The Outliers

  Jasper heads to the back of the cabin, poking his head into what looks like a closet. When he reaches overhead and pulls a string, a single bulb goes on. It leaves a slanted gold rectangle on the floor around his feet, brightening the cabin a tiny bit. I feel relieved, but only for a second.

  “There’s electricity?” I ask. Should that make me feel better? Because it does not. “I thought this place was abandoned.”

  “Yeah, that’s for sure weird.” Jasper waves me over to the closet. “But not as weird as this.”

  When I get over to him, I can see what he means. There’s a bucket on the floor of the closet with a roll of toilet paper next to it. There’s even some hand sanitizer. A makeshift bathroom.

  “They knew we were coming,” I say.

  “Or they knew somebody was,” Jasper says, walking back to the front window. I stare at him, but he doesn’t look back at me.

  “Who are these people?” I ask, though I already know Jasper doesn’t have a clue.

  “Probably not the same ones who stab each other in the eye over marshmallow Peeps.” He turns to look at me when I come to join him at the window. “Right?”

  Of course he’s right. It’s way too organized and well thought out.

  “Wait, is that a person over there?” Jasper points to the cabin across the way, but all I can make out are shadows. “I just saw something move.”

  I lean in and squint but still can’t see anything. Instead, something in the opposite direction catches my eye.

  “Look,” I say, feeling a tiny surge of hope. “The police car is still here.”

  “Yeah, but someone turned the headlights off,” Jasper says, and from his voice I can tell he doesn’t think there’s anything good about that. We both stare at it for a moment in silence. “Do you really think that Cassie might be doing meth?” he asks, eyes still on Officer Kendall’s car. “That meth is what all of this is about?”

  “I have no idea.” I turn around and slide down the wall until I have taken Jasper’s spot on the cold and dirty floor. “Cassie’s done a lot of things lately that I never thought she would.” I feel annoyed at Jasper all over again. Because the Rainbow Coalition might have been the reason Cassie got started partying. But Jasper was why she kept at it. “I mean, all those parties she went to—maybe she did try meth. Well, you would know. You were with her.”

  “Wait, you think there was meth at a party I was at?” he asks, then shakes his head, disgusted. “You seriously think I was the reason Cassie was doing drugs, don’t you?”

  “I didn’t say it was your fault.” I roll my eyes. It is more than a little ridiculous how innocent he’s acting. “I’m saying maybe you could handle it better than she could, that’s all.”

  “And by ‘it’ you mean drugs?” Jasper doesn’t wait for me to answer. “Listen, I know you think you know everything about me. That you know everything about everything. But I don’t even drink. I never have. No drugs either. And I mean never tried them,” he snaps. “My dad was high as shit when he beat the crap out of that guy. Almost killed him. And yeah, he did it. Wasn’t the first time, either. Just the first time he hurt someone so bad he ended up in jail because of it. And yeah, I lied about it to Lexi and Doug, because sometimes people don’t think the apple falls far from the tree.” He eyes me then like he knows I’m one of those apple people. “And sometimes I even worry they’re right. So I’m careful. Like staying away from drugs, for one. I’ve never gotten high and I never will get high. And I never personally saw Cassie get high. She knew how I felt and so she didn’t do it around me. But yeah, I knew she smoked pot and I hated it.”

  “Okay,” I say, holding up my hands. “Fine, sorry.”

  I do feel like a jerk. Because maybe I am one of those apple people. And Jasper’s right, it is a terrible way to think.

  “But she was acting weird recently.” Jasper crosses his arms, eyes still on the window. “Like I said before, I thought she was cheating on me. But maybe she was hiding some kind of drug thing. Meth even. Shit, I don’t know. She definitely wouldn’t have told me. She would have known I wouldn’t be okay with it. But whatever, if you think I’m lying, there’s nothing I can do about that.”

  “I don’t,” I say. “I didn’t mean to—”

  “And by the way, while we’re on the subject of your shitty opinion of me,” Jasper goes on, angry all over again, “Cassie told me you think I did something to Tasha. Not that it’s any of your business, but Tasha and I were friends. Sometimes, she liked to pretend we were boyfriend and girlfriend, and I thought fine, what do I care?” He shakes his head. “But I was too much of an ass to think about how she’d feel when I actually got a girlfriend. And it was bad.”

