The Collide

“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 rocks back on her heels. “I’m afraid I can’t say.” Can’t clearly means won’t. “After what that poor woman went through, it’s no surprise she couldn’t stay here. Why don’t you give me your information? I’ll pass it on when she gets back.”

This is an excuse to get our names. She has no intention of passing on anything. To her credit, she is pretty convincing. Or she would be for someone who isn’t me.

“That’s okay.” I tug Gideon by the arm. “We were just going.”

EndOfDays Blog

November 5

It is critical that we all stand ready when called upon to do what is right. Whatever it might cost each of us personally. Love of the Lord requires sacrifice. That is how we show that we are loyal servants to a higher power.

If we expect to see the benefits of being devout in our own lives, we must be willing to sacrifice so that we can show we are deserving of all that has been sacrificed for us. And one thing we cannot allow is a world intent on racing to the next scientific discovery at the cost of innocent lives.

We must be willing to stand up to such forces. We must be willing to fight righteously for the innocent and the weak. Whatever the cost.

Go in peace, everyone. To the light.

RIEL (#ulink_929e64d1-8d1c-5765-a88a-a5111a848bbe)

RIEL LIES IN LEO’S NARROW BED. EYES WIDE OPEN IN THE DARK. WITH INSOMNIAC Leo’s super-shades down, it’s pitch-black in his room, even though it’s nearly eight a.m. As Leo breathes heavily in his sleep, Riel tries to imagine a night sky above filled with stars. Purple-blue blackness and pinpricks of light. Like glitter. Her sister, Kelsey, loved to do shit like that. To look up at the stars. Pretend they were there, even when they weren’t. But all Riel sees is blackness. That’s all she’s ever seen.

Riel shifts in bed, curls up closer to Leo. Hopes his steady breathing will put her back to sleep. It won’t, though. It never does.

Once, after their parents died, Kelsey slept outside in the freezing cold just so she could feel “close to them.” To the stars? To their parents? Riel didn’t ask. Kelsey’s explanations always made things worse.

Kelsey was an old soul, though, a sensitive spirit. An artist, born short a layer of skin. Not just because she was an Outlier, either. Riel’s an Outlier, but she’s always been hard as nails. She’d survive a goddamn nuclear winter, even when she was trying to die.

Riel had been eighteen and a freshman at Harvard, Kelsey only sixteen, when their parents died last November. Swept away in a flash flood while building temporary housing in Arkansas. Because that was the kind of people they were. Good people. People who died doing the right thing.

Doing good was what Riel had intended with Level99. And maybe that even was what she was doing before Quentin came along in April, only weeks after Kelsey died. Riel was still shredded by her grief, and Quentin made it sound like Kelsey could still be alive if it wasn’t for one ambitious asshole: Dr. Ben Lang. Dr. Lang cared only about his new discovery—these Outliers—making him rich. And so, Riel had decided the only thing that mattered was making him pay. She could tell Quentin was an ass from the start, of course. An untrustworthy narcissist. But that had mattered less than seeing to it that Dr. Lang got what was coming to him.

Deep down, she’d also probably known that Kelsey had been doomed from the start, regardless of Dr. Ben Lang. That finding out she was an Outlier wouldn’t have changed a damn thing. Maybe being an Outlier didn’t make things easier, but it wasn’t her whole problem either. Kelsey had started drinking way before their parents died. Riel had heard them talking about getting Kelsey help. But then they were dead. The drugs didn’t start until after their funeral. Pot, then pills. Kelsey flew downhill like she was on a damn toboggan.