Neverworld Wake(73)

She reached out and gently tucked loose strands of hair behind my ears.

“Never, ever give away your words again.”

Martha. I was so wrong.

“Anyway.” She removed her glasses, folding them, carefully setting them on the seat beside her with a faint smile. “Chapter Seventy-Two. This is only the beginning.”

She stood and, mumbling something that sounded like breadcrumbs, she dove into the water, kicking into the turquoise depths.

I sat there, shaken, unable to move.

So absolutely wrong.

I lurched to my feet, shading my eyes.

“Martha!”

There was no sign of her.

Whitley and Kipling, swimming a few yards away, turned in alarm.

“She was just here. Martha. I—I have to tell her. I have to let her know—” I was untying the skiff, grabbing the oars, crying as I steered the boat between the trees. “Martha!”

I jumped overboard, swam into the darkness, reached out into the empty cold.

When Whitley and Kip hauled me back into the boat, I was sobbing.

“She was just here. And now it’s too late. Too late. Don’t you realize? Martha. She’s never coming back. I have to tell her. She’s gone, and it’s too late now to tell her—”

“Shhh,” said Whitley, hugging me and wiping the tears from my cheeks. “It’s all over now, Bee. Look around. It’s almost gone.”



* * *



—

Look around. It’s almost gone.

If only someone had told me that before. About life. If only I had understood.

We didn’t speak after that. We didn’t need to. All we did was wrap ourselves in the blanket, and gaze out at the water.

Cannon was already somewhere else.

The sun was setting. It had turned the bold orange of children’s paintings, and it was casting a warmth on our faces so gentle it seeped into us, filling every dark hole and lighting every corner. I’d felt this way before, back at Darrow on some ordinary Tuesday with my friends, when one of them said what I felt and life sharpened into focus, as it did sometimes. There was a momentary stillness, a sense of the eternal in the strands of our laughter like windblown ponytails, in the touch of our shoulders, side by side.

Something began to happen to me. Whether it was death or some other state in the mystery of all life, I didn’t know. It pulled me to the bottom of the boat, leaving me staring up at the vast yellow sky. They had more time in their last wake, Kipling and Wit. But they would feel it eventually. I could see them crouched beside me, whispering words I couldn’t hear, uncertain yet unafraid, their hands warm as they squeezed mine, waiting for what came next.

I would never let go of them. Never.

Then their faces dissolved into the darkening day, and I slipped away.





I was floating in milky space.

Something hard was shoved down my throat. I heard footsteps.

“Good morning.” A man was speaking. “How you holding up?”

There was a clattering noise. Someone was beside me.

“I know this is difficult. As I explained yesterday, we’ll be taking this one step at a time. Her weaning parameters look very good. So I’m hoping to remove her breathing tube today. We need to see if she can follow commands.”

There was a flurry of activity, hushed whispering. A hand touched my arm.

“Beatrice? Can you open your eyes for me?”

I blinked. All I could see were streaks of color.

“Oh, my God.”

“Beatrice?”

“There. There she goes….”

“Bumblebee?”

“Can you show me two fingers?”

Dizziness. I was floating in a swamp. I tried to lift my hand. My throat was on fire.

“What about your other hand? That’s great. Wiggle your toes.”

Someone was leaning over me. Suddenly a light beamed into my eyes, sending a hot purple pinball knocking around my skull.

I blinked again.

That was when I saw a TV on the wall. It was a morning talk show, the sound muted, the date at the bottom of the screen snapping into focus.

7:21 a.m. September 10.

I was alive.



* * *



—

As I fell back into the warm, watery darkness, my final conversation with Martha drifted through my head. It felt like she’d just left me moments ago. Her confession had turned me inside out. It was the secret I’d kept so deep inside my heart it had actually remained buried, out of sight, like a missing airplane that had vanished with such totality, some questioned whether the passengers had even existed.

Whitley hadn’t realized how right she was.

When you think about it, we all killed Jim.

No one had ever questioned me—not my friends, not the police, not my parents. No one. Because I was the good one, Sister Bee.

I’m going to the quarry. Meet me.

In my dorm room, I listened to Jim’s message over and over again, staring out the window at the empty lawn. I was so alone. I loved him. Yet I hated him. I hated how he could make me feel so alive, then invisible, as if he were a magician and I was the rabbit in his hat. I was desperate to see him, forgive him, to banish him from my thoughts. I wished he’d never seen anything rare in me. The prospect of being without him was too painful to imagine.