The Collide

by Kimberly McCreight

  “The only thing that’s wrong with Wylie,” he says, before he strides for the door, “is that she was ever friends with you.”

  JASPER JUST ENDS up at Cassie’s house. Like he’s on autopilot now. He didn’t plan on going there any more than he’d planned on going to Maia’s. But there he is. And inside there might be answers.

  Wylie was right that Karen is the best person to ask about the pages. She hasn’t been anything but nice to Jasper since Cassie died, but he still isn’t looking forward to seeing her. He doesn’t feel like he has a choice anymore, though. Understanding where the journal pages came from would at least give him an excuse to talk to Wylie again. Yeah, he does realize that’s a part of all this. It’s a part of everything.

  Jasper knocks hard on Cassie’s front door. Waits. Knocks again. Waits some more. It’s almost ten p.m. Maybe Karen’s asleep. Jasper’s about to give up and head back to his car when the front door finally opens.

  It’s a man with a salt-and-pepper ponytail and a matching beard. He’s wearing shorts and a light gray T-shirt that says Life’s a Beach. For a second, Jasper thinks he has the wrong house; he even steps back to check the house number.

  “Can I help you, son?” Calm, serene.

  Vince, Cassie’s dad, Jasper realizes as soon as he says “son.” His hair is longer and he didn’t have a beard at the funeral. But Vince called Jasper son a few times back then, which Jasper liked more than he wanted to admit. Weird that Vince is here, though. He and Karen have been divorced for years now, and from what Cassie said, it had been pretty far from friendly. Then again, maybe losing your only child changes that.

  “Um, have you, maybe, seen Cassie’s diary anywhere?” Jasper jumps right in. Immediately, he regrets not giving it some lead-up. He should have at least started by explaining why he’s looking for the journal: the pages being sent to him. As it is, Jasper wanting Cassie’s journal must seem creepy. But if Vince is put off, he doesn’t show it.

  “Would you like to come in, son?” Vince asks, and nicely, too.

  “Yeah,” Jasper says. “Thanks.”

  VINCE MOTIONS JASPER to take a seat on the couch, which is kind of awkward given that it’s the exact spot that Jasper and Cassie last had sex. Jasper hates himself for remembering. Especially because Vince is looking right at him. So Jasper starts talking, and too fast.

  “Somebody mailed me some pages out of Cassie’s journal. And I was kind of hoping that Karen would be able to tell me who might have sent them. The whole thing has been freaking me out for a while.”

  “Oh, well, Karen might be able to, but she’s not back until the end of next week,” Vince says. “Two months in Europe. Sounds odd, probably, but she needed the time away.”

  “Oh, okay,” Jasper says.

  “That is strange about the journal, though. We could take a look in Cassie’s room,” Vince says, rising to his feet. “Don’t know what we’ll find. But sometimes a single step forward lights the rest of the way.”

  “Yeah, thank you,” Jasper says, relieved that Vince isn’t bothered by him being there. But then Vince seems pretty weird himself. “That would be good.”

  IN CASSIE’S ROOM, Vince and Jasper open and close drawers, check in corners and under stacks of paper, looking for her journal. But the more they look and the more they turn up nothing, the hollower Jasper feels. Like he already knows that none of this was the answer to anything to begin with.

  “Oh, look here,” Vince says finally, turning around with a small black book in his hands. “Here it is. And I had no idea Cassie even kept a journal.”

  But when Vince holds it out to Jasper, he cannot get himself to take it. He’s suddenly too afraid of what he might find inside. What if there are even more pages about how much Cassie loved Quentin? What if there are parts that say she never cared about Jasper at all? He’s not sure he’d be able to take that right now. After Wylie’s note, he’s too fragile.

  But Vince is still hanging there with the journal in his hands. Jasper needs to say something. “I really just want to know who sent the pages I already got. I don’t want to read any more.”

  “Oh, well.” Vince flips quickly through the journal. “It does look like there are some sections missing. But I’m afraid that doesn’t tell me who could have taken them. We will need to wait until Karen gets back to ask, though there’s a good chance she won’t know, either. So many of Cassie’s friends have been in and out. And before then . . . well, we didn’t pay the attention we should have.”

