Neverworld Wake(24)

A minute later Martha drove past me.

I followed her Honda Accord all the way to Providence, to Brown University, to the third floor of a redbrick building on Thayer Street, to a corner office.

ARNOLD BELORODA, PH.D. read the brass plaque on the door.

I watched Martha knock. A male voice answered “Yes?” and she entered. I heard her say hi as the door closed, and though I slipped closer in the crowded hallway, straining to hear the muffled voices inside, I couldn’t make out any more.

I Googled the name. Arnold Winwood Beloroda. He was an award-winning psychiatrist and professor emeritus specializing in group dynamic theory. He taught a host of classes at Brown. Making Ethical Decisions: The Good, Bad, and the Ugly. The Psychology of Manipulation and Consent. The Fantasy of Free Will. A senior seminar, Laboratory for Experiments in Social Persuasion. He had published thirteen nonfiction books, winning a slew of awards for one from the nineties, Heroes and Villains. According to the Wall Street Journal, it was about “the master-slave dynamics of concentration camps” and other situations in which “a large populace allows themselves to be controlled by a select few.”

I scanned Beloroda’s articles in the Harvard Review, the Economist, and Scientific American. What was so compelling about him? What was so critical that Martha had gone to such lengths to hide him?

Then it hit me. It felt like a pair of hands had begun to squeeze my neck.

While the rest of us had been wasting time warring against the reality of our circumstances, Martha had been using the Neverworld’s infinity to study.

Beloroda had been teaching her how to manipulate the group so we would choose her.

She was figuring out how to win.

I tailed Martha over and over again. Every time, she drove to Brown’s Cognitive, Linguistic, and Psychological Sciences building. Every time, she visited Beloroda. They remained holed up in his office for three, four hours. Clearly she’d figured out a way to hook him, captivate him with some high-level question about group dynamics or a detail mined from his own papers that served as the magic key to Open Sesame the close connection, the meeting of like minds. When they finally emerged, Beloroda—an elfin man with a turned-up nose and an overmanicured inky beard like a Rorschach test—was beaming at Martha (now hauling a pile of textbooks he’d given her, as well as a legal pad covered with notes), bewitched by the sudden appearance of such an engaging new student.

Sharing an umbrella, they always strolled outside, deep in conversation, and chatted for another twenty minutes on the sidewalk. Once I crept behind them, hiding in an alcove where a few students were smoking under the awning.

“You’re absolutely correct,” said Beloroda. “But here I would cite the philosophy of M. Scott Peck. In all groups there are four stages. Pseudocommunity. Chaos. Emptiness. And true community.”

“Could you tell me more about the Milgram experiment?”

“Ah. The blind obedience to authority figures.” Beloroda chuckled. “There’s nothing I’d like more, but I’m afraid I’m due to join my wife at a party. How about we resume this conversation tomorrow after my Group Cohesion lecture?”

He was unlocking his car, climbing in.

“It was a delight to meet you, Miss Peters. Until tomorrow?”

He drove off. Martha stared after him, her affable smile abruptly falling from her face as she pulled up her hood and took off. She sat for the next few hours in a window booth at Greek Taverna, poring over the books, taking notes. When the diner closed, she moved to her Honda and read in there, seat reclined, overhead light on.

The longer I watched from the darkness of the park across the street, the more I felt a choking anxiousness and fear, as if the Neverworld were closing in on me.

Martha was brilliant. Martha understood. She was light-years ahead of the rest of us. She had summarily accepted the crushing reality of the Neverworld, and rather than fighting it, she had dedicated her time to figuring out how to master it.

I wanted to live, didn’t I? I wanted to be chosen. Yet, staring at the pale light inside Martha’s car, fighting back tears, I sensed I was too late, that I’d already lost.

My gaze suddenly fell on a dark figure pushing a wheelbarrow toward me down the path through the park. It was heaped with black compost.

I should have been used to the Keeper’s presence by now. I should have ignored how no matter where I went, however near or far, when I least expected it, he would come to me like a terrifying thought, the Neverworld’s omnipresent alarm, its memento, its tolling bell.

The vote. The vote. The vote.

The temperature had dropped. The rain was turning to snow again.

I sprinted to the McKendrick van, climbed in, and took off, swerving into the road so wildly I almost hit a streetlamp. The Keeper paused to watch me go, a shovel balanced on his shoulder.

I caught a glimpse of his face through the swirling snowflakes, the chilling smile.

I couldn’t imagine what Martha was planning. Whatever it was, I suspected it’d be so well considered and masterful, none of us would ever see her coming.

How right I was.





How did I pass the next few wakes?

Was it months? Or was it years?

I was the only one left. Wincroft was my castle to rule, my tiny home planet. The solitude was infinite. Gandalf was there, but he backed away and barked whenever I tried to pet him, as if aware I wasn’t quite real. I wandered the creaking hallways and musty rooms, had conversations with stuffed deer and grizzly bears. I read every book in E.S.S. Burt’s library, sprawled across daybeds, love seats, and carpets; dining room tables, window seats, and grand pianos. I watched every show on every cable channel at every time. I ate chocolate. I played Scrabble by myself, and chess by myself, and sang pop songs. I drew everything I could think of—eyes, faces, landscapes, shadows. I made a dream soundtrack, song lyrics to a fake four-hour movie about the end of the world called Ned Gromby’s Last Day Alive Ever, scribbling the mad rhymes about life and death, war and peace, all over the wallpaper and floors and ceilings of Wincroft. Wincroft was my bridge underpass spangled with my graffiti. I squeezed my eyes closed to beat back the silence, and sifted through memories of my old life as if inside them I’d find a key to a door that would lead me somewhere.