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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 (#ulink_db2985b3-7472-5bb9-8055-ccddffa834b3)
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.
Jasper puts his brand-new iPhone down gently on the desk that’s jammed up against the head of his bed in the small double room he and Chance share. The new phone was a gift from his mom before he headed off for BC. A gift she definitely couldn’t afford, one that was supposed to be a reward for him “doing the right thing.” It made him feel extra guilty every time he talked to Wylie.
Jasper’s bed squeaks loudly as he sits up, and Chance makes the same sick, wet noise he does whenever he wakes up: surprised Scooby-Doo. Most of what Chance says and does is some shade of Scooby-Doo.
“Shut that thing off,” Chance mumbles into his pillow, same as he does each day. Like the alarm’s not already off. Like Jasper’s a pain in his ass. But Chance counts on Jasper to get them both up in the morning and again in the afternoon. Otherwise, Chance would sleep all day. No surprise, Jasper likes being the guy who can be counted on. And that’s the great thing about college: you can decide to be only the best parts of who you are.
Apart from the noises, Chance is a decent guy, too. Straight-up. He’s from Terre Haute, Indiana, not exactly known for ice hockey, but it’s there according to Chance. He says it’s mostly corn and nice people, and once upon a time that might have sounded boring to Jasper. But these days, boring doesn’t sound half bad.
“Your problem, Jasper, is that you think too much,” Chance likes to say. “More time living and less time thinking, my man.”
And it seems to work for Chance. He’s at Boston College to play hockey, get drunk, and find girls. In that order. Anything outside those three buckets he tosses like a wrong-shaped peg. Chance believes life is simple. And so it is. Meanwhile, Jasper isn’t sure about anything. Except Wylie. Each day he is more sure about her.
Wylie is the reason he finally decided to go to BC preseason, and not just to keep his mind off her being gone. Wylie told Jasper he needed to go to BC back when she barely knew him. And she never wavered.
By the time everything with the hospital had happened, Jasper joined preseason late. It wasn’t easy convincing the BC hockey coach to give him a chance. Jasper decided to go with the truth—Cassie and Wylie and the camp and the bridge and then the hospital. All of it out in a rush. Coach had sat there listening with his scraggly, scrunched-up eyebrows. When Jasper was finally done with his wild story, the coach stayed quiet for a crazy long time. Like he was about to drop some serious knowledge.
“Okay” was all he finally said, looking Jasper square in the eye. “But you miss a game or a practice from here on out, you screw up at all, you’re gone. You’re lucky as hell Samuels is out with a concussion. I got no choice but to take you on, despite the fact that you sound like you could be delusional. Consider yourself already out of strikes.”
Strikes. There it was finally. Like father, like son. The judge had said basically the same thing when he’d sentenced Jasper’s dad to fifteen years for aggravated assault. “I’m sorry, Mr. Salt, but you are out of strikes.”
And fair enough. Jasper’s dad had already been arrested more times than Jasper could count. And what he’d done that night was so much worse than anything that had come before. It wasn’t just evil. It was animal.
The guy in front of them was driving like a dumb-ass, weaving all over the place, slowing way down, then jerking to a stop. They could see that he was on his cell phone. Stupid, no doubt. But it wasn’t until Jasper’s dad had to jerk so hard to stop that he dropped his cigarette in his lap that he became a train cut loose on the tracks.
“No, Dad!” Jasper had called after him.
But he was already out of the car.
“Don’t,” Jasper had whispered inside the empty car as he watched his dad through the windshield, up ahead on the slick road, shouting through the window at the driver of the other car. But watch was all Jasper did. Because he was only twelve at the time. And there was only so much that twelve could do.
Jasper had actually been relieved when the other man got out and was much bigger than his dad. Big enough, he figured, to easily knock Jasper’s dad back in his place. But rage, Jasper learned that night, can make a man many times his natural size.
By the time Jasper was outside the car screaming, “Stop! Stop! Dad, stop it!” his dad’s fists were covered in blood, and the man was on the ground, motionless.
All these years later, Jasper tries not to picture the way the guy’s face had looked after—lumpy and wet and bright red. It’s his dad’s face that haunts him more late at night. The way it looks far too much like his own.
“IN A WAY, I am like him,” Jasper said during one of his many visits to Wylie at the detention facility.
It wouldn’t have been Jasper’s first pick for a date locale, but he was getting used to it. On the upside, they had no choice but to really get to know each other. And Jasper was cool sitting anywhere with Wylie. Had he felt that way about other girls? Maybe. Jasper fell hard and he fell often—his mom was right about that. But that didn’t mean this time with Wylie couldn’t be different. That it wasn’t special.
“You’re nothing like your dad,” Wylie said.
“Come on, that kid that I choked in that Level99 place, the kid I punched in school. I snap, like, a lot of the time,” Jasper said, staring at Wylie so hard his eyes had begun to burn. “I may not be the same as my dad, but I’m not sure I’m all that different.”
