The Collide

by Kimberly McCreight

  My face feels hot. “You wouldn’t do that.”

  She laughs angrily, eyes gleaming. “Try me.”

  “You should leave,” Gideon says, stepping forward protectively. “Wylie hasn’t done anything wrong. She doesn’t have to do what you tell her to. And she doesn’t have to listen to this.”

  “If she doesn’t want to go back to jail, she does,” Jasper’s mom says, more confident now. This bail threat just occurred to her. But it’s gripped now in her fist like a spear. “Make any choice you want, Wylie. But don’t say you weren’t warned.”

  She means this, too. She’d make up a lie to make it sound like I’d violated bail. And I can’t risk getting sent back to the detention facility. Not with my dad still missing, and no one else very interested in making sure he’s found. Jasper would understand that. He will, definitely. Once I explain. And then it will all be okay. I’ll say what I have to now. There will be time to fix everything.

  Too bad I don’t believe any of that.

  “What is it exactly that you want me to do?” I ask.

  “Just a note,” Jasper’s mom says, trying to sound casual, but she’s desperate to close the deal now that she’s got me on the run. “Something real clear. Give you both a clean break, anyway. A fresh start.”

  “Okay, I could send—”

  “No,” she says. “Right now. I need you to do it now.”

  Jasper will understand, that’s what I say to myself again. I’ll write this note, and as soon as I’m not at risk of getting my bail revoked, I’ll explain everything to him. And then it will be fine. Too bad it’s not any more convincing this time.

  I motion her inside. “Gideon, could you take Jasper’s mom to the living room?”

  “I’m fine standing right here,” she says, excited now.

  “I can’t write anything with you hovering over me,” I say. “Go in the living room with Gideon or go back outside, I don’t care. But you can’t stand there.”

  She stomps down the urge to bark at me. Instead, she holds up a hand. “The living room will be fine. Thank you.”

  I STARE DOWN at the blank page once she and Gideon have gone. No words will come. There is a small part of me, though, that has started to think maybe Jasper’s mom has a point. That maybe Jasper really is better off without me. But a larger part of me still feels like the note is a bad idea. That it will set something terrible in motion. Something worse than even the end of Jasper and me.

  Outlier Rule #7: Knowing something bad is going to happen isn’t the same thing as knowing what it will be.

  Still, I am not sure what choice I have. Jasper’s mom will follow through on her threat. She will do whatever it takes to protect him. And my dad still needs me out here. I can feel both things so clearly they are like an ache. All I can do is take a deep breath as I begin to write, praying that whatever happens now was meant to be.

  Dear Jasper,

  Now that I’m out, I can see that my feelings for you aren’t real. They were about me needing somebody who’d been there through everything. Somebody who understood the camp and losing Cassie.

  Somewhere along the line, I got confused between that and something more.

  But I don’t have romantic feelings for you. I never did. We aren’t right for each other. We have nothing in common but what we lost up in Maine. And I don’t want to be with someone who is just trying to save me so they can convince themselves they are a good person.

  I’m sorry. But I don’t want to lie to you. What we had is over.

  Wylie

  By the time I am done writing, my chest is burning, and the tears have started. I wipe at my face before heading back out to the living room. I don’t want to give Jasper’s mom the satisfaction.

  Gideon is leaning against the wall on the opposite side of the room, eyes fixed worriedly on my phone as Jasper’s mom rises from the couch. She’s so hopeful it makes me furious. I haven’t even held the letter out as she rushes over and snatches it from my hand.

  “You can read it if you wa—” But she already is. “I didn’t put anything about another guy in there. Jasper would know that’s a lie.”

  But I do wonder if I should have included a line about him being better off without me, just to soften the blow. It’s so awful to think of him being hurt this way. But I also know a line like that would have made him want to convince me I was wrong.

  “Okay, thank you,” she says, already racing for the door.

  I expect her to turn back before she goes. To offer me something in exchange for the slice of my heart I’ve just given her. But the front door is already slamming closed.

  Gideon says something then. Words I can’t hear. I’m still staring after Jasper’s mom.

