The Outliers

by Kimberly McCreight

  “Who knows?” Jasper asks. “How?”

  “I’m not sure, but my dad mentioned it in his text. I guess the police must have made the connection. He sent them out looking for me because I’m ‘unstable.’” And maybe I can just leave it at that. “Anyway, you might get caught up in this—my—you might not want to come in. Just in case these police know about it too. I could tell them about Cassie on my own if you want.”

  “Unstable?” Jasper looks totally confused. Almost offended, as he turns off the car. “Yeah, I’ll take my chances. You weren’t in that diner alone.”

  The police station is brightly lit, but so small—just six metal desks in a single open room. There are three men sitting there, playing cards, when we walk in. Two look on the younger side, maybe late twenties. One is older than my dad, fifties maybe. They turn in our direction when we walk in, not startled or surprised. But also not particularly interested even though you’d think they would be—two teenage kids, walking in at eleven at night.

  “We help you?” the older one calls, though he makes no move to get up from his card game. He has salt-and-pepper hair and looks puffy, like a football player whose muscles have gone soft. He makes a big show of squinting up at the clock on the wall. “You lost?”

  There’s an edge to his voice, too. Like he wants us to get lost.

  “No—um—we’re not lost,” I say as Jasper and I make our way up to the counter. I sound nervous and guilty. I swallow hard, hoping my throat will clear. “We’re here, um, looking for our friend?” Like it’s a question.

  “Missing friend, huh?” says the younger officer who’s facing us. He has beady eyes and a pockmarked face, and now that he’s talking, I can see that he’s really young—not that much older than Jasper and me. There’s the hint of a smile playing on his lips. “You lose her somewhere?”

  This time he smiles wider, like a wolf. I wait for the older guy to shoot him a look telling him to knock it off. But the only one who does anything is the third officer, and he just begins collecting the cards. He hasn’t even looked in our direction.

  “She texted us and said that she needs our help,” Jasper says. “We drove all the way up from Boston.”

  He adds that part, I think, to make us seem like good, dedicated kids. Loyal. To help make up for the mess that Cassie is in.

  The older cop finally heaves himself out of his chair with a grunt, looking officially annoyed as he makes his way over. For sure not concerned about what happened to this friend of ours. Like he’s already decided that nothing has. Once he’s close, I see his badge: Sergeant Randolph Sternbach. When I look up from it, he’s staring at me. Or my hair, to be exact. His eyebrows are scrunched together. His frown is disgusted.

  “Let me guess, your friend came up here to party?” he asks, still staring at my hair, and making no attempt to pretend otherwise. I put a hand up like that could hide how crazily hacked it is.

  “Party?” I ask. It comes out in a squeak. Already I do not like where this is headed.

  The sergeant takes an exasperated breath and looks away from my hair to reach for a pad of paper. He slaps it down on the counter in front of us. “Yeah, you know, meth.” His eyes narrow on my face. “And I know, she’s never done it before in her entire life and she’ll never ever do it again.”

  He even rolls his eyes a little. Blah, blah, blah. He doesn’t actually say that, but it’s what he means. All I can do is stare at him. It’s not very policeman-like.

  “Meth?” Jasper asks like he must be hearing things.

  “You know, chalk, dust, ice, crank, glass,” the pockmarked, weaselly one says, slithering his way over to stand next to his boss. Unlike the sergeant, he seems happy to be talking about it. Excited almost. Like he’s taunting us.

  “You’re kidding, right?” Jasper asks. “We’re in high school. We don’t shoot up.”

  I turn to look at him. The way Jasper says “shoot up” sounds so awkward, too awkward. Like he’s playing up how little he knows about it.

  “Lots of ways to take meth, son. Most of them don’t require a needle,” the sergeant says, and like he’s damn sure Jasper already knows that. “And you’d be surprised what ‘regular people’ do. Trust me, you’re not the first to come in here looking for a missing friend. We got a whole damn cottage industry in screwed-up kids making a mess of what used to be—what ought to be—a nice town.”

  “Pigs is what they are,” the weaselly guy says, but with this glint in his eye like it also turns him on a little. “Look at those tweakers from the other day.”

