Stop! Your baby is gone!
The words shoot to my lips, but my mouth stays shut as my pulse surges and my brain gets fuzzy on the rush.
No, don’t say that, I think. Don’t say a word.
Instead, I look over at Jasper. His eyes are closed, head resting against the window. I wonder for a second whether he’s asleep. But when I push one of my knuckles hard into the side of his leg, he lifts his head and turns.
I shake my head a tiny bit, widen my eyes before he can ask what’s wrong. I point a low finger at the car seat, then mouth the words: “No baby.” I hope that will be enough for him to get what I mean, but not ask questions.
Because as soon as Doug and Lexi know—that we know—we will have lost the only thing we have going for us: the element of surprise. And what is it that I think I know? There’s no baby in the seat, but I don’t know why or what that means. We asked them for a ride, I remind myself. Doug didn’t even want to take us.
Maybe these are just the people you run into in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere. People running from something. People with something to hide. For all we know, they stole this car with all its warm and fuzzy bumper stickers and its empty car seat. I don’t want to know. Lexi and Doug can keep their secrets, thank you very much. We just need to get the hell out of their car.
I quietly pull in a mouthful of air, but I am already so light-headed. My eyes are off, too, like the filter has been switched to antique, everything a little too soft and the tiniest bit yellow. At least there is no dark tunnel yet and I haven’t started to go numb. But if I can’t keep it together, it will only be a matter of time before the lights go out.
Lexi glances at me over her shoulder, then smiles like she has so many times since I first saw her swaying back and forth next to her car. A minute ago that smile seemed so sweet and warm. Now it lifts the hairs on the back of my neck. I press my fingers against my thighs. Dig in my nails as I smile back at her.
But whatever Doug and Lexi are up to, it has nothing to do with us. It started before we ever pulled into that gas station. Maybe they’re friendly neighborhood outlaws, environmental terrorists, or conscientious political protesters on the run for some crime of principle, and the pretend baby is cover. Not wanting to be found doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a bad person. I know that firsthand. And yet I still have such a bad, bad feeling.
“So your friend—” Lexi asks, finally settling on a song. “Wait, what did you say her name was again?”
I turn to Jasper, shake my head again. Don’t tell her anything else. Not another thing, I try to say with my eyes. Jasper squints at me for a second.
“Victoria,” Jasper answers finally. His lie is all the proof that I need. He gets it. “Her name is Victoria.”
I tap open my phone map, to see if we’ve veered off course. But the little blue dot that is us is still headed on Route 203 toward Seneca. Lexi and Doug could have something to hide but still be doing us a favor. This could be more of an unfortunate coincidence, a less dangerous disaster. My chest loosens a tiny bit. Yes, maybe. But we still need to get out of the car.
When I look down, I have only one bar of signal left on my phone. Soon even that might be gone. I am angry at my dad, of course. It feels like he actually may have permanently broken us. But I am still way more afraid of Lexi and Doug than I am angry at him.
I open my texts and type out a quick message to my dad.
Jasper’s car died off 93, Exit 39C in New Hampshire. Headed toward Maine on Route 203. In a black Subaru station wagon with New York plates and a Hillary 2016 sticker on it. We need help. Not safe maybe. I am trusting you. Don’t mess it up.
“Victoria, that’s a pretty name,” Lexi goes on, and with this tone—like she knows quite a few Victorias herself. Like the name says everything you need to know about this friend of ours. “Does she get herself into a lot of situations like this?”
“Sometimes,” I say, but way too high and way too loud. Be normal. Just talk about Cassie. She is not a lie. “She gets caught up and one thing leads to another and then she’s in over her head.” Like you guys. See, we get it. No hard feelings. “It’s not the first time she’s asked me to come get her. We’re just trying to bring her home to her mom.”
She has a home. She has a mom. They are good people. We are good people. And you should let us go.
“That’s good of you to do, especially more than once,” Lexi says, sounding wistful, as she turns to look out the window. “The two of you must be really close.”
“We are,” I say. “We are really, really good friends.”
