The Outliers

by Kimberly McCreight

“Stuart!” Quentin shouts as the couch next to him catches fire, and some paper on the other side of him. He is trapped by flames on every side.

  “Oh shit!” A voice from behind the door. Stuart rushes past, grabbing up a blanket to smother the fire.

  And then I am jerked backward, dragged away from the smoke toward the door. I am kicking, fighting to be let go.

  We have to do something. We have to save her, I think, even though I know it’s already too late.

  “Come on, Wylie!” It’s Jasper shouting in my ear. Pulling me out. His voice is high and tight like a terrified little boy. “We have to go!”

  Outside, we run. It’s cold and dark and the air smells burnt. Of flesh. And of death. Of Cassie on fire. The smell is coming off me. Seeping out of my pores. I gag hard as we rush across the pitch-black, damp grass toward the even darker woods. No moon tonight, no stars. Like the universe has folded in on itself and disappeared. There are tears in my eyes and a burning in my chest as we run. No, I think again. That did not just happen. None of this is real. And my legs are so heavy suddenly, too heavy to move.

  “Come on.” Jasper tugs me on as I slow. “We can’t stop. She’d want us to go.”

  And he’s right. She died so we could get away. And there is still my dad to warn. I don’t know what he believes. What Quentin and the pretend Dr. Simons may have convinced him of. Why he thinks he’s coming here. But I feel sure he’ll never get back out alive. When we finally reach the trees, I turn back once, hoping I’ve imagined it. But the cabin glows orange in the distance.

  “Don’t look,” Jasper says, more to himself than anything. “It’ll be worse. Come on.”

  But it’s hard to run, to catch a breath when I’m crying so hard. Am I crying? My face is wet and there’s a burn in my throat. But I am otherwise completely and totally numb, making it even harder to run through the woods in the dark. But Jasper and I have done this before. We can do it again. We will have to. And he is right about not turning around. There are already the voices behind us again. So many, it sounds like, but it could be an echo of only a few. At that distance, it’s impossible to know.

  “Look. Over there,” Jasper calls after a while of just sticks and branches and more darkness. I can see the outline of his arm, pointing straight ahead. And in the distance there are very small lights, a house maybe. “It has to have a driveway. Driveway has to lead to a road.”

  Saved again by some lights on the horizon? But they are so much farther away this time. Because we continue on like that, forever it seems, running as fast as we can in the dark, which doesn’t feel nearly fast enough. And doesn’t really seem to be getting us anywhere. Not any closer to the lights, which at one point seem to vanish entirely. And the whole time, I brace for a voice behind us. For someone’s hand on my arm. For gunfire. But there is nothing in that long and awful forever but the hard beating of my own heart.

  Finally—hours later, minutes, a lifetime—we come out of the woods at the edge of a road. The house, it turns out, is still some distance on. And the road is dark and narrow. Dead quiet. I look right and then left. Not a car in sight. Nothing. No one. Anywhere. But Jasper is right. We need to keep moving. Just pausing there for a minute, my chest already feels like it is going to explode.

  And later there will be so much time to be sad for Cassie. Later, I will be sad forever. Right now, though, I need to move. I need to keep going. We need to keep going before they catch us. We need to warn my dad.

  I look left and right again down the dark and silent road. Which way to go? Which way is fastest to a phone, someplace we can call my dad? Or the police. Some police other than Officer Kendall. The FBI? How does one even call them?

  “Holy shit,” Jasper whispers suddenly, his eyes wide on mine. “She’s dead, isn’t she?”

  Like someone has only just told him what happened. Like he is only just realizing it.

  “Yeah,” I say. “But you were right. We had to go. There was nothing we could do to save her.”

  “Holy shit—what the fuck,” he says, wrapping his arms around his stomach like he might vomit. “Did you hear what I said to her? I was so mean. That is going to be the last thing I ever say to her. The last thing anyone says.”

  “She knew how much you loved her,” I say. And he has to keep it together. If Jasper crashes to pieces too close to me, I will be swept up in his collapse.

  Suddenly, there is a flicker in the distance up the road. Like a shooting star. Gone so fast I think I’ve imagined it. Seeing things that I want to see. But then it appears again. Small, but slowly and steadily growing. Headlights. A minute later there is no doubt.

