The Collide. Kimberly McCreight
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his phone in his hand finally, Jasper taps off the alarm.
“I am not going to let that girl drive your whole life off into a ditch,” his mom had snapped at him the day after Wylie was hauled off to the detention facility. When she was blaming Wylie for him not going to BC. “She’s damaged goods. Please tell me I raised you well enough to see that.”
The anger balloons in his chest, being reminded of how much his mom cares about hockey camp, because she’s after some NHL pie in the sky and the money that might go along with it. Wait. No. That’s not how his mom really feels. Wylie has told him more than once: his mom’s worry and love just look like anger. The actual truth is that she cares about him, not hockey. Or so Wylie says. Jasper’s still working on believing her.
If only his mom knew that Wylie is her biggest defender. But to do that he’d have to tell her that he’s been hanging out with Wylie in the detention facility. And it’s better not to go there. His mom would panic, angry panic. She’s chilled out a lot thinking Wylie is out of the picture. And, yeah, going to hockey camp like both Wylie and his mom wanted was a good call. It’s where he is supposed to be. Jasper believes that now. At least, most days.
Jasper puts his brand-new iPhone down gently on the desk that’s jammed up against the head of his bed in the small double room he and Chance share. The new phone was a gift from his mom before he headed off for BC. A gift she definitely couldn’t afford, one that was supposed to be a reward for him “doing the right thing.” It made him feel extra guilty every time he talked to Wylie.
Jasper’s bed squeaks loudly as he sits up, and Chance makes the same sick, wet noise he does whenever he wakes up: surprised Scooby-Doo. Most of what Chance says and does is some shade of Scooby-Doo.
“Shut that thing off,” Chance mumbles into his pillow, same as he does each day. Like the alarm’s not already off. Like Jasper’s a pain in his ass. But Chance counts on Jasper to get them both up in the morning and again in the afternoon. Otherwise, Chance would sleep all day. No surprise, Jasper likes being the guy who can be counted on. And that’s the great thing about college: you can decide to be only the best parts of who you are.
Apart from the noises, Chance is a decent guy, too. Straight-up. He’s from Terre Haute, Indiana, not exactly known for ice hockey, but it’s there according to Chance. He says it’s mostly corn and nice people, and once upon a time that might have sounded boring to Jasper. But these days, boring doesn’t sound half bad.
“Your problem, Jasper, is that you think too much,” Chance likes to say. “More time living and less time thinking, my man.”
And it seems to work for Chance. He’s at Boston College to play hockey, get drunk, and find girls. In that order. Anything outside those three buckets he tosses like a wrong-shaped peg. Chance believes life is simple. And so it is. Meanwhile, Jasper isn’t sure about anything. Except Wylie. Each day he is more sure about her.
Wylie is the reason he finally decided to go to BC preseason, and not just to keep his mind off her being gone. Wylie told Jasper he needed to go to BC back when she barely knew him. And she never wavered.
By the time everything with the hospital had happened, Jasper joined preseason late. It wasn’t easy convincing the BC hockey coach to give him a chance. Jasper decided to go with the truth—Cassie and Wylie and the camp and the bridge and then the hospital. All of it out in a rush. Coach had sat there listening with his scraggly, scrunched-up eyebrows. When Jasper was finally done with his wild story, the coach stayed quiet for a crazy long time. Like he was about to drop some serious knowledge.
“Okay” was all he finally said, looking Jasper square in the eye. “But you miss a game or a practice from here on out, you screw up at all, you’re gone. You’re lucky as hell Samuels is out with a concussion. I got no choice but to take you on, despite the fact that you sound like you could be delusional. Consider yourself already out of strikes.”
Strikes. There it was finally. Like father, like son. The judge had said basically the same thing when he’d sentenced Jasper’s dad to fifteen years for aggravated assault. “I’m sorry, Mr. Salt, but you are out of strikes.”
And fair enough. Jasper’s dad had already been arrested more times than Jasper could count. And what he’d done that night was so much worse than anything that had come before. It wasn’t just evil. It was animal.
The guy in front of them was driving like a dumb-ass, weaving all over the place, slowing way down, then jerking to a stop. They could see that he was on his cell phone. Stupid, no doubt. But it wasn’t until Jasper’s dad had to jerk so hard to stop that he dropped his cigarette in his lap that he became a train cut loose on the tracks.
“No, Dad!” Jasper had called after him.
But he was already out of the car.
“Don’t,” Jasper had whispered inside the empty car as he watched his dad through the windshield, up ahead on the slick road, shouting through the window at the driver of the other car. But watch was all Jasper did. Because he was only twelve at the time. And there was only so much that twelve could do.
Jasper had actually been relieved when the other man got out and was much bigger than his dad. Big enough, he figured, to easily knock Jasper’s dad back in his place. But rage, Jasper learned that night, can make a man many times his natural size.
By the time Jasper was outside the car screaming, “Stop! Stop! Dad, stop it!” his dad’s fists were covered in blood, and the man was on the ground, motionless.
All these years later, Jasper tries not to picture the way the guy’s face had looked after—lumpy and wet and bright red. It’s his dad’s face that haunts him more late at night. The way it looks far too much like his own.
“IN A WAY, I am like him,” Jasper said during one of his many visits to Wylie at the detention facility.
It wouldn’t have been Jasper’s first pick for a date locale, but he was getting used to it. On the upside, they had no choice but to really get to know each other. And Jasper was cool sitting anywhere with Wylie. Had he felt that way about other girls? Maybe. Jasper fell hard and he fell often—his mom was right about that. But that didn’t mean this time with Wylie couldn’t be different. That it wasn’t special.
“You’re nothing like your dad,” Wylie said.
“Come on, that kid that I choked in that Level99 place, the kid I punched in school. I snap, like, a lot of the time,” Jasper said, staring at Wylie so hard his eyes had begun to burn. “I may not be the same as my dad, but I’m not sure I’m all that different.”
And it mattered to Jasper that she didn’t pretend otherwise. He wanted her to know the worst of him (the parts even he hated) and to care about him anyway.
“So, whatever. Even if that is true. You still get to decide what to make of who you are,” Wylie said finally. “Dr. Shepard said that to me, about being an Outlier and being anxious and everything. There’s a lot of gray in the world, Jasper. Wanting to hit someone isn’t the same thing as hitting them. And hitting someone once, or even twice, doesn’t mean you have to be someone who hits forever. Not everything is black and white.”
Jasper looked up at Wylie then. He wasn’t sure if she believed what she was saying. But he was sure that he was falling for her different than ever before. For real. In love. That maybe he was already all the way there.
INSTEAD OF WORKING out with Chance today, Jasper heads home. His mom has been asking him to come every day since he started at camp, and he’s been avoiding her. Partly to get back at her. Even though, to Wylie’s point, his mom is doing her best. And he should know better than anyone that your best isn’t always as good as you’d hoped it would be.
“Oh, you’re here!” his mom calls out as she swings open the door, like she was just sitting there, waiting for him. She’s so happy that she’s pumping up and down on her toes. Jasper feels like an ass. He should have come sooner.
“Yep,” he says, stepping