скачать книгу бесплатно
“Ha!” my dad huffs. “I’m calling a lawyer.”
What lawyer? I think as my dad grabs for his phone and dials. And yet he seems so confident as he puts the phone to his ear. Time stretches out as we stand there, waiting for someone to answer his call, for my dad to speak. I can feel Agent Klute staring at me. I try not to look back at him, but I cannot help myself.
Sure enough, his cold, black eyes are locked on me, his mouth hanging open a little so that I can see his huge white teeth. I imagine them biting into me. But I don’t sense any of the hostile feelings I would expect to be coming from him—no annoyance or suspicion or aggravation. There is only one thing: pity. And, it turns out, that is so much more terrifying.
I cross my arms tight as my stomach balls up. Maybe I should just answer their questions. Maybe that would make this all go away faster. Except I also have the most awful sense that—no matter what I say—this is the beginning of something and not the end.
Breathe, I remind myself. Breathe. Because the room is narrowing, the floor beginning to shift underfoot. And this is definitely not the time to black out. I’ve been an Outlier for thirty-six hours, but I know I am still capable of totally losing it.
“Hi, Rachel, it’s Ben,” my dad finally says into the phone. “I need you to call me back as soon as you can. It’s an emergency.”
Rachel. Right. Of course my dad would call her. Rachel was my mom’s friend. Or ex–best friend. After years of her and my mom being out of touch, Rachel appeared out of nowhere at my mom’s funeral. Ever since, she’s been like some kind of rash we can’t get rid of. She wants to help. Or so she claims. My dad says it’s probably her way of coping with her grief. If you ask me, what—or who—she actually wants is my dad. Regardless, the whole thing is weird. She is weird, and I don’t trust her.
But like her or not, Rachel is a criminal defense attorney. She would know what to do in a situation like this. And Rachel might be a totally shitty person—the details of their falling-out were never something my mom would share, but even she always said that Rachel was the person she’d call if she ever found herself in real trouble, because “Rachel could keep a bragging serial killer out of prison.” And my mom didn’t mean it as a compliment.
“Dr. Lang, if Wylie has nothing to hide, it shouldn’t be a problem for her to talk to us,” Agent Klute says when my dad hangs up.
“Maybe it would be less of a problem if you hadn’t tackled me,” I say, because it seems like my dad could use some help.
“Hey, you fell!” the short agent pipes up. “I didn’t touch you.”
That’s true, of course, but it hardly feels like the important point.
Agent Klute frowns at me. None of this is going the way it was supposed to. And now he is aggravated, but only a little. Like he’s just gotten a small drop of soup on an otherwise dark shirt. “I can assure you, Dr. Lang, we have extremely broad authority to question witnesses in cases of suspected terrorism. And we don’t need a warrant. Wylie is not under arrest. At least not yet.”
“After that”—my dad points to me, my arm specifically—“the only way we’re answering your questions is if our lawyer tells us we have to.”
Agent Klute takes a breath. “Fine. When will she be here?”
“I don’t know,” my dad says, trying to sound like this gives him the upper hand. Though he knows that it does not. And he’s worried about where this situation is headed. I can feel that loud and clear.
Agent Klute stares blankly at my dad. “We’ll just wait for your lawyer then. For as long as it takes.”
FOR A WHILE after, a half hour maybe, my dad and I sit in silence, side by side on the couch. The agents stand as still as statues in each corner. Agent Klute is the only one who moves, pacing as he sends texts. He’s getting more agitated with each one, our floor creaking eerily under his heavy feet.
I want to text Jasper, but who knows what he will say? And if the agents do bring me in for questioning, they could easily take my phone. It’s safer to wait to talk to Jasper until after they are gone.
My dad calls Rachel two more times, but both calls go to voice mail. And so we wait some more. Thirty more minutes go by. Then an hour. I cannot believe how uncomfortable our living room couch is. I don’t think anyone has ever sat on it that long, definitely not me. Eventually, I need to use the bathroom, but I can’t bear the thought of someone going with me. And I am sure they will.