  “Did you tell Cassie that?” I ask. Surely she would have thrown that right in my face.

  “No. She asked about Tasha, but I didn’t think it was anybody’s business. Listen, I’m not pretending I’m perfect. And in case you’re wondering, yeah, I broke that kid’s nose. Knocked him flat out. Did I mean to hit him that hard? I don’t know, maybe. He said some crap about my dad and I just lost it. I’m not proud of that. It was a mistake. People make them, you know?” Jasper turns back to the window, crosses his arms. “Maybe if you realized that, you’d be a happier person.”

  My cheeks feel hot as I stare at the side of his handsome-boy face. I hate how right he is.

  “Look there!” Jasper points again toward the window.

  I jump to my feet quick enough to see—something or someone in the shadows of the large cabin across the way. Then a flashlight goes on and starts bouncing across the dark grass toward us. Officer Kendall. At least, I think—same light, same height. On his way back to us maybe? It’s possible he rushed out to investigate and the door slammed shut behind him. It could even be stuck, not locked. Our situation could be bad still—because we haven’t found Cassie—but maybe not as bad.

  Instead of continuing on toward our cabin, though, the flashlight turns toward the car. Not Officer Kendall? But a second later, once the light is no longer shining at us, we can see who is behind it. And there can be no doubt. It is Officer Kendall. Sure enough, he’s headed for his car. And away from us.

  I close my eyes. Hope that I am seeing things. I have to be. But when I open them, there is Officer Kendall. Still walking calmly toward his car.

  Jasper knocks on the window with two of his knuckles. “Hey!” he screams. “Where are you going?”

  If Officer Kendall hears, he doesn’t even twitch.

  “He’s leaving us here,” I say, barely able to get the words out. My heart is throbbing in my head.

  “Hey!” Jasper screams again as Officer Kendall gets into his SUV. He bangs with his whole closed fist this time. So hard I’m afraid he’s going to shatter the glass and hurt himself.

  “Jasper, stop.” I put a hand on his arm.

  He rests his fist against the glass as Officer Kendall backs up and drives away. We stand in silence until his taillights disappear down the driveway.

  “Fuck,” Jasper says quietly. Then sits back down on the floor.

  I watch him down there for a minute, looking so defeated. If Jasper’s hope is gone, we are truly lost. But he’ll rally. He has to. I just need to give him a minute. I turn away from him back toward the window.

  And there is a face. Right there. Right on the other side of the glass. A man with terrible dead eyes locked on mine.

  “Holy shit!”

  Jasper jumps to his feet. “What is it?”

  The terrible man, bearded and thin with blotchy skin, looks over at Jasper and holds up his dirty finger again. Shhh, that’s the sound he’d make if we could hear him. My heart is racing as he lifts something high in front of him. It takes me a minute to realize what it is: a rifle. As he lowers it, his smile sinks and becomes an awful frown before he finally disappears from view.

  “Fuck,” Jasper says again, his wide, terrified eyes locked on the window. “We have got to get the hell out of here. Now.”
r />   We divide the cabin into sections, searching for a way out. At one point, Jasper moves a couple of boxes, creating a little fence around Cassie’s stuff, and I’m glad because I’m afraid if I look too close I might spot something terrible on it, like blood.

  I check all the windows again, but they are all nailed shut, each covered with that same wire. Jasper scans the walls for a loose board, a crack in the seals. We both scour the floors for any sign of weakness, some corner we could dig our way out from. I find only the hole in the floor Officer Kendall mentioned, but it’s not big enough to be useful.

  We do all of this in silence, neither one of us throwing out theories about who exactly these people are or why they locked us in here. Why Officer Kendall has gone. Because there are no explanations anymore that do not make our situation, and Cassie’s, seem much, much worse.

  “Do you think she’s okay?” Jasper does ask at one point. Alive, he means, I can tell.

  I do not want him to be asking me this. I want him to know that she’s going to be fine, the way he did before.