  “Somebody’s coming,” I say.

  Jasper takes a deep breath, crossing his arms as he steps around me to look. “It could be them, though.”

  “They’d be coming from the other way. Wouldn’t they?”

  I hold my breath as the lights get closer, praying that I’m right. Because all I can picture is Stuart’s gun. And what my dad might look like with it pressed to the back of his skull.

  “It’s a truck,” Jasper says. “But he’s going too fast. He’ll never see us.”

  Jasper is right, the truck is coming so fast, the headlights bigger and bigger by the second. When just an instant ago, they seemed miles away. He’ll stop. He’ll see me. A guess, a hope, an instinct. Intuition. If I am who they say I am, I will be right, won’t I?

  “Wylie!” I hear Jasper yell as I make my way out into the road. “What the hell are you doing?”

  It’s okay. This is not how I die. And I don’t think that it is. But as I stand there in the middle of the road, waving my arms over my head, part of me wishes that it would be. And Jasper is right, the truck isn’t slowing down. The lights are closer now. Bright on the road and the trees. Blinding me as I wave my arms. This is not how I die. It’s a memory and a wish.

  “Wylie!” Jasper screams again.

  When I turn, his face is lit up as he sprints toward me at full speed like the athlete he is. But I already know, there isn’t enough time for him to do anything but die with me. And so I close my eyes and face the oncoming lights. And I pray that I am right. That I am everything Quentin said. And that if I am not, that this is at least not how Jasper dies.

  The insides of my eyelids glow. So bright for a second I wonder if I might not already be dead. But then comes a deafening screech. The smell, too, rubber burning against asphalt. When I open my eyes, there’s Jasper at my side, his face turned away, shoulders up, bracing himself for impact. I close my eyes once more. Until finally there is only silence.

  When I look, the truck has rolled past us and come to a stop, almost in the woods on the opposite side of the road. I blink down at my hands. They are still there. I am still in one piece. We are still alive. I swallow down a mouthful of air as Jasper and I stare at each other, wide-eyed.

  “For fuck’s sake!” the driver shouts as he comes around the front of his truck. He’s a big man with a bushy black beard, wearing a blue flannel shirt and a John Deere baseball cap. He rests one hand on the grille of his truck, the other on his heart. “What the hell are you kids doing in the middle of the goddamn road?! I almost killed you.” Then he looks down at himself as if to make sure he’s not injured. “I could’ve been killed myself. Not to mention my truck.” He steps back to inspect it. “I’m a foot away from that goddamn tree.”

  “We need help, please.” I sound too frantic. Like someone who’s going to cause trouble, somebody already in too much. Someone on meth, maybe. If he knows this area, that is what he’ll think. “We just need to use your phone.”

  “Fuck no!” He’s already headed back around to the front of the driver’s side. “Now, get the hell out of the road or I swear to Christ I’ll roll over you.”

  He’s pissed. But he’s nervous too—him, not me. Even though a day ago I would have mistaken it for my own nerves, I actually think they are his feelings. He’s worried about getting in trouble himself. Nothing too bad, not a
dead body in his truck. But something he’s not supposed to be doing: driving on that road, cheating on his wife, working past shift to make up time. Whatever it is, he’s lying to somebody about something.

  “Let us use your phone now, or we’ll call your company later and tell them we saw you here.” I step back and make a show of looking at the company name on the side of the cab door, and then his license plate. Neither of which I will remember. “This size of truck on this size of a road. There’s no way you’re supposed to be here.”

  “Oh, yeah?” he says angrily. “Fuck if I care what you do.” Except it’s obvious that he does care, a whole lot. “There’s no damn signal here anyway. Even if I gave you my phone, it wouldn’t do shit for you.”

  But he hasn’t gotten back in his truck. He’s worried enough that he doesn’t want to leave with my threat hanging in the air.

  “Then give us a ride. Just to the nearest gas station. We’ll use someone else’s phone when we get there.”

  “No fucking way I’m going to—”

  “Or we’ll make that call,” I say. “And everyone will know what you’ve been doing.”

  And I know I’m on seriously thin ice here. But the driver grinds his jaw down and narrows his eyes some more, like he is actually buying my stab in the dark.

