The Outliers

“Why are you even touching that!” my dad shouted. And so loud. “Put it back outside!”

“It’s not contagious, honey.” My mom smiled her beautiful, mischievous smile and raised an eyebrow. She was going to let the shouting go, apparently. She’d been doing that a lot lately—letting everything with my dad go—but I could tell she was starting to get annoyed. “You’ve got to keep your sense of humor, Ben. You know that.”

And my dad did used to have a sense of humor. He used to be really, really funny actually. In a way, that was even funnier, because of his whole stiff science-guy thing. But these days, he was so wound up. First, because he’d been working around the clock at the university trying to finish his study, then I guess his results were kind of disappointing. It wasn’t going to be officially published until February, but it was already finished. The icing on the cake, though, was him having to fire his favorite postdoc, Dr. Caton, because—according to my dad—he’d let “personal bias cloud his judgment.” Whatever that meant. We’d never met Dr. Caton—my dad wasn’t big on socializing—but from the day he hired him, he’d talked about the supposedly very young Dr. Caton (twenty-four and already with a PhD) like some kind of precious, unearthed jewel. I didn’t care, but it drove Gideon—our other resident science boy wonder—totally crazy. He was delighted when Dr. Caton got the ax.

My mom shrugged as she stepped over to pick up her half-eaten toast. She took another bite, the doll still gripped in her other hand, then placed the toast back down delicately, brushing the crumbs from her fingers as she walked back toward the foyer with the baby. She opened our front door and calmly tossed the doll outside. We all heard it go thud, thud, thud down the front steps. Gideon and I giggled. So did my mom. My dad did not. Instead, he headed for the phone.

“Who are you calling?” my mom asked.

“The police,” he said, like this should have been self-evident.

“Come on, Ben,” my mom said, crossing over to where he was standing. “I can give you one definite. You calling the police is exactly what they want: attention.”

“I can’t deal with this, Hope,” my dad said quietly, sad almost, as my mom took the phone from him and hung it up. Then she wrapped her arms around him and whispered something in his ear.

“You don’t have to deal with it,” she said as they separated, but loud enough that it seemed like she was saying it for my benefit. And weirdly, she did not even seem mad at my dad for making something that had happened to her all about him. “That’s why you have me.”

After my dad and Karen are gone, I sit on the living room couch in the dark, staring out our large bay window overlooking Walnut Hill Road, waiting for the lights from Gideon’s ride home from track practice. Neither of us even have our learner’s permits yet, though we’ve both been legally allowed to for two months now. Nothing like your mom dying in a car accident to kill your thirst for the open road. Gideon will probably learn to drive eventually. Bur I already know that I never will.

I peer again down the road for any sign of headlights. What is taking Gideon so long? He should have been home—well, just a few minutes ago, but still. Tonight, a few minutes feel like hours. It’s weird to be waiting on Gideon. His company is so prickly lately. But right now, I’d choose anything over being alone.

I did lock all the doors after my dad and Karen left, then checked them twice. And then a third time. Because you don’t have to tell me twice to worry. I checked the locks and then I checked anything and everything else that could even potentially jump out, burn up, or otherwise turn on me.

I’ve also checked my phone a dozen times for an answer to one of my texts to Cassie. I’ve sent four so far, and called her twice. But there’s been nothing. I would have sent more texts, but each one that goes unanswered makes me feel worse. Makes me more worried that this time, Cassie has finally gotten herself sunk into something so dark and deep that even I won’t be able to yank her back out, no matter how hard I try.

“Why are all the lights off?”

A voice behind me. When I spin around, heart racing, there’s Gideon, coat and backpack still on. He’s wearing sweatpants, his blond, shaggy hair damp against his forehead as he chews on what’s left of a Twizzler.

“Why did you do that, Gideon!”

“First of all, calm down.” He takes another bite. “Second of all, do what?”

“Sneak up on me, you stupid jerk!”

“Um, wow.” He holds up his hands like I’m pointing a gun at him, the half-chewed Twizzler flopping around in his fingers. He loves to point out whenever I’m acting nuts. Which, let’s face it, is most of the time lately.

Gideon is perpetually annoyed at me because he thinks it’s unfair that he gets less attention for being more normal. Like with the home tutor, for instance. Gideon is an insanely smart kid (though even he would admit I could easily crush him on any math test anywhere, any day), but he hates school even after moving to Stanton Prep so they could better accommodate his über-genius science needs. He thinks he should get to opt out, too. My dad had shut him down so fast, it had made my head spin.

“Did Stephen drive you home?” I look back out the window. Did I somehow miss the car? Am I now not seeing things right? “I didn’t see him.”

“We came the back way. We stopped at Duffy’s for fries with some of the other guys.” He shrugs: hanging out like all the normal kids with lots of friends do. That’s what the shrug says. He so bad wants to be that kid. But I know that only Stephen is Gideon’s friend, sort of, and that the rest of the guys on the track team mostly put up with him because he’s willing to run everyone’s most-hated race, the two-mile, without complaining. Friends have never come so easily for Gideon, maybe because of how smart he is. Maybe just because of how he is period. “I came in the back door.”

