The Collide Read online

  DEDICATION

  For all of us,

  May we rage on against the dying of the light.

  #resist

  EPIGRAPH

  To the wrongs that need resistance,

  To the right that needs assistance,

  To the future in the distance,

  Give yourselves.

  —Carrie Chapman Catt (1859–1947),

  President, National American Woman Suffrage Association

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

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

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Author’s Note

  Wylie

  Riel

  Wylie

  Jasper

  Wylie

  Riel

  Wylie

  Jasper

  Riel

  Jasper

  Wylie

  Riel

  Jasper

  Wylie

  Riel

  Wylie

  Jasper

  Riel

  Wylie

  Jasper

  Wylie

  Riel

  Wylie

  Jasper

  Wylie

  Riel

  Wylie

  Wylie

  The Outliers

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Books by Kimberly McCreight

  Back Ad

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Dear Rachel,

  Don’t think that I’m not grateful for all you’ve done. It’s probably not possible to be more grateful to another human being. You saved my life. And, up until now, you’ve been right about me staying hidden. You’ve been right about everything.

  I know you think going to see Wylie at the detention center is a bad idea. When we talked, you did an outstanding job explaining all the really logical, completely rational reasons why it would be dangerous. For her, and for me.

  •It’s a prison filled with cameras: no more playing dead.

  •Ben is already missing. Do I really want to leave my kids orphans?

  •I could be putting Wylie even more in harm’s way. They could try to use me against her.

  See, I was listening, Rachel. And I do trust you.

  But I’ve got to trust my own instincts, too. And for all the risk there is in showing up at that detention center, there’s more in staying away. Maybe not a risk of physical harm to me or Wylie. But there are other kinds of pain, Rach. There’s other damage that matters.

  I was the one person Wylie always counted on. And I lied in the worst possible way. How am I ever going to get her to trust me again? I’m terrified that I may have already lost her forever. So scared that sometimes I think my heart might stop. If I don’t start clawing my way back to her right now, I don’t think she’ll ever forgive me.

  And I’ve already made a difference out here. Those people you suggested I contact, that senator, that friend of yours at the ACLU—they’ve had such good ideas about what this fight is going to entail. We have to be prepared, there’s no doubt about that.

  But right now, I need to be Wylie’s mom first. That matters most of all. And she needs to know for sure that I’m alive. For that, she’ll need to see me with her own eyes. After what she’s been through, it’s the only option. I can’t hurt her for one second more. I won’t.

  Okay, rant complete. I just wanted to state my case, for the record. And just so we’re 100% clear: going to see Wylie is something I’m going to do, with or without your help. Whatever happens, though, know how grateful I am. I’m so glad to have you back, too. I missed you more than you know.

  Xx

  Hope

  WYLIE

  I STAND IN FRONT OF THE GRAY DETENTION FACILITY DOOR, WAITING FOR IT TO buzz open. In my hand is a plastic grocery bag stuffed with the mildewed Cape Cod T-shirt and shorts I was wearing when I was arrested.

  For the past two weeks, I’ve been in the standard-issue pajama-like shirt and pants twenty-four hours a day. So stiff, it’s like they were designed so you’d never sleep again. My current outfit is the total opposite. Expensive pair of denim shorts, threadbare in just the right places, and an absurdly soft plain gray T-shirt. Without me having to ask, Rachel brought the clothes in for me to wear home. And I’m grateful for that. I’ve felt grateful to Rachel for a lot of things.

  Like starting with getting me out on bail. It wasn’t that complicated, Rachel says. Still, they went to so much trouble to get me in there, I didn’t think they’d let me go just because Rachel filed a petition for bail review. But I was wrong. Rachel came through for me, once again. According to her, it wasn’t just about the papers she filed, though. It was who you called after you filed them, which sounded both totally true and completely shady.

  And I do credit Rachel alone, not my mom. I’m going to get you out of here. I promise. Xoxo. That’s what my mom’s note said. And on the other side: Trust Rachel. She will help you. She saved my life.

  But those were just words. It’s easy to make promises and then disappear. It’s sticking around to face what you’ve done that’s the hard part.