  “Fine,” he says. “But your asses are riding in the trailer.”

  Jasper and I sit in silence inside the dark, freezing-cold trailer. Backs against the wall, feet jammed against a tall stack of plastic pallets filled with boxes of crackers and pretzels, we can hear them creak right and then left every time we hit a bump. We drive for longer than I expect. Much, much longer than would seem necessary. An hour maybe. With the dark and cold and the rocking crackers, eventually, I start to wonder if he’s taking us to a gas station at all. And who’s to say this truck driver isn’t some friend of Quentin’s, the way that Officer Kendall was? Or if what he has to hide is so much worse than I thought? Something worth getting rid of us for. I still don’t feel like my thoughts are much more than guesses.

  And even if I’m right that he’s doing something he’s not supposed to be, it’s one thing to know enough to threaten someone, it’s another thing to know what will happen after you do. I’m not breathing much by the time the truck finally jerks to a stop, and Jasper reaches over and takes my hand.

  “We’re going to make it,” he says when he squeezes my fingers. His voice is quiet and calm, but it’s too dark to see his face. “And your dad’s going to be okay. We’ll warn him in time. I know we will.”

  We couldn’t save Cassie, and so we’ll save him. Jasper doesn’t say that, but that’s what he means. It’s what he wants to believe. Except he doesn’t, not really. I can feel that he doesn’t. Jasper is afraid that my dad is walking into a trap, that maybe he already has. And so am I. I’m terrified, actually. But I am trying so hard to stay above it, not to let my panic overwhelm me. Because my dad needs me right now. He needs me not to be afraid.

  Jasper and I are still holding hands when there’s a sound at the back of the trailer, the lock being flipped open. A second later, the door rolls up loudly.

  Dark still. I was hoping for light, even though I know that would be impossible. We’re still hours from dawn, a whole nighttime stretching between here and tomorrow. But morning would have felt like such proof everything was going to be okay. Even if another part of me knows that it’s already too late for okay. Cassie is dead. Nothing can change that.

  “Now get your asses out of there before somebody sees you,” the driver says, waving us out. At least we are at a truck stop like we asked. “And you better not have taken any goddamn crackers.”

  I climb out of the truck to the ordinary hum of the nearby, late evening, highway traffic. The parking lot is mostly quiet. A few drivers are filling up their cars, truckers chatting with coffee in hand. Businesspeople, a few families in and out of the building. Life. As if nothing has changed. And I wonder for a second whether it really has, whether we might have imagined everything.

  No, I shouldn’t let myself do that. Pretend that Cassie is alive. It will be worse to have to remember that she really is gone. That all of it really did happen. I know that. Cassie and my mom are both gone and I am all alone. I don’t know what I will do without them. Can’t imagine how I will survive. But I have to focus on the here and the now: my dad. We need to warn him. Need to make sure that he doesn’t go to Camp Colestah. Doesn’t go where his supposedly dear old friend Dr. Simons has convinced him he needs to be. Because maybe I should be angry enough not to care what happens to him, but all I can think about is how badly I need for him to survive.

  Inside the rest stop, there’s a woman at a table near a McDonald’s holding a sleeping baby in her arms while trying to get the tired little girl across from her to eat some more of her chicken nuggets. She looks right up at me when I step inside. Like I’ve tripped some kind of alarm. Concerned in that motherly way. For her own children. For me. It’s hard to tell.

  But she will say yes about the phone. I feel sure of it. She will do her best to help. Still, she grips her baby a little tighter when I head her way. Leans in closer to the little girl. It’s hard to blame her. I can only imagine what I look like. Exhausted, filthy, covered in soot. Like a liar. Because that’s the reality: my truth has become the sum of so many lies.

  “Do you think I could borrow your phone?” I ask her. “It’s an emergency. I lost my cell phone and I need to call my dad.”

  “Um, sure,” she says. Definitely nervous, though, as she pushes her phone quickly across the table to me, flicks her eyes toward her daughter, who is sitting just inches away from me.

  “Thank you.” I step away, which seems to make the woman relax a little. “I’ll be quick.”