The acid is kicking high in my stomach, trying to make its way up my throat, when I spot a little blue sign up ahead: a gas pump next to a crisscrossed fork and knife. Food and gas, an excuse to stop, to get out. To run. I rub my palms against my jeans, then squeeze my fingers tight.
“I’m sorry, but I have to go to the bathroom.” I point to the sign. “Could we stop? I’ll be really quick, I promise.”
I turn and look at Jasper. He nods. He may not know exactly what is going on, but he’ll follow my lead.
“Sure, no problem,” Doug says, and so easily, like I’ve imagined the danger. Or maybe like things are even worse than I thought.
The turn signal ticks like a metronome, the light flashing slow and steady in the darkness. The world has slowed. Every sound is amplified, every motion exaggerated. Doug’s eyes are on the road. Lexi’s are on her phone. It all looks so normal, which only makes me more convinced that none of it is.
“Wow, can’t miss that, can you?” Lexi says, pointing.
Floating high in the sky is a huge neon sign that reads Trinity’s Diner, with two red race cars and a checkered flag. It’s way too big, an eyesore out here in the woods. Especially when the restaurant itself is a smallish, rectangular metal trailer. Not the kind of place that’s going to be easy to lose Doug and Lexi inside. Once we start trying to get away, things could definitely get messy. I need to text Cassie, warn her that we could be out of touch for a while.
Ran into trouble. You should text your mom just in case. More important that you’re safe. Just tell her not to call the police. She’ll listen. I know she will. At least I hope.
It isn’t until I’ve hit send and closed out of that message that I see the red exclamation point next to the one I’d sent to my dad. Failed to deliver reads the red message next to it. My signal was already gone. All those choices I’d been mulling over about who to tell what about Cassie—they were no longer mine to make.
As we pull into the parking lot, I turn to Jasper, holding up my phone. I shake my head. No signal. He immediately looks down at his own phone. His face brightens for only a split second before he shakes his head, too. He doesn’t have a signal either.
“I should probably go in also, just in case,” Jasper says as we pull into the parking lot. In case? “I mean, so we don’t have to stop again later.”
Inside, Jasper and I will decide what to do. We can tell someone in the diner or we could ask to use the landline. Inside, there will be safety in numbers. And, after a while, when we don’t come back out, Doug and Lexi will probably drive away with their secrets, and without us. Happy to be gone, to be rid of us. We are a complication they didn’t ask for. Relieved, yes. There’s no reason to think they won’t be. Except as the gravel crunches loud under our tires, I do not believe that. Not at all.
Doug parks in a spot under the glow of the diner windows, next to a brand-new pickup with tinted windows, shiny hubcaps, and some kind of rack on top. For guns probably, given all the stickers: Maine Bears Arms, Terrorist Hunting Permit, an NRA emblem. There’s also a green tarp lashed to a back shelf, the tip of a hoof poking out from underneath. Not exactly who I was hoping to be asking for help.
But when I look up at the table in the diner window above, there are three girls about my age sitting in a booth, eyes locked on the one boy sitting opposite. They’re smiling on the edge of their seats as he talks, arms
moving back and forth in a big circle. When he suddenly freezes—on the punch line probably—they all burst out laughing. Totally regular kids, doing totally regular things. They’ll help us. I know they will.
“Actually, I could use a cup of coffee myself,” Doug says as he turns off the car. “No offense, but this little detour is going to add some driving time.” It almost sounds like it could be the truth, like he really just wants coffee. But truth or not, it’ll be a lot harder to talk to Jasper if we’re not alone.
“Well, I’m not staying out here by myself,” Lexi says as she undoes her seat belt and starts to get out. She’s forgotten about the baby they’re supposed to have. I watch Doug catch her eye, see her hesitate as she remembers. “Let me just grab the baby?”
My feet feel heavy as I make my way up the diner’s rickety metal steps. I’m almost at the top when the door swings open and there’s a burst of shouts and jostling as the kids from the window spill out.
“Oops,” the first girl says as they collide into one another. Their voices drop politely as they try to make way for us to pass. “Sorry.”
