Kimberly McCreight - The Collide

IT ISN’T UNTIL Jasper has her bike loaded into his Jeep and is finally pulling into traffic that he thinks about Wylie again. But maybe the delay is a good thing. To calm him down. He does wish he could call Wylie to let her know he is on his way. But, conveniently, he doesn’t have her number programmed into his brand-new iPhone. God, his mom is good.

“They couldn’t roll over your contacts, for some reason,” she had said when she gave it to him.

But he hadn’t cared at the time. Wylie didn’t like to talk on the phone from the detention facility. She said it was too awkward, people waiting in line, listening to your conversation. Not that he could have called her there anyway. Wylie’s cell number was the only one he really cared about, and with Wylie locked away that hadn’t mattered either until now.

But that’s okay. He’ll drop this girl wherever she wants to go, then he’ll calmly and slowly drive back to Wylie’s house. And he’ll focus. Because even if he doesn’t want it to be, hitting this girl was a reminder: bad things can happen when you’re distracted. Even by somebody you love.

“I’m Lethe, by the way,” the girl says, bringing Jasper back. He’s been inching down Newton’s main street, so totally distracted again .

“I’m Jasper,” he says. “Where to, Lethe?”

“I’m at BC. The campus is just—”

“I know where it is,” Jasper says, and too forcefully. “I mean, I just started there, too, preseason hockey camp.”

Lethe smiles tentatively, motions to herself. “Lacrosse.”

And Jasper feels that familiar tug—it’s fate. He knows that’s stupid, that he is stupid for feeling some kind of connection—even for a second—with some random girl he hit with his car on the way to see Wylie. But old habits die hard. And no one’s perfect. Not Jasper. Not Wylie. Right now all he can do is be polite and responsible and get this girl who he hit with his car home. As fast as he can.

“Lacrosse?” he asks as he focuses again on the road. “That’s cool. I would have taken you for a cyclist.”

“I’d rather be a cyclist for sure,” Lethe says. “But there aren’t any cycling scholarships for girls. And I happen to be really good at lacrosse. So my parents are just like, ‘do that,’ because who I am and what I want don’t even matter.”

Jasper turns to look at her after he stops squarely at a red light. She seems embarrassed.

“Sorry. I probably sound like a spoiled brat,” she says. “I’m grateful, don’t get me wrong. I’m just also really annoyed. Does that make sense?”

“Completely,” Jasper says. Lethe is describing exactly the way he feels now. “My mom works her ass off to give me, like, everything. But I still wish I had, I don’t know, more options or something.”

Lethe turns and looks at Jasper for a long time. “Exactly,” she says. “You know, not that many people are willing to admit it, though. Whenever I say something like that, I always end up feeling like a monster.”

Jasper smiles, shrugs. “I have low standards.”

She nods. “So if you’re at BC, what were you doing all the way over here?”

“I was going to see a friend,” he says.

“Oh, I don’t want to hold you up,” she says. “If she’s expecting you.”

Did Lethe nail the she in a way that was supposed to be a flag or something, or did Jasper just imagine that?

“She’s not,” he says. “I was going to surprise her.”

“Oh,” Lethe says—and like she wants to ask something more but doesn’t.

THE TWO OF them are quiet then as Jasper drives the rest of the way to campus. Finally, Lethe points toward a gate up ahead. “I’m in Mavis Hall. You can drop me on the corner. It’s faster to cut through from here.”

Jasper double-parks at the curb. “I’ll get your bike.”

It isn’t until Jasper pulls the bike out of the back that he sees just how messed up it is, totally unusable, actually. When Lethe gets out, they stare down at it together.

“Let me get it fixed,” he says, turning to look at her. In the sun, her eyes shimmer. “It would make me feel better.”

“No, I can just . . .” But then she frowns. “Can I just say okay?”

Jasper smiles. “I hit you with my car . You can say whatever you want.”

“Let’s start with fixing the bike.”

And when Lethe smiles this time, her whole face glows. She pushes her hair out of her eyes and looks down. She has a leather cuff on one wrist. It’s the kind of thing that Cassie would have worn. Cassie. Wylie. Lethe? Why do you need them all so much? But his mom is wrong. He’s just being polite with this girl. It’s not an actual situation they’re having. Jasper wants to be with Wylie. He cares about her, a lot.

After Jasper puts the bike back in his Jeep, he and Lethe exchange numbers. Then there is a long, strange silence in which Jasper almost tells Lethe that she should know that he is actually in love with Wylie and he is just being nice, fixing her bike. Luckily, he manages to keep his mouth shut.

“I’ll call you as soon as the bike is done,” he says instead. “Good luck with lacrosse.”

“Thanks.” Lethe smiles as she turns for the gate. “Good luck with hockey.”

“THE HOSPITAL SENT YOUR PHONE BACK,” GIDEON SAYS WHEN I FINALLY GET back downstairs from the longest shower I have ever taken. He puts the phone down in front of me on the coffee table. “I charged it for you, too. I mean, it probably has like nine kinds of tracing crap embedded on it. You should take a look at your missed messages or whatever. Then we should burn it.”

Gideon thinking to charge my phone feels like the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me. I stare down at it and try not to cry.

“Thanks,” I manage.

When I turn it on, one hundred and thirty-six texts flood in. Jasper accounts for 90 percent of the messages, all sent in the twenty-four hours between when he saw me grabbed on the bridge and when he finally snuck his way into the hospital and found me, all some version of “Where are you?” or “Are you okay?”

None of the messages are from today. It’s already two thirty p.m. now, and I still haven’t heard from him. Jasper’s mom might not have told him that I called, except I have a hard time believing that—I feel like he knows I’m out. And yet he hasn’t called, hasn’t come looking. I want it not to nag at me, but it does.

After tapping onto Jasper’s old messages, the number of total unread ones drops to twenty-three. A few of the others are from Gideon. They also came in while I was in the hospital, after he stormed out of the house that morning so angry at Dad and me. Before he knew anything bad had happened.

Gideon sees his messages, too. “Wait, um, I don’t think I would—”

“It’s okay,” I say, knowing as well as he does that whatever he had to say to me then probably wasn’t very nice. “I’ll delete them.”

“Read the one from Dad, though,” he says, pointing.

“Oh,” I say, surprised to see it there. “That’s weird.”

Because it was sent the day I was grabbed, but at three p.m., after I talked to my dad from the hospital. By then, he knew I didn’t have my phone. Why would he have been bothering to send me messages? I have such a bad feeling as I tap on the message.

It’s just a single word: Cassie. That’s the whole of it. It makes me shudder.

“What does that mean?” Gideon asks. “‘Cassie’?”

“I don’t know.”

Breathe , I remind myself. Breathe . But it’s not easy with all the facts crowding in. First I’m drawn to Cassie’s house, then Holy Cow, and now here’s a text from my dad with just Cassie’s name? These things have to be related. I’m just afraid to find out how.