  “Mmm,” the sergeant says without looking at the other officer. Like he doesn’t necessarily approve of where this conversation is going, but doesn’t disapprove enough to stop it.

  “One of them stuck a damn fork right in another one’s eye.” The weasel points two fingers toward his own eye, then jabs them at Jasper’s and mine. “Some damn argument about Peeps. You know, those stupid little bunnies? Fork in the eye for a freaking marshmallow. EMTs said the guy was so high he didn’t even know there was a fork sticking out of his face.” He laughs, full on. Like this is hilarious. “Guy kept on talking the whole time.”

  The sergeant finally glares at him. “You got somewhere to be, Officer O’Connell?”

  “Not really,” the weasel says, eyes still on us. “Not unless I can go back to kicking your ass at Bullshit.”

  “Then go pretend,” the sergeant says.

  “Okay, boss man.” Officer O’Connell holds up his hands and grins some more. And I wonder if he could be high himself. He’s having an awful lot of fun. With his hands still raised, he whistles low and long, spinning on a heel and heading for a door at the back of the station. He pauses before he reaches it, grabs a piece of paper off a desk nearby. He crinkles it into a ball before winging it at the head of the other officer, the one who still has his back turned to us.

  “Two points!” Officer O’Connell calls.

  The paper ball bounces off the other officer’s head. But he easily catches it in midair and tosses it into the garbage can at his feet. Like it’s something he’s done, and that’s been done to him, a thousand times before.

  The sergeant exhales, loud and annoyed. “You got to excuse Officer O’Connell. He’s, well, him.” He shakes his head, like that’s all the explanation we should need. “But he’s not making up the bit about the fork. You may not want to hear this, but if your friend is here, meth is almost surely the reason. Doesn’t even mean she’s not a nice kid. That garbage has ruined a lot of decent folks.”

  Meth. This time the word sinks into me. I knew about the drinking, and Cassie being arrested for buying pot isn’t even that much of a shocker. But meth? It’s like comparing a fender bender to an eighteen-car pileup. But it also doesn’t feel totally impossible either. Not nearly as impossible as I wish it did. It would definitely explain her not wanting to tell us what was going on. Would explain someone like Doug wanting to keep us away from whatever crack den they have her in. And meth sure would have kept Cassie skinny.

  “It could be meth, I guess,” I say quietly.

  “What?” Jasper whips in my direction, eyes wide. “Cassie doesn’t do meth. What’s wrong with you?”

  “I’m not saying that is what’s going on. But I can’t swear it’s not. Can you?”

  And in that moment, all I want is for Jasper to say that he does know for sure it’s not meth. That he has proof. But instead, he closes his eyes and shakes his head, rests a fist down on the counter.

  “I can’t say anything for sure anymore,” he says quietly.

  I look back to the sergeant. The other younger police officer—the one the weasel beaned in the head—has finally gotten up and is making his way over. He’s surprisingly good-looking, with thick black hair and deep-set brown eyes. But there’s something a little wounded about him. Strange for someone so good-looking and tall. Weird for a policeman.

  “This is Officer Kendall,” the sergeant says. “He spends a lot of his time clea
ning out the users, combing through the mess they leave behind.” It’s kind of insulting the way the sergeant says it, like Officer Kendall is literally on garbage duty. “Your friend say where she was? There’s spots we can check, but there’s a lot of them. It would save time to have a place to start.”

  “Camp Colestah?” I say.

  The sergeant glances over at Officer Kendall, who still has not spoken. The two nod knowingly to each other. “Colestah’s a popular spot,” the sergeant goes on. “Shelter, privacy—what more could a junkie want? They are like rats. We chase ’em off and they keep coming back and coming back. But you and O’Connell did a pass-through earlier today, didn’t you? It was clear?”

  Officer Kendall frowns and nods, glances back the way O’Connell has gone. Yeah, but with him, who knows, the look says.