When I take the door from the last girl, it feels weirdly too light. Like none of this is actually real. Like it is a dream I will wake from. Help, I want to say to her. But with Doug and Lexi right there, I can’t say a word.
“Here you go,” the girl calls cheerfully when I hesitate too long. She is cute and petite with long, black hair. I stare at her and think, Please, don’t go. But all she does is smile a little more before hustling after her friends. At the bottom of the steps, they burst into laughter before they disappear. And just like that, our very best option is gone.
“Now I want a burger, too,” Doug says, positively cheerful now.
“Ugh.” Lexi sounds disgusted as she makes her way up the steps. She has the car seat in one hand, the top of it pulled low so no one can see that there’s actually nothing inside. She’s even doing a decent job of supporting herself with the handrail, as if the car seat is actually heavy. “A burger at a place like this?”
As I step into the diner vestibule, a wave of warm, damp air hits me, pumping out loudly from a radiator next to an M&M vending machine. I move on through a second set of doors into the diner, which is much cleaner and busier than I would have expected at nearly ten p.m. The half-dozen booths along the front windows are filled—teenagers, older people, a family with two young, sleepy boys, and it smells like bacon and apple pie, the walls a cheery bright red.
But not everyone in the diner is happy. One long-faced couple in the middle of the room is surrounded by a circle of empty tables and nestled in a zone of gray; their faces, their clothes, even the air around them seems coated in soot. They are utterly silent, almost motionless, their eyes on the tabletop. The woman has a full plate in front of her that she hasn’t touched, and the man is chewing slow and hard, like he’s trying to gnaw through rubber. They feel like a terrible, terrible omen.
I’m still watching them when a hostess appears in front of us. She has a dirty-blond ponytail and is cute despite her too-big eyes and crooked teeth. She’s wearing a red T-shirt with Trinity printed in big black letters, a flag on either side.
“Four of you?” she asks, smiling as she grabs up some menus.
“Actually, we’re just getting something to go,” Doug says.
Did he say that kind of too forcefully? Like he knows something is up? Who knows? It could easily be my imagination.
My heart is beating so hard, I feel like it is rocking my body as I stand there. I pray that Doug and Lexi can’t see.
“Where’s your bathroom?” I ask the hostess, hoping that Jasper will follow my lead. That he and I can talk privately back by the bathrooms, match notes, come up with a plan. Who knows, maybe he’ll even think it’s safe for us to be honest with Lexi and Doug, to tell them we know there’s no baby. Maybe Jasper will tell me that I’m being paranoid. And maybe I will even get myself to believe him.
“Sure, hon, bathrooms are right back there.” The hostess points toward a door at the far end of the counter. “Ladies’ is at the end of the hall.”
“Okay, thanks.” I avoid meeting Doug or Lexi’s eyes as I step toward the back. “I’ll just be a second.”
Lexi smiles. “Take your time, sweetheart.”
Did her voice also sound weird? A tremor to it like she’s scared, but trying to hide it? For sure, my racing heart has made the floor spongy underfoot as I make my way to the bathroom. By the time I finally reach the door, my body feels numb. I can see my hand on the knob, the door coming back toward me as I pull it, but I can’t feel it. I can’t feel anything.
On the other side of the door is a short, wood-paneled hall, the men’s room to the left and a ladies’ straight ahead. It’s colder out here, like the walls are paper-thin. When I put a hand on one to steady myself, I hope it doesn’t punch right through. By the time I reach the women’s bathroom, Jasper’s still not there like I hoped he would be. But I can’t just stand there like I’m waiting for him, on the off chance Lexi or Doug comes in behind me instead. It’ll look like I’m up to something. I have no choice but to go on inside the women’s room. Jasper will knock when he comes, right? He’ll know that’s where I went. He’s not an idiot.
The bathroom itself is filthy—hair all over the sink, stains on the floor, no toilet paper. Like the otherwise squeaky-clean diner saved up all its scum for this one room. It’s ten degrees colder yet again in here, and the laminate floor is peeling, the corners lifted and curled. I lock the door behind me, then press an ear to it. I can hear the dining room: voices, the clinking of silverware. I’ll definitely be able to hear Jasper when he comes through. If he comes through. I wait for a minute longer. Still, nothing. But he has to be coming. He has to be.
