Neverworld Wake(68)

Kipling nodded. “We hoped the cops wouldn’t notice the difference between injuries sustained from a car hitting you and injuries from a three-hundred-foot fall.”

“The police probably would have looked closer,” said Martha, “if not for the Masons. They were worried the business about Estella Ornato was about to be exposed. They didn’t know what Jim had told people. Given the level of his anger, they probably weren’t so sure Jim didn’t commit suicide, having learned the truth about what they’d done. What he had done. So they stayed silent. And probably applied some pressure on that little police station. Whatever other pieces of evidence the cops unearthed—Jim’s visit to Honey Love Fried Chicken, Vida’s tip-off about Shrieks being the real White Rabbit, cell phone records? They stopped pursuing it.”

“The Masons confiscated the contents of Jim’s case file, don’t forget,” said Kipling.

“Exactly.”

“But there’s blood here,” whispered Whitley. She was using the light on her cell to illuminate the area where the Nissan had been parked. “It wouldn’t take much effort for police to see that something brutal had happened right here.”

“We cleaned it up,” said Kipling. “I noticed the blood, and we spent an hour tearing up the grass with bloodstains. I shoved it into my backpack and spent more time at school flushing it down the toilet.”

“There you have it,” said Martha. “The freak possible.”

There was nothing to say, nothing to do except to consider the strange history Martha had just related like a professor illuminating to her students some new law of gravity. For a while, I was aware of nothing but my own shallow breathing, and the orchestra of crickets, and the night, gasping and alive all around us.

Never had I imagined a truth like this.

“It’s too extraordinary,” whispered Whitley, crossing her arms, shivering. “When you think about it, we all killed Jim. I sent Cannon here. And Cannon hit Jim with the car. And Kipling helped him cover it up. All of us are guilty, right? All of us except Martha and Beatrice. You’re the good ones.”

“That’s not true,” I blurted, tears burning my eyes, a lump in my throat.

“It’s time to get out of here.”

Martha whispered this, frowning thoughtfully as she stared overhead. Bewildered, none of us moved. Then she was pushing us and I realized, stunned, looking up, that without even being aware of it, I’d been standing too close to one of the tower’s steel legs, because the entire thing was tottering. The wood was groaning and splintering.

Suddenly, with a thunderous moan of metal and glass, the entire Lookout was tipping over, rusted nails and screws and wooden beams raining down on us as we took off across the quarry road. I threw myself into the wall of grass, fighting back blades as they slapped and whipped my face. I ducked and covered my head as the entire structure collapsed around me with a roar, Kipling and Whitley shouting somewhere behind me. I felt myself tossed forward.

When I opened my eyes, I was on my stomach, the immense pressure of the ending wake pressing against my legs. I managed to heave myself onto my back, blinking up at the sky.

I heard voices, and then Martha and the others were bending over me.

“She’s at the end of her wake,” said Martha. “We don’t have much time. We have to find Cannon.”

“I think I know where he is,” said Whitley, her face grave.

When she told us the location, no one spoke. Of all possible places in space and time, this one seemed the most frightening, and the most impossible.

“No,” said Martha. “No way. It’s too risky for Bee.” She was helping me to my feet, pulling me toward the edge of the quarry. “We should go back to Wincroft.”

“We need Cannon for the vote,” I said. “I’ll go. I’ll get him and bring him back.”

Martha looked anxious. But there wasn’t time to argue. I could feel the wake traveling up my neck. I knew what to do. I stared down at the quarry and the lake, so far below.

This was the same journey Jim had made. My Jim.

“I’ll see you there,” I whispered.

They were watching me, afraid, but there was no time and nothing to say to reassure them. I squeezed their hands, one by one.

Then I jumped.





When I opened my eyes, I was submerged in freezing water.

Milky blue liquid floated before my eyes. I kicked, barely able to feel my legs. I couldn’t tell which way was the surface. My lungs throbbing in pain, I blew bubbles, watching dimly as they floated in the opposite direction of where I’d thought to go. I kicked after them into murky darkness, the water growing icier, shadowed fish circling me, their cold, gelatinous skin brushing my toes and fingertips.

I wanted to scream.

I kicked again. Suddenly, I breached the lake’s surface, gulping in the icy air.

I looked around. Dense white fog swirled everywhere, chalky and crystalline. A thin layer of ice on the pond’s surface splintered around my shoulders. I dog-paddled in a circle, groping for something to hold on to, but there was nothing. It was impossible to see more than a foot ahead. Dead white tree trunks rose out of the water around me, retreating into the whiteness overhead.

It was where Whitley had told us to go. Blue Pond, Cannon’s Birdcage, at 3:33 p.m. on his birthday last year. It was the real-life place in the photo inside the bug Cannon had discovered in Apple’s operating system sophomore year at Darrow. It was a dreamlike setting of chalky mist, and thin black Japanese larch and silver birch trees growing straight out of an icy blue lake.