“You should go take a shower.” I turn back to the window. I want him to go, leave me alone, not pick a fight.

“Who died and left you in charge?” When I look back at him, he puts a hand over his mouth and opens his eyes wide in fake shock. “Oh snap. Get it? Who died? You gotta admit, that was pretty funny.” I scowl at him. Gideon always tries to make jokes about our mom being gone. It makes him feel better. And it makes me feel worse. My mom was right, we really are opposite twins. Forever repelling each other, like the wrong sides of a magnet. “Come on, it was.”

“It wasn’t funny.”

“Fine, whatever.” Gideon shrugs as he turns toward the stairs. Does he actually look hurt? It’s so hard to tell with him, but I know there’s a heart in there somewhere. And these days he’s just trying to survive. We both are. “When is Dad going to be back? I have to ask him something about my chem homework.”

Having exhausted all of Stanton Prep’s AP offerings, Gideon now takes science classes at Boston College. I don’t know if he really likes science or if it’s just a way to get closer to our dad. It’s not the worst call. One surefire way to get more attention from our dad is to somehow get mixed in with his work. I wouldn’t say our dad loves his work more than us, but sometimes it does feel like we’re neck and neck.

“I don’t know, maybe a couple hours,” I say.

I should have been more vague. Since the accident, our dad never goes out that long. It’s only going to lead to more questions. And I don’t want to talk to Gideon about Cassie. He’ll end up saying something rude. Gideon has never liked Cassie. Or, more precisely, he has always really liked her, but she never gave him the time of day. So he decided to hate her instead. Right now, I can’t take him insulting her down to a more manageable size. Or worse, trying to make me worry more just for the fun of it.

“A couple hours? Where did he go?”

“To help Karen.”

“Help her with what?”

Ugh. Too late. He’s already too interested. “She doesn’t know where Cassie is.” I shrug. No big deal.

For a split second, Gideon almost looks worried for real. But then his mouth pulls down into his fake-thoughtful frown. “Huh. Now I get it,” he says.

I hate it, but I’m going to have no choice but to play his game. “Get what, Gideon?”

“Why Cassie was acting all freaky when she came by here,” he says, like I should know what he’s talking about. “I mean I don’t know exactly why. But it makes sense that she’d be acting weird if she was about to take off.”

“Wait, Cassie came here?” My heart skips a beat. “When?”

Gideon rubs his chin, then looks up at the ceiling. “Um, I think it was—let’s see.” He counts on his fingers like he’s measuring the days or even weeks. “Yesterday. Yup, that’s it, in the afternoon.”

Jerk.

“Yesterday?” I say, trying not to get mad. Gideon wants to get under my skin, that’s the whole point. “Why didn’t you tell me she was here?”

“She didn’t want me to.” He shrugs. “She just wanted to drop off the note.”

“What note, Gideon?” I’m up off the couch now. “You didn’t give me any note.”

“Huh,” he says again, nodding. Like he’s confused, even though he obviously isn’t. Then he starts patting around his sweatshirt pockets and digging in his jeans. “Ah, here it is.” He pulls out a folded page and holds it up into the air, pulling it farther away when I grab for it. “Oh wait, now I remember why I didn’t give it to you. I knocked on the bathroom door to tell you about it, and you yelled, ‘Go away, jerk!’”

He’s right. I did that. Screamed it, actually. Since the accident, my anxiety has been back with such Technicolor vengeance. Each day is mostly a thing I survive. But some are even crappier than others. And yesterday was one of the super-crap ones. By the time I got into the shower, hoping it would help me calm down, all I wanted to do was scream—at myself, at the world. I definitely couldn’t deal with Gideon. If I thought apologizing to him wouldn’t just make things worse, I would have. And I am kind of sorry. Deep down, Gideon doesn’t mean to be a jerk. But the sweet part of him is buried so deep these days, it won’t be able to keep the rest of Gideon from kicking me when I’m down.

“Give me the note, Gideon. Please.”

He lifts his hand and the note even higher in the air. I’ve always been on the tall side, but Gideon is pushing six feet. There’s no way I can grab it. “Maybe I should read it,” he says. “You two aren’t even really friends anymore. Probably because Cassie got tired of everything being all about you and your problems all the time.”

“Gideon, if you don’t give me that note, I’m going to tell Dad I saw you smoking pot with Stephen the other day.”

It’s true—out in our small square of a backyard, next to the shed. From the look of it, it was Gideon’s first time. He’s got his issues, but drugs aren’t one of them. But even if it was just a one-off, I’ll still use it if I have to. The color has gone out of Gideon’s face. And there’s this look in his eyes. Like now he really, really hates me. I want not to care. But I do. I always do.

“Whatever,” he says finally, throwing Cassie’s note at me. It hits the wall over my head and drops to the floor. “But if I was stuck with a messed-up best friend like you, I’d run away, too.”

And with that, Gideon turns and walks out of the living room, headed for the steps. I wait until he’s gone before I pick up the note.