The Outliers (The Outliers, #1)(24)
Yes, I know that. And my dad knows that being committed is one of my greatest fears. My grandmother dying strapped down in a psychiatric ward has haunted me since I was a little kid. It was the whole reason I hadn’t wanted to start seeing a therapist in the first place, convinced it was step one down a slippery slope that would dead-end in a straitjacket.
“Dad!” I shout, because I can’t even think of where to start. But he has to stop. Wake up. Take it all back.
“Believe me, I don’t want to call Dr. Shepard, Wylie. It’s the last thing I want to do. Come home, tell us where Cassie is, so I don’t have to.”
He’ll do that—break my heart, betray me, shame me—just so he can get me to do what he wants? Suddenly, my brain is swimming, with rage.
“If you call Dr. Shepard, I will never come home,” I say. And I mean it. I will hate him forever. Maybe I already do. Because now all I want to do is hurt him, the way he just hurt me. “You know what else, Dad? You know what I really wish? That it had been you who went out for milk. That you had been driving the car that night.”
I tap the button on my phone, ending the call before he can respond, then stare down at it, trembling in my hand. I switch off the ringer and a second later it’s vibrating, Dad flashing on the screen. I wait until it says missed call, then buzzes with a voice mail. My dad calls back two more times, right in a row. I ignore both.
“That went well,” Jasper says after another minute of silence. He’s smiling a little, trying to make me feel better. I don’t.
“Yeah.” My voice sounds numb. And I feel hollow. Like someone cracked open my chest and scooped out my insides. “Awesome.”
“Do you want me to try to say something that might make you feel better?” Jasper offers halfheartedly. “Because I can if you want me to.”
I shake my head, then turn to look at him. “If you haven’t lied to me yet, don’t start now.”
Jasper nods as he puts the car in reverse, then pulls slowly toward the gas pumps. He parks across from the only other occupied car, a new-looking Subaru station wagon with New York plates. Black and shiny, it has carefully arranged lefty stickers on the back—Hillary for America, One Million Moms for Gun Control, Green and Mainstream—the kind my parents might have had, if my dad hadn’t always been too anal for stickers on even his old, crappy car.
“I think I’m going to go inside.” I motion toward the Freshmart. It’s a place to go, a destination. And I need air, movement. I need to get out of Jasper’s Jeep. “You want anything?”
Jasper shakes his head. “I’m good.”
My phone vibrates with another text as I’m getting out of the car. Not my dad, luckily. It’s Cassie.
Still trying to figure out where exactly I am. Where are you?
We got off at 39C like you said. We’re at a gas station on Route 203.
OK. Can you wait there for a minute? I’ll tell you where to go as soon as I can.
We’ll wait, I write back, trying to hint that we’re not going anywhere again without at least that. Who are the people you’re with?
Not who I thought they were.
A cold gust cuts into me as I type a response to Cassie. I need to get something more from her. Something useful. Are the people you’re with dangerous? Where did you meet them? How many are there?
I stand in the freezing cold, waiting for an answer. Any answer. But nothing comes. Finally, I put my phone away and wrap my arms around myself, pulling my shoulders up as I step toward the door.
“Brutal, isn’t it?” When I turn toward the voice, there’s a woman standing in front of the Subaru. She’s smiling at me, a baby buried under the blankets cradled against her chest. “It was so much warmer when we left Brooklyn.”
She is pale with long, reddish hair gathered loosely at her neck and startling blue eyes. She’s beautiful, but fragile-looking, like a long-limbed bird. She looks up at my hacked hair, but her eyes linger as she sways gently from side to side. Unafraid, unashamed on my behalf. When she finally does meet my eyes again there’s this look, like she gets it. Like she’s done that exact same thing to her own hair a bunch of times. Though looking at her, so normal and pretty, that’s seriously hard to believe.
I smile at her and nod, but my mouth feels glued shut. It’s the kindness in her eyes and all that mom-love pulsing off her. If I did speak, my words would surely be a soupy mess. This beautiful, blue-eyed baby-lady reminds me of my mom, of course. If my mom had been there, she never would have let my dad threaten me. He wouldn’t have had to. Because I would have trusted her with the whole truth. I would have told her where I was going. I smile harder at the baby-lady, my eyes filling with tears as I turn away from her and toward the Freshmart.
“I still have to feed the baby, Doug,” she calls out to her husband as I drift away. “Maybe I should go inside. It’s too cold out here and too cramped in the car. Right, baby?” she says, her voice rising. “Way too cold.”
As I continue alone across the frozen parking lot, holding myself tight against another brutal gust, I hear that graceful bird-woman begin to sing to her little baby. And what’s left of my heart finally turns to dust and disappears with the wind.
Inside, the Freshmart is weirdly warm and cheerful, more like a country store than a rest stop on the side of a highway. Nothing like those grimy gas stations near Boston where the bulletproof glass in front of the register is so smeared with handprints it looks like a herd of zombies went for the cashier. There’s even a bulletin board near the register with photos of happy customers and cheerful thank-you notes pinned one over another. The tall man with thick gray hair and a perfect smile behind the counter looks like the hearty type who might have built the place with his bare hands.