“I’m the one who wanted to take that stupid test.” Cassie presses her lips together. Apparently, Dr. Simons has told her she’s an Outlier, probably when I was jetting off into the woods. “None of this would have happened if I hadn’t talked your dad into it.”
“Okay, taking the test was your fault.” I smile, squeeze her forearm. “But my dad should have told you about your results. He definitely should have mentioned”—I motion to the room instead of stating the obvious: that some psychos might come after her—“all of this.”
“Yeah,” Cassie says. “I guess.”
“Wait, where’s Jasper?” I ask, suddenly realizing that he’s been gone for a really long time.
Cassie’s face trembles when she turns back to me, her eyes flooding with tears. She told him about the other guy. And it did not go well. Of course it didn’t.
“What happened?”
“You were right,” she manages finally. And the look on her face is so shattered. “I never should have told him. He was so, so angry.” She takes a breath and stares up at the ceiling. “And then he took off.”
“What do you mean, ‘took off’?” I ask. And the dumbest part is that I feel abandoned.
“He left,” she says, motioning toward the woods.
“Really?” I ask. Do I seriously feel like he had some obligation to say good-bye?
“Yup. Really,” she says, and with this look on her face: he was my boyfriend. I’m the one who gets to be upset, which is totally fair.
Now I look toward the windows. It’s still dark out. “On foot?” I ask. “He just walked away?”
“I guess,” Cassie snaps, crossing her arms. She’s defensive, angry. Upset. “He wasn’t so interested in giving me explanations.”
A little while ago Quentin didn’t want us even walking across the short patch of grass without taking “precautions,” and now Jasper has taken off through the woods? We heard those noises that might have been gunshots.
“But it’s not safe,” I say, even though I can see that Cassie is already annoyed.
“Can Jasper not be something else you obsess about, Wylie?” she says sharply. “Let it go. Where he went—it’s not about you.”
“Okay.” My cheeks flush. Because she’s right about me and my obsessing, of course. And Jasper was her boyfriend, not mine.
“It was nice that he ran after you,” Cassie says flatly, nodding in Quentin’s direction. He’s helping Miriam fold towels now, nodding good-naturedly as she bosses him around. Giving Cassie and me space to talk, probably.
“Yeah,” I say. “You know, his dad was killed, too.”
“Really?” she says, and now she sounds annoyed. Maybe she’s jealous? That doesn’t exactly seem like what it is. But with everything happening to her at once—grabbed off the street, given a special power, hunted by lunatics for said special power, dumped by Jasper—maybe she’s entitled to feel any way she wants to.
And I so want to make things better for her, but I don’t even know where to start.
“Jasper will come around, Cassie,” I say, even though I’m not sure that’s true. “He really loves you.”
But there is a downside to Jasper loving Cassie the way he does. Perfect never bends. It snaps clear in two.
She nods, but not like she actually believes me. “Yeah, maybe.”
“Hey, on the upside, you were right. You are basically psychic.”
I say this even though my dad would hate it. Maybe especially because he would.
Cassie nods and forces a fake smile. “Yeah, that’s me. Totally psychic. Too bad I didn’t see any of this coming.”
“So you really don’t—I don’t know—feel anything?” I ask.
“Not a thing.” She shrugs, her eyes moving to Quentin as he makes his way over. “But whatever, who knows. I don’t feel like I know anything right now.”
“Is everything okay?” Quentin asks when he’s finally standing in front of us.
He hands me a small bag of trail mix, which I tear open immediately. I’m even hungrier than I realized once I’ve eaten some.
“Yes, we’re fine,” Cassie says coolly and without looking at him. “Thanks.”
“Yeah, except Jasper left,” I say. Cassie shoots me an angry look. It did go without saying that I wasn’t supposed to send out a search party. But I’m worried enough about Jasper that I have to say something, even if it makes Cassie mad at me. “Could somebody maybe go look for him? Make sure he’s okay?”
“He doesn’t want anyone to look for him, Wylie,” Cassie says. And sure enough, now she sounds even angrier. “He wanted to leave.”
“Someone can at least drive him to town,” I say. “It’s not safe out there in the woods, right?”
I look to Quentin for support.
“We can definitely go looking for him,” he says. “But we can’t drive him. We don’t have a car nearby.”
“You don’t have a car?” I ask. That cannot possibly be true.