I’m just beginning to think I’ll have no choice but to bear bathroom babysitters when Agent Klute’s phone vibrates loudly in his hand. “Excuse me, I need to take this call,” he says, nodding at the other agents, letting them know they are temporarily in charge before stepping outside the house.
As the front door closes behind Agent Klute, my dad’s phone finally rings. “Rachel,” he answers, desperate and relieved. He’s quiet, listening for a minute. “Well, not great to be honest. Could you come over? It’s kind of an emergency. No, no, nothing like that.” He pauses and takes a deep breath as he stands. But he doesn’t actually go anywhere. He just hovers there in front of the couch. On his feet, he seems so unsteady, like part of him is disintegrating. “There are some federal agents here, and they want to interview Wylie and I’m just—she’s been through a lot, and I want to schedule it for another time.” Silence again as Rachel responds. “I did. They refused. They said because this has to do with domestic terrorism and Wylie’s not a suspect …” More silence. “Yeah, okay. Okay. Thank you, Rachel.”
He seems better, more hopeful when he turns back to me. “What did she say?” I ask.
“That we’re doing the right thing,” he says. “We should just wait here. She’s on her way.”
MY DAD STILL has the phone in his hand when Agent Klute steps back inside the house. “We’ll be in touch soon, Dr. Lang,” Klute says matter-of-factly. As if this is an extension of a conversation we were already having. As if this was already agreed upon. “We’ll schedule another time for that interview.”
But why? Because I am not buying that Agent Klute is taking off because he’s afraid of some lawyer he’s never met. He doesn’t even know Rachel finally called back. Klute nods in the direction of his men. No, they are leaving for their own reasons. Bad ones.
“Where are you going?” I ask though I would probably be much better off not saying a word. It’s not as if I want them to stay.
When Agent Klute looks at me, I feel it again: pity. And it’s worse this time. So definitive and deep. He nods again. “We’ll be in touch.”
I watch as Klute and his men gather together and disappear out the door. And I imagine it like that eerily quiet moment when the tide gets pulled out to sea, right before a tsunami crashes back to shore. Silent and astonishing and totally terrifying.
2 (#ulink_3ceca6b5-1515-5d62-8160-ef331d67c02f)
Six weeks later
I OPEN MY EYES TO DARKNESS. My bedroom. The middle of the night. Jasper calling. Without checking, I already know it is him. But I don’t reach for my phone. Sometimes he only calls once and hangs up. And tonight, for the first time in a long time, all I want to do is sleep.
Ever since we got back from Maine six weeks ago, Jasper’s late-night calls have become an everyday thing. Jasper is on his new phone, of course. Because it hadn’t been him who sent the text telling me to run that day all those weeks ago when the agents were standing at my door.
As soon as Agent Klute and his friends had left our house, I called Jasper back—wanting to be sure he was okay, wanting to know why exactly he had told me to run. But he hadn’t answered his phone. After two more hours of calling and being unable to track down a landline number for Jasper’s family, I’d insisted—over my dad’s strong objection—that we drive over to Jasper’s house and check on him.
Jasper had been completely fine when he’d finally answered the door—sleepy and confused, but fine. He didn’t even have his phone, hadn’t seen it since Quentin had taken it from him at the camp.
The local police had found my phone in the main cabin and had returned it to me that morning during one of the many interviews at the rest stop. But Jasper and I were being questioned separately then. I had just assumed he had gotten his back, too. Actually, I hadn’t thought about it at all. But the officers had never found Jasper’s phone.
Someone had told me to run at the exact right moment, though. And to what terrible end I could only imagine. Maybe they had been hoping that running would get me killed.
My dad did contact Agent Klute later when we realized the message hadn’t come from Jasper. Klute had agreed to look into the text and then sometime later proclaimed the whole thing to be some kind of prank. We did press him for details. A prank didn’t make sense. But Agent Klute stopped returning our calls. And it was hard to object to that when we also never wanted to hear from him again.
My phone chirps again now and I feel around for it on the nightstand. Think again about how I should change it to some less jarring ringtone. But then, I’ll stay jumpy regardless of my ringtone.
