The Collide - Kimberly McCreight

Скачать книгу

of subgroup compliance with protocol

      —Cost of protocol

      —Ease of enforcement

      —Time from initiation to launch

      —Likelihood of legal opposition

      —Efficacy of protocol in properly alerting nontarget subgroup

      Results to follow.

      THE MENU AT HOLY COW IS WRITTEN ON A MIRROR BEHIND THE OLD-FASHIONED soda counter in curly white script. It’s barely eleven a.m., so we’re the only customers, seated at a booth along the wall. We ended up there after we left Cassie’s and after we stopped at the drugstore and after we went for breakfast and after we drove around and around. I told Gideon I wanted to go to all those places because I could. Because I wanted to feel free. That’s true. It’s also true that I’m stalling. Like if we don’t go home, I don’t have to tell him about our mom. So now, ice cream at Holy Cow.

      Nicholas is behind the counter; a gray-haired man with an impressive potbelly, a huge square face, and an intimidating scowl. Cassie always said he was much sweeter than he looked. He would have to be.

      Telling Gideon about our mom would be so much easier if Jasper were here. Not for Gideon, maybe. Gideon still isn’t exactly a Jasper fan. But definitely for me. I still haven’t been able to reach Jasper, though. Using Gideon’s cell, I’ve tried his phone twice, and both times I’ve gotten a new recording: this number is no longer in service. A definite downgrade from the customer you are trying to reach is not available, which I got before. Calling Jasper’s mom is my best option now, I know that. But I need to work up my courage first.

      “Hello?” When I look down, Gideon is holding out a menu to me.

      “Oh, thanks.”

      The bell on the door chimes as the girl Cassie used to work with and couldn’t stand comes in. She used to have bright pink acrylic nails and bows in her long blond hair, but she’s cut it pixie-short and dyed it bright white. She has a nose ring, too, and trimmed bare fingernails. I wonder if those things would have made Cassie like her more. Or less. I’m not sure I know anymore. After the funeral and before the hospital, Jasper had once joked about Cassie being a terrible judge of character. And somehow it felt not like an insult, but like an act of love. To remember her fondly, but exactly as she was.

      “Are you okay?” Gideon asks.

      To say anything now other than the whole truth would feel like an actual betrayal. Still, my mouth feels stuck. I lean forward and imagine punching the words from the base of my gut.

      “Mom is . . . ,” I begin, but nothing more will come.

      Gideon’s eyes snap up from his menu. “Mom is what?”

      Afraid, that’s how he feels. Afraid of something exactly like what I am about to tell him. Something that will make everything even worse. And what I wish most at this moment is that I could have no idea how he feels.

      “She’s alive,” I say, looking down at the table, bracing myself for the blowback: betrayal, anger, rage, hurt. “She’s been alive this whole time. It wasn’t her in the car.”

      But nothing. I feel nothing from him. And when I look up, Gideon is just staring stone-faced at the wall. Totally numb. And it is awful. I’d much rather he’d feel something, anything—anger, rage, sadness. This quiet emptiness? It’s like peering into a sucking black hole.

      “Gideon?” I ask.

      “Yeah,” he says finally. But still, he feels nothing. And he looks so pale and stunned.

      “Are you okay?”

      “Sure,” he says, raising his hands helplessly. Am I? they ask.

      And then suddenly, the floodgates open and Gideon’s heartbreak plows into me with such force that without thinking I reach forward and clutch his hands.

      “I know, I’m sorry,” I say, looking away as tears fill his eyes. I haven’t seen Gideon cry since we were little kids. And I do not want to, especially not now. “Rachel says that Mom did it to protect us. Not the accident, that was . . . Someone really did try to run her off the road. It just wasn’t her in the car. But the staying away after, I mean. It’s been to keep us safe.”

      “I should have known.” Gideon shakes his head.

      “How could you have?” I say. “Who would ever have thought that—”

      “There’s an envelope in your room.” He cuts me off sharply. “And if you want to know why I was in your room, looking through your stuff—I don’t have a good excuse. I went through everybody’s room in the past two weeks—Mom and Dad’s, yours. I was lonely.”

      And this is so heartbreakingly true it makes my breath catch.

      “What letter?” I ask.

      “On your nightstand,” he says. “I didn’t open it, I swear. But I saw it there. And I thought, wow, that kind of looks like Mom’s handwriting. Of course, because I’m me and not you, I didn’t have a ‘feeling’ about anything. I was like, logic says Mom is dead. So it’s old or something . . .”

      “I didn’t have a feeling either until she was standing right in front of me. I had no idea she was alive.” But that’s true only technically—I was obsessed about the accident not being an accident. Probably because some part of me knew she wasn’t dead.

      “Wait.” Gideon’s eyes are wide. “You saw her? Where?”

      Crap.

      “Only for a second,” I say, wishing I could snatch the words back and stuff them down my throat. “She came to the detention facility just so I would know Rachel was telling me the truth.”

      “Awesome,” he says. “Well, I guess we know for sure who’s the favorite child now. Not that there was any doubt before.”

      “Gideon, come on, that’s not—”

      “Don’t.” He looks at me hard. His hurt is already hardening around his heart. “Don’t protect her. Where the hell has she been then?”

      And so I tell Gideon what I know about Mom and Rachel and what happened that last night. As I say it out loud, I realize just how little I do know.

      “Where has all this rallying of the troops gotten her?” Gideon asks. “I seriously hope she has something to show for it.”

      “I don’t know. We should ask Rachel. There is something else, though,” I say. And I need to get it all out, all at once. Now. “Dad knew.”

      “What?” Gideon’s hurt has caught fire—it’s anger now. “Come on. Seriously?!”

      Cassie’s ex-coworker has appeared at our table, recoiling from Gideon’s shouting. “You want me to come back?” she asks, giving Gideon the side-eye. Her name tag says Brittany.

      “I just lost my appetite,” Gideon mutters.

      “A black-and-white milk shake?” I don’t want anything, but we need to buy something so we can sit here a little longer.

      Brittany narrows her eyes at me. “Hey, you’re Cassie’s friend, aren’t you?”

      I nod and try to smile, but I’m not sure I actually do. “Yeah, I am. I was.”

      “That sucked, what happened to her,” Brittany says.

      And suddenly this feels like an opportunity. To give Gideon a chance to calm, yes, but maybe Brittany is even the reason I told Gideon I wanted to go to Holy Cow in the first place. “Can I ask you something?”

      “Sure,” Brittany says, though it feels like no.

Скачать книгу