Neverworld Wake(29)
For most of my time at the school he was a bogeyman. No one had actually ever seen him—no one who would admit to it, at least. He did his deals in creative scavenger-hunt dead drops all around Darrow, like behind the frame of Landscape #14 in the art gallery, or inside the ripped seat cushion of seat 104, row E, Orchestra Hall.
By the time I was a senior, the name had garnered such cult status, whenever anything weird happened, it was said to be the work of the White Rabbit. Even teachers knew the name. They’d doubtlessly held emergency meetings about him, trying to determine whether he was real or it was just kids dreaming up some Keyser S?ze.
The biggest scandal concerned a freshman named Veronica Beers. She took some pills and went out of her mind during Winter Dance, fell down a flight of stairs, and got taken to the ER. She admitted the White Rabbit had sold her the pills. Tracing the phone number led to only a defunct prepaid phone.
Was he a lone wolf or a gang of hoodlums? A student or someone from the outside?
When the police found Jim, he’d been dead for two days. The cause of death was asphyxiation due to drowning, but he also had signs of a concussion and leg and spinal fractures, which the coroner believed were sustained when he hit the water.
Police searched Jim’s room at Packer Hall, and they found hidden inside his Gibson guitar stashes of pot, Adderall, Ritalin, and cocaine. They concluded that Jim had been the infamous supplier, his death most likely suicide, though foul play in conjunction with some local criminal couldn’t be ruled out.
The revelation spread like wildfire.
First Jim Mason’s disappearance and death, then the shocking reveal of his secret life. It was the perfect one-two punch to leave us all breathless at the end of a teen slasher flick.
Of course the White Rabbit was Jim, everyone whispered. Totally.
It’s always the one we worship the most we know the least.
He was, after all, Darrow’s rock star, its heartthrob-musical-genius-Shakespeare, the boy who made spontaneous rapping, poetry, and wearing tweed caps cool (all small miracles unto themselves)—the kid everyone loved, longed for, yet simultaneously wished dead.
He had it. An energy force field.
He was the giant lit-up window with no curtains at night. You couldn’t help stopping to look closer on your silent walk past him.
I never believed it.
There was no way Jim was the White Rabbit. Someone had set him up, I was sure. He never touched drugs or alcohol after his speedboat accident. And he wouldn’t have sold it. He was a rescuer of broken-winged birds and lunchtime social outcasts. Nor did he need the money. His dad, Edgar Mason, was the inventor of the Van Gogh sneaker and the Poe hoodie, the man behind Starving Artist, a global leisurewear company he’d started in the back of his Jeep at nineteen. Jim’s family was worth five billion, according to Forbes.
I’d spent the past year doubting my belief in Jim’s innocence. I road-tested my theory obsessively, kicking the tires, trying to make the doors fall off. I wondered about all the occasions when Jim said he couldn’t meet me in the canteen during Evening Spells, how he was on a tear and had to stay sequestered in his dorm room writing. I wondered if he’d been lying to me every time he said he was at work on Nowhere Man, his musical about John Lennon.
My heart insisted no. He couldn’t have been. He’d lied to me about other things.
Not about that.
* * *
—
“I know where to start,” I announced.
The others had lapsed into thoughtful silence. Now they looked up at me, apprehensive.
“Vida Joshua.”
“Kitten?” yelped Kipling in surprise.
“She knows something about Jim’s death. I’m positive.”
“How do you know?” asked Whitley sharply.
“Remember how Jim was acting that final week?”
Kipling arched an eyebrow. “Like I remember a hot summer with a water shortage, backed-up sewage, and zero air-conditionin’.”
“He wasn’t himself,” I went on. “He was moody. A short fuse.”
“All because of his musical,” said Whitley.
“Oh, Lord Almighty, his musical,” drawled Kipling, grimacing. “It was eatin’ him alive.”
“He was stressed about his musical, definitely,” I said. “But there was something else going on too. Something I found out about.”
They were watching me, rapt, waiting for me to go on.
“I’m pretty sure he was hooking up with Vida Joshua.”
No one said a word. They just stared at me in shock.
“The day before he disappeared was the first night of Spring Vespers, remember?”
They nodded.
Spring Vespers—it was a two-night performance of skits, speeches, and original songs commemorating the end of the year and preceding finals week.
Around five, Jim texted me. He said he had a fever and chills, and was heading to the infirmary. I was shocked. After all, a medley of original songs from Nowhere Man was being performed that night. It was the cornerstone of Spring Vespers, the first time anyone had heard it, so for Jim to abandon his own production on the eve of its debut was very strange. Even if he was nervous about it, he’d never quit. Later that night, after eight, I was running late for Vespers, having stayed longer than I realized in the library. I veered behind the cafeteria on my way to the auditorium. It was the shortcut Jim and I sometimes took. That was when I saw him. Sitting by the loading dock. Not sick. At all. He was fine. Just sitting there in a black T-shirt and jeans, as if waiting for someone. Alone. I stood behind a tree and texted him.