“Gideon, it’s Wylie. You have to listen to me,” I say, and my voice cracks. But I can’t fall apart, not yet. “You have to call the police in Boston. Tell them something has happened to Dad. That he’s in trouble. Someone—” What can I say that won’t sound insane? That Gideon can tell the police so they go looking for a grown man gone only a few hours? “Dad was carjacked, in Boston. Some man with a gun came and took him and his car. He called me once. He said they were near Camp Colestah in Maine.”
It doesn’t make a lot of sense, but it’s not a terrible lie, either. When I look down, the woman with the baby is staring at me with her mouth open—the talk of guns, the police. I can’t blame her. But I need to finish before she can have her phone back. Before she can be rid of me.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Gideon asks. “And where are you?” Now he sounds actually worried. “You can’t just take off without telling anybody. Whose phone is this? And what do you mean that Da—”
“Gideon!” I shout, and too loud. I can’t even bring myself to look at the woman now. I grip the phone hard so no one can rip it away. “Please, just listen to me. I have to get off this phone now. Just call the police. The Boston police. Tell them to look in Maine for Dad’s car, somewhere on the highway between Newton and Camp Colestah in Maine. Or something really bad could happen to him. It already has happened, I mean.”
“Why don’t you just talk to Dad yourself?”
“I can’t talk to Dad, Gideon. That’s the whole point. He’s not answering his phone. He needs our help.”
“Um, yeah, except you can talk to him. He’s sitting right here next to me.”
They send the police. All sorts of police, to all sorts of places. To the camp. To us. Even to Officer Kendall, not that they can find him. State police. The FBI, too, because Quentin took Cassie across state lines. I don’t explain all the details to my dad on the phone, just enough for him to understand. To know that something terrible has happened and Cassie is gone. And that the local police near the camp can’t be trusted. And he says enough for me to know that he didn’t send any of the texts I got after our argument when I was at the Freshmart. The fact that they’d come from his phone number instead of his name in my contacts was a sign, just not the one I thought it was. And the texts he did send, the voice mails he left, had—without my dad knowing—been blocked from ever making their way to my phone. Level99 might not have known who they were really helping or why, but apparently they were very good at their job.
It takes much more convincing to get my dad to stay at home. All he wants to do is to rush up and be sure that I’m okay. To see for himself. And I am much more grateful for that than I ever could have imagined. But I’m still afraid that Quentin might be looking for him. When my voice cracks as I beg him not to come, he finally listens.
Karen, though, has no choice. She is already on her way.
Jasper and I don’t talk much on the ride home, once again in the backseat of a police car. This one is older, though, and more cramped, but feels so much safer. We were at the rest stop overnight answering question after question from officer after officer—patrolmen, detectives, and eventually the FBI. An hour into the drive back to Newton, the sun finally begins to rise, the sky above the trees a swirl of pinks and purples. I fall asleep for a few minutes, though I would have sworn I would never sleep again. I dream of fire, Cassie on fire, jolting awake with a gasp that wakes Jasper. The female police officer riding in the passenger seat turns her head a little toward me, but doesn’t actually look at me.
“You’re okay,” she says, flat and firm. Official. “You’re safe now.”
It’s not comforting. Because I don’t feel safe. Maybe I never will.
“Do you think you’re really an Outlier?” Jasper asks then.
“I don’t know,” I say, and that’s the truth. There have been things I seemed to know somehow, even since Jasper and I left the house: Lexi and Doug’s missing baby, the old man being willing to hand over his keys, that truck driver caving to my threat. But there is so much else that I missed—who Quentin was, what Cassie would do. “Maybe I’m an Outlier. Maybe not.”
“Are you going to be okay?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” I say again, forcing a little smile. “Maybe. Maybe not.”
Because that’s the truth also. But it’s also true that I’ve felt much less panicked for hours now. Is that because I have this explanation now for how I am? Freed from anxiety Alcatraz because of this secret? I don’t know. I don’t feel like I know anything anymore, except that I need to get home, and I need to see my dad.
Jasper reaches over again to squeeze my hand. But this time he doesn’t let go. Instead, he falls back asleep, fingers wrapped tight around mine.