  He says it again. This time he puts a hand on my arm.

  “Hey, do you know this number?” Gideon is holding out my phone. There’s a text up on the screen.

  Hello? Call me back here, it says, dated two weeks earlier. It’s from a Boston area code.

  “No, I don’t know the number,” I say, my finger drawing down the screen. There are six texts in all from that same number, each sent without a response from me.

  They start curious: Hello? Turn threatening: What the hell is wrong with you? Don’t you care about your dad?

  The last one was sent four days ago.

  “Who do you think it is?” Gideon asks, and I do wish he sounded less concerned. That he felt less concerned.

  “I have no idea,” I say. “Wait, there’s a voice mail from the same number.”

  I play the message—this one left three days ago—and put it on speaker.

  “I still got his phone,” the voice says. “Remembah? Your dad’s. I don’t know where you went, but his phone’s dead now. Call me back on this numbah. And then you got to come get it. Your dad needs you. You should call me. Soon.”

  My dad’s phone, not a dead end after all. My fingers are already tapping the call-back button when Gideon leans close. “Are you sure you should do that?”

  “No,” I say as the phone begins to ring.

  It doesn’t matter anyway. A recording starts almost immedately: The number you have called is out of service.

  EndOfDays Blog NEWS: A New Addition to the Blog!

  May 25

  Dear Readers of EndOfDays,

  Beginning today, in addition to commentary on the blog, we will be featuring links to all the news you need! Citing only the most trusted sources.

  “Senator David Russo: A Life of Sacrifice,” McCann Report

  “The Armed Services Committee and the Fight for a Safer Tomorrow,” Daily National

  “Why We Should Care About Privacy,” Daily National

  “Cybersecurity: Get Educated,” Freedom Sentinel

  “Whatever the Cost: Senator Russo and the Cyber-Frontier,” McCann Report

  RIEL

  IT’S LATE IN THE AFTERNOON WHEN THE FIREFIGHTERS ARE FINALLY FINISHED. The flames spread quickly out from Leo’s room and through the old Harvard dorm. The firefighters managed to put it out in Leo’s room right away; it was the rest of the building that raged on. Riel knows because for hours she has been watching, tucked up in an alcove of a nearby building, out of sight.

  At first, she had been frantic, desperate to find anyone who could tell her for sure that Leo wasn’t inside. By now, all these hours later, at least eight different official people have assured Riel that the building is empty—they’ve checked, cleared every possible space. There have been no injuries at all. It has calmed her, some.

  But Riel isn’t going to be completely convinced Leo is safe until she hears from him. As it is, she’s texted him at least three dozen times. No response. He was on his way home, too. He should be there by now. He should have been there hours ago.

  Leo has to be okay, though. Because this is all Riel’s fault. She was warned. Klute told Riel to stay away from the “whole situation.” He said that Leo would “pay.” And sure enough, she pokes around online about those pictures
, and boom: his room goes up in flames. And she just got a damn note about them. So stupid.

  It isn’t until the last fire truck is pulling away that Riel’s phone finally vibrates in her hand. Everything okay? Got hung up in an endless meeting with a supervisor. What’s with all the messages?

  Alive. Leo is alive. Thank God.

  Riel feels dizzy with relief as she types a reply. There’s been a fire in your room. I’m okay. But you should come back. Now. If there is somebody watching, it will look better if Leo is there. And Riel is gone.

  Okay. Coming. You sure you’re okay?

  Yeah, I’m fine. Just want to see you.

  And now Riel has a second chance to do the right thing: protect Leo. And to do that, she needs to disappear. Riel comes out of the alcove she’s been tucked away in and heads down the steps. There’s still a decent crowd lingering in front of the building. She weaves her way through the bodies, toward the nearest campus gate.

  “Excuse me!” Riel calls as she pushes forward. She hates how panicked she sounds. She feels it still, too, even though she knows now that Leo is safe. She swallows. Takes a breath. “Excuse me.”

