The Bridge to Never Land

by Dave Barry

  “Police! Police! On the floor, now! Down on the floor!”

  Three of the policemen hit J.D., taking him down hard, face-first, paying no attention to his shouted pleas protesting his innocence. Others grabbed Aidan and Sarah, and in seconds they were being hustled out of the house.

  A police van idled in the driveway. Sarah and Aidan were seated on one of the two facing bench seats inside. In the front seats were two officers, a male and a female, the female at the wheel. Between the cops and Aidan and Sarah was a metal mesh divider.

  J.D., in handcuffs, was led to the van by two policemen, who opened the back door and pushed him inside. They sat him on the other bench and chained his handcuffs to the floor. One of the cops handed his weapon to a fellow officer and sat on the bench with J.D., nightstick in hand. The other cop slammed the rear door shut.

  “You don’t understand,” Sarah pleaded. “This man is helping us. He didn’t do anything!”

  “Stockholm Syndrome,” the male cop in the front seat said to the female, who nodded. He turned to Sarah and Aidan and said, “You’re going to be all right, kids. You’re safe now.”

  “But we were safe!” said Sarah. “He didn’t—”

  “We’ll sort it out at the station,” said the cop. “With your parents.”

  The van started moving.

  “Our parents are coming?”

  “On their way from Pittsburgh,” said the female cop. “They’re very worried.”

  “You had a lot of people worried,” said the male cop, lecturing now. “Your pictures were all over TV.”

  “Oh, no,” said Sarah.

  “No, that was good,” said the cop. “People saw you leaving Jadwin Hall with the creep back there. That’s how we tracked you down.”

  “He’s not a creep!” said Aidan.

  “Like I said, we’ll sort it out at the station.”

  Sarah leaned closed to Aidan. “This is bad,” she whispered.

  “Tell me,” he whispered back. “They’re never gonna believe us.” He nodded toward J.D. “And I don’t know what they’re gonna do to him.”

  She glanced back. J.D. was staring at the van floor, his face white with shock. A few hours ago, he didn’t know Sarah and Aidan existed; now he was facing arrest, maybe jail. Because he tried to help us, she thought.

  “It’s not fair,” whispered Aidan.

  “I know.”

  “You two all right?” the female cop in front asked.

  “No,” said Sarah, softly. Tears burned her eyes. She looked down; she didn’t want the police, or Aidan, to see her crying. A tear fell. It landed on Molly’s diary. Sarah realized that she’d been gripping it all along, so tightly that her hand hurt.

  Then she realized that her other hand was gripping the backpack. She looked at Aidan. He was looking at the backpack, too.

  Lester Armstrong was following the van. He’d been just a step behind the police since he’d gotten to Princeton.

  He’d reached the library just after dark. As he pulled up, a man and a woman hustled out of the building and climbed into an unmarked, illegally parked Chevy—so obviously a police car it might as well have had a light rack on top. Detectives, Armstrong figured. No way they were there by coincidence; they had to be on the trail of the Cooper kids.

  The Chevy started rolling and was joined a few seconds later by a Princeton PD patrol car, siren blaring. Armstrong followed in the Escalade, keeping a safe distance. The cops were moving fast; they’d obviously found something out. Armstrong’s plan was to stick close to them, looking for an opportunity—he was very good at this—to leapfrog their investigation and rescue the kids himself, thus earning a nice fee.

  The police headed toward the Princeton campus, their destination a large brick building called Jadwin Hall. From the idling Escalade, Armstrong watched the detectives go inside. They emerged a few minutes later, without the two kids but in a hurry, and walked briskly to their car, cell phones glued to their ears. They roared off, again accompanied by the patrol car.

  Armstrong followed them to a residential neighborhood not far from campus, where they stopped in front of a large, wood-framed house with an unkempt lawn. Armstrong killed his lights and pulled to the curb a half block away. A few seconds later a black panel van screeched to a stop in front of the house.

  Uh-oh, thought Armstrong. SWAT team.

  This was not good. If the kids were in the house, there was no way he’d get to them ahead of the SWAT team. By the look of it, he’d wasted his day.

  The raid was efficient, professional; fifteen or twenty seconds, and it was all over. Armstrong felt slightly ill as he watched the cops bring out the two kids, including the boy who’d eluded him. They also brought out a man whom Armstrong didn’t recognize. All three were loaded into a police van and driven away.

