The Outliers

by Kimberly McCreight

  Cassie and I knew of each other—our school wasn’t that big—but we weren’t friends. Cassie didn’t really have any friends yet. And I felt bad about the way some kids picked on her. It was her snug sweatpants or her short, knotted curls or the fact that she was bigger than the other girls—both her boobs and her belly. No one cut Cassie a break because she was a sports star either. She might have single-handedly made our soccer team decent for the first time that fall, but all they cared about was that she didn’t look the part. I did feel bad, but it wasn’t like I could be Cassie’s defender or something. Not when I was barely hanging on myself.

  “So what brings you to the bowl of shame?” Cassie asked once our knees were touching over the open water of the toilet.

  There was no way I was going to tell her anything. Except then suddenly, all I wanted was to tell her everything.

  “All my friends hate me,” I began. “And they’re all in my homeroom.”

  “Why do they hate you?” Cassie asked. I was glad she hadn’t tried to talk me out of them hating me straight off the bat. People love to talk you out of your bad feelings. (Believe me, I am an expert in this phenomenon.) Instead, she just seemed curious. “What happened?”

  And so I told her all about how Maia, Stephanie, Brooke, and I had been a foursome since we were eight years old, but lately it had felt like the rest of them were in on some joke that was mostly about me. I’d still been hoping it was my imagination, though, right up until that Saturday night at the sleepover when they started interrogating me about my therapist. Maia’s mom volunteered in the school office and must have seen the note about me having to leave early for my first appointment with Dr. Shepard. And then had apparently decided to tell Maia, which I still couldn’t believe.

  “Come on, Wylie. Tell us,” they’d chanted.

  By then I was sweating already. Suddenly, the room began to spin. And then, it had happened.

  “I didn’t even realize that I’d thrown up until after I’d heard the screams,” I said to Cassie. And I could still hear them ringing in my ears: “Oh my God!!” “Ew!!!”

  “Oh, that sucks,” Cassie said. Like what I’d told her was important, but not really that alarming. “My basketball coach showed me his stuff yesterday. You know, Mr. Pritzer. He drove me home after practice and then he just whipped it out. And unfortunately, he’s my homeroom teacher.”

  And she said it like her getting flashed wasn’t so terrible either, just kind of unfortunate.

  “Oh,” I said, because I couldn’t think of what else to say and it made me embarrassed just imagining Mr. Pritzer doing that. “Ew.”

  “Yeah, ew.” Cassie frowned and nodded. Now she looked sad.

  “Did you tell your parents?”

  “My mom won’t believe me.” Cassie shrugged. “That’s what happens when you lie a lot.”

  “I believe you,” I said. And I did.

  “Thanks.” Cassie smiled. “And I’m sorry you lost all your friends.” She nodded, pressing her lips together. “Good thing you’ve got a new one now.”

  Out in the kitchen, I move fast, not waiting for the tap to run cold before sloppily filling a glass of water for Karen. The truth is, I’ve been waiting for a long time for the “big one” to happen where Cassie is concerned. Rescuing her has always been a thing—playing a human shield so she didn’t get beat up for talking shit about some huge eighth grader, bringing money down to the Rite Aid so she didn’t get reported for shoplifting a lipstick (Cassie doesn’t even wear lipstick). Harmless, stupid kid stuff.

  This fall, though, things did take a dark turn. Cassie’s drinking was the biggest problem. And it wasn’t just how much (five or six beers in a single night?) or how often (two or three times a week?) that got me worried. That was kind of excessive for anyone, but for someone with Cassie’s genes, it was a total disaster. Once upon a time, she said herself that she should never drink. Because she loved her dad, but the last thing she wanted was to end up like him.

  But then it was like Cassie decided to forget about all that. And boy, did she not like me reminding her. By a couple months into this year, our junior year, she was unraveling so fast it was like watching a spinning top. And the more worried I got, the angrier she became.

  Luckily, Karen is still talking when I finally get back out to the living room. I might still catch some details that matter.

