Kimberly McCreight - The Collide

As I sat down across from Rachel, I wanted so badly for her to be an Outlier, so she could feel the full force of my rage. Rachel had lied to me repeatedly.

Had I felt joyful when I’d looked up and seen my mom—my actual mom, risen from the grave—staring down at me with all that love in her eyes? Sure, I guess. Okay, yes, definitely. But a day later, it was mixed up in a stew of other feelings: anger, sadness, confusion, betrayal.

But my mom wasn’t there for me to take that out on her. Rachel was. And so, laying into her would have to do.

“First, I need to remind you, be careful what you discuss in here.” Rachel motioned overhead before I could say a word, to the invisible prying eyes in our smelly “private” attorney room. “But I’m sure you’re confused.”

“Confused?” I snapped. “How about seriously pissed off?”

She nodded, relieved. Glad not to be keeping my mom’s secret anymore, maybe. “That’s fair, too.”

“Explain,” I shot back, leaning closer. I pressed a finger into the tabletop. “Right now.”

Rachel looked away. “It was a real risk for her to come here, dangerous, you know. But she did it anyway because she wanted to be sure you believed. She knows how much you’ve been through, and she didn’t want you to think I was making it up, or jerking you around or whatever.” Worry. For a moment from Rachel. Just a flash. But not a trace of regret. “We are lucky I know the volunteer supervisor here. She did me a solid, letting your special visitor volunteer.”

“Right,” I said, my anger seeping away despite my grip, like water through cupped fingers. “So. Lucky.”

“Listen, if it makes a difference, she didn’t know it was going to turn out this way,” Rachel said. And this much was true, I was pretty sure. “Your—” She stopped herself, eyes darting around. “ She turned up out of nowhere at my house the night of the accident. I hadn’t talked to her in what, ten years? But she thought someone was following her, and she ended up driving near my house. She was lucky I even lived there after all this time. To be honest, at first I thought she was drunk or having an episode or something. She sounded so paranoid, delusional almost. But she was just so freaked out. How could I risk not helping? I don’t know, maybe part of it was selfish, too. We didn’t end on the best terms, your mom and I. Maybe I thought this was a chance to prove that she was wrong about me.”

“Wrong about what?” The question felt weirdly important.

“You know your— She’s an avenging angel. And I gave up on noble a long time ago.” Rachel shrugged. Another cold, hard truth. Rachel might not have been ashamed, but she wasn’t proud of it, either. “Anyway, I didn’t think it would be a big deal to ask somebody to drive her car out of there. The girl in the car was the girlfriend of a client of mine. I’d hired her to clean my house, run errands. I knew she needed cash. She’d been sober for two months, trying to get her life straight. So, she needed money, and we needed someone to drive the car away. I thought it would be a win-win.”

“Not so much for that girl doing the driving,” I said, deciding not to mention the vodka bottle. Maybe the girl wasn’t so sober after all, but it felt like just another wrong to expose her now.

“Yeah, not so much,” Rachel said. She knew she should feel guilty but wasn’t all the way there.

“And after the crash, her disappearing and pretending to be dead was, like, the only logical option?” I sounded pissed, but sadness was closing in fast. “Going to the police or something normal like that was totally out of the question?”

“You know better than anybody that trusting the police isn’t always a simple proposition, Wylie. Besides, she was too worried about you guys,” Rachel said. “Something about baby dolls? She thought they were meant as a threat to you guys, specifically—her babies.”

“They weren’t even for her,” I said, though my mom wouldn’t have known that at the time. “We kept getting them after she was gone. I got one in the hospital. Anyway, she pretended like the dolls were nothing to worry about.”

“What was she supposed to say? Everybody freak the hell out? Anyway, there were other things, too, apparently,” she said. “Emails. Anonymous ones. They mentioned you guys specifically. Warned against the police. After the accident, we were both convinced the only way she could keep you safe was to let the people who were after her think she was dead.”

“Great plan,” I said, sounding extra snide.

“Well, it’s easy to see now that everything had to do with your dad’s research. But it wasn’t until your dad told her what happened with that assistant of his up at the camp in Maine—”

“Wait, what?” My chest clamped tight. “My dad knew she was alive?” Because that conversation could have only taken place in May, long after we believed she was dead.

“Not until after the camp.” Rachel avoided eye contact. “Once your . . . once she realized that her accident—that the threats—were really about his work, she had to let him know she was alive. Your dad wasn’t happy. But he understood, eventually. They decided together it was safer not to tell you and Gideon. That she had a better chance of helping behind the scenes if no one knew she was alive.” Rachel leaned forward eagerly, but it felt forced. “And she’s been all over the country, Wylie, working behind the scenes, meeting people, enlisting help from scientists, journalists, politicians. She’s been assembling a team to help. Everything has been to protect you.”

“Protect me?” I swallowed over the lump in my throat, motioned to the walls of the detention facility. “How is this safe?”

“You’re alive, Wylie,” Rachel said. “Aren’t you?”

“YO, HELLO?” THE tall guard with the long hair shouts at me. I’m still standing at the exit door. Sounds like she’s been buzzing it open for a while. “You want to stay in here? Go on, go ahead!”

No, I definitely do not want to stay locked up. I startle forward, gripping my crinkly plastic bag tighter. Besides the mildewed clothes, inside are an envelope with what’s left of Rachel’s money (a dried and wrinkled eighty dollars) and my mother’s wedding ring. Part of me wants to dig the ring out and hold it tight. Part of me wants to toss it down the nearest storm drain. My mom taking her engraved ring off and leaving it behind had been Rachel’s idea. Overkill, Rachel acknowledged now. But she had helped people disappear before. Better safe than sorry.

Finally, I step out into the July morning sun, hot already even at seven a.m., the weirdly early release time. I hold up a hand to shield my eyes from the glare as I scan the parking lot. The air is heavy and damp, weighing down my lungs. My anxiety has been relentless since I was arrested. Like a concrete slab strapped to my chest, slowly crushing me. Dr. Shepard said this was to be expected—the stress of the detention facility, the claustrophobia.

Except now that I’m outside, it doesn’t seem much better. I need to get going and stay moving. For me, forward momentum always helps; it’s the only good thing I learned from the horror of the camp in Maine.

It isn’t until I start walking that I finally spot him, leaning against the front of the car at the far edge of the parking lot. Like he didn’t want to fully commit to being there. He pushes himself up and waves, smiles way too hard.

Gideon.

Even from this distance, I can feel his guilt. The longer our dad is missing, the more Gideon blames himself. These days, guilt is what Gideon has become.

I’ve told him that he’s holding himself responsible for way too much. The list of Outliers that Gideon gave to Dr. Cornelia might have been a shortcut to a bigger group of Outliers to round up, but I was the one who encouraged our dad to go to DC, where he was grabbed by God knows who. Somebody working for Quentin, I still assume. Though Quentin had seemed genuinely shocked when I told him about my dad the day he’d shown up in his baseball cap at the detention facility. But who else? Senator Russo? Sure, my dad was supposed to meet with him, but Rachel forced the DC police to check him out every which way. There’s no record they ever had a meeting scheduled, and there is a mile-deep paper trail proving Russo was in Arizona at the time.