Neverworld Wake(38)

“So you didn’t speak to Jim at all the next day? The day he died?”

I shook my head.

No one said anything, all of them doubtlessly thinking how tragic it must have been for me, for that argument about Vida Joshua to be our last conversation.

The truth was, Wednesday I’d exiled myself to Marksman Library, hiding out in the fourth-floor attic stacks in the History of South America section, which was seldom visited by students. It reeked of mildew and served as a shadowy breeding ground for a range of freakishly large moths. All day I sat hunched over my European history and English literature textbooks in front of the lone window with the dirty glass, Beats headphones blasting the soundtrack to Suicide Squad in my ears, forcing myself to focus on the French Revolution and World War II and For Whom the Bell Tolls. I kept my cell phone off all day because I didn’t want to deal with Jim. The only time I exposed myself to the rest of campus was during my four-minute walk between the library and my room in Creston Hall around eleven o’clock.

I waited until I’d put on my pajamas and climbed into bed at midnight before turning on my cell, whereupon I was hit by the torrent of texts. A few were from Kipling, Cannon, and Wit. Twenty-seven others were from Jim. They’d started at eight that morning, messages ranging from ? to come on to why are u bein like this to desperate voice mails, his mood ranging from teasing to despair to anger, all of which sounded crazy and heartbreaking the more I replayed them.


Call me.


Call me Bumblebee.


We need to talk.


If you have any love left in your heart, call me.


Why are you doing this?


I need you. You know how I need you to survive.


I hate you. I hate you so much. Because I love you.


Don’t do this.


I’m going to the quarry. Meet me.



That was the last text I ever got from him. Received at 11:29 p.m.

I deleted it. I deleted all of them.

When they found Jim dead, two days later, I expected the police to ask me about his texts. I’d tell them I’d remained in my room all night.

But they never did ask. No one ever even questioned me.

I was tempted to tell them that I knew Jim was going to Vulcan Quarry. But what if they didn’t believe I’d stayed in my dorm all night?

I’d be damned to the Neverworld forever. I’d have no chance—none—of ever making it out of here alive.

“What if we went to the police now?” whispered Cannon.

“What?” asked Whitley.

“What if we went to speak to the Warwick police about Jim? We could get our hands on his case file. They have to have pulled his cell phone records. We get our hands on those reports. We’ll know a lot about his final days—where he went and who he was with.”

“The police never came up with anything substantial to make them think Jim’s death was anything but suicide,” said Martha.

“Unless the school forced them to cover up what they found,” said Whitley.

“Or his family,” added Kipling. “If Edgar Mason thought somethin’ damnin’ was about to come out about his beloved dead son? The apple of his eye? He’d do anythin’ to stop it from gettin’ out. Remember the safe house?”

We said nothing, all of us thinking back.

Christmas break, senior year, Jim invited us to his family home in Water Mill, and we were shocked by the extreme security measures his family had adopted as totally routine.

Edgar Mason had always been paranoid. Hoover, Jim called his dad, a not-exactly-joking reference to J. Edgar Hoover, the fanatical wiretapping founder of the FBI. For years, Edgar Mason had employed a private security firm called Torchlight to safeguard his family, which meant for the entirely of Jim’s life, two armed ex–Navy SEALs silently tailed him and every other member of his family when they left the house.

The Christmas visit revealed a new level of Edgar’s obsession. Every inch of the Masons’ many houses around the world was being recorded in HD, the feeds playing in a basement control room called the Eye. There was a cybersecurity team on staff in Washington, D.C., who monitored the family’s servers twenty-four hours a day.

Then there was the safe house.

“For home invasions, terrorist attacks, and Zero Days,” Jim said, pointing out the black bunker peering out, crocodile-like, over the hill on the edge of the property. “It has power generators, independent water supplies, a secure phone line that can call the director of Homeland Security in three seconds. When the end of the world happens, let’s meet here.”

The smile fell from his face, the lonely implications of such a structure hardly lost on him. He seemed reluctant to say more. After all, his dad’s obsession with safety had everything to do with him. Edgar Mason had always been careful, but it was apparently Jim’s boating accident the summer before senior year that had triggered this new level of mania.

“I say we go over there,” said Cannon. “Ask around. See what the police know.”

“Or are trying to forget,” said Whitley.

“Bee?” prompted Martha.

Everyone turned, waiting for me to weigh in.

I stared back.

Taking a look inside Jim’s police file could mean his final texts to me would come to light. I’d have a lot to explain. But what else was in that file?