  “Might be worth a second look,” the sergeant goes on. “Most of the other camps are pretty well secured. They learned fast, hired people to live on site in the off-season. Caretaker kind of thing. But the Wynns, who own Camp Colestah, have been gone so long—I warned their lawyer the place will be destroyed soon. They’ll never sell it.” The sergeant checks his watch. “I’ve got to head out. But Officer Kendall here will take another ride up there, check for your friend.”

  But there is still something off about the way he says it to Officer Kendall. Like there’s a you know what to do under his actual words. Rats or not, why are the meth addicts so sure that Seneca is such a safe place to set up shop? Is somebody—like maybe the meth dealers—paying the police to look the other way?

  I watch Officer Kendall head back to his desk for his keys. And I’m already thinking about how I’m going to feel afterward, once he reports back that there’s nothing up at Camp Colestah. I’m not going to believe he even looked. I don’t trust these police officers, period.

  “We want to come look for her,” I say, my heart racing.

  But the sergeant is already shaking his head. “There’s no way in hell that—”

  “Please.” I sound desperate and a little crazy, but what does it matter? “We won’t get in the way. We’ll do whatever you say and—”

  “Absolutely no way, nohow.” The sergeant eyes me firmly. “Listen, you seem like decent enough kids. I can see you’re real worried about your friend, but we can’t take civilians out into the field. Much less a couple kids.”

  He has common sense on his side. The police don’t usually let regular people tag along. Even I know that much. I’m going to need a better argument.

  “If there are a bunch of people there, how will you know if she’s one of them?”

  The sergeant’s jaw tightens. He’s pissed, maybe because he doesn’t have an easy answer for that. Makes me wonder even more whether it’s that he doesn’t think Cassie’s up there or is just invested in not finding out.

  “You got a picture of her on your phone?”

  “No, we don’t,” I say, probably too quickly. “We can stay in the car when we get there. We’ll do whatever—”

  The sergeant holds up a hand, silencing me. “I’d quit while you’re ahead, kid.” The don’t test me look on his face is pretty convincing. And if I push too hard, he might demand to see my identification. Might do some kind of search and learn all about what happened in the diner or about the police Dr. Shepard has sent after me. “If there’s anybody up there, we’ll be bringing them all in for trespassing, at a minimum. Then you can see for yourself whether one of them is your friend.” He nods like that’s the end of that. Though I can’t really see how Officer Kendall is going to bring in a bunch of people in his one car. Probably because the sergeant has already told him not to. “Now, about three miles past town there’s a Dunkin’ Donuts at a Hess station. It’s one of the few places with decent cell coverage. I’m sure Officer Kendall wouldn’t mind giving you a call after he’s checked out the camp.”

  The sergeant looks to Officer Kendall for confirmation. Kendall frowns some more, then nods.

  “Come on,” I hear Jasper say. “Let’s go get a doughnut.”

  “I don’t want a doughnut,” I say through gritted teeth.

  He puts a firm hand on my shoulder. “Yeah, you do.”

  Outside, it feels much colder as we make our way down the steps. And I feel so much worse than before we went into the police station. It’s knowing that there’s nothing to do now but wait that’s getting to me the most. Wait for news on Cassie, wait to see if the Seneca police realize who I am, wait to see if everything is going to be okay. I look over at Jasper as we finally reach the old man’s truck. He’s swinging the keys in his hand, shoulders loose, looking more relaxed than I’ve ever seen him.

  “What are you so happy about?” I snap.

  “Happy?” He looks confused as he heads over to the driver’s side. “What are you talking about?”

  Good question. What am I talking about? And why do I even care if Jasper is feeling better? I don’t know why I care. But I do, and it is seriously pissing me off.

  “You were awfully quiet back there,” I say to him over the back of the truck.

  Jasper raises an eyebrow. “What was I supposed to say?”

  “Something, anything,” I say. “It was kind of like you were on their side.” That isn’t true or wasn’t true, at least not until the very end, when I did feel like Jasper was too quick to leave just because they told us to.

  “On their side?” he asks, and still with the wounded face.

  “Even now, all you’re doing is repeating what I’m saying!” I shout, and so loud that my words echo in the quiet. “Do you ever have an original thought about anything?”