It’s a big achievement that I was asleep at all. Neither Jasper nor I have slept much since we got back from Maine—too much regret, too much guilt. Instead, we survive the endless nights on the phone, talking about everything and nothing. And I lie on my bed, staring at the old photos that line my bedroom walls, thinking I should take them down because they remind me of my mom. Knowing that is the reason I never will.
Jasper and I try to keep our conversations light, to help blot out the darkness. Maybe that’s exactly why it doesn’t work. The “what-ifs” of the choices we made that night as we drove north—“what if” we’d told Cassie’s mom right away, “what if” we’d ignored Cassie and had gone to different police earlier—are way too loud and angry by comparison. But all the talking has made Jasper and me closer. Sometimes I wonder how long it will last or how real it can be, this friendship born out of so much awfulness. Other times, I don’t want to think about that. I don’t want to think too hard about anything. There are too many questions I don’t know how to answer.
In her usual therapist way, Dr. Shepard has said she doesn’t think it’s a good idea for us to rehash too much, and neither do I. Jasper can’t help himself, though. We both have our what-ifs, sure, but it was Jasper who straight-out blamed Cassie for getting us locked in the camp. I say the same thing every time he brings it up: No, it is not your fault, Jasper. Cassie is dead because of Quentin, not you. And that is what I think.
Jasper doesn’t believe me, though. Sometimes when I look in his eyes, I feel like I am watching someone slowly starve to death. And I am standing right there, my arms filled with food.
Not that I am totally fine now by comparison. I still have horrible nightmares, and every day I cry at least once. Normal signs of grief and trauma, Dr. Shepard says. My anxiety didn’t disappear the second I was told I was an Outlier, either.
But these days there is less oxygen fanning the flames. I am working on separating out other people’s emotions from my own anxiety. There are little differences, it turns out, in the way each feels. My own anxiety is colder, deeper in my gut, while other people’s feelings sit higher in my chest. And now Dr. Shepard’s breathing exercises and her mindfulness meditations and her positive self-talk—things she has always advised—are actually starting to work, probably because I am more willing to believe they will.
Finally, I lay my hands on my phone, almost knocking it to the ground before I answer.
“Hey,” comes out garbled. I clear my throat. “What’s up?”
“Shit, were you sleeping?” Jasper asks. He sounds almost hurt, betrayed by my lack of insomnia.
“Um, not really,” I lie. “I was just—what’s up?” Then I remember why he’s probably called so late. Because this is late, even for him. “Oh, wait, the dinner with your mom. How was it?”
Jasper was supposed to tell her that he’s having second thoughts about playing hockey for Boston College. And by second thoughts, I mean he’s totally changed his mind. The summer camp for incoming freshmen starts in a few days, and he doesn’t plan on going. And BC isn’t going to pay his way on an athletic scholarship if he isn’t playing hockey. No hockey, no Boston College.
But Jasper is totally okay with this. Completely. He isn’t even sure he wants to go to college anymore. In fact, talking about bagging Boston College is the only time Jasper sounds remotely happy these days. Though I am fairly sure that’s because never playing hockey again is his own punishment for what happened to Cassie. Because as much as Jasper’s mom pushed him into the sport, he also loves it. Turning his back on it is a way to make himself suffer.
“Dinner was okay,” Jasper says. But he sounds distracted, like this isn’t at all why he called.
“What did she say?” I push myself up in bed and turn on the light.
“Say? About what?”
“Um, the hockey?” I ask, hoping my tone will bring him back around. “Are you okay? You sound really out of it.”
“Yeah, yeah. I’m fine.” It’s totally unconvincing. “The thing with my mom didn’t go well. But, I mean, it’s not like I thought it would.” He doesn’t sound upset either, just totally flat. I wait for him to get into details, but he stays quiet.
“Is she going to let you drop out?” I ask as my eyes settle on my photograph of the old woman and her plaid bag and all those crumbs. The one that Jasper called depressing that first time he was in my house, the day we raced off in search of Cassie. I wonder if he’d see it the same way now.
“Define ‘let,’” he says, and then tries to laugh, but it’s wheezy and hollow.
