The Outliers (The Outliers, #1)(82)

“Come on.” Jasper tugs me on as I slow. “We can’t stop. She’d want us to go.”

And he’s right. She died so we could get away. And there is still my dad to warn. I don’t know what he believes. What Quentin and the pretend Dr. Simons may have convinced him of. Why he thinks he’s coming here. But I feel sure he’ll never get back out alive. When we finally reach the trees, I turn back once, hoping I’ve imagined it. But the cabin glows orange in the distance.

“Don’t look,” Jasper says, more to himself than anything. “It’ll be worse. Come on.”

But it’s hard to run, to catch a breath when I’m crying so hard. Am I crying? My face is wet and there’s a burn in my throat. But I am otherwise completely and totally numb, making it even harder to run through the woods in the dark. But Jasper and I have done this before. We can do it again. We will have to. And he is right about not turning around. There are already the voices behind us again. So many, it sounds like, but it could be an echo of only a few. At that distance, it’s impossible to know.

“Look. Over there,” Jasper calls after a while of just sticks and branches and more darkness. I can see the outline of his arm, pointing straight ahead. And in the distance there are very small lights, a house maybe. “It has to have a driveway. Driveway has to lead to a road.”

Saved again by some lights on the horizon? But they are so much farther away this time. Because we continue on like that, forever it seems, running as fast as we can in the dark, which doesn’t feel nearly fast enough. And doesn’t really seem to be getting us anywhere. Not any closer to the lights, which at one point seem to vanish entirely. And the whole time, I brace for a voice behind us. For someone’s hand on my arm. For gunfire. But there is nothing in that long and awful forever but the hard beating of my own heart.

Finally—hours later, minutes, a lifetime—we come out of the woods at the edge of a road. The house, it turns out, is still some distance on. And the road is dark and narrow. Dead quiet. I look right and then left. Not a car in sight. Nothing. No one. Anywhere. But Jasper is right. We need to keep moving. Just pausing there for a minute, my chest already feels like it is going to explode.

And later there will be so much time to be sad for Cassie. Later, I will be sad forever. Right now, though, I need to move. I need to keep going. We need to keep going before they catch us. We need to warn my dad.

I look left and right again down the dark and silent road. Which way to go? Which way is fastest to a phone, someplace we can call my dad? Or the police. Some police other than Officer Kendall. The FBI? How does one even call them?

“Holy shit,” Jasper whispers suddenly, his eyes wide on mine. “She’s dead, isn’t she?”

Like someone has only just told him what happened. Like he is only just realizing it.

“Yeah,” I say. “But you were right. We had to go. There was nothing we could do to save her.”

“Holy shit—what the f*ck,” he says, wrapping his arms around his stomach like he might vomit. “Did you hear what I said to her? I was so mean. That is going to be the last thing I ever say to her. The last thing anyone says.”

“She knew how much you loved her,” I say. And he has to keep it together. If Jasper crashes to pieces too close to me, I will be swept up in his collapse.

Suddenly, there is a flicker in the distance up the road. Like a shooting star. Gone so fast I think I’ve imagined it. Seeing things that I want to see. But then it appears again. Small, but slowly and steadily growing. Headlights. A minute later there is no doubt.

“Somebody’s coming,” I say.

Jasper takes a deep breath, crossing his arms as he steps around me to look. “It could be them, though.”

“They’d be coming from the other way. Wouldn’t they?”

I hold my breath as the lights get closer, praying that I’m right. Because all I can picture is Stuart’s gun. And what my dad might look like with it pressed to the back of his skull.

“It’s a truck,” Jasper says. “But he’s going too fast. He’ll never see us.”

Jasper is right, the truck is coming so fast, the headlights bigger and bigger by the second. When just an instant ago, they seemed miles away. He’ll stop. He’ll see me. A guess, a hope, an instinct. Intuition. If I am who they say I am, I will be right, won’t I?

“Wylie!” I hear Jasper yell as I make my way out into the road. “What the hell are you doing?”

It’s okay. This is not how I die. And I don’t think that it is. But as I stand there in the middle of the road, waving my arms over my head, part of me wishes that it would be. And Jasper is right, the truck isn’t slowing down. The lights are closer now. Bright on the road and the trees. Blinding me as I wave my arms. This is not how I die. It’s a memory and a wish.

“Wylie!” Jasper screams again.

When I turn, his face is lit up as he sprints toward me at full speed like the athlete he is. But I already know, there isn’t enough time for him to do anything but die with me. And so I close my eyes and face the oncoming lights. And I pray that I am right. That I am everything Quentin said. And that if I am not, that this is at least not how Jasper dies.

The insides of my eyelids glow. So bright for a second I wonder if I might not already be dead. But then comes a deafening screech. The smell, too, rubber burning against asphalt. When I open my eyes, there’s Jasper at my side, his face turned away, shoulders up, bracing himself for impact. I close my eyes once more. Until finally there is only silence.