  “Yeah, so …” She glances up at me and then clears her throat before going on. “I came home to see Cassie after school and she wasn’t there.”

  The glass is definitely warm as I hand it to Karen. When she takes it, she doesn’t seem to notice. But she does finally notice my hair. I see the split second it happens. In her defense, Karen recovers pretty well, steadies her eyes before looking all the way shocked. Instead, she takes a sip of that bathtub water and smiles at me.

  “Couldn’t Cassie just still be out then?” my dad asks. “It’s only dinnertime.”

  “She was supposed to be home,” Karen says firmly. “She was grounded this whole week. Because she—well, I don’t even want to tell you what she called me.” And there it is. The tone. The I-hate-Cassie-a little-bit, maybe even more than she hates me. “I told her if she wasn’t home, I really was going to put a call into this boarding school I’d been looking into—you know, one of those therapeutic ones. And no, I’m not proud of that threat. That we’ve sunk as low as me shipping her off. But we have, that’s the honest truth. Anyway, I also found this.”

  Karen fishes something out of her pocket and hands it to my dad. It’s Cassie’s ID bracelet.

  “She hasn’t taken that bracelet off since the day I gave it to her three years ago.” Karen’s eyes fill with tears. “I didn’t even really mean it about that stupid school. I was just so worried. And angry. That’s the truth. I was angry, too.”

  My dad looks down quizzically at the bracelet looped over his fingers, then at Karen again. “Maybe it fell off,” he says, his voice lifting like it’s a question.

  “I found it on my pillow, Ben,” Karen says. “And it wasn’t there this morning. So Cassie must have come back at some point and left again. It was meant as a sign—like a ‘screw you, I’m out of here.’ I know it.” Karen turns to me then. “You haven’t heard from her, have you, Wylie?”

  Back when things were still okay between us, Cassie and I wouldn’t have gone more than an hour without at least texting. But that’s not true anymore. I shake my head. “I haven’t talked to her in a while.”

  It’s been a week at least, maybe longer. Being at home, it’s easy to lose track of the exact number of days. But it’s the longest stretch since the accident that we’ve gone without talking. It was bound to happen eventually: we couldn’t be pretend-friends forever. Because that’s all we were really doing when Cassie came back after the accident: pretending.

  The accident happened in January, but Cassie and I had stopped talking the first time right after Thanksgiving. Nearly two long months, which, let’s face it, might as well be a lifetime when you’re sixteen. But the morning after the accident, Cassie had just showed up on our doorstep. My eyes had been burning so badly from crying that I’d thought I was seeing things. It wasn’t until Cassie had helped me change out of the clothes I’d been dressed in for two days that I began to believe she was real. And it wasn’t until after she’d pulled my hair out of its ragged, twisted bun, brushed it smooth, and braided it tight—like she was arming me for battle—that I knew how badly I needed her to stay.

  I don’t know what Cassie has told Karen about our best-friend breakup and our temporary get-back-together. And it ended anyway a few weeks ago. But I can bet it’s not much. The two of them aren’t exactly close. And it’s not like the reasons we stopped talking reflect so well on Cassie.

  “You haven’t talked to Cassie in a while?” my dad asks, surprised.

  My mom knew about Cassie and me having a falling-out back when it first happened. She apparently just never told him. It is possible that I asked her not
to—I don’t remember. But I do remember the day I told my mom that Cassie and I weren’t friends anymore. We were lying side by side on her bed, and when I was done talking, she said, “I would always want to be your friend.”

  I shrug. “I think the last text I got from her was last week? Maybe on Tuesday.”

  “Last week?” my dad asks, eyebrows all scrunched low.

  The truth was, I really wasn’t sure. But it was the following Thursday now. And it was definitely at least a week since we’d spoken.