  There’s a noise then, some kind of crash followed by a thud downstairs. They both startle and look toward the door.

  “Squirrels,” Vince says with an exasperated shake of his head. “They get in through the attic. They used to stay in the walls, but lately they’ve been getting into the basement. I should go downstairs and be sure the door is closed. I’ll never hear the end of it from Karen if they get into the house itself.” He puts the journal down on a side table. “But I will say that reading the journal is an awfully big risk. The thoughts in someone’s head are just that: thoughts. Are you still getting parts of it mailed to you?”

  Jasper shakes his head. “No, they stopped.”

  “Maybe that’s the thing that matters then,” he says kindly, and Jasper does feel relieved. “That it’s over. Maybe what you need to focus on, son, is letting go. Believe me, I know. Sometimes that can be the hardest thing.”

  BACK ON CAMPUS, Jasper goes straight for a run. Doesn’t even stop back at his room. He has to burn some of what he’s feeling off or he might explode. There are lots of people out still, but on their way to bars or parties. It’s eleven p.m. Way too late for a run. Still, the harder Jasper runs, the better he feels, and the farther he wants to run.

  As his feet slap against the pavement, he replays in his head each sentence of Wylie’s note over and over, waiting for the words to lose their shape. When they don’t, he tries instead not to think about the letter at all. But that doesn’t work, either. How could Wylie just decide that he wasn’t right for her? That they were too different? Who said they were trying to be the same?

  Jasper also hates that Wylie’s reasons for breaking up with him sound so much like Cassie’s. But Jasper also wonders whether the way he choked that kid at Level99 didn’t factor in. Still, Jasper went after that Level99 kid way before Wylie was arrested. And still—in twenty-six-minute increments—they’d fallen for each other in that detention facility visiting room.

  Hadn’t they? Or had Jasper made that up, too?

  ONE KIND OF nice, kind of crappy thing about having to see Wylie at the detention facility? Sex wasn’t even on the table. They couldn’t even touch hands, let alone something more. Still, Jasper somehow managed to get the conversation there anyway. But it was Wylie who grabbed hold of the bait.

  “You know how it is when you accidentally have sex with somebody,” Jasper said. He’d been telling a story about a friend of his, not even himself.

  “Nope,” Wylie responded. “I don’t know. I’ve never had sex. With anyone.”

  Wylie had never had sex, and Jasper had. Obviously more than once, including with Cassie. There it was now, out there on the table between them. Wylie was staring at Jasper, too, like there was a right thing to say at that moment. And a wrong thing. But Jasper had no clue which was which. He had never before wanted so badly to be able to feel his way to an answer. As it was, all he could do was stare back at Wylie and hope that she’d be able to feel that his heart was in the right place, even when he totally screwed it up.

  “It’s okay,” Wylie said finally, rescuing him. “You don’t have to say anything. I just—I wanted you to know.”

  “Oh,” he said, exhaling hard. And the rest was a guess. “Yeah, I’m, uh, glad you told me.”

  Wylie smiled. “Me too.”

  JASPER HAS RUN two more hard laps around campus when he feels a twinge in his knee. He can’t risk blowing it out. Now more than ever, he needs the ice. The game. The pain. Otherwise, he mig
ht actually end up taking a swing at somebody on dry land.

  Jasper takes a hard left at the west gate of BC, looking down at his Runkeeper app as he turns back toward his dorm. His eyes are still down on his phone when he collides with somebody running in the opposite direction.

  “Watch where you’re going!” A girl’s voice. And there she is, knocked to the ground, looking pissed as she yanks her earbuds out. For a second, Jasper wonders whether he’s imagining her. “Seriously? Do you just have a thing about running into people?”

  But no, it’s her. The girl on the bike. The girl he already ran into once with his car. The girl whose bike he destroyed. Crap. The bike. Jasper completely forgot about fixing it. He should have dropped it at a shop while he was out. He hasn’t even taken it out of his car. The letter from Wylie made him forget everything.

  “Sorry, I didn’t see you,” he says, hoping that they can somehow breeze past the whole subject of the bike.