My body tightens. “Jasper, come on, what happened?”
“Oh, you know, kind of what I expected,” he says. He’s trying to rally, but I can hear the effort in his voice. I can feel it, too, even over the phone. “Except worse, I guess.”
“Worse how?” I ask, though maybe I should be distracting him instead of pressing for details. As usual with Jasper these days, I feel totally out of my depth.
“My mom said if I don’t play hockey—go to the camp and whatever—I can’t live under her roof.” He pauses and sighs. “Listen, it’s not like she was going to change into this totally different person because I almost died.” I’m not sure if he means this as a joke. But the weird tightness in his voice is pure sadness. It makes my own chest ache.
“I’m sorry.” I want there to be something else to say. But anything more would be a lie and I know what those feel like. Jasper deserves better.
“Maybe she’s got a point.”
“So you’re thinking of playing after all?” I sound too hopeful. I can’t help it. I don’t like Jasper’s mother, but I agree that he should go to Boston College and play hockey. He’s too lost right now to cut himself free from the one thing that still brings him joy.
“No way,” he says, like that’s the most absurd suggestion ever. “I’m definitely not playing.”
My heart has picked up speed. Yes, there is a line between me reading Jasper’s bad feelings and me being anxious, but it is still super blurry. All I can say for sure is that this conversation is making me really worried.
Whether that’s because of my feelings or Jasper’s feelings is still up for debate.
“SO I MADE it to your actual office,” I said to Dr. Shepard in our first face-to-face meeting a week after the camp. I was fishing for praise. All that trauma and there I was, getting myself out of the house.
She nodded at me and almost smiled, looking as pretty and petite as she always did in her big red chair. Still like Alice in Wonderland shrunk down to nothing. I was relieved that hadn’t changed.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Dr. Shepard said.
It wasn’t exactly the job-well-done parade I was hoping for. But that was Dr. Shepard’s style: don’t make too much out of anything. Not the good or the bad. She wanted me to have expectations for myself, but she wanted to be sure I knew she didn’t have any of her own.
We chatted then for a while: how was I spending my days, how were things at home? But there was only so much dancing around what had happened at the camp that we could do.
“You know, I felt less anxious while I was going after Cassie,” I said, finally diving into the middle, probably a little too aggressively. “Shouldn’t that have made me more anxious? I was having a hard time leaving the house. Wasn’t leaving the house actually.”
“Anxiety is variable, Wylie. No two people manifest it in exactly the same way. There are no ‘shoulds.’ Even for one person anxiety can change over time depending on life events—your mother’s accident certainly made your anxiety worse to the point that you were unable to go outside for a brief period. The adrenaline of being called upon to help Cassie likely camouflaged your own anxiety temporarily,” she said. “For once the alarm bells going off inside you matched the actual danger of your situation. It’s not surprising that your anxiety would be less noticeable.”
“So that’s my cure? To be in some crazy emergency all the time?”
Dr. Shepard’s mouth turned down. She was never a fan of sarcasm. “People do go through intensely anxious periods and come out the other side. Others have good and bad periods cyclically throughout their lives. With anxiety, there are no one-size-fits-all explanations or predictions, Wylie. No absolutes. The unknown can be frustrating, but also encouraging. You’re here now. Perhaps we should start there.”
“Do you believe my ‘Heightened Emotional Perception,’ this ‘Outlier’ thing”—I hooked quotes around the word and rolled my eyes in a totally transparent attempt to show I wasn’t taking it very seriously—“could be the whole explanation for what’s wrong with me?”
My dad had called ahead to explain to Dr. Shepard what had happened at the camp and its link to his research, including his newly coined “Heightened Emotional Perception,” or “HEP,” which I think he felt had the benefit of heading off any eventual comparison to ESP. He had also told her I was an Outlier and what that meant. It was a relief not to have to go into the details, especially about me being an Outlier, which I found one part thrilling, one part confusing, and two thousand parts terrifying. It was like learning that for years you’d been carrying around some kind of enormous benign tumor in your belly. Sure there was good news: you weren’t sick and you’d lose eight pounds when the watermelon-sized thing was removed. But you still had to contend with the daunting sense that you’d been invaded, occupied. Worse yet, you’d had absolutely no idea.
