The Collide

by Kimberly McCreight

  “Awesome,” he says. “Well, I guess we know for sure who’s the favorite child now. Not that there was any doubt before.”

  “Gideon, come on, that’s not—”

  “Don’t.” He looks at me hard. His hurt is already hardening around his heart. “Don’t protect her. Where the hell has she been then?”

  And so I tell Gideon what I know about Mom and Rachel and what happened that last night. As I say it out loud, I realize just how little I do know.

  “Where has all this rallying of the troops gotten her?” Gideon asks. “I seriously hope she has something to show for it.”

  “I don’t know. We should ask Rachel. There is something else, though,” I say. And I need to get it all out, all at once. Now. “Dad knew.”

  “What?” Gideon’s hurt has caught fire—it’s anger now. “Come on. Seriously?!”

  Cassie’s ex-coworker has appeared at our table, recoiling from Gideon’s shouting. “You want me to come back?” she asks, giving Gideon the side-eye. Her name tag says Brittany.

  “I just lost my appetite,” Gideon mutters.

  “A black-and-white milk shake?” I don’t want anything, but we need to buy something so we can sit here a little longer.

  Brittany narrows her eyes at me. “Hey, you’re Cassie’s friend, aren’t you?”

  I nod and try to smile, but I’m not sure I actually do. “Yeah, I am. I was.”

  “That sucked, what happened to her,” Brittany says.

  And suddenly this feels like an opportunity. To give Gideon a chance to calm, yes, but maybe Brittany is even the reason I told Gideon I wanted to go to Holy Cow in the first place. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure,” Brittany says, though it feels like no. I can even feel her backing away, though her feet haven’t moved.

  “Were you here when she met the guy she was dating?” I’m hoping she saw something or heard something about Quentin that might help me find out who he is. Or, better yet, where he is.

  “You mean Jasper?” Brittany asks. “I saw him at a party once. Cute, you know, in a jock kind of way. But Cassie didn’t meet Jasper here. They went to school together. Don’t you go to school with him, too?”

  I feel a guilty pang. It’s amazing how I’ve turned Cassie and Jasper into a thing that never was. It didn’t occur to me she’d think I was talking about Jasper.

  “No, not Jasper. A different guy, he had glasses. Older, cute, but in a kind of geeky way,” I say. “Cassie told me he came in here one day. That was how she met him.”

  Brittany shakes her head. “I don’t think so. Cassie and I were always on shift together. Besides, Nicholas won’t let any guys over the age of thirteen hang out here unless they’re somebody’s dad. Nicholas thinks everybody is a pedophile. So I can’t see how she would have met him here.”

  “Oh, okay,” I say, and I want to feel like she’s gotten it wrong. But I feel just the opposite. She’s right: Cassie didn’t meet Quentin at Holy Cow. But then, where did she meet him? And why did she lie? “Thanks anyway.”

  Brittany takes a couple steps from the table, but then turns back.

  “I really am sorry about what happened, you know,” she says. “Cassie was a wild girl, but I liked her.”

  OUR HOUSE SMELLS exactly the same, good in that weird, old-house way. Like lavender with a hint of maple syrup. And I want to be comforted by something that familiar, but all I feel is sad. Like even the smell is just another lie.

  Gideon and I sit next to each other on the couch, staring down at our mom’s sealed letter, the milk shake from Holy Cow that I drank too fast sitting heavy in my stomach. Gideon went up to get the letter for me because I still wasn’t ready to face my bedroom. Downstairs, I already feel swamped by memories. Even the good ones feel terrible, too. Maybe especially the good ones. And something about telling Gideon about our mom has made me angry all over again. I got kind of lulled into Rachel’s explanations, which ring a lot less true now that I’ve relayed them to Gideon. I mean, our dad is missing, and our mom is building some coalition? That might be noble. It might even make her feel like a hero. But we need her home, right now.

  “You want me to open it?” Gideon asks after we have been sitting there a really long time.

  “No, I will,” I say.

  My hands tremble as I finally rip open the seal. There is too much riding on what she has to say. I already know whatever’s inside won’t be enough. How can it be? My heart sinks even more when I see it’s just a single page of notebook paper, just a few short paragraphs. Gideon and I read together.

