Outlier: One mistake can destroy everything.

by Jacob Mesmer

  “No, it wasn’t; I saw the whole thing,” a boy volunteered. “She was just walking down the hallway and collapsed. She fainted or something. That janitor guy wasn’t even near her.”

  Jay looked at Mr. Rodriquez with desperate eyes.

  “I didn’t even see anything!” Jay explained. “I was just saying goodbye to Miss Paimen.” He began to get defensive. Chi glared at him with a mix of fear and anger.

  “OK, OK; everybody calm down. Anybody who actually saw what happened, come with me to the V.P.’s office and we’ll sort this out.” He looked around at the crowd of students and turned to walk to the administration office. Chi, the boy who had spoken up, and two other girls followed him. A few meters down the hall, Mr. Rodriquez stopped and turned.

  “Everybody else, get back to class—NOW!”

  As he turned back, the crowd slowly dispersed, all quietly chattering in excitement. A few eyed Jay suspiciously.

  Jay slowly walked out of the room and continued pushing his broom down the hall, aware of all the eyes upon him. He dared not meet them.

  His plan had taken on much more urgency. And much more danger. He no longer wanted to simply escape. He was angry. Very angry. And he wanted them to know it.

  He hadn’t done anything. But he would.

  Very soon.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Wednesday, 7 p.m.

  Jay had finished on time. The police hadn’t come, and nobody had believed her when that stupid girl had blamed him for that other stupid girl passing out. Why did girls get all the attention anyway? He was shuffling down Figueroa Street, hands in his pockets, staring at the ground. It was a warm night, despite being fall. The sun had just set, and the streetlights were on. The few people who were out treated him the same way the kids did at school. No eye contact. No recognition. Just quickly avoided him as he shuffled along.

  He stopped, for a reason he didn’t quite understand, and looked to his right. He was standing outside Lappert’s, the local ice cream shop. More girls inside. Stupid girls. All smiling and laughing and having fun. They didn’t care about him. When he was in school, he’d always hear the other kids talking about going there after school. Nobody ever invited him. He’d walk by, but never walk in. He was too scared, and he felt out of place. Like he didn’t belong. Just like now. He was standing outside on the sidewalk, looking in. A few times he thought he saw some of the girls look up, notice him, and then quickly look away. He was sure they were talking about him, laughing about him. That retarded janitor.

  He turned away and walked down the street to the end. Not far. Only about fifty meters. There was a small park overlooking the bay. He found a bench and sat down, hands in his pockets. He turned and looked at the ice cream shop. The lights inside made it stand out on an otherwise quiet street. The barber shop next door was closed early. Further down was a small strip mall with a laundromat and a place that did check cashing.

  He looked into the vacant park. Sometimes he saw Hurley here, an older guy who sold pot to college kids. Why did people do drugs? He didn’t know. He thought of those guys last month at the hospital. Or that place that didn’t look like a hospital on the outside, but looked kind of like one on the inside.

  He had to take the bus to get there. He went there every weekend for four weeks. Each time they gave him 14 pills. And each week they’d ask him all kinds of questions. Easy questions, but lots of them. And they made him watch TV. That was strange. The TV had commercials, but ones he’d never seen before. They seemed a little strange. He didn’t know why.

  The pills didn’t do anything. They were supposed to make him relax. They didn’t make him do anything. But they paid him five hundred dollars just for trying them. He was sad when they told him he was finished. They thanked him and paid him. They were nice to him. They kept asking him if he was comfortable, how he felt. Nobody ever asked him that. Maybe they’d let him do the test again. He thought he had that email they sent. Maybe he’d check.

  He looked at the ice cream shop again. Angry and alone. He stared at the window, and imagined all those young, pretty girls on the other side laughing at him and making fun of him like when he gave that speech at school. The more he stared at the glass, the angrier he got. Stupid girls. Stupid laughing girls.

  The glass seemed to move. Small waves started to vibrate across the surface as if somebody were shaking it. As it moved, the sounds of the girls laughing in his head became louder and more vicious. He imagined them standing in front of him, pointing and laughing. Jay started gritting his teeth, slowly rocking back and forth on the bench.

  The glass shattered, sending shards flying inward toward the shop. Jay could hear girls screaming all the way from the park. He stopped.

  Shocked. Frozen.

  A barely perceptible, knowing smile of realization slowly appeared on his face.

  He rose slowly, turned, and walked home.

  Chapter Twenty

  “You say the injuries are non-life-threatening?” Sean wrote down the information and the location of the hospital.

  “And somebody threw a brick at the window. Got it. So we’re looking at anywhere from potential vandalism up to attempted murder based on intention. Got it, Chief.” He clicked off, glad he hadn’t decided to knock back a few G&Ts this evening. He checked his watch. 9:30 p.m. The other officers had taken information, but they needed some follow-up. He didn’t mind this one, as there may have been an actual perp who intended harm. He’d already talked to Greg, the only officer on-scene. So far only broken glass. No object. Still, broken glass can be considered a weapon regardless of how it had broken.