  “I’m beginning to sense that happens to you a lot,” she says. And then she smiles, finally.

  “They said your bike would be ready tomorrow, hopefully.” The lie popped right out of his mouth. So much for avoiding the subject of the bike. “I can drop it off for you.”

  The girl narrows her eyes like she doesn’t believe him. “Drop it off? What makes you think I’ll give you my address?”

  Jasper feels his cheeks flush. He knows she’s joking, but his skin just feels so raw. “Oh, well then—”

  “Um, that was a joke.” The girl leans in. “You should try to lighten up.”

  Jasper’s chest opens a little, like a bubble crowding out his insides has just burst. He smiles, for real. “Yeah, I probably should. Definitely, actually.”

  “Why don’t you call me when the bike’s ready, and I’ll come by and get it?” Is she flirting? Maia was one thing, but this girl is less obvious. Wylie’s note has made him doubt his ability to read even the most straightforward emotions. “And maybe you can buy me dinner or something, too. You do owe me.”

  And with that Lethe jogs off. Jasper stands there for a minute, watching her go, her long ponytail swinging back and forth. She glances back once over her shoulder to wave. Like she knew for sure he’d still be standing there, watching her go.

  WYLIE

  IN THE MORNING, AFTER A TERRIBLE NIGHT OF MOSTLY NO SLEEP, I LIE IN BED thinking about that picture Leo gave me or, rather, hid for me. It’s bothering me so much it makes it hard to even enjoy being back in my own room.

  The night before, I waited until we were safely back in the car to open the folder Leo left for me. Inside was a grainy and off-kilter eight-by-ten black-and-white photograph of a car. A black sedan, nondescript but for the license plate, which was visible. In the background, there was also a sign that read For assistance call the main office. There was a phone number, too. But other than the sign and the license plate, there was just the car and a little bit of flat gray sky.

  “What’s that?” Gideon had asked.

  “One of Mom’s pictures, I think,” I said. “I found an envelope of them in Rachel’s house after I got out of the hospital. Mom must have had them with her when she was followed. I don’t remember this one picture specifically, but they were pictures just like this.”

  “These are the pictures Rachel asked about,” Gideon said. “Didn’t you say you had to leave them?”

  I nodded. “With Riel,” I said. “I didn’t tell Rachel that part because I guess I didn’t want her trying to find Riel. I wonder where the other pictures are. There were a bunch of them.”

  “Maybe this is the only one that matters?” Gideon offered.

  And it seemed like a reasonable suggestion last night. But now as I lie in my bed in the light of day, it no longer does. There’s a knock then at my bedroom door.

  “Come in!” I call.

  Gideon opens the door but stays in the doorway. “We got a text from Oshiro,” he says, then reads out loud: “‘I’ve got some information for you. Come to my apartment: 72 Sleeper Street, PH-C. Seaport District. Ten a.m.’” He looks up at me. “What do we do?”

  Gideon is right to hesitate. It’s a little weird for Oshiro to be asking us to go to his house. But when I search myself for real doubt, for some sense that we might be walking into a trap, I feel nothing but how torn I am between wanting all the answers about my dad and wanting only the good ones.

  “We go,” I say, getting out of bed. “Definitely.”

  “WHAT DOES IT feel like?” Gideon asks as he turns on the car and starts driving toward Oshiro’s apartment. There is no judgment in his voice. His motives are pure and simple: he just wants to understand. “I mean, the whole being-able-to-read-people thing.”

  It isn’t until I pause to consider how to answer him that I fully realize that I am no longer just reading feelings. Go to Oshiro’s. That was intuition, unattached to a single person. In a matter of weeks, since finding out I was an Outlier and with no formal training, I’ve gone from reading people to reading situations. That much better, that fast. No wonder they are trying so hard to contain this. To contain us. Someday who knows what we will become?

  “Sometimes I feel it as a physical thing in my own body. Like, right now, you’re freaked out, but trying not to be—I can feel that. Like it’s my own heart beating fast. I used to get confused, but now I can tell the difference between someone else’s feelings and my own. And then there’s my own anxiety, too, which I have to separate out. It’s getting easier to tell the difference between all three. Also, the more I learn to read people, the more I also have a gut feeling just about things.”

