The Outliers

  “Kidnap her?” It just sounds ridiculous. “For what? It’s not like her parents are rich or something.”

  “Sex slavery.” Jasper shrugs. “They sell girls into prostitution. I heard about it on NPR.” He shoots me a look. “And yeah, I’ve listened to NPR. All Things Considered. And no, not on purpose. One of the cooks at the IHOP is some kind of writer.”

  “I guess it could be that,” I say, even though that does not feel at all right. And also, I do not want it to be true. “Listen, we know we have to call somebody, right?” I say, and it makes me feel a tiny bit better just to admit it. To start there and get that out on the table. “The police, Cassie’s mom, somebody. Or we can text Cassie and make her call them. Either way we’re going to need a cell signal. Why don’t we start with that? We drive until we get a signal.”

  Jasper stares out at the road for a minute longer, until finally he nods.

  “Okay,” he says without looking at me. Like he’s trying to convince himself. He puts his hand on the truck’s long gearshift, tugs it back into drive. “Okay.”

  We drive on until the dirt road T’s back into Route 203, the diner and Seneca to our left, home to our right. To the right we know for sure we will have a signal, and soon even. If we go left we’ll be headed onward toward Cassie, but who knows how long we will have to drive in that direction before we have a signal again? Not to mention what other messed-up things might lie in store.

  “So?” Jasper asks, knowing the question is much, much bigger than it sounds. “Which way?”

  Neither option feels right or good. Jasper stares at the steering wheel like he’s considering. We should go home, that is what I think. Even if the police are waiting there for me. Even if they make me go to a hospital. Too much bad has already happened. We’ve gotten too lucky. We should call it quits while we’re ahead, or at least, still alive.

  I’m about to say that—let’s go home—when Jasper pulls ahead and turns left. Onward and toward Cassie.

  “Just until we get a signal,” he says, like it’s a thing we’ve agreed on. And I nod, even though I still feel like we should probably do the opposite. They are all bad choices now.

  But going on toward Cassie and Seneca does mean we have to drive right past the diner. I hold my breath as we pull back onto Route 203 and I see that big sign for Trinity’s Diner floating again way too high in the distance. I brace myself for police cars. Sink lower in the seat, out of sight. But there are no flashing lights like Doug had said, no police. Maybe it should be a relief. No police means they’re not out looking for me.

  But it is not a relief. Not at all.

  “Do you see Lexi or Doug?” I ask.

  “No, I don’t think so.” Jasper looks around some more. “I don’t even see their car.”

  This too makes me feel worse. And I can tell from the way he says it that it doesn’t make Jasper feel better either. Because if Lexi and Doug are not in that parking lot, they could be anywhere.

  “Do you really think Doug was trying to keep us from getting to Cassie?” I ask, as we roll on past and I push myself back up in the seat.

  “Yes,” Jasper says without hesitating.

  “And you really think it has something to do with a sex slavery ring?”

  “No,” he says, just as fast.

  “Oh, then what do you think it does have to do with?”

  Jasper keeps his eyes on the road. “I have no idea.”

  We’re quiet as we drive on, like we’re both trying to come up with some better, less frightening explanation for what has happened to Cassie and how it might connect to Lexi and Doug. But both of us are coming up empty.

  “You know, I wanted to kill you back there when you yelled after that old guy,” Jasper says finally. “Pretty crazy how you got him to give us the keys.”

  “Yeah, crazy,” I say, because that is the operative word. “It takes one to know one, I guess.”

  “I don’t know,” Jasper says. “You had the right call with Lexi and Doug, too. If I’d noticed the empty car seat I might have been suspicious or whatever, but not enough to get out of the car. Imagine what would have happened if Doug had gotten us out in the middle of nowhere. I’m pretty sure I’d be dead right now. You’re two for two.”

  “When you’re freaked out by everything, you’ll eventually be right about something,” I say, but I feel aggravated. Does he actually think all I need is one pep talk from him and I’ll be all sorted out?