  June 17

  Dear Wylie,

  Rachel has hopefully explained as much as she can about what happened and why. All I can say is that I’m doing the best I can to be sure you’re safe from here on out. I have already found people to help us, including a senator—I can’t wait until you meet her. She’s amazing. There’s a neuroscientist, too (a woman), who your dad has been working with. Real people. Who are smart and committed and are willing to help.

  I am sure you are angry, and I know that nothing I write here will make up for the pain I have caused you. But know that everything I did was to protect you, and because I love you.

  In the meantime, Rachel will help you. I am so grateful to her. Thank God for my “old lady yoga,” as you like to call it, because if she and I hadn’t run into each other, I never would have thought to go to her that night. But she was the perfect person. Anyway, let her help you. She saved my life, literally. She knows what to do. And send my love to Gideon.

  It’s even harder to read than I expected. To think of her sneaking back into the house to leave it after I saw her. To feel how stupidly desperate I am still to forgive her, to find some decent explanation. It makes me feel like such an idiot.

  “Is there anything she could say that would make you forgive her?” I ask. Partly because I want him to tell me how I should.

  Gideon considers the question for a minute. “Probably,” he says. “People who live in glass houses, you know? You’re saying you can’t forgive her? I mean, no matter what?”

  “I’m not sure,” I say, and I realize then that whether or not I can forgive my mom isn’t even the thing that’s bothering me most. I’m just not sure what is. “I’m going to call Jasper’s house, see if I can reach him.”

  “You think he knows something?” Gideon asks.

  “No,” I say. “But he knows me.”

  Jasper’s mom answers on the third ring. “Hello?” Mad, already. Like we’re in the middle of an argument. And she doesn’t even know it’s me. Things are only going to go downhill once she figures that out.

  “Can I please speak to Jasper?” I ask brightly.

  “He’s not here,” she snaps. On second thought, she knows exactly who I am.

  “Oh, I, um, tried his cell phone, and it’s not working. . . .”

  Dead silence. She also knows that Jasper’s phone isn’t working. She is maybe even the reason why.

  “Could you tell him that Wylie called?” I ask. “And that I’m home?”

  “I am not telling him a goddamn thing.”

  Click.

  She’s hung up on me. My chest is burning as I grip my phone. I know that I shouldn’t take her venom personally. But that’s easier said than done.

  I still have the phone in my hand when the doorbell rings. I want to feel a happy surge: it’s Jasper! But already I know it’s not.

  “I’ll check who it is,” Gideon offers as he gets up to peek out the window. He turns back to me. “Rachel.”

  Gideon opens the door and Rachel steps into the foyer, dressed, as usual, in an elegant, perfectly tailored black suit and expensive-looking four-inch black platform heels. Rachel’s thousand-dollar rock-star shoes are her screw-you to lawyerly convention. Somehow, she makes this seem brave.

  “Glad to see you made it home,” she says, and there goes a bolt of lightning. Her feeling, gone before it’s even really there. And right now I am definitely too wo
rn out to chase it. “I just wanted to check in and make sure everything was okay.”

  I stare at her. “I was just sitting here reading the note my not-dead mom left me. So define ‘okay.’”

  “Oh, right,” she says, looking past me. Perplexed. (Maybe.) Flash. Crackle. Gone. “Well, I came by to remind you of the bail conditions: greater Newton area. They can use it against you at trial if you violate, even by accident, not to mention that they will revoke your bail, instantly. It’s not worth it.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” I say. Though I am already pretty sure this is yet another of my lies.

  “Good. Also, we got the first set of discovery disclosures from the prosecutor’s office today,” Rachel goes on, glad to change the subject. Now her feelings are steady, loud and clear: calm, confident, focused. Whenever we talk about my case is the only time they are ever like that. “They’re, let’s just say, interesting.”

  “Interesting how?” Gideon asks when I am too slow on the uptake.

  “They’re thin,” she says, pleased with herself now. “Like remember those matches they supposedly had in the first interview?”