  RACHEL LOOKED SHEEPISH when she came to visit the morning after my mom had appeared like a ghost, pushing that creaky detention facility library cart. She felt guilty, too, I could read that loud and clear. We were in one of the small private rooms reserved for meetings with attorneys. The rooms that always smelled like onions and were freezing cold. The ones that Rachel cautioned weren’t actually that private at all.

  It was Rachel’s guilt that erased all doubt. Not only had Rachel known my mom had come to see me in the detention facility, she had known the whole time that my mom was alive.

  There was also no excuse for the fact that I’d missed Rachel’s deception. But she was usually really hard to read; the guilt today was kind of an exception. Maybe it was so many years of saying whatever it took for her clients. The only real constant was that Rachel always told less than the whole truth. Like it was a reflex. Trying to get a fix on her true feelings was like trying to grab a bolt of lightning in your hands. It probably made her an awesome lawyer. It did not make her an easy person to trust. In my defense, I never fully had. I had just come to accept that I did not.

  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.

  And I may still be convinced Russo has done something really bad, but even I don’t think that thing was taking my dad. No one was ever able to find the woman who supposedly had my dad’s phone, either. And it’s dead now, or destroyed. Regardless, they can’t track it down. Leaving the single, solitary clue about what happened to him a security video unearthed of him leaving the airport with someone, then getting into a black sedan. I haven’t seen the video, but Rachel has. She says that my dad looks to be walking “normally” in the video, as in voluntarily. But then, he’d been expecting someone from Russo’s office to come pick him up. It’s not surprising that he would have gone with whoever it was.

  The man—we assume a man—is only visible from the back. Shortish, with his hood up. That’s all Rachel can say. Basically, he could be anyone. Quentin, even. In my mind, all roads still lead back to him.

  I promised Rachel that I’d tell Gideon about our mom. But now that he’s here on the other side of the parking lot, I wish I had refused. Because I know just how bad it feels to find out she lied. I’ve been mad at Gideon a lot lately, but I would never wish that pain on him. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

  Gideon takes a couple steps toward me and waves again. As I start across the parking lot to him, a white van whooshes past in front of me. So c
lose that it sends me rocking back on my heels. I watch as the van pulls to a hard stop at the detention facility gates. A second later, they swing open and it speeds inside. That guard was right, what am I waiting for? Terrible things happen in wasted time.

  “Hey,” Gideon says when I finally reach him. He motions to my bag. “You need help?”

  It’s sweet. But sweet Gideon makes the world feel unsteady and upside down.

  Even not-sweet Gideon isn’t my first choice right now. I would have preferred Jasper. Then I could have finally wrapped my arms around him like I’ve been wanting to every day for the past two weeks. But getting out happened so fast. They told me only yesterday after Jasper had left the visitors’ room that my bail had been posted. And when I tried Jasper’s cell today, I got a the customer you are trying to reach is not available message. I’ve tried not to worry. Jasper probably forgot to pay the bill, I tell myself. But each time I believe it a little less.

  “I’m good,” I say to Gideon as I head around to the far side of our father’s car. “But thanks,” I add, hoping it will make him stop looking at me like I am the only thing that can keep him from drowning.

  “Where to?” Gideon asks once we’re in the car, trying to sound cheerful, casual. “Want to grab breakfast or something? The food must be terrible in there.”

  “Um, maybe later,” I say. I should tell Gideon about our mom right now. Get it over with. Instead, I just look away out the window. “Let’s get going. As far from here as possible.”

  I just can’t tell him. Not yet.

  GIDEON JUST GOT his license. Turns out, he’s a terrible driver. Nervous and slow, but then suddenly fast. Not that I should judge. Gideon has gotten himself behind the wheel, which is more than I can say. But when he finally lurches out of the detention facility parking lot, I’m thrown back against the seat, nauseous already.

  “Sorry,” he says, pumping hard on the brakes. “I’m still getting the hang of it.”

  I nod and turn again toward the window, watching the worn-out strip malls and boarded-up fast-food restaurants pass. The area around the detention facility is an ugly, desperate place. I should feel better leaving it behind. But instead, my dread is on the rise. Like I already know that what lies ahead is worse than what lies behind. Because this feeling isn’t just anxiety. On a good day, I’ve learned to tell the difference.