  “Maybe you should try to be more positive.” Now Jasper is annoyed that I’m annoyed. Because I guess I’m supposed to be honored or something that he is trying to help me. “You’d probably be less stressed all the time.”

  My nostrils flare. And here I’d almost forgotten completely why I didn’t like him.

  “Now, why didn’t I think to tell you that when you were trying to rip the steering wheel off back at the gas station?” I say. “How about I’ll learn to ‘be more positive’ when you learn a little anger management.”

  Jasper glances in my direction and, annoyingly, actually seems hurt. “Just trying to help.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t need your help,” I say. “Cassie does.”

  I feel embarrassed as I look down at my phone. Why am I even getting into this? Do I actually care what Jasper thinks? I check for a signal as the diner fades into the distance behind us.

  “Anything yet?” Jasper asks. His voice is different now, chilly. And maybe I’m even glad. We don’t have to be friends, he and I.

  “Do you think she’s okay?” I ask. If he’s going to be honest with me, now would be the time.

  “Yes,” he says, too quickly for me to believe.

  “Why?”

  “Because she has to be, right?” and when he looks at me this time, his eyes are shiny in the dark.

  “Yeah,” I say, my own throat burning as I turn away from him toward the windows and the darkness beyond.

  It isn’t until that moment that I realize what I said to that crazy old man was true: I don’t know what I’ll do if I lose Cassie, too. How will I ever live without her and all her insane manic energy, making me see past my world of worry?

  “So, did you ask your dad or what?” Cassie peered at me over the top of her Western Civilization textbook.

  For the past hour, she’d been sitting in a beanbag chair in the corner of my room, pretending to study. But I could tell she was mostly texting behind her book. To Jasper, maybe. It was only the beginning of October and they weren’t officially dating—yet. I was still hoping something might head it off at the pass. So mostly, I pretended that it—whatever it was—wasn’t happening.

  “Ask him about what?” I was playing dumb.

  Partly because I just didn’t want to deal and partly because I wasn’t in the mood to be doing Cassie any favors. But I knew she was desperate to take my dad’s test. Cassie had a glass slipper complex—forever hoping to discover she was a long-lost princess.

  “Ask him about his test.” Cassie rolled her eyes.

  “He’s going to say no,” I said. “This week especially he’s in a really bad mood. He had to fire that assistant guy he was obsessed with.”

  “I thought he loved that guy,” Cassie said, because even she had been treated to one of my dad’s endless speeches about how everyone in the world should try to be more like the insightful and dedicated Dr. Caton.

  “Thin line between love and hate.” I shrugged. “Why do you care so much about taking that stupid test anyway?”

  “I feel like there has to be something more.”

  “To life?”

  I watched Cassie’s face sink. “To me.”

  And now I felt bad. I wasn’t actually trying to hurt her feelings.

  “You don’t need some dumb test to prove that you matter,” I said. “You matter to me.”

  “Yeah, thanks,” she said with a wink. “But I still want to take that test.”

  Fifteen minutes later, when my whole family was assembled around the dinner tab
le, there Cassie went, asking my dad herself. She was tenacious. I had to give her that.

  “Do you think Wylie and I could try your test after dinner, Dr. Lang? Just even like a little part of it?” Cassie asked. Her voice was intentionally high and squeaky like a little girl.

  My dad frowned into his beet salad. “I don’t think that—”

  “Please, please, please,” Cassie begged. And it kind of made me love her that she couldn’t care less that my dad seemed so displeased. “Knowing our results could be super useful, you know, in school.”

  “In school?” Gideon asked, staring at Cassie as usual like he both loved and loathed her.

  Cassie rolled her eyes at him like he was her brother, too. “Or fine, just for our own personal use. Or whatever.”

  I could tell from the look on my dad’s face that there was no way he was going to say yes.

  “Yes, well, as much as I’d like—”

  “Oh, let them, Ben,” my mom said, swooping in with one of those smiles of hers. The kind that always made my dad cave. “They’re the ones who haven’t seen you for months. It will give them a chance to be a part of it, a part of you.”