“Wrong with you?” Dr. Shepard asked. “Right and wrong is not an effective way to frame a discussion about anxiety.”
“You know what I mean,” I said, though how could she? I wasn’t even sure what I meant. I wanted certain answers (how anxious was I really?), but wanted to avoid others (what did being an Outlier really mean?). I wanted to off-load my anxiety without taking on being an Outlier, to cherry-pick my truth. “Do you think it’s possible that I’m not actually anxious at all?”
Dr. Shepard stared at me and I felt with troubling clarity the moment she decided to play it straight, instead of opting for the good old therapy bob and weave. It wasn’t necessarily comforting, this being able to see through people so easily. It made everyone so much weaker, their gifts so much more ordinary.
“I believe awareness is a powerful thing, Wylie. Do you understand?”
I nodded. But then reconsidered. “No, actually, I don’t understand at all.”
“This Heightened Emotional Perception could have exacerbated your anxiety, certainly. It’s possible that in some instances you have mistaken the emotions of others for your own. However, I’d say that it is highly unlikely that being an Outlier is the explanation for all your anxiety. Let me ask you this. Do you feel anxious now?”
I tried to pull in some air. It wasn’t easy. And there was that cold heaviness in my stomach for sure. “Yes, definitely.”
Though my anxiety did feel a little more separate now that I could pick out its peculiar chill. More like a backpack I was wearing than one of my internal organs.
“I can at least assure you that the anxiety you are feeling right now is yours, not mine, Wylie. Bottom line: I think the answer is yes, you are anxious, and, yes, you have this Heightened Emotional Perception. Where the line is will be something for you to figure out.”
But that was the problem. In those first hours after Jasper and I escaped, still reeling from what had happened to Cassie, being an Outlier felt like it might be the answer to everything that had ever been wrong with me. The secret to my freedom. But so quickly “being an Outlier” turned into a bottomless box filled with questions and more questions. So far I had decided to close the lid and lock it up tight. Knowing that I alone reserved the right to use the key.
Not yet, though. I had politely declined to engage in any of my dad’s “follow-up testing” and had taken a pass on him teaching me to “do more” with my Heightened Emotional Perception or “reading” ability. I’d even intentionally avoided learning where my dad’s research was headed. I knew only his two main questions: the “scope” of the Outlier ability (what could we do if we practiced) and the “source” of the Outlier ability (where did it come from).
After he had accidentally discovered the three original Outliers—me and the other two girls—my dad had done additional “exploratory” studies using a handful of volunteers, but nothing that could have been published. It was during these exploratory studies that he had noticed the Outliers were all girls, and only teenagers. All of that was before what had happened up at the camp. Now, my dad had been spending most of his time on applications and proposals to get the money he needed for a proper, peer-reviewed study that would prove the existence of the Outliers. Then, and only then, would he be able to move on to the more complex issues of source and scope. For now, as far as the scientific community was concerned, it was like nothing had even happened.
“And what if I don’t want to be an Outlier,” I said to Dr. Shepard, my throat pinching unexpectedly tight.
“You may not be able to choose whether or not you are an Outlier, Wylie. Or, for that matter, whether or not you are anxious.” Dr. Shepard leaned forward and looked at me intently. “But you can decide what you do with who you are.”
I BREATHE IN to the count of four, trying not to exhale into the phone still pressed hard to my ear. “Jasper, what do you mean, that your mom ‘has a point?’ A point about what?”
“About the not living with her,” he says. “Maybe I’ll just hit the road or something. You know, freedom and all that. Figure it out as I go along.”
“Figure what out?” I snap, my fear rising.
“Figure out everything,” he says. “I’m sorry I woke you, Wylie. It was good you were asleep. We can talk about my mom and everything later, or tomorrow. Or whatever. That wasn’t even why I called. I was awake and wanted to say hi. That’s all.”
This is a lie. Even through the phone I can feel it.
“I’m up now. You don’t have to go.”
We are silent then in a way that I hate.
