Kimberly McCreight - The Outliers

Jasper’s eyes flick up to my hacked hair then. They snap right back down. He’s pretending not to notice the disaster that is the top of my head, which, I guess, is one tiny point in his favor.

“Well, here I am,” I say. I force myself to loosen my grip on the doorknob, hoping it might help relax the rest of me. “What’s up?”

“Can I come in?” Jasper asks, looking around behind him like there might be someone out there in the dark, watching him. “I’d rather explain inside.”

No. But I can’t say that while pretending I don’t know why he’s here.

“All right.” I step to the side but keep him blocked into the foyer. “What?”

I don’t want him any farther in the house, or my life. I just want him to tell me what he knows about Cassie and then be on his way. Because the longer Jasper stays, and the more it seems like he’s stalling, the tighter my chest is getting. And I am really not interested in having one of my episodes in front of him.

Jasper crosses and uncrosses his arms, lifts his shoulders even closer to his ears. Now he officially looks guilty. I press my lips together and swallow hard. He didn’t do something to Cassie, did he? I am not a member of the Jasper Salt fan club. I think he is a bad influence with a mean streak that everyone, for some reason, pretends doesn’t exist. But when I told Cassie’s mom that I didn’t think he would hurt her, I meant it.

“Cassie’s missing,” he begins finally. “And I, um, got a call a couple hours ago from her mom asking if I’d talked to her. But I haven’t since yesterday.” Well, there’s lie number one: Jasper told Karen that he’d texted with Cassie this morning. “Oh, wait, I mean, I guess we texted this morning.” Okay, fine. Back to zero lies, that I know of. But we are just getting started.

“She wasn’t in school?”

Jasper somehow walks right past me, uninvited, into my living room. That’s the kind of guy he is: convinced that he’s welcome everywhere.

“I don’t know for sure. We were in a fight,” he says, and kind of defensively. “I texted her this morning, but I was still kind of pissed. So I dodged her at school. Later Maia told me Cassie must have bagged school anyway. Have you seen her, or heard from her or anything?”

So the Rainbow Coalition lied to Karen about seeing Cassie in school.

“I haven’t talked to Cassie in days,” I say. And he must know that. “Why would you think I’d have heard from her?”

“Because I got this.” Jasper digs his phone out of his pocket and hands it to me. There’s a text from Cassie open on the screen: Go to Wylie’s house. That’s it. That’s the whole message. “You have no idea why she’d tell me to come here?”

“Me?” It actually sounds like he thinks I’m the one who’s hiding something. “I have absolutely no idea. Did you tell her mom that you got this?”

“I was about to, but then—” He motions for his phone back and moves his finger up a little on the screen before handing it back to me. “I got this one.”

Don’t tell anyone you heard from me. Especially my mom.

“Okay, but—”

He reaches for the phone again, tapping in search of yet another message. He holds up the phone a third time.

I messed up again. If you call my mom, she’ll call the police. And you know what will happen. Please, just go to Wylie’s. More soon.

“What the hell is going on?” I ask, and I sound angry. At Jasper. But I am sure this is somehow at least a little bit his fault.

“I have no idea what’s going on. I came here because that’s what her text said to do,” Jasper says, and now he sounds angry at me. “But who knows? Cassie has been acting weird lately.”

“What does that mean: ‘weird’?”

“Are you asking me the definition of the word ‘weird’?”

I just glare at him. At least it’s obvious now. He doesn’t like me either.

“Like distant or whatever,” he goes on. “I don’t know why.”

“And what does she mean about the police: ‘you know what will happen’?”

“I can’t tell you,” Jasper says.

“So you can come here and pump me for information, but not give any away?”

“It’s just—she was really embarrassed about some stuff that went down,” he says finally. “She wouldn’t want you, of all people, to know.”

Fuck you, Jasper Salt, I want to shout. You don’t know anything about me. And you don’t know anything about the real Cassie, the awesome person she was before you helped destroy her. But I can’t tell him off yet, not when he knows things that I don’t. Things that might help find Cassie.

“Trust me, I know lots of embarrassing things about Cassie,” I say. “We have been friends a really long time.”

And there are definitely secrets I know that Jasper does not. Things that Cassie would have been way too embarrassed to tell him. For instance, maybe Cassie peed her bed again, but this time her mom caught it. She did that after one of her first “hangouts” with the Rainbow Coalition before she and Jasper started talking.

She was really freaked out about it, especially because she’d also blacked out at the party. Didn’t even remember getting home. Blacking out had been one of her dad’s signature moves. Cassie was convinced he didn’t remember half the messed-up things he’d done. It was how Cassie managed not to hate him. Anything he didn’t remember didn’t get held against him. But even blacking out didn’t scare Cassie straight the way I’d hoped it would. Instead, the next time it happened, she decided it was funny.

“I know you guys are close, but—” Jasper looks down at his hands, presses his fingertips together. “She specifically said she didn’t want you to know this one thing. She was worried you’d look down on her, I guess. And I have to respect that, right?”

“You cannot be serious,” I laugh. Or sort of laugh.

Jasper holds up his hands. “I’m not saying you would look down on her.” But I can tell from the way he says it that he totally does think that. “That’s just what Cassie was afraid of. She’s not always the best judge of people.” Him saying that to me makes me want to spit. “Anyway, I think the part that matters is that she’s done something her mom would be seriously, seriously pissed off about. And she was already talking about sending Cassie to some crazy boot camp boarding school.” He takes a deep breath. “Anyway, I guess Cassie having done something wrong is at least better than someone having kidnapped her or something.”

“Kidnapped?” That had not even occurred to me. “What do you mean kidnapped?”

My phone vibrates loudly on the coffee table before Jasper can explain whether he’s got some actual reason to consider kidnapping, or if he was just throwing that out there. Because now Cassie getting snatched off the street is all I can think about. As I reach for my phone, I feel like it might bite me.

Please, Wylie, I need your help , the text reads. I messed up big. I need u to come get me. I sent Jasper so he can drive. But the person I really need is you. More soon.

I take a shaky breath. At least she’s okay enough to text. That’s something. And “messed up big” does not sound like being kidnapped. And even after everything between us, I have to admit there is a tiny part of me that likes that Cassie feels like she needs me specifically.

“What does it say?” Jasper asks, peering over my shoulder.

“‘I need your help. I messed up big,’” I say, feeling this sadness sink over me. Like I’m finally realizing that Cassie might never be okay. “Can you drive? I don’t have my license.”