  “What about them?” I feel a flutter in my chest. The matches really bothered me, right from the start. If they did find matches under my bed, I worried that maybe I did do something awful to Teresa and just don’t remember. Because in some small, dark corner of my mind, I still don’t trust myself, not completely.

  “They’ve disappeared, apparently.” Rachel shakes her head in disbelief. “Now, I don’t know if they lost them or if they never had them or what. But they’re gone.”

  “That’s great news, right?” Gideon asks, looking over at me. I’m afraid there’s a catch. “Does that mean they’ll drop their case?”

  Rachel shakes her head again. “I wouldn’t get ahead of ourselves. They still have proof that the fire at the hospital was intentional. It was ‘constructed from combustible materials.’ Meaning, apparently, whoever set it didn’t need a match.”

  “Maybe Teresa?” I ask. I’ve thought a lot about that excitement I sensed from Teresa at the weirdest times. Like she knew something big was coming.

  “Pretty sure they still have you in mind.”

  “Combustible materials? They grabbed me off the bridge,” I say. “Not to mention, they took everything off me. How would I even have—whatever that is—to set a fire?”

  Rachel takes a breath and looks down, like she’s reluctant to say the rest. To spare my feelings. No, like she knows she should feel that way. No flash. No crackle. I don’t think she feels anything. “Jasper is their theory. They have him on tape, remember, sneaking in to see you.”

  For a split second I feel betrayed by Jasper. Even though I know he wasn’t involved. That’s the true danger of the most outrageous lies. Somehow they take on the possibility of truth.

  “But he didn’t—”

  “It doesn’t matter what actually happened, obviously,” Rachel says. “It matters what they can get a jury to believe.”

  “Then make sure that doesn’t happen!” Gideon snaps, and he’s pissed. Probably more about our mom for him. “Isn’t that your job?”

  Anger. (Maybe.) Flash. Crackle. Gone. That’s fair: she saved my mom’s life, got me out of jail. How much more is she really expected to do?

  “There’s a limit to my control over this situation,” she says carefully and calmly, and this much is definitely true. “I will do the best I can, but there will be regular people with their own imperfect opinions involved—juries, prosecutors. These people make random, stupid choices.”

  “Did the police ever find Quentin?” I ask, partly to change the subject, partly because I do feel way more bothered about his whereabouts now that I’m out.

  Rachel frowns and shakes her head. But I feel a twinge of something. Flash, then gone. I am pretty sure it could have been guilt, though.

  “You did ask them to find him, right? You told them he was at the jail, that he was alive?”

  “I made a judgment call, Wylie.”

  “What? You told me you were looking into it!” I shout. And—stupidly—I feel like I’m going to cry. “He could be anywhere!”

  Scared. That’s how I really feel. Quentin being alive and out here makes me scared. I don’t want to give him that power. But it’s a fact.

  “In my judgment, admitting that Quentin visited you in jail could make you look like his accomplice, Wylie. It could even end up linking you to Cassie’s death, which, you know, was another theory they have—that you’ve killed a girl with fire before.” Rachel stares me straight in the eye. Calm. Steady. Controlled. “They probably never would have found Quentin anyway. It’s not like they have sophisticated resources. I’m sorry that I lied to you. But I truly thought it was in your best interest.”

  I wonder for a second whether she thinks I imagined Quentin or made up that he came. I never told Jasper about Quentin coming to see me, that I knew for sure he was alive. And that’s the real reason, I think. I was afraid that maybe it never happened.

  “But what if Quentin has our dad?” I ask.

  “He doesn’t have your dad,” Rachel says. Guilt. (Maybe.) Flash. Crackle. Gone. She feels absolutely 100 percent sure of this fact, though. But then again, people who are totally sure can also be totally wrong. Being an Outlier has taught me that much. “And if he does, I swear to you, Wylie, I will make it my mission in life to track him down myself and make sure he pays.”

  Impatience. (Maybe.)

  Flash. Crackle. Gone.

  “Doesn’t somebody at least have to explain the whole thing in the hospital? Like the NIH or that doctor involved, Cornelia,” Gideon says, forcing himself to ask despite—or maybe because of—his shame about anything where Cornelia is concerned. “Doesn’t he have to answer for something?”