  Twenty minutes later he was walking down the hallway of the hospital. The nurse told him the injured girl was in room 514. He knocked on the door, checking his notebook. “Lisa?” he asked loudly as he entered the room.

  She looked up at him as he walked in. No parents.

  He sat on the chair next to the bed. “You by yourself?” He tried to smile; no big deal.

  “Yeah, my mom is on her way; she had to get out of a split shift.”

  He didn’t ask about dad. “So, you want to tell me what happened?” He sat down next to her bed.

  “Well, there were three of us: me, Stacey and Becky. Then that guy, the janitor? He was just standing outside the window, like all creepy. We tried to ignore him, and then the glass broke.” Jay, huh? Maybe this guy was doing something after all.

  “Where were you looking when the glass broke?” Eyewitness testimony was always sketchy at best.

  She cocked her head, trying to think. “Like I said, after we noticed him staring, we tried to ignore him. I guess I was looking at Stacey or Becky?” She seemed unsure.

  “So, did you see him break the glass, or did you hear the glass break?”

  “Well, he was there, and then it broke. I don’t know who else it could have been…” she trailed off.

  “Did you see anybody else outside, before or after you saw the janitor?”

  “No, nobody else.”

  “OK. What did the doctors say?” Sean asked, motioning to her bandages. Her left forearm was wrapped, and she had a few small stitches on the left side of her face.

  “He said I can go home tomorrow after my mom gets here and signs some papers.”

  “Well, that’s not too bad. Say, you have the numbers and addresses of Stacey and Becky? I’m going to need to talk to them too.”

  He wrote down their information. If Sean could corroborate that Jay was the only guy they’d seen, that might be enough to bring him in for questioning, but if they were as unsure as she was, he’d have to confess if they were going to move forward with this. He didn’t think that was likely.

  As he was about to leave, she stopped him.

  “Detective, why did that other guy ask so many questions?”

  Other guy? “I’m sorry, who are you referring to? Did the other officer talk to you?” He thought she may be asking about Greg.

  “No, the guy that came here about twenty
minutes before you. He said he worked for the government or something?”

  Government? He went back in and sat next to her as before.

  “You’re saying somebody from the government came here to speak with you? Do you remember what, uh, branch or department? Did he say?”

  She shook her head. “He said, but it was quick; and he showed me this badge, but it was so fast I didn’t really read it. He was wearing a suit, though, and a tie.” Sean suddenly felt self-conscious. He was wearing jeans, a polo shirt and a coat he’d thrown on.

  “What kind of questions did he ask?”

  “That was the thing; he asked me a lot more questions about that janitor guy. Like if he’d been acting strange around school or anything like that.”

  Curious. Sean figured the best way was to just roll with it.

  “Yeah, we sometimes work with certain government agencies on cases like this. Schools get government funding so sometimes they’re interested when students are in trouble. Things like that.”

  She seemed to brighten up at that. Maybe being at the center of a federal investigation concerned with her safety would make her more popular.

  On the way out, he decided to ask the nurse at floor reception.

  “Anybody other than me come by here, looking official or anything?” he asked while holding his badge out long enough for him to read all the details.

  “Yeah, some guy did come through, not too polite. Just flashed his badge and said ‘Government business’ or something. He seemed to know where he was going so I just let him be.” The reception nurse seemed to be buried in a mountain of paperwork, so Sean let him slide.

  “OK, man; thanks. Say, if he comes back, could you give me a call? I’d appreciate it.” Sean left his card on the counter.

  “Sure thing, man,” said the reception nurse, not looking up.

  Sean was the only one in the elevator on the way down.

  “Government man?” he said to himself. “Who the fuck?”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Jay paced his living room, too excited to sleep but too worried to consider what had happened. Part of him believed that if something good happened, and he started to think about it or even talk about it, it would ruin everything. You had to keep those things secret. Good things didn’t happen to Jay. When they did, it was a mistake.

  And if you talked about a mistake, somebody or something would come and fix it. But what if it was real? What if he really did make that glass break? It felt like he had some kind of guardian angel. One who helped him get back at those stupid girls. Maybe that’s what those doctors were doing to him. What if they were the ones who were helping him?

  He ran into his room and dug through his dresser. He’d put all their paperwork, the stuff they’d said to save, in a special envelope. Maybe it said something in here about what he had done tonight. He read through everything. Some was on color paper that was smooth and glossy. Others were on paper that looked like it had come out of a regular printer.

  He brought it to the living room and spread it all out on the coffee table in front of him. He tried to make sense of it all. Lower stress. Blood pressure. Secondary and tertiary consequences of subconscious anxiety. What did that mean? None of it made sense.

