Neverworld Wake(72)

I couldn’t breathe.

“It was stupid. One of those dark spells of loneliness that I thought meant everything. Little did I know, it meant nothing. These monumental moments of our childhood, they’re just one bend in the river, a tight curve filled with boulders so you can’t see beyond. The river roars on across distances we can’t even imagine. I was about to jump when I heard someone coming. It surprised me, so I hesitated, threw myself on the couch, grabbed some random book, pretending to read. You came in, and you saved my life. So here, in the Neverworld, I had to save yours.”

I opened my mouth to say something, but no sound emerged.

“I thought for sure you were on to me,” she said, shaking her head. “Like, back at the Warwick police station, how I suddenly appeared downstairs with you. You knew I was the one who removed the papers from Jim’s case file, right?”

“What?” I whispered.

“It wasn’t the Masons. It was me. I hid the files in another box so they’d never find them.” She took a deep, unsteady breath. “Because it was all there. Jim’s texts to you. I didn’t want them to suspect you. That was why I was so against going back to Vulcanation. I didn’t want them to find out the truth. So as soon as we landed, I snuck away so I could dismantle the ladder from the Foreman’s Lookout before anyone else saw it. I climbed up fifty feet, got a million splinters, but I knew I had to present a compelling scenario with such assurance that they’d all be blind to the truth.”

“What?”

She studied me with a soft smile.

“You know, Beatrice. You were there.”

Chills ricocheted down my spine.

“I saw you. Coming back from the quarry.” She squeezed my hand. “You have nothing to feel guilty about. Whatever happened, I know you acted with a full heart. I never doubted you. And I never will.”

All my blood drained into my feet. I was going to be sick.

“Jim loved you. But he didn’t see you. He was incapable of that. You were the one to keep him propped up. You were his scaffolding. He could be riveting, and addictive. And you loved him, and we rarely see those we love as they are.” She sighed, hunching her shoulders. “That’s what killed me the most. Why I could never be your friend. Why I couldn’t stay around you. You made me so mad, Bee.”

She shook her head, staring at me, her face a wild pool of emotion barely contained.

“I’ve seen it before. It happened to my sister. She loved a boy, and that love made her put herself last and forget herself, and it killed her. Your love was that unquestioning. It made you do things that were dangerous. That ripped me up.”

“What are you talking about, Martha?”

“Nowhere Man. Jim’s musical? Everyone gushed about how brilliant it was. And it was. But it was strange, wasn’t it, how suddenly after weeks of whining, being unable to write a single word, Jim had it all come together on the eve of his debut at Spring Vespers? Like magic?”

She stared at me, her face grave.

“You were the magic.”

I was unable to speak. I felt as if a glaring light were suddenly shining into my eyes.

“You showed them to me the night of the snowstorm. Those dream soundtracks. I never forgot them. I committed the words to heart. I recognized your voice immediately when Jim showed me what he’d written. ‘You’re my Sunday best, my new-car smell, / You’re Chateau Margaux, no zinfandel.’?” Martha shook her head. “Jim thought nothing of passing off your words as his own. Did he say he was just borrowing them? That he’d give you credit later? He swallowed everything around him, leaving nothing behind.” She wrinkled her nose. “It’s so funny. For such an energetic person, the space around him was always so cold. And anyway, his grand plans for himself always exceeded his actual talent.”

She shrugged with a look of resignation. I felt a wave of hot emotion in my chest.

“Jim didn’t steal the lyrics from me,” I said. “I gave them to him. They were just sitting in a drawer in the dark, no use to anyone. I had to help him.”

Martha surveyed me so intently, I felt light-headed.

“Everything I’ve done in this Neverworld,” she said, “the good, the weird, the absurd, the exhausting, was for you. Pushing the discussion in a calculated direction. Asking you the pointed questions so I’d appear impartial. Distracting the others from seeing the rot that kept bubbling up around you all the time. Mold, breaking glass, tar, oil, tumbling trees, falling Lookout Towers—God, Bee, it was like trying to hide a typhoon swirling around you, all because of this secret you were hiding. That you were there that night.”

She shook her head, biting her lip.

“I even spent a million hours talking to this kooky professor with scary facial hair and bad breath at Brown to learn the art of persuasion, to implant the idea in all of their heads that you had to go on, because you had to be the one to tell our story.”

My mind was crawling stupidly over her words like a crab, trying to make them out.

What was she talking about? I had voted for Martha. Martha was going to live.

“I couldn’t tell you what I was doing because you’d have tried to stop me. You’d have messed it all up. We had to get to the bottom of Jim’s death for the vote, but you had to stay beyond blame. You had to remain Sister Bee.” She shook her head. “I’m only telling you all this so you’ll know. So you’ll see. Because we all have our words tucked away in notebooks in drawers in the dark. You can’t just give them away, Bee. They’re yours. Like a fingerprint. Like your children. They are the light that shines your way. Without them, you’ll be lost.”