admit, which—I am beginning to realize—may be far less than their true sum. “But I won’t be mad if you don’t come. And you won’t be abandoning me. I can and I will do this on my own.”

  Jasper looks up at me out of the corner of his eye, then ahead again through the windshield. Finally, he nods. His anger has vanished, replaced by a faint twinge of satisfaction. And warmth. That was exactly what he needed me to say. And there it is: the first time that I’ve used what I know from being an Outlier to make someone feel good, to make things better. For a moment it lifts the heaviness off everything. For a second, it gives me hope.

  IT STARTS TO rain as we climb out of the car. Huge, scattered drops plunk to the ground as Jasper and I lift our hoods and follow the little blue dot on his shielded phone through several more rights and lefts, deeper still into the maze of narrow Cambridge streets. The stormy blue-black sky makes it seem much later than four p.m.

  When we finally turn onto Gullbright Lane, the sky opens and it begins to pour. Jasper tucks his phone into his jeans, trying to protect it from the rain as we dash down the street looking for number 323. People have newspapers over their heads, jackets pulle
d up as they sprint for cover. I’m glad for the rain, though. Now everyone is running from something.

  Finally we spot 323, about halfway down the block. A narrow, run-down, pale-blue Victorian divided—judging from the buzzers—into five apartments, the lower windows covered from inside in some kind of brown paper. We hover under the short awning as I dig out Kendall’s note with the code.

  I’m shaky as I step forward to the panel of buzzers stacked up in a row, each with a small number taped alongside. I try not to think about what will happen. Maybe I will ring all those buzzers in the order Kendall said, and everyone in the building will burst angrily to the door. And who could they be? My fingers are trembling as I punch the first button and then the next.

  I hold my breath until I am done. Then I wait for the door to spring open, for some terrible possibility I haven’t even considered. But nothing happens. The door doesn’t open. No one jumps out. There is only silence.

  “Try it again,” Jasper says, which surprises me. I’d have thought he’d be happy for any excuse to turn around.

  And so I press the buttons again in the order Kendall’s note instructed. This time I hold each number for longer. My finger is still on the last button when the door finally opens. But only a crack. Whoever is inside has left the chain across.

  “What?” A male voice, deep and aggravated. On the upside, at least he didn’t come charging out the door.

  “Um, we’re here to see Joseph Conrad,” I say.

  It feels reckless, like I’m taping a target to our backs. And yet—a bigger part of me is pushing onward.

  “What?” the voice barks.

  “Joseph Conrad?” I offer again.

  The door snaps shut without a reply. There are voices inside, followed by other sounds: cabinets opening and closing, footsteps. A beat later the door opens again, this time a little wider and without the chain. But more like someone forgot to be sure that it was all the way closed than an actual invitation.

  I look over my shoulder at Jasper. If he tries to stop us again I might listen. But he nods a little—go ahead—and so I push open the door with one spread-fingered hand all the way until it bumps back against the wall to be sure there is no one hiding back there.

  I take a deep breath as I step into the darkness inside. The smell hits me first. Mildew and dust and something else, thick and rotten. My throat clamps shut and I try not to gag.

  “Hurry up,” comes a voice to our right in front of the blotted-out windows. “And close the goddamn door.”

  In the dim light, I can make out only a short, slight outline. He sounds super pissed, but at least he isn’t huge.

  “You sure?” Jasper asks.

  I nod, though I am not sure that I am sure, and motion for Jasper to close the door.

  “Come on, come on,” the small guy says, stepping from directly in front of the window so we can see something of his face now. He has messy, shoulder-length hair and a bony face. He’s wearing oversized clothes—a green denim army jacket and super-low, baggy jeans. Massive black gauges stretch out his earlobes. Both the clothes and his angry voice seem meant to make up for his size. He’s waving us toward the back of the room. “Let’s go. Hurry up.”

  He was expecting us—or somebody like us—but he’s also annoyed that we’re there. He heads past us toward the back of the room and jerks open a door. Dim light from a stairway down brightens the room. I can see now he is even younger than I thought. And smaller.

  “Hello?” he snaps, waving us toward the steps. “Come on, let’s go. They’re down there.”

  Jasper peers in the direction of the stairs without taking another step. “They who?”

  “Fuck off,” the kid spits back, like he’s sure Jasper is messing with him. He pulls himself tall, too, for emphasis. Or taller. “Get down there now or get the fuck out.”

  Jasper makes a noise then: something between a huff and a laugh. Then he closes the space between them and I think: don’t Jasper. This will not end well. But he is already looming over the jittery kid with the stretched-out ears.

  “What did you just say?” Jasper asks.

  The kid leans in. Stupidly unintimidated. “I said: get down there or—”

  Jasper has grabbed him by the throat. In one hand. And so fast and sudden that I have to blink to believe what I am seeing. But there is Jasper, this small kid’s neck locked under the fingers of one hand. He has him lifted, too. On his toes. It is not the first time that Jasper has done this either. He is too good at it. A complete and terrifying natural.

