The Outliers

Jasper and I don’t talk much as the miles pass except “Are you cold?”and“Can we change the station?”Pretty soon almost every alternative on Jasper’s old-school radio is static, except some talk-radio program about the evils of psychiatric drugs and teens, which under the circumstances—my circumstances—feels pretty awkward.

Luckily, it’s hard to hear much of anything anyway over the roar of Jasper’s car. Riding in the worn Jeep feels like being a stowaway in a cargo plane. Like I’m in a space not meant for passengers. And the farther north we go, the colder it gets. Soon, my toes are almost numb, despite the fact that Jasper keeps turning up the heat. As I check the time on my phone—almost eight thirty p.m.—I’m starting to worry that the cold and the noise might be a sign something is dangerously wrong with the Jeep. I peer over toward Jasper’s feet, where the sound and the wind seem to be coming from.

“There’s a hole.” Jasper points down.

“In the floor?” I ask, squeezing the door handle so hard my hand starts to throb.

“Don’t worry. It’s not dangerous or anything,” Jasper goes on. “It’s nowhere near the pedals. My brother should fix it. It’s his car. But he never thinks about anything, except getting laid and beating the shit out of people.” Jasper looks like he’s going to say something more. Instead, he half smiles. “Like me, for instance, when he realizes I took his car.”

“Oh,” I say.

“Whatever. It’s fine. He’s big, but seriously slow. I can usually outrun him. Once I didn’t.” He points to a scar next to his right eye. “Pushed me into the corner of our coffee table. Only five stiches, but the blood was insane. Luckily, my mom is a nurse, so she was pretty calm about it. She did have to replace part of the carpet afterward, though.”

“That’s terrible.” I wince. “She must have killed him.”

Jasper glances over at me. “Yeah, not so much. In my house, it’s survival of the fittest.”

This must be the “hard-knock life” Cassie told me about. “Oh,” I say again, because I have no idea what I’m supposed to say.

“Yeah, my mom only gets involved in my life if it’s going to have a direct effect on her wallet.” He smirks like he doesn’t care, but I can tell he does. “She’s got high hopes about my future as a human ATM.”

“That sucks.” And it does.

“Yeah,” Jasper says quietly. “There are worse things, I guess.”

My phone buzzes in my hand again then. Wylie, please don’t do this. Answer me. Right now.

“Cassie?” Jasper asks hopefully.

I shake my head. “My dad again.”

“Is he pissed?”

“Worried, I think mostly.”

“That’s nice,” he says, like my dad being worried is proof that I’ve got it so much better.

“Yeah, I guess,” I say, staring down at my phone. And maybe it should feel nice, but it doesn’t. Probably because the more texts he sends, the more it feels like it’s about him getting me to do what he wants instead of how much he loves me.

Jasper holds up a hand. “Sorry, I hate when people say that kind of crap to me. ‘Your mom loves you, I’m sure. She’s your mother.’” And now he sounds pissed—a little bit like a guy who could punch somebody in the face. “My mom is living proof that life is full of messed-up options.” He shakes his head. Shrugs. “Maybe your dad’s an asshole. How would I know?”

I don’t feel like I know either. But I do think the time has come that I answer, tell my dad something that will calm him down.

We heard from Cassie. She’s totally okay. She just got mixed up in something and needs us to come get her. We’ll be back soon! Xoxo

I hit send, staring at my totally unconvincing x’s and o’s. Even the exclamation point was overkill. But it’s not a lie. Not completely.

NO, comes my dad’s response almost instantly. You should NOT be doing that. Tell Karen where she is NOW and she will go get her.

“He wants me to tell Karen where Cassie is,” I say, staring at his all caps, which are digging under my skin.

“You think we should tell him?” Jasper asks. I can’t tell if he sounds judgmental or I’m just hearing it that way.

“And you don’t?” I ask. Because the truth is I’m not sure what I think. It does feel vaguely insane that this—of all situations—is when I suddenly decide to do what Cassie wants, the way I used to. But then again, me feeling worried about something isn’t actually a very good indication of whether it’s the right course of action.

“Technically, we don’t know where she is yet,” Jasper says. “Can’t we wait? See what she says next? You could pretend you didn’t see his message yet or something.”

“Lie.”

“Buying us some time to think, I’d call it. But sure, lie is another word for it,” he says, like I’m the jerk. “I’m okay with a little misdirection, as long as he’s not a cop or something.”

My stomach pulls tight. Why is Jasper worried about cops? “No, he’s a scientist. Why?”

“I dated this girl once and her dad was a probation officer,” he says. “I didn’t find out until after he caught us together. He had one of his friends lock me up in a holding cell overnight.” He shakes his head and almost laughs. “She and I were both kids. It’s not like it was a crime or something. But man did her dad scare the crap out of me. I didn’t go near another girl for weeks.”

I stare at the side of Jasper’s face. Does he actually think his girlfriend’s best friend is going to enjoy hearing about his sexcapades?

“Anyway.” He clears his throat and looks confused when I keep scowling at him. “What kind of scientist is your dad?”

I put my phone facedown on my lap, trying to pretend I’m actually interested in this conversation instead of just buying myself time before I answer my dad’s text like Jasper suggested. But it does feel like the best I can do for Cassie is wait to find out what’s going on before I decide to rat her out.

“Live Conversation and Emotional Perception: Implications for the Integrative Approach to Emotional Intelligence,” I say, repeating the title of my dad’s study, trying to make it sound like something Jasper would never understand.

“Right,” Jasper says with a thoughtful frown. “I mean—I don’t have any idea what integrative whatever emotional perception is. Am I supposed to?”

I shrug. “I wouldn’t if my dad didn’t talk about it nonstop. He set up this test to look at this one small part of ‘perception,’ which is this one small part of this one approach to emotional intelligence—that’s the ‘integrative’ part. Anyway, my dad started studying emotional intelligence, which is basically like IQ but for feelings, after he met my mom and got totally convinced she was psychic because she always knew what he was thinking. I think she was the only person who ever really understood him.”

I was passing through the foyer on my way upstairs to bed when I spotted the green flyer on the floor. It was in front of the mail slot, tucked under yet another Wok & Roll menu.

The Collective,it read in big black letters across the top, and beneath it the details of some kind of lecture: The Spirituality of Science,Seven p.m.,December 18!Explore the intersection between freedom, faith, and science.

“Huh,” my mom said, appearing behind me and reading over my shoulder. She twisted her wavy hair into a knot at her neck. “Life in a college town—the good, the bad, the vaguely fanatical. Sometimes I love it, and sometimes I wish the flyers were all about garage sales.”

She was trying to make like the flyer just happened to have been slipped under our door. She did the same thing the time I met her at work and someone had stuck a collage of the Middle East under her windshield wiper. It had a skull and crossbones over it.

“Is this about your story?” I asked, thinking, of course, about the baby dolls. Almost a month and a half after the first one, another had been delivered three separate times.

“Oh, I don’t think so,” she said, like the possibility had honestly not occurred to her.

“And what’s ‘The Spirituality of Science’?”

“Who knows?” she said, a hint of humor back in her voice as she wrapped an arm around my shoulders and squeezed. “More proof it’s a free country. And thank God for that.”

“And so it’s nothing to worry about?”

“No, definitely not. It’s just more proof that you cannot control the world,” she said, taking the flyer from my hands. She folded it crisply into a small, sharp square and slipped it into her back pocket, then kissed the top of my head. “Luckily, you don’t need to. Now, your dad didn’t see the flyer, did he?”

I shook my head.