Neverworld Wake(12)

“Alex. Hold on. Now, wait a—wait a— Tell me what day and time it is. The date and time. I’ll explain in a sec—would you tell me the goddamn date? I’m not asking you to recite the Declaration of— WOULD YOU PLEASE JUST SHUT UP AND TELL ME—”

Whatever Alex’s confused response was, Cannon furiously hurled the phone at the sliding glass doors. He collapsed on the couch, staring wild-eyed at the floor. I hurried to my purse and dug out my phone, which was actually pretty strange because the last time I’d seen it, it’d been upstairs.

My phone read the same thing. August 30. With a shiver of panic, I dialed my mom.

“Hi, Bumble—”

“Mom. Mom? Where are you?”

“On our way to the Dreamland to see His Girl Friday. What’s the matter?”

“You didn’t see the movie yesterday?”

“Yesterday?”

“Mom, what day is it?”

“What? Why are you shouting?”

“What’s the date?”

“It’s—it’s Friday, August thirtieth.”

“Are you positive?”

“I’m looking at the dashboard right now.”

“It’s the thirtieth,” I heard my dad chime in.

“Mom, I called you last night, remember?”

“Last night? What?”

“Last night I called, and said I was spending the night at Wincroft, and you asked me to be in for opening because Sleepy Sam was getting a tooth pulled.”

“Sam is out tomorrow? He called you? Sam is out tomorrow,” she told my dad.

“He called Bee, after we’ve made sure he has our number about nineteen times?”

“Bee, what’s going on up there? Is it awful? Why don’t we come get you?”

I hung up, blood rushing in my ears.

My mom called back, but I was too shaken to answer.

I sat on the couch, trying to calm down. This had to be some kind of lucid dream. I willed myself to wake up. Wake up. After a moment, I realized Kip and Martha had drifted inside. They were standing stiffly with stricken expressions, like they’d just woken up from sleepwalking. Whitley had stepped back into the kitchen, her every gesture slow, as if pretending to walk on the moon.

“Y’all?” whispered Kip, his voice scarcely audible. “Was there an earthquake? Or some end-of-days world event we’re just finding out about?”

That was when the doorbell rang.

I didn’t wait for the others. I jumped off the couch, sprinting past Kip and Martha, and yanked open the front door.

“Perhaps this time I’ll be invited in for tea,” said the old man.





“The first thing you must do is stay calm,” said the Keeper. “Panic will get you nowhere.”

He was making tea.

He had asked for tea when he’d strolled inside, and as we were all too alarmed to react to what he was saying, he had, incredibly, started making it for himself. He filled the kettle, turned on the gas stove, and grabbed a mug from the cabinet, as if he had visited this house many times before.

“If it’s any reassurance, remember one thing,” he continued, his fingers nimbly straightening his dark blue silk tie. It caught the overhead light, and I saw it had a discernable pattern of stags identical to the stag presiding over the entrance to Darrow.

“Others have gone through the Neverworld before you. Many more will after. Hundreds of millions of others will expire never having had the opportunity that each of you has. So you must look at this as a gift. A chance to change history, for your choice of who will live will affect billions of moments barreling into the future for infinity. In other words, there is a precedent, and you aren’t alone. You must rely on each other. Each of you is a key, the others your locks. This isn’t a nightmare, and it isn’t a dream. It’s a crack you will continue to fall through until you vote. The sooner you accept where you are, the sooner you will all escape.”

The old man here, again, wearing the same dark suit, speaking in the same grand voice, was so incongruous and strange, none of us could really pay attention to anything he was saying. Whitley and Kip were standing by the kitchen island, staring openmouthed at him, as if he were a poltergeist. Martha was on the couch, stone-faced, her feet planted like she felt faint. I was doing my best to follow what he said, in case there was some clue that might reveal who he actually was. Yet all the while my mind was screaming, It’s a prank. It’s a prank. It had to be. Somebody—international terrorists, hackers from Anonymous or some other group—was playing a cruelly ingenious trick.

I noticed Cannon had disappeared upstairs. Now he reappeared, hauling his duffel.

“I’m out,” he announced.

“What?” asked Whitley, alarmed. “Where are you going?”

“Airport.”

“But it’s yesterday,” said Kip.

“No, it’s not. Of course it’s not. Yeah, we can’t explain it, but there is an explanation. I’m sure the physics department at Harvard is working on this as we speak.”

“I’m afraid the physics department at Harvard is ignorant of your plight,” interjected the Keeper, wringing out the tea bag on a spoon. “They’ve got their hands quite full trying to solve quantum gravity. Specifically, the vacuum catastrophe.”