  “A part of me?” My dad blinked at her like he had absolutely no idea what she was talking about. He really was becoming more and more like a robot every day.

  “Yes, honey, share something of yourself with your kids.” My mom was being playful now, but firm. “You know, connect with them. It might help them better understand why your work is so important to you.”

  “He’s never going to say yes,” Gideon said to Cassie. “I’ve already asked him a hundred times.”

  “Oh, come on. Life is short, Ben.” My mom got up and wrapped her arms around my dad’s neck, then leaned over to kiss his ear. “Let them have a sneak peek of this thing you love. It’ll be fun. You used to have fun with them all the time, remember?”

  We did used to have fun with him. He was always the best at making up puzzles or designing family treasure hunts whenever we were on a road trip, and once upon a time he would play Legos with us for hours. He was never the warm and fuzzy type like my mom, but he had his own things with us and I loved them, too. Until for some reason this particular study came along and devoured the part of him that had always belonged to us.

  When my mom rested her forehead against his, his whole body softened.

  “Okay, fine.” He leaned back in his chair and tossed his napkin down. “I surrender. Let’s do it.”

  “What?” I asked, feeling queasy. It had not occurred to me that he could possibly say yes. I was not at all into any kind of mental assessment. I already knew all I needed to about my monkey mind. “Seriously?”

  “Yeah!” Cassie pumped her arms in the air.

  “What do you mean, ‘okay’?” Gideon looked like he’d just been slapped. “All Cassie has to do is ask and all of a sudden you say yes?”

  “I am not saying yes to Cassie, Gideon. I am unable to say no to your mother. Someday you will understand.” My dad stood from the table, seeming brighter than he had in a long time. “Listen, I’ll make it up to you—how about you go first?”

  Downstairs in the basement—my dad’s home lab—Gideon, Cassie, and I sat stiffly on my dad’s bright-red couch and watched him set up. It wasn’t bad-looking down there these days, not since my mom had insisted on improvements: a shaggy cream carpet, some posters on the walls, the bright Ikea sofa. With my dad spending so many hours down there, she’d worried he’d get depressed.

  “I’ll hook you up to the electrodes to monitor your heart rate, perspiration, and all that,” he said. “We’ll run the test in pairs, two of you having a conversation, while the third does the reading. That is the bulk of the study. We’ll keep the whole thing shorter than the actual study, but we’ll also do it with the blindfold and with the noise-canceling headphones and then with both so you can get a general sense of that part, too.”

  “A conversation about what?” Gideon asked, probably nervous that his feelings for Cassie would somehow come out.

  And I was a little nervous, too, for what would happen when my dad’s test revealed somehow that I was extra insane?

  “Don’t worry, I’ll give you the topics. They are meant to generate some emotion—so there’s something for the reader to intuit. But nothing too personal.” My dad pulled three chairs into a triangle formation. “Cassie and Wylie can have a conversation first, and Gideon will be the reader.” He set about hooking Gideon up to all the wires—electrodes, a pulse monitor. And now he seemed like he was enjoying himself. “The equipment I have here isn’t nearly as sophisticated as what I have at my lab on campus. The chairs there read the slightest shift in body temperature and muscle response. Because a piece of this is, of course, about someone reading not just how you think you’re feeling, but how you really feel.”

  He moved over to hook me up to the same set of wires. But I was so tense already (because I am tense always), I wondered if it was possible I would short out the machines. I wanted to kill Cassie for getting me into this.

  But when I looked over at her, she smiled and mouthed, “Thank you.” And she had this look in her eyes that felt like love.

  And I thought, for the first time in a long time, that maybe she and I would be okay. After all, didn’t we have to be?

  My phone vibrates in my hand, startling me. Cell coverage again, finally. Probably not for long. All the alerts I’ve missed come through in a blast. Four calls and one text from my dad. Three new texts from Cassie. My mouth feels dry looking down at all of them.

