Kimberly McCreight - The Scattering

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2017

HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,

1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

The HarperCollins website address is: www.harpercollins.co.uk

Text © Kimberly McCreight 2017

Cover illustration ©

Kimberly McCreight asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of the work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008115081

Ebook Edition © 2017 ISBN: 9780008115098

Version: 2017-06-24

For every girl who’s been told she’s too sensitive.

For every woman who’s taught herself not to be.

Life is a dream. ’Tis waking that kills us.

—Virginia Woolf, Orlando

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Author’s Note

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Acknowledgments

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About the Publisher

This is a work of fiction. The things that you read here did not happen. At least, not yet.

I STAND IN THE DARK, barefoot and cold on the edge of the sharp rocks, staring out over the long stretch of black water in front of me. And I wonder if I really can make it all the way to that small light on the dock in the distance. It seems so impossibly far away, the water so frighteningly still like it’s just waiting for someone fool enough to try.

I am not a very strong swimmer, or not nearly strong enough. I’ve never made it that kind of distance. Not fully clothed, not in the darkness. Across unfamiliar water, with all the tricks a pinprick of light on the horizon can play, who knows what could go wrong? But we have no choice. They are coming for us. For me, actually. They are already here. Voices in the distance, creeping closer. It’s only a matter of time.

But the real crazy thing? These bad facts notwithstanding, deep down I do believe I can swim the mile or more to that dock. I know it, actually. Maybe that’s all that matters. Because if I have learned anything in these past weeks, it’s that strength is just another word for faith. And true courage lies in holding out hope.

And right now, it’s just me and my doubt at the water’s edge anyway. I know not to let that get the better of me. Instead, I need to trust my instincts.

So I take one last deep breath before I step forward and set my gaze on that faraway horizon. And then I start to swim.

I AM IN OUR FOYER staring at the text from Jasper. At that one word: Run.

For a minute. For an hour. Forever.

My heart drums against my rib cage as my eyes stay down. The six agents say things. Their names—Agent Klute and Agent Johansen and Agent something else and something else. Run. Don’t run. Run. Don’t run. They say other things: Department of Homeland Security. Ruling out a domestic security threat. The rest is just buzzing.

Run. Don’t run. Run. Don’t run.

Run .

I spin toward the steps, phone gripped like a hand grenade. Run first. Questions later. Quentin taught me that.

“Wylie?” my dad shouts after me. Stunned. Confused. Worried. “Wylie, what are you—”

Voices, jostling behind me as I pound toward the steps. Don’t look back. Don’t slow down. On and up the stairs. On and up. That’s what I need to do.

But why up? Shouldn’t I run out the back door and not deeper into the house? The upstairs bathroom and the slanted, notched part of the roof. That must be it. A way out. I grab the banister when my feet slip.

“Ms. Lang!” one of them calls. So close I can almost feel his breath.

“Stop! Leave her alone!” My dad sounds so angry I barely recognize his voice. Many more voices shout back at him. Gasping, thudding, a struggle. “You can’t just barge into our house!”

“Dr. Lang, calm down!”

“Hey! Stop!” The voice behind me again. Even closer now. I lunge forward as I hit the upstairs hall.

The bathroom. That’s where I need to go. Focus. Focus . Faster. Faster. Before he grabs me. The door isn’t far. And I’ll only need a second to open the window and crawl out. After a quick slide to the ground, I’ll do then what I have done before. Run. Like. Hell.

Down the hallway I pound, loud feet still just a stride behind me. “Wylie!” the man calls out, but stiff like he doesn’t want to admit that I even have a name.

“This is our house!” my dad shouts again. He sounds closer to the steps.

“Dr. Lang, you need to stay here!”

My eyes are locked on the bathroom door at the end of the hall. It seems so far away. The hallway endless. But I need to get to that door. Window up. Slide out. One step at a time. As fast as I possibly can.

“Ms. Lang!” The voice again, much closer. Too close. And nervous. He is near enough to grab me but is too afraid of hurting me. “Come on! Stop! What are you doing?”

Past the first door on the right. Two more left to go.

But then my foot catches on the carpet. I manage to get my hands up at the very last second so that it’s my wrist that cracks hard against the wall, and then my shoulder instead of my face. Still, the shooting pain makes me feel dizzy as I hit the ground. I think I might vomit as I roll into myself, cradling my arm against my stomach. I’m afraid to look down. Terrified the bone might be poking through.

“Jesus, are you okay?” The agent has stopped in front of me. I can now see he’s the short one with the overly muscular arms that stick out stiffly from his sides. And he is definitely as nervous as he sounded. But also annoyed. He looks up and down the hall like he’s checking for witnesses. “Damn it. I told you not to run.”

A FEW MINUTES later, I am sitting on the slouched couch in our small living room as my dad wraps an ice pack around my throbbing wrist. The pain is making my brain vibrate. The men have silently positioned themselves so that they now block the door and the stairs and the hallway toward the back. Each and every one of the possible exits. They look even bigger inside the compact frame of our old Victorian home than they did outside. There is definitely no way out now.

“I don’t think it’s broken,” Agent Klute announces, peering at my arm. But not nearly close enough to make that kind of assessment.