The Collide. Kimberly McCreight
the window, watching the worn-out strip malls and boarded-up fast-food restaurants pass. The area around the detention facility is an ugly, desperate place. I should feel better leaving it behind. But instead, my dread is on the rise. Like I already know that what lies ahead is worse than what lies behind. Because this feeling isn’t just anxiety. On a good day, I’ve learned to tell the difference.
Gideon and I drive on for another twenty minutes, exchanging harmless chitchat between long pockets of silence. How was your cellmate? Very nice. What’s the food like? Very bad. Did anyone try to beat you up? No. Every time I open my mouth and don’t tell him our mom is alive, I feel even more like a liar.
I’m relieved when we’re finally pulling into downtown Newton. It looks exactly as it did when I left but feels weirdly unfamiliar. It isn’t until we’ve made the next right that I realize we’ve turned down Cassie’s street. And, up ahead, there it is: Cassie’s house, with its gingerbread peaked roof and ivy-covered facade, picture-perfect as ever. I feel the moment Gideon realizes his mistake. He may not be an Outlier, but he’s not an idiot.
“Oh, um, I— Crap.” He slams on the brakes so hard, I brace myself against the dashboard to avoid bashing my face. “Sorry, I wasn’t thinking. I can just turn around if you—”
“No.” And even I’m surprised by how forcefully it comes out. I don’t really know why. “I haven’t, um, been here since her funeral. I don’t know . . . I kind of want to see her house.”
Want is the wrong word. Need would be more accurate. Like obsessively must. It feels as though some kind of essential truth is buried in the past—Cassie’s past, our past. Like we will only break free of this terrible loop of heartbreak and loss after we force ourselves back to the start.
“Pull over there, just for a minute?” I point toward a nearby curb.
“Seriously?” Gideon asks, gripping the steering wheel even tighter, hunched over it now like an old man. He feels way out of his depth with the driving, not to mention managing me. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure,” I lie. Luckily, Gideon has no way of knowing that. “Please, just for a minute.”
Finally, Gideon lurches to a stop at the side of the road. The house looks exactly the same. It’s only been two months since Cassie’s funeral; still I expected more decomposition. Maybe this is why I needed to stop here: to be reminded that the world rages on no matter how many of us are cut down by its wake.
No, it’s not that. That sounds good, but that’s not why I’m here. It’s something else. Something more specific. Cassie’s house. Cassie’s house. Why?
Cassie’s journal, maybe? It could be. Jasper and I never did figure out who mailed him those pages.
“WHO CARES WHO sent them?” Jasper asked.
We were sitting across the table from each other in the detention facility visiting room. Day thirteen of my incarceration, day thirteen of Jasper faithfully coming to see me. He sat, as he always did, with his hands tucked under his legs against the hard plastic chair. So he’d remember not to try to hold my hand. He’d forgotten once and had almost been permanently banned. No touching. No exchanging of objects. Shirt and shoes required. There weren’t many rules. But they were enforced like nobody’s business.
“I care who sent them,” I said. “It makes me nervous not to know. It should make you nervous, too.”
“Nervous?” Jasper asked. I looked for an edge in his voice. Everything always makes you nervous. But he didn’t mean it that way. Jasper wasn’t about subtext. It was one of the things I loved about him.
Yeah, loved. I hadn’t said it to him yet. It was more like an idea I was trying on for size. But so far it fit. Much better than I would have thought. And I kept waiting for that to make me feel stupid, like I’d been tricked into something. But instead it felt like I’d trusted my way there.
“We should at least investigate,” I said.
“It was Maia. We already decided that.”
“You decided,” I said. “I want confirmation.”
“Wait, you’re not jealous, are you?” Jasper teased. I shot him a look, and he held up his hands. “Sorry, bad joke.”
And then he blushed, like actual red cheeks, which was kind of old-fashioned. But then our whole two-week-long detention facility courtship had been all chaste conversation and hands to ourselves, in twenty-six-minute, guard-supervised increments. The truth was—despite what we’d been through—Jasper and I didn’t know each other that well. But as we unfolded slowly in front of each other, we slid more tightly into place.
Turned out, Jasper was goofy. Much more so than I realized. And so brutally, heartbreakingly sensitive underneath. He talked about his dad a lot, what it meant to be afraid you were going to become something you hated. He used that fear to explain how he kind of understood my anxiety. In a way, sort of. And I didn’t get the connection. But I loved Jasper for trying to make one.
“I’m going to need to hear Maia say it was her who sent the journal pages before I’ll believe it,” I said. “Otherwise, it’s going to nag at me.”
Jasper’s face softened. “You want me to go ask Maia?” It was a token offer.
I nodded anyway. “Yes, please.”
Jasper took a breath and closed his eyes. “Okay,” he said, drawing out the word. “But only because I . . .” The color rushed back into his cheeks. He waited a beat before looking up at me. “For you, I will. But only for you.”
BUT SITTING HERE now, staring up at Cassie’s house, it occurs to me that it’s stupid to bother asking Maia. She’ll just deny it. And so maybe that’s why I wanted to stop here, to ask Cassie’s mom, Karen. She can tell us whether Maia has ever been in Cassie’s room alone with the diary. She might even know something more.
“I need to ask Karen one quick thing,” I say, unbuckling my seat belt and opening the door. “I’ll be right back.”
“Seriously?” Gideon asks, but I’m already halfway out the door. “Ugh, then I’m coming with you.”
It isn’t until I’m on the front walk that I notice the weeds poking up between the stones. The house is disintegrating more than I realized. Karen probably is, too.
“Can I help you?” a woman calls from the neighboring yard before we’re even at the door. Her voice is sharp, unwelcoming.
When I turn, there’s Mrs. Dominic, Cassie’s grumpy, gray-haired neighbor, wearing a lime-green sweat suit, a grocery bag gripped against her right side, even though it seems awfully early to be getting back from shopping. Cassie never liked Mrs. Dominic. And I am pretty sure I’m about to find out why.
“We’re here for Karen,” Gideon says when I stay silent.
Mrs. Dominic peers closer, looks us up and down. We are up to no good. It’s been decided. She takes two steps closer so that she’s almost on Cassie’s lawn. But not quite.
“Why?” she asks.
My stomach churns icily—my own anxiety this time. But it’s followed then by that now-familiar prickly, Outlier heat. That’s all about Mrs. Dominic. She’s too aggravated by us, too interested. All wrong. I don’t want to tell her anything. And really, what business are we of hers?
I force a smile. “Thank you,” I say firmly. “But we’re fine.”
As though she had offered her help, not her suspicion.
“Well, Karen’s not in there anyway. No one is,” Mrs. Dominic says, happy to disappoint us. “She went away.”
“Went away where?” I ask, feeling far too devastated, I know.
Mrs. Dominic