Neverworld Wake(63)

“You mean commit suicide?” He looked insulted.

No.

“I have to go.”

I turned and took off running, though when he began shouting my name, asking where I was going, I threw back my head and turning, laughing crazily, I shouted, “I love you, Jim Mason. I always have.”

I ran out of the parking lot into the six-lane highway. Cars honked. A woman in a passing car rolled down the window and started to scream at me. “Get out of the way! Honey, what are you doing out here? Honey?” I could hear Jim calling me, but I stepped in front of a cement truck and closed my eyes.



* * *



—

August 30. Wincroft. 6:12 p.m.

“Beatrice? Bee! Beatrice!”





Martha, Kip, and Whitley were waiting for me in the library.

There was no sign of Cannon.

“You made it, Bee,” said Whitley, hugging me.

“What happened after we left?” asked Kipling.

I didn’t answer. Instead, I slipped past them, heading straight to an upstairs bedroom. Minutes later, returning downstairs, my suspicions confirmed—I’d found what I’d been looking for—I explained where I’d gone. I told them about the connection I’d made between the man in the chicken costume handing out heart balloons, whom Vida had mentioned, the Honey Love fried chicken coupon left in Jim’s case file, and the email in Edgar Mason’s in-box.

I told them about Estella Ornato.

No one said a word for a long time. Whitley opened her laptop and Googled the name, then read aloud the only information that appeared about Estella’s death, a four-sentence mention in the South Shore Sentinel.

“?‘Officials have released the name of a four-year-old child killed Wednesday night in a car accident in Water Mill,’?” she read.

“S.O.,” I said to Martha. “I think it’s Alonso Ornato’s son.”

Sure enough, a search of Ornato and Princeton turned up a Facebook page belonging to Sebastian Ornato, about to start his sophomore year. On his page there was a photograph of him sitting in Firestone Library wearing a Princeton sweatshirt, grinning and making a goofy peace sign.

“Poor kid thinks he got into Princeton on his own steam,” said Kipling.

“I can’t believe it,” said Whitley, solemn. “I knew Jim’s family was capable of anything. But erasing the existence of an entire person? Designing a new death that’s more elegant and acceptable to all involved? And getting away with it?”

“It proves Jim’s suicide, doesn’t it?” suggested Kipling, taking a deep breath. “Jim probably felt so alone. Lost. So he rode his bike out to Vulcan Quarry and jumped.”

“I don’t think so,” I said.

They turned to me in surprise. I told them what Jim had said in the parking lot.

“Well, if it wasn’t suicide,” said Whitley, “then what happened?”

I dug in my pocket and pulled out the bumblebee pin, placing it on the coffee table.

Kip widened his eyes. “What is that, child?”

“The gift Jim bought me freshman year.”

“Oh, that’s right,” said Whitley.

“Didn’t someone steal it from you?” asked Martha.

I nodded. “I just found it upstairs in Whitley’s jewelry case.”

Wit stared at me, her face pale.

“You stole it from me. I know you did. It was one of your notorious thefts. Wasn’t it?”

“Bee, I’m so sorry—”

“You never think. Little do you know how your most haphazard gestures inflict such pain. It hurts to be your friend. It always has. But I still love you.”

Ignoring Wit’s astonished face, I went on to explain how I’d been stuck in the neck with the pin moments before the wake, which had sent me plunging back into the past with thoughts of Jim.

“I didn’t do it, Bee,” said Whitley. “I swear.”

“I know. It was Cannon.”

Everyone gaped at me.

“He knew you’d taken it, so he stole it out of your jewelry case the first night we changed the wake. He wanted to throw me off track, send the rest of you into a state of perpetual limbo. He doesn’t want us to find out what happened to Jim. He doesn’t want to ever leave the Neverworld.”

“You think he had something to do with Jim’s death?” asked Martha.

“I don’t know yet.”

“Bee does have a point,” said Kipling with a dubious expression. “Cannon knows if anything goes wrong he’s supposed to meet us here. So where the hell is he?”

“He’s hiding somewhere in the past or the future,” I said. “There’s really only one way to get to the bottom of what happened to Jim.”

No one spoke for a minute, all of us doubtlessly thinking the same thing.

“No,” said Martha, shaking her head. “No. It’s out of the question, Bee. No.”

“It’s not as dangerous as you think,” I said.

“Yes, it is.”

“I did it already. I went back even farther, five years by accident. The crazy thing about the past is that you never meet yourself. There are no doubles. If you arrive there, your past self exits on cue to make room for you.”