  Riel is almost through the crowd when she feels something clamp around her forearm. When she looks down, there is a hand wrapped around her; on the wrist is that leather bracelet. Shit. The man from Brew. She knew she recognized him. Make a scene, she tells herself. Make a scene.

  “Get off me!” she screams so loud her throat burns, yanking her arm away. But his grip is too tight. He tugs her closer.

  “Where are the pictures?” he whispers harshly in her ear. But not angry, not like Klute. All this man feels is cold, hard focus. He has his hat tipped down, so she still can’t get a good look at his face. But what she can see doesn’t look all that familiar, vaguely maybe. Riel doesn’t recognize his voice, either. And yet she still feels sure she knows him. From somewhere. Somehow.

  “Get off me!” Riel shouts again, even louder. As loud as she can.

  People have turned. A young woman—wispy blond hair, large glasses—steps forward. She isn’t afraid to get involved.

  “Hey, you!” she shouts, pointing at Riel and the man. “Let go of her!”

  Other people are staring now, too. The man loosens his grip but doesn’t let go. It’s enough. Riel jerks her arm free and darts into the crowd.

  She sprints away toward the nearest Harvard University gate. She doesn’t turn back, doesn’t slow down until she’s run all the way to the far side of the quad. When Riel finally does check behind her, the man from Brew is nowhere in sight. A little flicker of doubt then. Like Riel is leaving the most important thing behind. She scans the crowd again for the man, hopes for a second look. But he is nowhere in sight.

  Riel does eventually spot someone, though. Way in the distance. Agent Klute, standing at the edge of the crowd in front of Leo’s dorm, staring right back at her.

  Riel grips her bag with her computer and Wylie’s photos as she spins in the opposite direction, racing through an alley between two dorms to the nearest gate, and then the street beyond. She’ll dive down into the nearest T station. Or disappear into the maze of crooked Cambridge alleys. Riel knows how to get lost if she needs to. She’s a genius at not getting found.

  Riel checks one last time at the steps of the T. No Agent Klute. No man with a bracelet. Nothing but the smoke rising in the distance from Leo’s dorm.

  And Riel. Once again, all alone.

  DOWN IN THE T station, Riel jumps on the first train. It’s headed toward Beacon Hill, it turns out, with its overpriced boutiques and expensive coffee shops, as good a place as any to get lost.

  Once she’s off the train and up on the crowded sidewalk—bustling with fancy old ladies and moms in yoga pants pushing expensive strollers—Riel checks over her shoulder again. Still no Agent Klute, no man with the bracelet. No one at all. She spots a sign halfway down Newbury Street: Trident Booksellers & Café. It feels like that’s where Riel was headed all along: free Wi-Fi, a café, thoughtful, bookish people likely to intervene if someone else tries to drag her off.

  Inside, the bookstore is a cheerful double-wide townhouse with lots of reclaimed wood and handwritten signs. It smells of pine. There is a girl with a high ponytail and square thick-framed glasses behind the register. She’s reading when Riel steps inside: Animal Farm. She smiles as Riel slides by, headed for the café.

  She needs to check her phone. On the walk from the T to the bookstore, it vibrated three times—three texts from Leo, surely. He’s probably at campus now and can’t find her. She needs to tell him not to worry, to explain why she left. But she can’t bring herself to, not yet. Because she will need to say good-bye, too. For good. Or at least for a while. For Leo’s sake.

  Once she’s upstairs in the café, Riel orders the most expensive coffee on the menu, hoping it will buy her more time to sit there unbothered, then tucks herself into a corner where no one can sneak up on her. She opens her laptop. It’s a risk being online again, of course. But it’s a risk not to get some answers, too. Like what the hell does her grandfather have to do with any of this? And the first rule of any reconnaissance mission? Cast a wide net. Senator David Russo, she types.

  The first article that pops up is a feature from Cigar Aficionado, posted online only hours earlier. It’s a profile of her grandfather and his clock collecting. Riel remembers her mother talking about it once, but in a way that sounded like an insult. More attention to those stupid timepieces than he ever paid to an actual person, something like that. According to the article, her grandfather has recently started collecting compasses, too, after getting one as a gift from a corporation whose board he once sat on years ago, long before he was a senator.