  Rachel shrugs. “The federal government has said all they are going to say about the incident at the hospital, apparently. That’s what an NIH assistant general counsel and a US attorney have told me.”

  “They can’t do that, can they?” Gideon asks.

  “When the government shouts ‘in the name of safety and security,’ they can pretty much do whatever they want. Besides, if we want to fight that battle we can, but later on. Right now, I have to focus on keeping Wylie out of jail.”

  “And finding our dad,” I add firmly.

  “Of course,” Rachel says. Flash. Gone. Too fast for me to even guess. I wonder if she’s already given up on my dad. Rachel stands and checks her Cartier watch. “Unfortunately, I’ve got a meeting I was supposed to be at fifteen minutes ago. We should catch up more later, Wylie. Oh, I almost forgot.” She pauses before reaching our door, starts digging in her bag and pulls out some pages. “Your mom sent some emails for me to pass on to you. I printed them out. I’ll leave them for you to read.” She puts the pages down on the side table near the door. “Oh, and she needs those pictures you took from my house.”

  Crap. My mom’s pictures. I never should have taken them. But I am annoyed my mom cares about them now. We’ve got so many other things—like where my dad is—that matter so much more.

  “I don’t have the pictures anymore,” I say. “I had to swim to get away from those agents.”

  “So you just . . .”

  “I had to leave them,” I say. And that is the truth. It’s also all I’m going to say. Even if Riel still has the pictures—which is doubtful under the circumstances—she’s underground now. There is no way I could find her. Or maybe I just don’t want to. Not just to give my mom what she wants.

  “Oh, okay,” Rachel says, trying to sound nonchalant. “Don’t worry. It’s no big deal. The pictures aren’t that important.”

  But when she smiles back at me one last time from the doorway, I can feel one thing absolutely loud and clear: nothing could be further from the truth.

  THE WASHINGTON NATIONAL

  IN WIDE-OPEN FIELD, IT COULD COME DOWN TO A BATTLE BETWEEN EXPERIENCE AND INNOVATION, FEAR AND OPTIMISM
>
  May 20

  It’s early days. This presidential race can’t even officially be called a race yet, but the potential contenders thus far are a wildly divergent pack.

  On the one hand, there are possible candidates like Lana Harrison, the senator from California, who rose to prominence in the recent fight to reform health care and expand civil rights. On the other end of the spectrum is Senator David Russo, who, after a distinguished military career, joined the Senate Armed Services Committee, where he has had a stern eye fixed on national security. Lately, though, his focus has shifted to privacy, which has thrown even some in his own party for a loop.

  Lana Harrison says that—rhetoric notwithstanding—Russo’s end goal is just the opposite. That Russo seeks to limit individual freedom, not protect it. The real question now is: Who will voters believe?

  JASPER

  JASPER REACHES FOR HIS PHONE TO SILENCE THE ALARM. HE’S IN SUCH A DEAD sleep, it takes a minute to remember where he is: the dorm, BC. Right. Jasper and his roommate, Chance, have gotten into the habit of taking naps after early-morning hockey practice. When you’re eighteen and up before five thirty a.m., then on the ice for three hours, that’s what you do.

  With his phone in his hand finally, Jasper taps off the alarm.

  “I am not going to let that girl drive your whole life off into a ditch,” his mom had snapped at him the day after Wylie was hauled off to the detention facility. When she was blaming Wylie for him not going to BC. “She’s damaged goods. Please tell me I raised you well enough to see that.”

  The anger balloons in his chest, being reminded of how much his mom cares about hockey camp, because she’s after some NHL pie in the sky and the money that might go along with it. Wait. No. That’s not how his mom really feels. Wylie has told him more than once: his mom’s worry and love just look like anger. The actual truth is that she cares about him, not hockey. Or so Wylie says. Jasper’s still working on believing her.

  If only his mom knew that Wylie is her biggest defender. But to do that he’d have to tell her that he’s been hanging out with Wylie in the detention facility. And it’s better not to go there. His mom would panic, angry panic. She’s chilled out a lot thinking Wylie is out of the picture. And, yeah, going to hockey camp like both Wylie and his mom wanted was a good call. It’s where he is supposed to be. Jasper believes that now. At least, most days.