Then, suddenly, Rachel was gone. Out of our life. Once, when my mom had been trying to comfort me about the distance between Cassie and me, she had said that she and Rachel had grown apart, too. But their separation had been so sudden and complete. I could tell even then—long before I knew that I was an Outlier—that my mom was leaving out important details. When Rachel reappeared after my mom’s funeral I had thought about asking my dad what had really happened between them, but he’d been so overwhelmed and sad that it had felt stupid and wrong to care. And there was a tiny part of me that had felt comforted being around someone who had even once upon a time been so close to my mom.
“It’s Dad’s stalker,” Gideon said of the passage, obviously enjoying Rachel’s reaction. “EndOfDays. He’s in The Collective, and he blames Dad for basically everything.”
“What?” Rachel asked as she handed my dad another rinsed plate for the dishwasher, then dried her hands on a towel. “What is Gideon talking about, Ben? What stalker?”
“A guy with too much time on his hands. To be honest, I don’t think he knows what he wants. He’s angry, that’s all. No one reads it anyway.”
“You mean, except the 3,523 people who commented,” Gideon said. “But who’s counting?”
“Ben?!” Rachel shouted. “Have you talked to the police? That doesn’t sound like something you should ignore.”
“They did look into it. The guy lives in Florida somewhere,” my dad said, waving a hand. As though Florida was the same thing as Mars. “Anyway, Agent Klute is not concerned.”
“The same Agent Klute that ran Wylie down?” Rachel asked, eyes wide. “No offense, Ben, but I think you better wake up a little here. You need to protect yourselves.”
I watched my dad’s nostrils flare. “Don’t you think I know that?” He was angry but hurt, too. He turned and dumped his glass of water into the sink. “Thank you for coming by and bringing dinner, Rachel. But I’m tired,” he said. “I think it’s time for you to go.”
“I’m sorry, Ben. I didn’t mean to—I’m just, I’m trying to help.” Rachel smiled at him apologetically as she crossed the room. Her mouth was stiff, and I could feel how badly she wanted to cry. “I promise next time I’ll keep my mouth shut.”
“YES, WYLIE, THINGS have been quiet in the press so far,” my dad goes on. “But if I can convince the NIH to fund a full-scale study of the Outliers and get peer-reviewed publication that will change, and quickly. There’s already some Senator Russo, from Arizona. He’s on the Intelligence Subcommittee and he’s insisting on a meeting. Somehow he got wind of my funding application. My guess is he’s worried about protecting some secret research the military has been doing.”
“Secret research?” Fear surely shows on my face.
My dad grimaces, then holds up his hands. “I just mean, in the way everything the military does is secret. They’ve been looking into how to use emotional perception in combat for decades,” he says. “They haven’t succeeded, but I’m sure they’re not thrilled about competition, or about not being able to control the flow of information.”
My dad’s phone pings then with a text. I feel worry jolt through him as he looks down at the screen.
“What is it?” I ask. “What’s wrong?”
“No, no, nothing—it’s not about the research,” he says.
He hands me his phone. I look down at the text: Accident file for Hope Lang will be available for review at 9 a.m. today. Sincerely, Detective Oshiro.
I have to read the message three times before I fully understand its meaning, like it’s coming out of nowhere, even though I am the one who has called Detective Oshiro pretty much every day since I got back from Maine, asking to see my mom’s accident file. I feel surprisingly foolish, too, now that I have gotten what I wanted. It’s because of what Quentin said—that my mom’s death wasn’t an accident—that I got so obsessed. It’s not as if anything else that Quentin claimed up at the camp turned out to be true, but knowing that hasn’t loosened my grip. Even my dad admitted that he had considered the possibility that my mom’s death hadn’t been an accident, though he backpedaled hard as soon as he could tell I was fixating.
“I am only going to say this once, Wylie.” My dad’s voice is quiet and firm. “And I am saying this as your father, but also as a psychologist and because I don’t want to see you hurt any more than you already have been. Looking in your mom’s accident file could be extremely traumatic for you. Extremely. There might be photographs or details that are far more upsetting than you can possibly anticipate.”
It is true that I have thought a lot more about getting my hands on the file than about what it would be like to actually look in it. It seemed so unlikely I ever would. Detective Oshiro had said that he needed clearance, higher-up approval, permission. Case closed or not, they didn’t ordinarily have the families of victims coming by to rifle through their files.
Jasper. I want to talk to him about this. Maybe I need to, the way the thought of him just popped into my head. He has listened to me go on and on about my mom’s accident ever since we got back from the camp. He gets how much I have wanted to look in that file. But he will also understand how not sure I feel about finally getting what I want. Jasper’s single best quality, I have learned, is his ability not to judge. But it’s not as if I can have that conversation in front of my dad.
“If I can’t handle it,” I say. Because I can’t show doubt, not to my dad. “I’ll stop.”
My dad’s shoulders sag. “Okay,” he says quietly as he turns around, head hanging low as he starts to clean up the dishes.
“Dad,” I begin, though I don’t even know what it is I want to say. “If you don’t want me to go …” I can’t even get myself to fully make the offer though. I’m too afraid he might take me up on it.
Instead, he turns to look at me. He crosses his arms and presses his mouth tight. All I feel now is love, his love for me—so pure and simple and complete. And for the first time ever—being able to feel that so clearly—I am grateful for being an Outlier.
“Well, you shouldn’t go down there on an empty stomach,” he says, motioning to my plate. “Eat something and I’ll drive you.” He looks at his watch. “It’s not long until nine.”
I look up at the little clock over the stove: 8:34 a.m. I’ll try to call Jasper on the way, see if I can come earlier if I finish up with the file before ten. It’s not the same as talking to him now, but it’s something. The station isn’t far from his house. If I can’t reach him, I’ll go to his house at ten a.m. like we agreed.
And maybe after we’re done gluing his loose pieces back into place, we can spend a little time on mine.
“Can we just go, um, now?” I ask.
My dad nods slowly.
“Yes,” he says finally and with some effort. “We can go now.”
THE POLICE STATION IN THE center of downtown Newton is a tidy redbrick and white stone cube on a block next to several other municipal buildings and a bunch of trees. I’ve never had a reason to be inside. Even after the camp, they drove