  “She’s okay,” I say finally, the way he told me hours earlier. “She has to be.”

  I carry a chair over to inspect a vent up near the ceiling that would be too small for us to crawl through anyway.

  “Hey, I think maybe there’s something behind here,” Jasper calls from the back. “Help me pull this bureau out.”

  The bureau is so heavy it might as well be made of concrete. Even with Jasper using his full strength we don’t get it far, only a foot or so from the wall. But enough to see that there is something behind it. A big piece of plywood—two feet by three feet—is attached to the wall like it’s sealing up a hole. A hole that might just be big enough for us to escape through. Jasper crouches down, inspecting the edges of the plywood. There is a screw in each corner and a couple more along each side.

  “We need to get these out.” He motions around the room. Find a tool to loosen them. And he’s right that we’ll need to be quiet, too. Don’t want to draw the attention of that man on the door.

  Carefully, gently, we pull open one drawer at a time. I find a broken pencil and four pennies in one, a few dirty manila folders in the next. Jasper is at the tall filing cabinet, trying to silently open and close the rattling metal drawers. He looks disgusted by something in the second, poking his head in closer. A moment later he pulls out a giant stuffed owl and sets it on top of the filing cabinet so that it’s staring right at me.

  “For you.” He smiles a little, and I’m glad one of us can still joke. “Hey,” Jasper whispers again a second later, and I turn, expecting another absurd discovery. But he’s got a metal ruler. The kind of thing that just might work on the screws.

  Jasper tries the ruler, and I’m shocked when it actually begins to turn the first screw. When he looks up at me, the hope is back in his eyes. And I pray that he’s right. That we are as good as free.

  Ten minutes later, though, it’s obvious it’ll at least be slow going. He’s got three screws out along one corner and a couple more loosened, but there are a half dozen more to go.

  “Let me,” I offer when it seems like Jasper’s hands are starting to give out. Even in the dim light from the bulb in our bucket bathroom, his palms are bright red.

  “I’ve got it,” he says, brushing me off, even as the ruler starts to slip.

  And so I let him struggle on for a couple more minutes, until it really seems like he’s slowing down. And we can’t afford to do that, no matter what. We don’t have the time, and neither does Cassie. Wherever she is.

  I reach out and put my hand over his. “Come on. Take a break for a minute.”

  Finally, Jasper nods and moves out of the way. When I start in on the screws myself, it’s even harder than I expected. Still, it is working. I get another one out and start on a second. Makes me think: for people who went to all this trouble, with new glass in the windows and wire on top of that, a makeshift bathroom, a sealed-up hole, leaving that ruler behind was a pretty stupid mistake.

  “Lucky we found this, huh?” I ask.

  The bad feeling I’ve got could be nothing. All the time it’s nothing. But when you’re worried about everything, eventually you are going to be right about something.

  “I guess,” Jasper says, but he’s not listening. He’s not worried that finding that ruler makes us too lucky. His eyes are still locked on it and the screws like he’s about to grab it back from my hands.

  “I mean, like suspicious?” I stop working the screw and look up at him.

  Jasper nods, shrugs, still staring down at the plywood. When he reaches out a hand, I think maybe he agrees that we should wait a second and think this through. But instead he just takes the ruler and gets back to work on the screws. Even faster this time.

  Refreshed from his short break, Jasper gets the next couple screws out quickly. With all of them off on one end he’s even able to pull the plywood back a little. Not much, five or six inches. He nods toward it.

  “See it if goes all the way through,” he whispers. Meaning he wants me to stick my hand through.

  I do not want to do this. There are countless reasons why. Mostly, I am convinced something terrible will happen when I do. Best-case scenario is that someone will grab me. But Jasper is waiting. And he worked so hard to get us this far. The least I can do is help. He’s pulling back the wood. You can do this, Wylie, I try telling myself. Do it.

  Finally, I nod and step forward. I suck in one last mouthful of air before jamming my hand through. I hold my breath, wait for teeth in my flesh, my hand being sliced in two. But there’s just the cold and the damp and something stringy getting caught in my fingers. It takes me a minute to realize that it’s probably tall grass growing alongside the cabin.

  “It goes all the way through,” I say relieved.