  He sat back on the couch, trying to think of what to do. Maybe if he tried to break the glass on the window next to the door. That was about the same size as the window at the ice cream place. No, his mom would find out and get mad. He thought some more. He jumped up, ran into the kitchen, and got a plate from the cabinet. He got a glass and filled it halfway with water. He brought them both back into the living room. He poured a little bit of water onto the plate. He looked at the water and tried to make it move. It didn’t.

  What was he thinking of at the park? The girls. The laughing girls. He imagined that there were three girls standing around him, laughing at him. He pictured them, right there, in his living room. Stupid laughing girls. He started thinking of them and rocking back and forth while looking at the water. The water started to move! Only slowly at first, but as he got more excited and really concentrated, it moved even more!

  It started to jump around like it was shaking. It started to splash the papers around it on the coffee table. Jay jumped up and paced back and forth. Was this really happening? Maybe he should tell the doctors. NO! They would tell him he wasn’t supposed to do that, and they’d give him different white pills and make it stop. No, Jay. Don’t tell anybody.

  He remembered his mean gym teacher. The same gym teacher that was at the school now. “The only way to get stronger is to practice! If you don’t practice every day, you will become weak! You are all weak now, and if you don’t practice, you will stay weak!” Jay decided to practice. He got something else. A pencil. He carefully moved the papers aside and put the pencil in the middle of the coffee table. He imagined the stupid laughing girls again and made the pencil move. All the way off the table!

  His mind spun in all different directions. He could do things, and nobody would know it was him! He could push people, like some of the mean boys had done to him. He could embarrass people like they’d done to him. And if he saw real laughing girls at school, he’d make them stop laughing. He would make everybody stop laughing. The best part was that nobody would know it was him. That meant he couldn’t tell anybody. Not his mom, and especially not Sean, that guy who hated him but pretended to be nice to him.

  Jay was smiling. He needed to practice. He needed to practice a lot.

  This was going to be fun!

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Thursday Morning

  “Yes, this is Mr. Bancroft calling for Ms. Weismann.”

  “Please hold.”

  Bancroft held.

  “What can you tell me?” she demanded. No greeting.

  “The Rockport Subject is a potential unintended benefit. I’m still in the early stages, but this looks promising.”

  “Explain.”

  Bancroft went over the details of what Jay had done from the park. Breaking the glass. He’d already placed micro-cameras in his home and could watch at any time via his laptop from his secure location. He explained that Jay was becoming aware of his abilities and was attempting to strengthen them.

  “That is significant. Continue watching, expand operations as needed, and let it play out however it plays out. Do not interfere under any circumstances. We already have sufficient biometric data on the subject, so we’ll not need his further cooperation. Be sure to continue to record all observable phenomena and clean the environment completely upon eventual termination.” She ended the call without waiting for a response.

  Bancroft had been agency, fully trained in non-detectable surveillance and counter-surveillance, but Tanner Industries offered significantly more potential. Bancroft continued to review the recordings of Jay at home, practicing his new skills. Getting eyes at the school would be easy. They likely had a security system he could remotely tap into. He’d have to get it done before the subject strengthened his skills sufficiently for human practice.

  Bancroft liked the private sector much better for many reasons. There was better pay and he got to spy on people who had no inkling they were being watched. Less bureaucracy and zero concern for collateral damage.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “So, where are we?” the chief said while massaging his lower back. He couldn’t seem to find a comfortable position in his chair.

  “Three girls. All minors. They see Jay Hutchins, male, 27, standing outside staring at them. They turn away, and a minute or so later the glass breaks inward. One girl injured, not life-threatening. She’s already at home.”

  “Cameras?” the chief asked, hopefully.

  “Negative.” Sean didn’t look up from his notes.

  “Circumstantial. Not enough for a warrant. Not enough for an arrest. Only enough to ask him to come in for questioning. You say you know this guy?” the chief asked, hoping this may help.

  “Not really. Graduated h
igh school in the same year, not much involvement. He was fond of Sheryl. They exchanged a few emails, nothing serious. She was a crush, and she kept a professional distance.”

  “Shit. I didn’t know. Sorry, Sean.” The chief seemed genuinely upset at the connection. It had only been—what, six days?

  “Don’t worry about it. But yeah, I’ll go to his house and talk to him about it. But there was that other thing. The kid who peed his pants. I asked him about that, and he wasn’t being entirely forthcoming.” Sean finally met his chief’s eyes.

  “What do you mean?”

  “That’s the thing. No crime, some guy peed his pants. Tell you the truth, only reason I went over to talk to Jay was because I was bored. But Chi, the girl who was with Josh, who peed his pants, said Jay used voodoo or witchcraft or something. She seemed convinced it was his fault that Josh peed himself.” Sean couldn’t help but smile when he said the last part. “So I go to his house,” he continued, “and he plays innocent. Doesn’t even corroborate.”