Neverworld Wake(11)

I realized that she’d just asked me a question.

“What?”

“I was wondering if you still made those dream soundtracks.”

She was referring to my hobby of creating albums for movies I made up. It was just something I did. I didn’t know why. As a child I’d always been painfully shy, so terrified of speaking in class, my teachers often thought I had a stutter or a hearing problem. I began crafting pocket-sized books with lyrics and hand-drawn art for movies I wished existed, like the soundtrack to a hit teen vampire movie called Blood Academy. Or Dove Nova, the biopic of a Swedish teen pop star who vanished into thin air, her disappearance forever unsolved. There was no point to these albums. I couldn’t even explain why I made them, except that I liked to imagine they were artifacts of some other world that existed beyond the one we could see, a world where I wasn’t timid, and unsaid words didn’t collect in my mouth like marbles, and I was brave. They were my what-ifs, my glass menagerie, as Jim said.

One night freshman year during a snowstorm, the whole school was in the auditorium for Holiday Dance when the power went out. I had accidentally ripped the back of my dress, so I left Jim to run back to my dorm to change. To my surprise, I encountered Martha in the dark of the common room, reading Pride and Prejudice with a flashlight, so absorbed she hadn’t realized one of the windows was wide open and snow was collecting in the corner three inches thick. We ended up hanging out for two hours, just the two of us. It was the only time we ever did. For some reason, probably in the hopes of making things less uncomfortable between us, I’d shown Martha my collection of dream albums. Ever since then, when we were alone, she tended to ask about them, like they were some one-size-fits-all subject she could rely on to get me to talk. It could be a little unnerving.

“No,” I said, feigning a yawn. “Not really. I think I’ll go find a bed upstairs.”

She nodded, her face solemn. “Good night, Beatrice.”

I slipped out—Martha returning to her book—and trudged upstairs, finding my favorite guest room at the end of the hall. I pulled back the comforter and slung myself into bed.

Any other night I would have been kept awake by the memories inside that room. I was curled up under the heavy covers, same as always. The only thing missing was Jim snuggled beside me, composing lyrics by the light of his cell phone.

I set my alarm for six and closed my eyes. I’d sneak out before any of them were awake.

And that, for better or worse, would close my final chapter on Wincroft.





When I awoke it was light out.

I was freezing and covered in sweat. No, not sweat, I realized after a moment, blinking. It was rain. I was soaked because I was sitting in the backseat of the Jaguar convertible, the top still down. It had been parked, seemingly by someone very drunk, in a flower bed in the front yard of Wincroft.

It was still pouring rain. Kip and Martha were beside me, wearing confused expressions.

“What are you doing?” Kip asked me. He was soaking wet, his eyes bloodshot. A raindrop dangled off the end of his nose. “Where are you taking us?”

I had no clue what he was talking about. I scrambled out of the car, raced across the driveway to the mansion, and threw open the front door. I nearly collided with Whitley. She was frozen in the foyer, wearing the same outfit she’d had on last night. She surveyed me with a look so stunned, I understood immediately that something terrible had happened.

“What? What is it?”

She only stepped past me, staring out the door, speechless.

I hurried past her into kitchen. Shivering, I took inventory of my body. I felt fine. My head was clear. Yet somehow I’d overslept. I wasn’t going to make it to the Crow by opening. My parents would be scrambling to keep up with the morning crowd, then lunch, and my dad would be so strapped he’d forget to tell people about the specials, and my mom would use this as an excuse to say they didn’t need specials anymore, they were too expensive, which was sometimes enough of a spark to make them start arguing, which they rarely did.

Cannon was standing at the kitchen island typing on his open laptop.

“See, look!” he shouted over his shoulder, seemingly believing I was Whitley. “New York Times. It’s the exact same thing.”

I stepped beside him. He was amped, like he’d had about six cups of coffee.

“What is it?”

“What is it?” he mocked, turning to me. He grabbed my head, directing it at the screen.

“?‘Senate Pushes for New Immigration Initiative,’?” I read.

“The date,” he snapped.

“Friday, August thirtieth. So?”

“So? So? It’s yesterday.”

Scowling, he was tapping the keyboard, loading CNN.

“CNN. The Post. Time. All of them say the same thing.”

He shoved his iPhone into my hands. I blinked stupidly down at the date overlaying a photo of what had to be his fencing-champion girlfriend.

He was right. August 30. 5:34 p.m.

There had to be an error with the International Date Line. Terrorists had hacked the network. As if reading my mind, he held up his wristwatch, the hour and minute hands set to 5:35, the date turned to 30.

“How could hackers get into my TAG Heuer?”

I could only stare.

At that moment, his phone rang. Someone named Alexandra. He snatched the phone.