“Yeah, I’m sure. If you come here right now, it will make everything worse,” he says firmly. “Listen, come over in the morning. We can take a walk or something. Talk it out.” His voice is softer, warmer. More convincing. Sort of.
“A walk, yeah,” I say.
“Listen, I’m fine. When my mom works second shift, she usually gets up around ten. You want to come by then?”
“Only if you promise me one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“That you will be okay.”
My throat tightens around the words and I have to swallow hard. Jasper is so broken. And he isn’t supposed to be. Despite his messed-up dad and a mom who loves him only for what he can do, he is still the optimist. I’m supposed to be the broken one.
“Definitely,” Jasper says, the flicker of brightness in his voice an obvious cover for how he agreed too quickly. “Now, you have to promise me something.”
“Definitely.”
“Don’t come over without calling first.”
I WAKE TO THE SMELL of Saturday pancakes and bacon, and a few sweet seconds of amnesia. Then it all comes rushing back: Jasper, his house, ten a.m. The pit in my stomach from the night before. I turn to look at my clock; not even seven thirty a.m. Going back to sleep will be the best way to pass the time without letting my mind twist about Jasper.
But then I hear voices downstairs. Gideon and my dad. And they are not happy. I put a pillow over my head to muffle their voices, but it’s no use.
WHEN I GET downstairs, my dad is standing over the stove. His jaw is clenching and unclenching like he’s trying to eat his teeth.
“So that’s it?” Gideon snaps, rocking back in his stool at the kitchen island. My twin brother is once again ready for a fight. He’s hungry for it.
I can read that loud and clear. I might have avoided my dad’s follow-up testing and training, but since that first post-camp session with Dr. Shepard, I have made strides at perfecting my Outlier skills on my own. It was my box. My key.
I started practicing at home, reading Gideon’s and my dad’s feelings until I could do it with near-perfect precision. It wasn’t pleasant. Gideon’s anger can be so toxic that it feels like my skin is being burned and my dad’s sadness is totally smothering. It was also pretty much all they felt. Eventually, I knew I needed to branch out: more people, more practice.
At the Newton Public Library I learned that it’s hard to read people’s feelings when they’re mixed up with the characters in the books they’re reading. So I moved on to restaurants, which is where crap gets real—people break up, they confess, they promise, they argue, they apologize. And they stick around long enough that you can watch the fallout. It was there I learned Outlier Rule #1: Eye contact helps in reading people. And Outlier Rule #2: Crowds make it harder to read people. And before long there came Outlier Rule #3: You get better at reading with practice. Because when I started at the restaurants, all I could make out were the basics—happy, sad, angry. Five weeks later and I can now divide shame from regret, joy from contentment.
The better I’ve gotten at reading, though, the less I want anyone to know. And the fact that my dad has worked so hard to respect my boundaries, not to push or interrogate, has come as a shock.
But then again, maybe it’s not such a surprise to him that I have to learn this whole Outlier thing on my own. I learned to swim in the same stubborn, lonely way. Gideon ran right up to the pool and jumped in. He almost drowned before my dad rescued him and then showed him how. Meanwhile, it took me weeks of walking back and forth across the shallow end until I could catch even a few strokes. But swim I did, eventually. And all by myself.
“Hi, Wylie,” my dad says when he notices me in the doorway. He smiles, relieved that I have appeared. “Do you want some pancakes?”
Gideon huffs in disgust.
Disgusted that my dad is trying to change the subject. Disgusted by the sight of me. No, that’s not right. Disgusted is too mild. Gideon is enraged by me this morning. It rocks me back on my heels.
And this is partly why I still have not embraced this whole Outlier thing. Who wants to risk knowing what anyone is truly feeling about them? Also, I’m aiming for normal at the moment. Being an Outlier means accepting the fact that I am never going to fit in.
My dad puts a huge plate of pancakes down in front of me as I climb up on a stool next to Gideon, trying to ignore the anger pulsing my way. I wish I hadn’t come downstairs.
“Good news! Looks like the NIH might fund Dad’s official Outlier study!” Gideon shouts. As if this is the final comeback in some long argument we’ve been having.
And in a way maybe it is. Gideon’s own test results were average. My dad couldn’t lie about that. Which means his nonvisual, nonauditory emotional perception was normal and fine when the auditory and visual limitations were each tested separately, but he—like the vast majority of people—has no HEP. He’s not an Outlier. And Gideon might have been able to accept that if there’d been some hope of changing it. But my dad insists that Gideon cannot be an Outlier because the Outliers are only girls. He may not know why yet, but that has not made him any less certain of this crucial fact.
At first, Gideon outright rejected the whole “only girls” thing, convinced that my dad had made some small but critical miscalculation. But when my dad refused to waste energy confirming the gender disparity, it sent Gideon into a rage spiral. Like how dare all males be denied.
It makes me want to point out all the other things boys get the better part of the deal on: like height for instance or running speed or being able to procreate without their bodies being ripped apart. Or, I don’t know, having only the most remote chance of getting raped when girls have to think about it every time they walk out the door.
But I know how Gideon would take that: as a declaration of war. And who wants to go to battle with a lunatic?
“The NIH response to our funding proposal has been encouraging,” my dad says. “But nothing is guaranteed.”
“Aren’t you going to tell her the rest, Dad?” Gideon goes on. “I mean, it is her brain after all.”
My eyes fly wide open. “Tell me what?”
My dad takes a loud breath, then looks up at me and forces a totally unconvincing smile. “Everything else is very preliminary. But there is a neuroscientist from UCLA who thinks she might be onto something on the source question. It sounds promising, but it is very early days.”
Already, my heart has picked up speed. Here it is, sooner than I thought: the dread final diagnosis. I am not prepared. I can maybe accept that I am an Outlier, and I can almost have a little fun learning what that means. But I am still afraid to know why. There is something too permanent about that. I have the urge to put my hands over my ears. It’s only the thought of how much this would please Gideon that keeps them balled at my sides.
“So tell her,” Gideon says. “Tell her what the neuroscientist thinks.”
“Gideon, if Wylie wants to know those kinds of details she can ask me,” he says sharply. My dad turns to me. “And you should take your time.”
“Spoiler: your brain isn’t normal,” Gideon hisses in my ear.
“Gideon, that is not helpful!” my dad shouts. He takes a breath, trying to calm himself down. “It’s also not true. ‘Normal’ is a meaningless word.”
“Meaningless?” Gideon shouts, pushing away his plate and jumping