And when he gets here, we’ll need a way out the back. There’s a window high above the toilet, and when I climb up, it opens easily. Big enough for Jasper and me to make it through. But when I poke my head out, it’s a long drop to the ground. Hard to see exactly how far in the dark. Probably not so far that we’d be seriously hurt, but even hurt a little would slow us down too much.
I’m still leaning out the window when I finally hear the door to the bathroom hall open, at least I think. Jasper, finally, thank God. I jump off the toilet and head for the door. And really, I am still hoping he won’t even think we need to run.
I’ve already turned the lock. My hand’s on the knob when there’s a second sound. The hallway door opening and closing again. A second set of footsteps, these ones fast. Then Jasper’s voice.
“Dou—”
A hard thud against the wall. Doug. That was Jasper trying to say Doug. Wasn’t it? I press my hands against the door, heart racing. Do I open it? There are more sounds now, louder, a scrambling against the floor, then someone kicking the wall. Struggling. Jasper struggling with Doug?
I feel around my pockets for my phone, praying that I’ll somehow have a signal. That I can call the police, because now I will. I will have no choice. But I don’t have a signal, of course. As I shove my phone back into my other pocket, it gets caught on something. My mom’s pocketknife. When I dig it out, it’s cool and heavy in my palm, stiff as I tug out the short blade. My heart pounds in my ears as I stare down at the small flash of metal.
“St-op.” Definitely Jasper this time. Like he’s gasping.
I have to be ready to do something when I open the door. Just in case. That stupid little knife is my only option. The way my mom once taught me to split a log with an ax. I’ll have to swing with my full weight behind it.
When I yank open the door, my chest seizes. Because there it is. There they are. What I expected and yet still cannot believe. Doug has Jasper up against the wall. His arm on Jasper’s neck. Jasper’s face red. His eyes wide as he kicks against the wall. Jasper looks so terrified.
Doug’s other hand is pressed flat against the wall for leverage. A big enough target. A place to aim. He’s choking Jasper. He needs to let go. Now. I ne
ed to make him let go.
I lunge forward and swing. When the knife finally comes down, I’m jolted by pain—my pain—as the knife and my fist closed around it come down against Doug’s knuckles. I would have sworn that I’d hit the wall, if it wasn’t for the blood all over me.
“Fuck!” Doug yells, grabbing at his hand as he buckles.
Jasper coughs violently and lurches for the door. But I’m frozen. All I can do is look at the blood on my hand, on Doug. The floor. There’s so much already. So much more blood than I ever would have thought. And it’s such a bright red.
“Come on!” Jasper pulls me past Doug and toward the door.
We bang too loudly back into the dining room. The noise, our speed, it’s enough to make the whole room fall silent, turn to look. The hostess who was so nice a second ago turns, suspicious. I don’t see Lexi. She’s not near the door. Not at a table. Nowhere in sight, and neither is the car seat.
Jasper and I thread our way through the restaurant, toward the door. Not running, not quite. Pretending not to be two people on the run.
“Whoa, buddy, is that blood?” A voice behind us. When I turn, Doug is leaning against the doorway. There’s an older man next to him, a hand on his shoulder. I watch Doug say something to him. “Hey, those kids just tried to rob him!”
He points at us as a waitress rushes over to Doug with a towel. But Doug never takes his eyes off us. Or me. Never even blinks. And that look on his face. Like he wants to kill me. Like he will. The only question is when.
“Watch out!” It’s the old man again. “She’s got a knife!”
It isn’t until then that I look down at my hand. Sure enough, my mom’s pocketknife is still gripped in my fist. There’s blood on the stubby blade, and all over my fingers. I am no longer just a crazy girl with chopped hair. I am a crazy girl with chopped hair and a knife. A girl who has already proved that she is definitely a danger to others.
And am I? Did I really need to stab Doug? Why didn’t I yell for him to stop first? Why didn’t I at least try shouting for help?
The Outliers Page 10