Kimberly McCreight - The Collide

Riel clicks through to the site, which drops her onto a glossy home page with a bunch of New York Times bestselling books stacked up artfully. The headshot of the author—current reporter, former soldier—on the right-hand side. Rosenfeld. Curly hair, thick black-framed glasses. Cute, even if the picture is a little too much about his biceps. His books are all about Iraq and Afghanistan, except for the most recent, which is called A Private War: How Outsourcing Is Changing the Face of the Military . And there is a related article: “Want Funding, but No Oversight? How the Federal Government Gets Away with Looking at Everyone but Themselves.”

This is the right Rosenfeld, no doubt about that. Military financing smells like her grandfather. But what does he have to do with the pictures? It would be a hell of a lot easier just to swing by the detention facility and ask Wylie. But Klute warned Riel specifically to stay away from her . It’s bad enough that she’s ignoring the other part of what Klute said: stay away from all of it . Riel is pretty sure the pictures fall into the “all of it” category.

Riel startles when her phone vibrates in her pocket. She pulls it out to read the text. Be back in fifteen. Forgot something. L. Shit, Leo will be back way earlier than she expected. And she left out that note: They know you have them . She needs to beat Leo back home and get rid of it before he sees it. He will freak out otherwise.

Riel’s still looking down at her phone when there’s a voice right next to her. “Excuse me?”

She jumps to her feet, clutching the pictures against her body. “What the fuck?” she shouts.

But there’s just a skinny, acne-spotted guy who looks about twelve years old, blinking at her. He holds up his nervous hands and moves them around in the air.

“Oh, sorry, no, I’m—” He touches the back of the open chair across from Riel. “I just wanted to borrow this chair.”

“Yeah, yes,” Riel manages. “Take it.”

But as she sits back down, she notices somebody else on the opposite side of the room. Baseball hat and glasses. A take-out coffee in one hand, a braided leather bracelet on his wrist. Sitting at a table. Alone. He was watching her a second ago. She can feel the echo of his stare. Worse yet, Riel has seen him somewhere before. The baseball hat is doing the trick, though—she can’t place him.

But she doesn’t need to. Between that and Leo about to beat her back to the room, it’s time to go. Riel snaps shut her computer and shoves it and the pictures in her bag before heading quickly for the door.

The fresh air is a relief, but Riel still feels jittery out on the sidewalk. She crosses the street quickly and picks up speed, checking over her shoulder a few times. But there’s no one behind her. She’s at a jog by the time she enters the gates to campus.

On campus, she feels alone, singled out. Scared. Despite all the people—professors, graduate students, summer program students, tourists.

As Riel dives into the flow, someone blows past her, knocking hard into her elbow. Running in the direction of Leo’s dorm at the far end of the square. Riel is about to yell at the guy when she notices that he isn’t the only one who’s hustling that way. Lots of people are. They are all rushing in the direction of Leo’s dorm.

No is what Riel thinks as she starts to run, too. No . No. No.

She sees the fire trucks first, right there by Leo’s building. She blinks hard. But they remain. Lights flashing. And then, only a second later, she sees the flames. Actual freakin’ flames. Coming out the windows.

The windows to Leo’s dorm room.

TOP SECRET AND CONFIDENTIAL

To: Senator David Russo

From: The Architect

Re: Outlier Identification Modeling

April 3

To summarize today’s meeting, they will proceed to run predictive modeling for two potential programs to identify and track subjects demonstrating specified skill set. One model will examine the use of identification cards. The second model will study the possible use of observable bracelets.

Aspects evaluated will include:

—Likelihood of subgroup compliance with protocol

—Cost of protocol

—Ease of enforcement

—Time from initiation to launch

—Likelihood of legal opposition

—Efficacy of protocol in properly alerting nontarget subgroup

Results to follow.

THE MENU AT HOLY COW IS WRITTEN ON A MIRROR BEHIND THE OLD-FASHIONED soda counter in curly white script. It’s barely eleven a.m., so we’re the only customers, seated at a booth along the wall. We ended up there after we left Cassie’s and after we stopped at the drugstore and after we went for breakfast and after we drove around and around. I told Gideon I wanted to go to all those places because I could. Because I wanted to feel free. That’s true. It’s also true that I’m stalling. Like if we don’t go home, I don’t have to tell him about our mom. So now, ice cream at Holy Cow.

Nicholas is behind the counter; a gray-haired man with an impressive potbelly, a huge square face, and an intimidating scowl. Cassie always said he was much sweeter than he looked. He would have to be.

Telling Gideon about our mom would be so much easier if Jasper were here. Not for Gideon, maybe. Gideon still isn’t exactly a Jasper fan. But definitely for me. I still haven’t been able to reach Jasper, though. Using Gideon’s cell, I’ve tried his phone twice, and both times I’ve gotten a new recording: this number is no longer in service. A definite downgrade from the customer you are trying to reach is not available , which I got before. Calling Jasper’s mom is my best option now, I know that. But I need to work up my courage first.

“Hello?” When I look down, Gideon is holding out a menu to me.

“Oh, thanks.”

The bell on the door chimes as the girl Cassie used to work with and couldn’t stand comes in. She used to have bright pink acrylic nails and bows in her long blond hair, but she’s cut it pixie-short and dyed it bright white. She has a nose ring, too, and trimmed bare fingernails. I wonder if those things would have made Cassie like her more. Or less. I’m not sure I know anymore. After the funeral and before the hospital, Jasper had once joked about Cassie being a terrible judge of character. And somehow it felt not like an insult, but like an act of love. To remember her fondly, but exactly as she was.

“Are you okay?” Gideon asks.

To say anything now other than the whole truth would feel like an actual betrayal. Still, my mouth feels stuck. I lean forward and imagine punching the words from the base of my gut.

“Mom is . . . ,” I begin, but nothing more will come.

Gideon’s eyes snap up from his menu. “Mom is what?”

Afraid, that’s how he feels. Afraid of something exactly like what I am about to tell him. Something that will make everything even worse. And what I wish most at this moment is that I could have no idea how he feels.

“She’s alive,” I say, looking down at the table, bracing myself for the blowback: betrayal, anger, rage, hurt. “She’s been alive this whole time. It wasn’t her in the car.”

But nothing. I feel nothing from him. And when I look up, Gideon is just staring stone-faced at the wall. Totally numb. And it is awful. I’d much rather he’d feel something, anything—anger, rage, sadness. This quiet emptiness? It’s like peering into a sucking black hole.

“Gideon?” I ask.

“Yeah,” he says finally. But still, he feels nothing. And he looks so pale and stunned.

“Are you okay?”