Neverworld Wake(34)

“I find it pretty far-fetched that he’d ask you for a ride if you weren’t more than friends,” said Whitley.

Vida glared at her. “Like I said. We talked. Occasionally. He visited me at the art gallery and gave me advice sometimes. Jim was a card-carrying genius. He understood stuff. I talked to him about my issues, you know, and he gave me better advice in ten minutes than six years of Dr. Milton Yeskowitz with the goatee, the too-long thumbnails, and the bookshelf full of seventies self-help manuals called Learning to Love Yourself.”

She said this with a scathing glance at her father, who stared back blankly. Both Mr. and Mrs. Joshua had been listening to their daughter as if she were speaking a strange dialect in which only every third word was comprehensible.

“Jim reminded me again and again that my life was alive and I had to tame it. That was why I decided to move to Chicago. I told him I had the opportunity to intern at the lab, and he said I had to go. I had to seize the day. Even if I was afraid. Jim said when there’s a break in the path in front of you and you’re freaked out, you take a running leap and trust that you’ll reach the other side. He inspired me. And I helped him, you know. He was really stressed about his musical. He wanted it to be great. He wanted it to be up there with Oklahoma! and Rent. He aspired to greatness. More than anything, he wanted to go down in history. And he was going to. He showed me his notebook, and he’d written the most insane rhymes. He was a genius.” She shook her head. “It’s horrible what happened to him. But that’s life, right? All the amazing people die too soon.”

“When was the last time you saw him?” I asked.

“Don’t you people listen? I told you. When I dropped him off at that mall.”

“You didn’t talk to him the night he died? He didn’t tell you to meet him at Vulcan Quarry?”

She scowled. “What are you talking about? I haven’t been out to that quarry in forever.” She sniffed, shaking her head. “Soon as I heard what had happened, though, that he was not only dead but had been a major drug dealer or whatever? I went straight to the police and told them they were completely insane.” She rolled her eyes. “Whatever drugs they found in his dorm? They definitely weren’t Jim’s.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

“He told me who they belonged to.”

“Excuse me?” asked Martha sharply, with a surprised glance at me. “What?”

“Oh, yeah.” Vida nodded. “A couple of weeks before he died. It was all he could talk about. How he’d found out one of his best friends had been selling serious drugs to students for years.”

“Did he say who it was?” asked Kipling.

“He didn’t have to. As he was telling me, the friend called. ‘Speak of the devil,’ he said. I saw the name right there on his phone.” Vida wrinkled her nose. “It was kind of weird. It was just one word.”

“What was the word?” asked Cannon.

“Shrieks.”

Instantly, a chorus of voices began to scream in my head: No. No. Impossible.

No one moved.

Whitley was gazing at the carpet, a blank look on her face.

“I gave the name to the police,” Vida went on. “Told them everything. I said this person had something to do with Jim’s murder. I was sure. Knowing their secret was about to come out? They had to get rid of him. Shut him up, you know?” She widened her eyes. “But the police didn’t care. Or they’d eaten too many Krispy Kremes to peel their asses off their swivel chairs and do something, because I never heard anything about it. I wasn’t surprised. No one does anything anymore. The only one who did, who went above and beyond for everyone, was Jim. And now he’s gone.”

She fell silent. There was a moment of uneasy stillness.

Then Whitley leapt to her feet and ran out of the house.





We took off after her.

At the front door, as Cannon and the others barged into a downpour, I paused, taking a final glance back at the Joshuas, who were regarding each other sullenly, like three strangers held in a jail cell before charges were filed. Then I turned and sprinted out.

Whitley was already disappearing down Entrance Drive.

“Whitley!” shouted Kip.

“Come on!” yelled Cannon. “Where are you going?”

She ignored them, veering off the road and vanishing over the hill. When I caught up, they were far below, Whitley a dark figure flying past the tennis courts and soccer fields, Martha, Cannon, and Kip fanning out behind her.

“Hold on!” screamed Martha.

“Let’s talk about this!”

“Whitley Lansing! Stop!”

I raced after them as fast as I could, faint police sirens erupting somewhere behind me. Whitley? The White Rabbit? How was it possible?

The rain was torrential now. Like ammunition blasting from the sky, it riddled my head and arms. It was hard to see where I was going. Tree branches cracked and thrashed overhead, thunder rumbling. I slipped and tripped my way to the bottom of the hill, where there was a swamp of thick, tarlike mud. My sneakers sank inches into the ground. I could see Wit and the others farther ahead, rounding the front of the girls’ dormitories: Slate Hall, Stonington Manor, the Gothic arches hulking and dark, misshapen shadows stretching long and fingerlike under the yellowed lamps. I veered through the garden behind Morley House and nearly ran over Martha. Apparently she’d slipped and fallen facedown in the mud.