  “I love my clocks, but they’re always losing time,” the article quotes him as saying. “Even in the harshest conditions, compasses always find their true north.”

  There is a picture of him to go along with the article. Out in his workshop with his tool belt on, looking like a kindly old grandfather, devoting his time to fixing broken-down things. It has nothing to do with the person he really is, of course. Looking at the picture makes Riel feel ice cold.

  She closes out of the article and returns to her original search, scanning for some connection between her grandfather and the Outliers. Something that proves she’s right that he’s behind Agent Klute, behind all of it. Something that also hints at why he wants those pictures so bad that he’s willing to kill to get them. Because even if he’d known that Riel and Leo weren’t in the room, the dorm itself was filled with people. A fire was a huge risk.

  But combing through everything about her grandfather is not an easy task; there are a lot of articles about him in the last year. One stands out, though. It’s about a critical military research spending bill that is in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee, research intended to protect against future invasions into citizen privacy. The article itself is so terribly written, which may be why it catches her eye. Just a bunch of words strung together so they sound impressive but don’t amount to much. That article links to another about her grandfather being on the Armed Services Committee for years. It’s filled with praise and more praise. So totally over-the-top that it doesn’t even read like it could be real. When Riel finally clicks through all the layers of both articles, she finds a random blog linked to both—EndOfDays—that looks like it’s curating a bunch of news sites, but actually, once Riel does some more digging, seems to be creating all the content. But it isn’t until Riel clicks back to her original list of search results that she finally spots the thing that matters most, something from a reputable newspaper: “Senator Russo Officially Announces Candidacy for President.”

  Riel holds her breath as she reads the headline again. Only one week old. This was always a possibility, she supposes, her grandfather running for the highest office. But in the way that getting hit by a car is always a possibility. Something so terrible you don’t let yourself think too much about it.


  Riel’s phone vibrates with yet another text.

  Riel holds her breath as she finally digs her phone out.

  Where are you? Are you okay? Leo’s text reads. Please answer. I’m starting to freak out.

  She quickly types out a response. I am okay. But you need 2 be REALLY careful. You are not safe. Got to ghost for now. I love you.

  Riel’s stomach twists after she hits send. The first time she’s told Leo she loves him, just as she’s saying good-bye. She shouldn’t have wasted so much time. She should have told Leo earlier how she felt—when there was still a chance for it to matter.

  Riel opens the back of the phone, plucks out the SIM card, cracking it in half as she walks over to the garbage. She flinches as it strikes the bottom with a hollow sound.

  As Riel makes her way back to her table, she tries again to picture the man from Brew, the one with the hat who grabbed her. She couldn’t see much of his face either time. But it wasn’t actually his face she recognized anyway. It was the shape of his body, the way he held himself. Where? Who? And then, suddenly, she knows.

  Kendall.

  “That’s Kendall. The police guy,” Brian had said as they watched the live stream of what was happening at the camp. Because by then Riel was already suspicious of Quentin. That was why she’d had Brian plant the cameras before leaving. “Wait, what’s he holding?”

  “It’s a gun,” Riel said, feeling sick.

  The rest happened so fast: Kendall out of the frame, a popping sound, a wounded old woman stumbling into view. Riel had been the one to send the police to the camp. Anonymously, of course. By then, Level99 had cut the camera feed, couldn’t risk it being traced. It wasn’t until hours later that they picked up chatter on the police frequencies: everybody at the camp was dead.

  Kendall’s face wasn’t easy to make out in the video. But the way he moved with that huge gun was unforgettable. Smooth, forceful authority. It was him at Brew, and then later outside Leo’s dorm with his hand on her. Riel is sure of it. And realizing that the man who grabbed her is the same man who killed all those innocent people should terrify her. But the truth is, she feels relieved. Hopefully that means Kendall is somebody on their side. That Riel can feel it, even if the evidence is thin. Because right now, people on her side feel in really short supply.