  “Jasper,” I whisper.

  Finally, he loosens his grip a little and the kid starts to cough.

  “Who is down there?” Jasper barks.

  But instead of answering there’s a flash of movement as the kid’s arm jerks back and then forward.

  Then: stillness.

  The kid has his arm outstretched, a short knife only inches from Jasper’s neck.

  “Stop!” I shout, staring at that knife so close to Jasper’s skin. This is all my fault.

  Jasper raises his hands in surrender. He is afraid now, I can feel it. But not nearly as afraid as he should be. “Okay, man, I don’t—”

  “Shut the fuck up!” the kid screams, his voice shrieky and wild. “Asshole, do you not fucking see that I am the one with the goddamn knife?”

  It’s when the kid readjusts his grip on the knife that I notice the tattoo on his hand. A grid of nine black circles arranged in a perfect square. I have seen something like that before. Where? When? Who? Then it comes to me. On the neck of one of the two men we passed coming out of the main cabin up at the camp. Level99. Hacktivists, that’s what Quentin called them.

  I have to think. I have use what I can feel to help Jasper. What is it that this kid is worried about? What is it that he actually wants? What can I do to get Jasper away from him in one piece? I try to see past his fear to what lies beneath. Concentrate. Concentrate. Not to fuck it up. That’s what this kid wants, to prove to Level99 that he should get promoted off the door. But he is scared. And fear can make a person do anything.

  “Level99 is expecting us,” I say. “You can ask them. My name is Wylie.” It’s a risk. Despite Kendall’s note, I seriously doubt they’re expecting us. But this kid won’t check. He’s too worried about bothering them. “We’re supposed to be here. We knew the code. They’ll be pissed if we don’t show up.”

  The kid keeps his eyes locked on Jasper, knife still right at his throat. “Then go,” he says. “Get the hell downstairs.”

  I tug gently on Jasper’s arm, trying to get him to move. “Come on, Jasper. Let’s go. They’re waiting.”

  THE STAIRS ARE narrow and uneven and creak hard underfoot. I brace myself against the walls as I make my way down, feeling both better and worse with every step. Better that the knife is farther away, worse that we are getting more and more trapped inside this house. And I realize then that it doesn’t even matter if Kendall was telling us to come here because he truly believed we should. Doesn’t matter if he was telling the truth. Kendall had no way of knowing exactly what would happen once we got here. What that kid would do. How I would respond. How Jasper would.

  Outlier Rule #4: Someone telling the truth—isn’t the same thing as them being right about what will happen.

  Behind me, Jasper is breathing hard.

  “I’m so sorry,” I manage. “This is my fault.”

  Though the choking is on Jasper, that’s for sure.

  “Yeah,” he says, more angry than I had expected. “It is.”

  Eventually, the stairwell opens up on one side, and when my head clears the ceiling, I lock eyes with the person seated at the desk below. It’s the blond guy from the camp with the beaked nose and the dark circles under his eyes. The one with the game board on his pale, ashen arm. It’s obvious he recognizes me, too. And not in a good way.

  “Shit,” he says, annoyed, exhausted. Like I am yet another human spill he will now be forced to clean up.

&nbs
p; Beyond him there are a dozen young women and men sitting at a long table in the center of the room, headphones and hooded sweatshirts on, hunched over laptops. And beyond them is a partial wall, a light in the corner as though there might be another desk there out of view. If the people at the laptops notice us, they pretend not to. They don’t even look up. It is stuffy and dim down there, and there’s a distinctly sour smell—too many pairs of jeans worn too many times.

  “I don’t know why the hell you’re here,” the blond guy says, sizing Jasper up as he comes into view, “but we’re done with you. Period. That comes straight from her.”

  I am close enough now to read the newspaper clippings taped above his desk—Emails Surface Proving FDA Fast-tracked Profitable Painkillers over Lifesaving Cancer Meds and Servers Down at Oil Giant Following Spill. There’s a big white bedsheet tacked to the opposite wall with the game board spray-painted below the words: Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace. Amelia Earhart.

  “What ‘comes straight from her’?” a girl shouts from behind the partial wall.

  “I’m handling it!” the blond guy shouts back with an edge. Like he and the girl are already in a fight about something else. “You don’t want to come out here. Trust me.”

  “Oh, please,” comes the snorted response.

  When the girl finally emerges, she is petite but muscular, wearing boyfriend jeans and a snug white tank top that sets off her crimson lace bra and her olive skin. Her black hair is held up in a high, thick ponytail, and she has piercings that run the length of one ear. Near her collarbone, she has the same game board tattoo.

  “Riel, you didn’t have to come out here,” the blond guy growls at her. “I’m handling it.”

  “Handling it,” she snorts again, like that’s the most absurd thing she’s ever heard. “And thanks for telling her my name, asshole. Well done.”