  “Oh, that long.” Karen is more disappointed than surprised. “I noticed that the two of you hadn’t been talking as much, but I didn’t realize …” She shakes her head. “I called the police, but of course because Cassie’s sixteen and we’ve been fighting they didn’t seem in a big rush to go after her. They filed a report and they’ll check the local hospitals, but they’re not going to start combing the woods or anything. They’ll send a car out looking, but not until the morning.” Karen presses her fingertips against her temples and rocks her head back and forth. “Morning. That’s twelve hours from now. Who knows who Cassie will be with or what shape she’ll be in by then? Think of all the horrible— Ben, I can’t wait until morning. Not with the way she and I left things.”

  I’m surprised that Karen seems to know even partly how out of control Cassie has gotten. But then, without me to help cover for her, Cassie was bound to get busted eventually. And this scenario Karen has in her head—Cassie well on her way to passed out somewhere—isn’t crazy. Even at that hour, just before seven p.m., it’s possible.

  “Nooners,” the kids at Newton Regional called them. Apparently getting totally wasted in the middle of the day was what all the cool kids were doing these days. The last time I rushed out to help Cassie back in November, it was only four or five in the afternoon. I had to take a cab to pick her up at a party at Max Russell’s house, because she was way too drunk to get home on her own. Lucky for her, my mom had been traveling, my dad had been, like always, working at his campus lab on his study, and Gideon was still at school, working late on his Intel Science Competition application. I slipped out and we slipped back in with no one ever the wiser, Cassie bumping into walls as she swayed. After, I held her hair back over the toilet when she threw up again and again. And later I called Karen to say she had a migraine and wanted to stay the night.

  I told Cassie the next morning that she needed to stop drinking or something terrible would happen. But by then I wasn’t her only friend. I was just the one telling her the things she didn’t want to hear.

  “Are you okay, Wylie?” My dad is staring at me. And he’s been staring at me for who knows how long. I realize then why. I’ve got myself pressed hard up against the back wall of the living room like I’m trying to escape through the plaster. “Why don’t you sit down?”

  “I’m fine,” I say. But I do not sound fine.

  “Oh, honey, I’m sorry.” Karen looks at me, seems again like she might cry. “The last thing all of you need is my, is our—” She forces a wobbly smile, looks even closer to falling apart. I stare down. If I see her really start to lose it, I will too. “Cassie will be fine, Wylie, I’m sure. The police are probably right that I’m overreacting. I can have a bit of a short fuse for this kind of …”

  She doesn’t finish her sentence. Because of Cassie’s dad, Vince, that’s what she means. Cassie’s parents were already divorced when we met, but Cassie told me all about life before. And Vince was never a quiet drunk. Fights with neighbors at summer barbecues, calling home to be rescued from whatever latest bar he’d been tossed out of. But the final straw was the second DUI, the one where he’d crashed his car into a mailbox downtown. Karen is as afraid of Vince’s history repeating itself in Cassie as I’ve been. When I glance up from the carpet, my dad is still looking at me.

  “I’m fine,” I say again, but too loud. “I just want to help find Cassie.”

  “Wylie, of course you want to help,” my dad starts. “But right now, I don’t think you—”

  “Please,” I say, willing my voice to sound determined, not desperate. Desperate is not my friend. “I need to do this.”

  And I do. I don’t realize how bad until the words are out of my mouth. Partly because I want to prove to myself that I can. But also, I do feel guilty. I didn’t agree with the things Cassie was doing, was scared about what might happen to her if she didn’t stop. But maybe I should have made more sure that she knew I’d always love her no matter what mistakes she made.

  “It was so selfish of me to come here.” Karen rests her forehead against her hand. “After everything all of you have been through—I wasn’t thinking clearly.”

  My dad’s eyes are on mine. Narrowed, like he’s assessing some tricky quadratic equation. Finally, he takes a deep breath.

  “No, Wylie is right. We want to help. We need to,” he says. And my heart soars. Maybe he can hear me after all. Maybe he does understand a little bit of something. He turns back to Karen. “Let’s back up. What exactly happened this morning?”

