The Outliers
From New York Times bestselling author Kimberley McCreight comes the first book in a breathtakingly brilliant new trilogy, packed with tension, romance and thrilling twists and turns.They’ll get inside your head…Imagine if you could see inside the minds of everyone around you – your best friend, your boyfriend, your enemies…?Imagine how valuable you’d be…Imagine how much danger you’d be in…Imagine being an Outlier.It all starts with a text:Please Wylie, I need your help.Wylie hasn't heard from her one time best friend, Cassie, in over a week. Not since their last fight. But that doesn't matter. Cassie's in trouble, and it’s up to Wylie to do what she does best, save her best friend from herself.This time it's different though – Cassie's texts are increasingly cryptic and scary. And instead of having Wylie come by herself, Jasper shows up saying Cassie asked him to help. Trusting the super-hot boy who sent Cassie off the rails doesn't feel right, but Wylie has no choice.But as Wylie and Jasper follow Cassie’s bizarre trail, Wylie has a growing sense that something is REALLY wrong. What isn’t Cassie telling them? Who is she with and what do they want from her? And could finding her be just the beginning…?
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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Childrenâs Books in 2016
HarperCollins Childrenâs Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,
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The HarperCollins website address is: www.harpercollins.co.uk
Text © Kimberly McCreight 2016
Cover images © Rubberball/ Mike Kemp/ Getty Images (Burnt matchstick type); Shuttercock.com (all other images);
Cover design © HarperCollins Publishers 2016
Kimberly McCreight asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of the work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
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Source ISBN: 9780008115067
Ebook Edition © 2016 ISBN: 9780008115074
Version: 2016-04-01
FOR HARPER AND EMERSON,
THE BRAVEST OF THE BRAVE
K. M.
Contents
Why are the bad things always so much easier to believe? It shouldnât be that way. But it is, every single time. Youâre too sensitive and too worried, they say. You care too much about all the wrong things. One little whisper in your ear and the words tumble through your head like youâre the one who thought them first. Hear them enough and pretty soon theyâre etched on the surface of your heart.
But right now, Iâve got to forget all the ways Iâve come to accept that I am broken. As I sit here in this cold, dark room, deep in the pitch-black woods, staring into this lying strangerâs beautiful eyes, I need to think the opposite about myself. I need to believe that I am a person I have never known myself to be. That in my deepest, darkest, most useless corners lies a secret. One that just might end up being the thing that saves me. That saves us.
Because there is a lot that I still donât understand about whatâs going on. So much, actually. But I do know this: despite all the fear in this womanâs eyes, we need to convince her to help us. Because our lives depend on it. And on us getting out that door.
My dadâs phone vibrates loudly, shimmying a little across our worn dining room table. He reaches forward and switches it off.
âSorry about that.â He smiles as he runs a hand over his thick salt-and-pepper hair, pushes his square black glasses up his nose. Theyâre hipster glasses, but thatâs not why he bought them. With my dad, any hipness is entirely accidental. âI thought it was off. It shouldnât have even been on the table.â
Itâs a rule: no phones in the dining room. Itâs always been the rule, even if no one ever really listenedânot my mom, not my twin brother Gideon, not me. But that was before. Things are divided up that way now: Before. After. And in the dark and terrible middle lies my momâs accident four months ago. In the after, the no-phone rule is so much more important to my dad. Lots of little things are. Sometimes, it feels like heâs trying to rebuild our lives out of matchsticks. And I do love him for that. But loving someone isnât the same thing as understanding them. Which is okay, I guess, because my dad doesnât understand me either. He never really has. With my mom gone, sometimes I think no one ever will.
My dad canât change who he isâa hard-core nerd-scientist who lives entirely in his head. Since the accident, he says, âI love you,â way more than he ever used to and is constantly patting me and Gideon on the back like weâre soldiers marching off to war. All of it is weird and awkward, though, and it just makes me feel worse. For all of us.
But he is doing his best. Heâs trying to be everything my mom was. It isnât his fault that heâs going about it all wrong. He hasnât had a lot of practice with warm and fuzzy. My momâs heart was always big enough for the both of them. Not that she was soft. She couldnât have been the kind of photographer she wasâall those countries, all that warâif she hadnât been tough as hell. But for my mom, feelings existed in only one form: magnified. And this applied to her own feelings: she bawled every time she read one of my or Gideonâs homemade welcome home cards. And how she felt about everyone elseâs feelings: she always seemed to know if Gideon or I were upset before weâd even stepped in the door.