  Jasper’s jaw tenses as he looks away from me and over the dark center of town. Mission accomplished: he’s mad now, but trying to keep his temper in check. “I didn’t say anything because you seemed like you knew what you were doing and I didn’t want to get in your way. Until the end, when you started losing it and I thought you were going to screw yourself, and us. So excuse the hell out of me for trying to have some respect. If that makes me a dick—whatever, fine,” Jasper says, yanking open the truck door. “And I’m not happy, trust me. But do I feel better now? Hell, yes. Going to the police feels like the first good decision we’ve made.”

  “Yeah, well, I feel worse.”

  “Maybe that’s because you are so insanely pessimistic,” he says, and not in a nice way. “You always feel bad.”

  I roll my eyes. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

  “No,” he says, glaring at me.

  Before I can respond, I see something catch Jasper’s eye behind me. When I turn, Officer Kendall is headed our way. He looks left and right like he’s checking that the coast is clear. Did they get word about me? Is he here to hold me until someone comes?

  “M-m-meet m-m-me around back,” he says when he reaches us. “At the c-c-corner.”

  It’s a bad stutter. Maybe why he didn’t say much inside? But a stutter for sure doesn’t mean he can’t arrest me.

  “Why?” I ask, trying to sound casual. (I do not. Not in the least.)

  “You c-c-can ride along,” he says. “I had a g-g-good friend who OD’d. I g-g-get it. J-j-just d-d-don’t t-t-tell my boss.”

  I’ve never ridden in the back of a police car, but I’m guessing this one is way nicer than most. It’s a brand-new Ford Explorer with smooth leather seats. It even has that new-car smell, which unfortunately reminds me of Doug and Lexi’s car. The meth problem might be ruining Seneca, but it’s sure not ruining their police cars. More proof maybe that they’re not doing a whole lot of actual fighting in this drug war.

  We’re quiet most of the fifteen-minute drive up to Camp Colestah. Jasper looks over at me a couple of times like he’s searching for a sign I want him to speak up, which is, of course, my fault. Eventually, he even motions toward Officer Kendall, then himself: you want me to say something? Just in case I didn’t know what he meant. All our quiet mouthing of words makes Officer Kendall glance in the rearview. I s
hake my head and turn toward the window in silence.

  The farther we go, the darker it gets and the stiffer my lungs become. But I feel a tiny bit better when we finally turn onto a dirt-and-gravel driveway. Soon, at least, we’ll know something.

  “Th-th-this is it,” Officer Kendall says as we pass disintegrating stone columns and a lopsided wood sign, the words Camp Colestah barely visible. “Once upon a t-t-time it w-w-was a real nice place. R-r-rich kids from Boston.”

  “Why did it close?” I ask. Already, I can feel something terrible has happened there. I’m hoping maybe it was a long time ago.

  “Owners’ s-s-son drowned in the p-p-pool,” he says. “Got c-c-caught on the d-d-drain in the d-d-deep end. I knew him. G-g-good kid. Parents c-c-closed up and moved out west after.”

  The gravel crunches under our tires as we roll on, our headlights flashing across the tall, bare trees as the ragged driveway curves right and then back to the left. We go a couple of hundred more feet before Officer Kendall finally stops.

  “S-s-stay here,” he says as he puts the car in park, then motions to the dark woods. “G-g-got to sweep each b-b-building as we go. Clear it. Oldest c-c-cabins are d-d-down here. Those are th-th-the ones they like.”

  I would have thought I’d demand to go along with Officer Kendall, but I’m more than happy to stay safely in the car. Evidently, Jasper isn’t as put off by how creepy the place is.

  “You sure you don’t want us to—”

  “S-s-s-stay here,” Officer Kendall shoots back with a lot more force the second time. “B-b-be g-g-glad I let you c-c-come.”

  We sit in silence, watching from the backseat as Officer Kendall’s flashlight bounces through the trees, down a slope, then up again. Once my eyes adjust to the darkness, I can make out where he’s headed, four small cabins up on the hill. Officer Kendall—or his flashlight at least—seems headed first to the one on the far right.