  Karen crosses her arms and looks away. “Well, we were rushing around getting ready, and Cassie and I were snapping at each other as usual, because she wouldn’t get out of bed. She’s missed the bus five times in the last two weeks. And I had to be somewhere this morning and I couldn’t—” Her voice tightens as she pulls a crumpled tissue out of her pocket. “Anyway, I totally lost my patience. I—I screamed at her, Ben. Completely let her have it. And she called me the most horrible word. One that I won’t repeat. A word that I have never in my life said out loud. But there was Cassie calling me that.” Her voice catches again as she stares down at her fingers, twisting the bunched tissue between them. “So I told her I was finally going to call that boarding school and have them cart her away. So they could scare some sense into her.”

  My dad nods like he knows exactly what Karen means. Like he’s yelled the exact same kind of thing at me countless times. But the only time I can remember him ever yelling at me about anything was one Fourth of July at Albemarle Field when I was barefoot at the fireworks and almost stepped on a broken chunk of bottle.

  “The worst part is that what started it—my big rush—wasn’t even about a work meeting or an open house or a prospective client. Nothing I needed to do to put food on our table. Nothing that actually mattered.” Karen looks up, toward the ceiling. Like she’s searching for an answer up there. “It was a yoga class. That’s why I lost it.” She looks at my dad like maybe he can explain her own awfulness. “I fought Vince through the entire divorce for Cassie to live with me, so I could be there for her, and now—I am so selfish.”

  Karen drops her face in her hands and rocks it back and forth. I can’t tell if she’s crying, but I really wish she wouldn’t. Because I am worried about Cassie. But not that worried. Ironic that I—of all people—would ever be less worried than anyone else. Makes me feel like maybe I’m in denial. And whatever it is could definitely be bad. Would any of the people Cassie hangs out with these days really call for help if she needed it? Would they stay to make sure she didn’t vomit in her sleep, that no one took advantage of her while she was passed out cold? No. The answer on all fronts is no.

  “Karen, you can’t do this to yourself. No one is perfect.” My dad steps toward her and leans in like he might actually put a hand on her back. But he crosses his arms instead. “Was Cassie absent from school?”

  “There was no message from them. But I guess—” Karen twists her tissue some more. “Cassie could have deleted it when she came back to leave the bracelet. She did that a couple weeks ago when she skipped school. I was going to change the school contact number to my cell, but I forgot.”

  Cassie’s been skipping school, too? These days there is so much about her I don’t know.

  “Why don’t you try texting her now, Wylie?” my dad suggests. “Maybe hearing from you—you never know.”

  Maybe she’s just not answering Karen. He doesn’t say that, but he’s thinking it. And af
ter Karen threatened her with that boarding school boot camp, Cassie might never talk to her again. But then if she’s avoiding her mom, she’ll probably avoid me, too, for the exact same reason: we both make her feel bad about herself.

  “Okay, but I don’t know …” I pull my phone out of my sweatshirt pocket and type, Cassie, where r u? Your mom is freaking. I wait and wait, but she doesn’t write back. Finally, I hold up my phone. “It can take her a minute to respond.”

  Actually, it never does. Or never did. The Cassie I knew lived with her phone in her hand. Like it was a badge of honor to respond to every tweet or text or photo within seconds. Or maybe it was more of a life vest. Because the skinnier and drunker and more popular Cassie got, the more desperate she seemed.

  “Can you think of anywhere Cassie might be, Wylie?” Karen asks. “Or anyone she could be with?”

  “You tried Maia and those guys?” I ask, hating the feel of her name in my mouth.

  The Rainbow Coalition: Stephanie, Brooke, and Maia—still best friends after all these years. All except me. They started calling themselves the Rainbow Coalition freshman year because of their array of hair colors. (And they seemed not to care that their all being white made their nickname totally offensive.) More beautiful than ever, they’d also gotten much cooler. By junior year, Maia, Brooke, and Stephanie had clawed their way to the top of the Newton Regional High School popularity pile. Cassie had always hated the Rainbow Coalition for what they’d done to me, right up until they reached down and invited her to climb up and join the pile.

  “Maia and those girls.” Karen rolls her eyes. “I honestly don’t know what Cassie sees in them.”