  I hope she doesn’t notice my hands, trembling as I dial my dad’s cell phone number. I take a couple more steps. Not so far that she thinks I’m taking her phone, but far enough that she won’t overhear every insane word I’m about to say. But my heart catches when the call goes straight to my dad’s voice mail. Not even a single ring. Is he close to the camp? Is he already on borrowed time?

  “Are you okay?” the woman asks, so much like Lexi. “Do you need help?”

  When I look up, she’s staring at me. Yes, I want to say. I need so much help.

  “Can I just make one more call?” I ask, moving back to her. “To my house. My dad’s cell phone is off.”

  “Sure.” She shifts the baby to her other leg, glances in the direction of Jasper, and then over to a security guard near the door. She knows there’s a lot I’m not saying. She can tell. Maybe because she’s just a nice person. Or maybe because she’s an Outlier. And maybe she’ll never even know. “Go ahead.”

  I’ve only got one more chance—one more call before she’ll at least insist on getting “help.” Gideon is my only option. My face feels hot as I dial his cell number, hope that I can get through to him. Hope that he’ll do exactly what needs to be done.

  “Hello?” Gideon answers before I can move out of earshot again.

  “Gideon, it’s Wylie. You have to listen to me,” I say, and my voice cracks. But I can’t fall apart, not yet. “You have to call the police in Boston. Tell them something has happened to Dad. That he’s in trouble. Someone—” What can I say that won’t sound insane? That Gideon can tell the police so they go looking for a grown man gone only a few hours? “Dad was carjacked, in Boston. Some man with a gun came and took him and his car. He called me once. He said they were near Camp Colestah in Maine.”

  It doesn’t make a lot of sense, but it’s not a terrible lie, either. When I look down, the woman with the baby is staring at me with her mouth open—the talk of guns, the police. I can’t blame her. But I need to finish before she can have her phone back. Before she can be rid of me.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Gideon asks. “And where are you?” Now he sounds actually worried. “You can’t just take off without telling anybody. Whose phone is
this? And what do you mean that Da—”

  “Gideon!” I shout, and too loud. I can’t even bring myself to look at the woman now. I grip the phone hard so no one can rip it away. “Please, just listen to me. I have to get off this phone now. Just call the police. The Boston police. Tell them to look in Maine for Dad’s car, somewhere on the highway between Newton and Camp Colestah in Maine. Or something really bad could happen to him. It already has happened, I mean.”

  “Why don’t you just talk to Dad yourself?”

  “I can’t talk to Dad, Gideon. That’s the whole point. He’s not answering his phone. He needs our help.”

  “Um, yeah, except you can talk to him. He’s sitting right here next to me.”

  They send the police. All sorts of police, to all sorts of places. To the camp. To us. Even to Officer Kendall, not that they can find him. State police. The FBI, too, because Quentin took Cassie across state lines. I don’t explain all the details to my dad on the phone, just enough for him to understand. To know that something terrible has happened and Cassie is gone. And that the local police near the camp can’t be trusted. And he says enough for me to know that he didn’t send any of the texts I got after our argument when I was at the Freshmart. The fact that they’d come from his phone number instead of his name in my contacts was a sign, just not the one I thought it was. And the texts he did send, the voice mails he left, had—without my dad knowing—been blocked from ever making their way to my phone. Level99 might not have known who they were really helping or why, but apparently they were very good at their job.

  It takes much more convincing to get my dad to stay at home. All he wants to do is to rush up and be sure that I’m okay. To see for himself. And I am much more grateful for that than I ever could have imagined. But I’m still afraid that Quentin might be looking for him. When my voice cracks as I beg him not to come, he finally listens.

  Karen, though, has no choice. She is already on her way.

  Jasper and I don’t talk much on the ride home, once again in the backseat of a police car. This one is older, though, and more cramped, but feels so much safer. We were at the rest stop overnight answering question after question from officer after officer—patrolmen, detectives, and eventually the FBI. An hour into the drive back to Newton, the sun finally begins to rise, the sky above the trees a swirl of pinks and purples. I fall asleep for a few minutes, though I would have sworn I would never sleep again. I dream of fire, Cassie on fire, jolting awake with a gasp that wakes Jasper. The female police officer riding in the passenger seat turns her head a little toward me, but doesn’t actually look at me.