  There’s a sound at the front of the cabin then—the lock sliding, the door opening. I go to yank my arm back inside, but my bunched-up sleeve gets hung up just as Jasper lets go of the plywood. It snaps down hard as I drag my arm the rest of the way out, and Jasper and I lunge toward the center of the room, as far away from the plywood as possible.

  My arm is on fire as the door swings open, my eyes filling with tears from the pain. So many tears that it’s hard for me to see. Hard for me to believe my eyes, when someone finally steps inside. I blink hard and pray that I’m not seeing things.

  Because there she is. In one living, breathing piece. Cassie.

  As soon as Cassie shuffles inside, the door slams shut behind her.

  She looks terrible. Her skin is chalk white, her dark-brown curls tangled and flecked with twigs and leaves. Like she’s been dragged by her feet across the ground. Her hands are filthy and so are her knees, bare in her short skirt. But the worst part is how stunned she seems. And the way she’s moving, stiff and awkward, like her entire body is burned.

  But she’s alive. She is alive. It’s not until that moment that I realize how terrified I was that she might not be.

  “Cassie!” Jasper rushes over and grabs her up in his arms. “Thank God you’re okay.”

  She doesn’t resist him, doesn’t yelp when he goes to touch her. But she stays rigid, arms out over his like a crucifix. I think about Cassie’s underwear on the floor, about how it might have gotten there. There are no good reasons for a girl and her underwear to be separated.

  “Are you okay?” Jasper asks, pulling back to look her in the eye.

  I drift closer to look myself. Cassie doesn’t have any obvious bruises or cuts. But I wish she would speak. Say something, anything. Instead she just shakes her head. No, not okay? Or no, not hurt? Suddenly she turns and clutches on to me.

  “Shhh.” I rub a hand over her head as she sobs against me so hard she sounds like some kind of animal dying in my arms. “You’re okay now. Everything is going to be okay.”

  But I feel so ashamed for saying something like that. Something I know is a lie.

  “Cassie, what happened?” Jasper asks when
her sobbing slows to sniffling. “What is this?”

  “I don’t know,” she says, finally letting me go. She drops herself down on the couch.

  Jasper and I turn to look at each other. She doesn’t know? Maybe she was slipped something at some party or some bar she never should have been inside in the first place. She could have blacked out and woken up here.

  I walk over and move the boxes out of the way so that Cassie’s underwear is in plain sight again.

  “Are you hurt?” I ask, motioning to it when she looks at me. “Did somebody mess with you?”

  “No, no.” She sniffles some more and wipes at her face with the back of her hand. “They haven’t done anything to me, except not let me leave.”

  They. I do not like the way she says it. Like we are outnumbered. I go to sit next to her on the couch. “Karen came to our house. She said you guys got into a bad fight and then you left for school. How did you get here?”

  Cassie nods, staring down at her hands.

  “She brought up sending me off to that ‘therapeutic boarding school’ again—a.k.a. prison—and I freaked out and called her the C word.” Cassie nods. “And then she flipped out. She was totally screaming at me. And I’d just had it. I took the bus to school, but I didn’t go in. I went downtown instead. I was just minding my business, sitting on this bench, when this guy came out of nowhere and said my mom sent him. He wasn’t dressed like a cop, but he flashed some badge and I figured maybe he was some kind of undercover truancy officer.” She looks at Jasper. “Anyway, I had to go with him because I couldn’t risk, well, you know …”

  She glances from Jasper over to me. And you know about me and the police, Jasper, that’s the look.

  “I told Wylie you got arrested,” Jasper says, crossing his arms. It’s quick and matter-of-fact, like he’s pulling off a Band-Aid. “Sorry, but with everything else—I had to tell her.”

  “Oh,” Cassie flicks her eyes my way, then down into her lap. “Well, once we were in his car, he said that he was actually from the school my mom was shipping me off to, and I had to go with him or he would turn me in to the police.” Tears rush into her eyes again. She blinks them back and looks up at the ceiling. “It’s not like those places take no for an answer. They’ll throw a bag over your head if they have to. And I thought about running, but I was scared it might make things worse for me.”