And it mattered to Jasper that she didn’t pretend otherwise. He wanted her to know the worst of him (the parts even he hated) and to care about him anyway.
“So, whatever. Even if that is true. You still get to decide what to make of who you are,” Wylie said finally. “Dr. Shepard said that to me, about being an Outlier and being anxious and everything. There’s a lot of gray in the world, Jasper. Wanting to hit someone isn’t the same thing as hitting them. And hitting someone once, or even twice, doesn’t mean you have to be someone who hits forever. Not everything is black and white.”
Jasper looked up at Wylie then. He wasn’t sure if she believed what she was saying. But he was sure that he was falling for her different than ever before. For real. In love. That maybe he was already all the way there.
INSTEAD OF WORKING out with Chance today, Jasper heads home. His mom has been asking him to come every day since he started at camp, and he’s been avoiding her. Partly to get back at her. Even though, to Wylie’s point, his mom is doing her best. And he should know better than anyone that your best isn’t always as good as you’d hoped it would be.
“Oh, you’re here!” his mom calls out as she swings open the door, like she was just sitting there, waiting for him. She’s so happy that she’s pumping up and down on her toes. Jasper feels like an ass. He should have come sooner.
“Yep,” he says, stepping inside. “Here I am.”
“Well, let me see what I have to feed you.” His mom hustles toward the kitchen like she didn’t just get home from a double shift at the hospital. Like she isn’t probably so beat she can barely stand. “I think there’s a lasagna. But that could take a while to heat up. Oh, I wish you’d told me you’d be coming today. I’d have made something special. How about grilled cheese?”
Jasper nods. “Sounds good.” He hates grilled cheese. It’s something his mom has always refused to know. It’s right that he should be forced to eat it now as punishment.
A FEW MINUTES later, Jasper sits staring down at the sandwich that he doesn’t want. But his mom is watching him, and the whole point of coming here is to make her feel better. The least Jasper can do is eat the damn sandwich. He takes a huge bite and chugs a bunch of water to wash it down.
“How was practice this morning?” his mom asks. She sounds nervous. Probably afraid of giving Jasper a reason not to come back. “The other boys on the team still okay?”
Jasper nods. And they are okay. Everything is okay. Sometimes he still has to remind himself. “Preseason is good, really good. You were right about it,” he says. “Chance, my roommate, is a nice guy. Coach is great. A hard-ass. But great.”
His mom nods and forces something of a smile. “That’s wonderful,” she says, but her voice catches.
“Mom, what’s wrong?”
Suddenly, she grasps Jasper’s hand, making him startle back. Her fingers are icy, bony. So old, all of a sudden. “I just don’t want you getting distracted, that’s all. Especially not after all the work you’ve put in getting your life back on track.”
“Distracted by what?” he asks. “I was just telling you it was all good.”
“By whatever.” His mom’s eyes dart away. Jasper can’t read shit, but she is a terrible liar. “I’m just saying. You’re doing well. It’s a good thing. We should keep it that way.”
Jasper raises an eyebrow. “Mom, what is up?”
“Nothing’s ‘up’!” she shouts, twisting a napkin so tight it begins to tear. Then she jerks to her feet and starts clearing the dishes. “I just worry about you. That’s what a mother is supposed to do.”
This is her loving me. This is her loving me, he tells himself. But it’s just so hard to believe.
“Mom, I know you only want what’s best for me,” he says. “And you were definitely right about me needing to go to hockey camp and BC. I totally admit that. It’s been really good for me to be there. So thank you for encouraging me to go.”
She takes a loud breath, then smiles up at him. Her eyes are glassy. “I’m so glad.”
“And I’m being straight with you now. So you be straight with me. Why are you all wound up?” he asks. “What’s going on?”
His mom takes another deep breath, looks down at the table, and crosses her arms. “She’s out,” she says finally.
“Who’s out?” Jasper’s heart has begun to pound.
His mom looks up at him and shakes her head, eyes brimming with tears now. “That girl,” she says, the tears finally making their way onto her cheeks. “The girl.”
“Wylie?” Jasper almost shouts. “She’s out of jail?”
His mom nods. “She called here,” she says reluctantly.
“What? When?” Jasper snatches his phone and taps hard through the call log. “She didn’t call me.”
“Not long ago. Couple hours. She doesn’t have your new number.”
“You gave it to her, right?”
“I did not,” his mom says firmly.
“Why not?” Jasper shouts.
“To protect you,” she exclaims, like this should be the most obvious thing. “And I know it’s not going to be easy to stay away. But it’s already been weeks since you’ve seen her. You’re already out of the habit. A clean break. That’s all you need. Don’t get yourself tied into knots again. You got out, Jasper. Keep it that way.”
But Jasper is already on his feet. She’s out. She’s out. That’s all he can think. “I have to go.” He’s moving quickly toward the door.
“Jasper!” his mom shouts after him. “You have a real chance now. Don’t throw your life away for another girl.”
Jasper forces himself to stay calm as he turns back at the door. He can do this. He can say no but stay kind. Respectful.