  I read the texts from Cassie first. Where are you guys? And then, when I didn’t respond, Is everything okay? How much longer? I’m scared. And then the last, just minutes ago: Never mind what I said. Go to the police in Seneca. It’s not safe anymore for anyone. I’m sorry I got u mixed up in this. But don’t text my mom. Please. She will make it worse.

  I would have sworn all I wanted was for Cassie to give us permission to make this emergency someone else’s problem. But I hadn’t counted on how much more worried it would make me once she finally did.

  “Cassie says we can go to the police in Seneca.” I type the town name quickly into Google Maps, hoping to get some directions or at least how far it is before we lose the signal again. I feel a surge of relief when the pin drops in the center of Seneca. “It’s not far, ten more minutes on this road, then Route 4 for thirty miles, then Route 151 for another ten.”

  “Is she okay?” Jasper asks.

  “She didn’t say. But she was still texting as of a half hour ago. That’s a good sign.”

  “But her sending us to the police isn’t,” Jasper says. “Is it?”

  I don’t answer. Because he’s right, of course. Something has gotten worse, bad enough that Cassie doesn’t even care about a criminal record. If that’s even why she said no to the police in the first place.

  We’re coming, Cassie, I write back. Just hold on.

  I hit send quickly before the signal is lost again to the wilderness, then look down at the little number 4 next to my voice mails, all my dad. But I can’t bear to hear the sound of his voice. Especially because I’m betting he didn’t call to apologize. At least all the calls are from our home number, which means he hasn’t come looking for me yet. And his last text came after the calls anyway. That’s the very last thing he had to say to me, the only thing I need to read, just in case.

  Ironically, it’s from his cell number and not Dad in my contacts, probably the spotty cell signal. Or like after threatening to have me committed, even my cell phone has turned its back on him. I take a deep breath as I tap open the message.

  The police are out looking for you. Dr. Shepard called them. You left us no choice. They will commit you when they find you. After what happened in the diner, I won’t be able to stop them. Unless I can get to you first. Tell me where you are, Wylie. And I’ll come. We can figure a way out of this together.

  Jasper asks me twice on the way to Seneca whether everythi
ng is okay. But I’m too ashamed to get into details. To tell him that my dad thinks I should be committed. Though he does have a right to know that somehow my dad already knows about what happened in the diner, which means they’ve identified me. Maybe identified Jasper, too. We could already be fugitives.

  “It’s just my dad being my dad,” I say, and I silently promise to tell Jasper the rest before we get to the police station. “He’s still being a jerk about me leaving.”

  “You can vent about it if you want. I know about shitty parents, believe me.”

  “Thanks,” I say. “But I’d rather just pretend it didn’t happen.”

  Jasper nods, looks kind of sad. “I get that, too.”

  When Jasper and I finally pull into Seneca, it’s picture-perfect quaint. All the buildings in the little downtown are white with matching green shutters, set out just so around a small town square. There’s even a neatly trimmed lawn with a white pagoda in the middle, for concerts, maybe. There’s a darkened church with a spiky steeple, too, and a row of shops with their names etched in matching arcs on their front windows. It’s past eleven p.m. now, so everything’s closed, except for a bar attached to the Fiddler’s Inn. A small wooden sign hanging out front says The Pub. The only other place lit up is part of what looks like it could be the city hall or something. It’s the largest building around, marked off by three flags out front: US, State of Maine, and a third, which might just be about bears.

  “Maybe that’s the police station,” I say, pointing.

  I am relieved that we might be getting Cassie real help soon. But it’s a risk for me to go inside. After all, I am the crazy girl who stabbed a man in a diner bathroom. The girl whose therapist has already reported her as a danger to herself or others.

  “What are we going to tell them?” Jasper asks as he pulls into a parking spot alongside the square, a little distance from the station. Like he’s still thinking we can guard Cassie’s secrets somehow.

  “Everything,” I say. But I can’t not warn Jasper about the rest because I’m ashamed. Not when it could affect him, too. “But there is something else. They already know about the diner. The knife. Doug.”