  “What do you mean ‘about things’?”

  “Like: yes, go to Oshiro’s,” I say. “That’s not about reading one person.”

  “Intuition,” Gideon says, and like maybe he knew that already. I wonder if in his less angry moments with our dad, they talked about where this Outliers research could be headed.

  “But that part—the intuition part—isn’t as consistent.” As I explain it to Gideon, I’m only fleshing out the details myself. “Sometimes I’ll be right, but only sort of. Like Jasper was thinking of hurting himself, I was right about that. But he’d changed his mind before I got to the bridge, and it ended with me caught and in the hospital. That I didn’t see coming. So it’s not like my intuition always keeps me out of trouble. It’s not like my intuition is foolproof.”

  “Not ESP.” Gideon smiles, but sadly.

  “No,” I say. “And it’s kind of a problem. I mean, how do you even prove something is a real thing, that it matters, when you have to admit right away that it’s kind of fuzzy? They will use it against us. I know they will.”

  “There are some people, dudes especially, who will try. But that doesn’t mean they’ll succeed,” Gideon says. “You want to know how it feels not to be an Outlier?”

  “How?”

  “Like nothing.” He shrugs. “That’s the weird thing. I don’t miss it at all. I just walk around the world making my decisions my way, using facts, not feelings. But it doesn’t feel like there could be something more because I don’t even know what that more feels like. And I swear I can’t remember a time when I had some kind of real overwhelming feeling about what I should do. Not even one that I ignored.”

  “Oh,” I say, and the gulf between us suddenly feels infinite. Gideon and I are twins. We have so much in common, almost everything. Except this. And suddenly, it feels like the only thing that matters.

  “Do you feel sorry for me?” Gideon asks. And there is no challenge in his head or his heart.

  I shrug. “I’d say both situations have a downside. And an upside, too.”

  “Maybe,” Gideon says. “But I do think people will want there to be one winner. One truth. Look at that blog. Hell hath no fury like people who don’t like what Dad’s research could be saying, even if they make up what that is.”

  “Yeah, EndOfDays,” I say as we pull off the highway into downtown Boston. I hate the way the name pops into m
y head like one firecracker after another. End. Of. Days. “But that’s not . . . they’re not regular people.”

  “No,” Gideon says. “He’s a fanatic. I’m just worried about the regular people listening who don’t realize it.”

  WE DRIVE ON into Oshiro’s neighborhood. It’s one of those that’s turning over from old factories to new luxury lofts. Empty buildings sprinkled between bright bistros and hip cafés. There’s even an art-house movie theater, where they probably bring soy-milk cappuccinos to your seat. And nearby, a pack of strung-out-looking white kids hang on a stoop in front of a boarded-up warehouse like it’s a fortress they just claimed.

  “Turn right in three hundred feet, and your destination will be on the left,” the GPS voice instructs.

  It’s risky to be using the GPS. Somebody could already be tracking us. But we are heading to Oshiro’s at least. If there is someone following, it couldn’t hurt for them to know we’ve got a cop on our side.

  Finally, we turn left between two brick pillars into a pristine parking lot. A row of white vans at the back are lined up like service vehicles for a luxury hotel. In front of us is a very fancy converted loft building.

  I look around. “Kind of nice for a police officer, isn’t it?”

  And there it is, a bad, bad feeling. Not my anxiety and not me reading Gideon. This is something else. It’s a bad feeling about this disconnect between Oshiro’s fancy apartment and his job. I’m not sure why it matters, though. But it does. It’s like an echo almost.

  “Have you changed your mind about going in?” Gideon asks, seeing the suspicious look on my face, no doubt.

  “No.” I look up again at the building as I open the car door. “And yes.”

  THE GRAY-HAIRED, SQUARE-FACED doorman eyes us disapprovingly over his desk in the glamorous lobby, confident as we approach that he can sweep us away with just the one look.

  “We’re here to see Detective Oshiro?” I shouldn’t have said it like it was a question. I hate when I do that.