Kimberly McCreight - The Scattering

“I want you to admit that she’s the only thing that matters to you now.” Gideon’s pointing at me. But at least he’s not looking at me, so I don’t have to feel the full force of his hatred. “Your kid and your research all in one place. What do you even need me for anymore?”

My dad winces. “Gideon, you know that’s not the way I feel.”

“No, Dad, I don’t know anything about the way you feel .” Gideon’s voice is quiet now, devastated. “That’s Wylie’s specialty, remember?”

My dad closes his eyes and lowers his head. As he passes out of the room, Gideon knocks hard into my shoulder, almost shoving me off the chair. I push myself back up as he storms to the foyer. My dad and I both flinch as the front door slams shut behind him.

WHEN MY DAD FINALLY OPENS his eyes, he tries again to smile. It’s no more convincing than it was before.

“That went well,” he says quietly, then motions to the dozen pancakes now stacked on the plate in front of him. “Please tell me you’re hungry.”

Without waiting for me to answer, he picks up the plate, walks to the garbage can, and presses the trash open with his foot. He reconsiders, though, letting the lid slam shut. Instead, he pulls out some plastic wrap and sets to covering each pancake, then stashing them in small groups inside the freezer. It’s amazing how fast this seems to buoy him. He may have no idea how to fix things with Gideon, but we now have enough pancakes to survive a nuclear winter.

“So this guy from Cornell who thinks being an Outlier is a sickness …” I begin, and then stop. Open-ended is more likely to get an honest answer.

My dad looks me right in the eye. I can feel him willing me to know that he is telling the truth.

“Dr. Cornelia is just looking to inject himself into something that he thinks will get him attention from the press.”

“What press?”

Despite all of us bracing for an onslaught of reporters and television cameras after what happened at the camp, the only real coverage was a thumbnail of an article in the Boston Globe , mostly about Cassie’s violent death at the hands of a cult. (The police had also officially deemed Cassie’s death a homicide, not that there was anyone around to prosecute anyway.) The article mentioned my dad’s research only vis-à-vis its connection to Quentin, who was described only as a “cult leader,” associated with The Collective, which—it turned out—was a national organization with various beliefs and branches, most of which did not appreciate being called a cult. They made that pretty clear in the online comments on the article. No one seemed to care about the Outliers or HEP, maybe because there had been no official, peer-reviewed study on the topic yet, maybe because science wasn’t as sexy as the word “cult.”

The only actual interest in my dad’s research came from one blogger—EndOfDays.com—who identified himself only as a “centrist” member of The Collective and who laid the blame for the deaths at the camp squarely at my dad’s feet. EndOfDays had decided that the Collective members were innocent victims caught in the deadly crossfire of scientific recklessness. My dad didn’t want us reading the blog. And so I hadn’t. Gideon, of course, couldn’t get enough.

“IT IS ONLY the maniacally egotistical who believe that they should insert themselves between man and the will of God,” Gideon was reading from his laptop at the dining room table. “It is an abomination to interfere with this sacred covenant.”

“What the hell is that?” Rachel asked. She was in the kitchen with my dad, helping with the dinner dishes. Since what happened at the camp, she’d been glued to us even tighter. It was aggravating, no matter how genuine her intentions (and I still wasn’t convinced). “Actually, forget I asked. I don’t care what it is—stop reading it.”

Rachel often used that overly familiar way with us like she was a member of our loud, no-holds-barred family and she was allowed to shout because it was all out of love anyway. Except we were not loud, and whenever she used that tone, it set my teeth on edge. As annoyed as I was at Gideon for torturing my dad by reading that blog, I was even more annoyed at Rachel for talking to him that way. I had a hard time imagining she ever could have been my mom’s friend.

Rachel and my mom had met in the third grade in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and somehow had managed to stay best friends for years, through different high schools, separate colleges, and then different graduate programs. When they finally got their first jobs, they had been thrilled to land in Boston together. Rachel was my mom’s maid of honor, and there were countless pictures of Rachel holding Gideon and me as babies.

Then, suddenly, Rachel was gone. Out of our life. Once, when my mom had been trying to comfort me about the distance between Cassie and me, she had said that she and Rachel had grown apart, too. But their separation had been so sudden and complete. I could tell even then—long before I knew that I was an Outlier—that my mom was leaving out important details. When Rachel reappeared after my mom’s funeral I had thought about asking my dad what had really happened between them, but he’d been so overwhelmed and sad that it had felt stupid and wrong to care. And there was a tiny part of me that had felt comforted being around someone who had even once upon a time been so close to my mom.

“It’s Dad’s stalker,” Gideon said of the passage, obviously enjoying Rachel’s reaction. “EndOfDays. He’s in The Collective, and he blames Dad for basically everything.”

“What?” Rachel asked as she handed my dad another rinsed plate for the dishwasher, then dried her hands on a towel. “What is Gideon talking about, Ben? What stalker?”

“A guy with too much time on his hands. To be honest, I don’t think he knows what he wants. He’s angry, that’s all. No one reads it anyway.”

“You mean, except the 3,523 people who commented,” Gideon said. “But who’s counting?”

“Ben?!” Rachel shouted. “Have you talked to the police? That doesn’t sound like something you should ignore.”

“They did look into it. The guy lives in Florida somewhere,” my dad said, waving a hand. As though Florida was the same thing as Mars. “Anyway, Agent Klute is not concerned.”

“The same Agent Klute that ran Wylie down?” Rachel asked, eyes wide. “No offense, Ben, but I think you better wake up a little here. You need to protect yourselves.”

I watched my dad’s nostrils flare. “Don’t you think I know that?” He was angry but hurt, too. He turned and dumped his glass of water into the sink. “Thank you for coming by and bringing dinner, Rachel. But I’m tired,” he said. “I think it’s time for you to go.”

“I’m sorry, Ben. I didn’t mean to—I’m just, I’m trying to help.” Rachel smiled at him apologetically as she crossed the room. Her mouth was stiff, and I could feel how badly she wanted to cry. “I promise next time I’ll keep my mouth shut.”

“YES, WYLIE, THINGS have been quiet in the press so far,” my dad goes on. “But if I can convince the NIH to fund a full-scale study of the Outliers and get peer-reviewed publication that will change, and quickly. There’s already some Senator Russo, from Arizona. He’s on the Intelligence Subcommittee and he’s insisting on a meeting. Somehow he got wind of my funding application. My guess is he’s worried about protecting some secret research the military has been doing.”