  Armstrong saw his fee going with it. Unless…

  He slammed the Escalade into gear, a plan forming in his mind. The Coopers wouldn’t reach Princeton until the next day. What parents would want their kids held in a police station overnight? Wouldn’t they be happier to have their kids released into his custody, and for him to put them up at a nice hotel until they arrived? If they hadn’t left yet, they might even authorize him to escort the kids home, shortening the process and getting this whole miserable experience behind them. He’d have to charge them for this service, of course. But money was usually no object for parents who’d lost their kids.

  He fished his cell phone out of his pocket and dialed. He was counting on paperwork to slow the police down so that he would be the first to give the Coopers the good news—and the first to receive their gratitude.

  He could practically smell the fee.

  Aidan and Sarah were communicating with their eyes. He looked, with an exaggerated stare, at the backpack, then at her. She nodded, then arched her eyebrows. Right, the star-stuff. But what do we do?

  Aidan’s eyes tracked slowly back toward the steel grid separating them from J.D., then forward to the front seat. He touched his belt, then nodded toward the male cop in the shotgun seat. Sarah looked and saw a key ring clipped to the officer’s wide police belt. One key was smaller than the others, silver in color. Sarah figured that must be a handcuff key.

  She looked at Aidan and nodded. Got it. The key. Then what?

  He pointed to the backpack again, then at his seatbelt, then at the seatbelts worn by the two officers in the front seat. Sarah looked puzzled. Aidan pointed at the cops and made a little floating motion with his hands. Suddenly, Sarah got it. She nodded.

  Okay.

  Aidan looked down at her backpack again, then at her. He mouthed one word.

  Now.

  Sarah, her hand trembling, slowly unzipped the backpack. She slipped her hand inside, found the gold box. She nodded to Aidan.

  Ready.

  Aidan checked to make sure his seatbelt was fastened; Sarah did the same. She drew the golden box from inside the backpack and put her hand on the little wheel. The male cop looked back.

  “What do you have there?” he said. “Is that gold?”

  Sarah closed her eyes, gave the wheel a quarter turn, and tilted the box just slightly. The van filled with brilliant golden light and a musical sound that seemed to come from everywhere.

  Aidan, his eyes also closed, leaned forward and felt around until he found the front seatbelt latches; he quickly released them both.

  Sarah turned the wheel shut. The light was less brilliant now, but the interior of the van was still filled with a golden glow. The male cop was still in the shotgun seat, but now he was upside down. This did not appear to trouble him; he was humming happily. The female cop, who’d been driving, was floating with her back against the windshield, a rapturous smile on her face. “Hello back there!” she said, apparently to the officer guarding J.D., who was floating against the van’s ceiling.

  “I love you, Janine!” he responded. “I’ve always loved you!”

  “I know, Tommy, I know,” she replied. “But
I’m driving!” She gestured vaguely toward the steering wheel, the motion causing her to somersault slowly in midair.

  “Wait!” she giggled. “I’m not driving. Who’s driving?”

  Sarah and Aidan were also feeling giddy, but having been there before, they were a bit more aware of what was happening. They found the fact that nobody was driving the van somewhat troubling. Aidan looked out the side window. For a moment he saw nothing but night sky. Then a tree passed by. Underneath the van.

  “Sarah,” he said. “I think you used a little too much.”

  Armstrong was following the police van, three cars back, when he heard car horns blasting and brakes screeching. Then he saw the van.

  Flying.

  He stared, openmouthed, as the van rose gracefully above the traffic and soared over a tree. Armstrong lowered his window and stuck his head out to watch it. That was when he rear-ended the car in front of him, which had just rear-ended the patrol car following the van, which had smashed into another civilian car whose driver had also been mesmerized by the flying van.

  The crash popped his hood open. Armstrong cursed, shut off the engine, and jumped out of the Escalade. He looked at the sky and picked out the van, still moving away but descending slowly.

  In front of him, the cops were scrambling out of their wrecked patrol car. They were yelling at each other, shouting into their radios, pointing at the flying van. In the distance Armstrong heard sirens. His eyes again went to the van disappearing into the night sky. His brain struggled to process what he had just seen. He knew two things right away. One was that this was no longer an ordinary missing-kids case. The other was that he wasn’t going away until he found out exactly what it was.

  The police van was drifting slowly back to earth, but the three officers were not at all concerned. The female in front—Janine—was continuing her floating flirtation with Tommy in back. The third cop was still upside down; at the moment he was singing what sounded like “The Climb” by Miley Cyrus. He did not notice when Aidan leaned forward and unclipped the key ring from his belt.

  The van was now about fifty feet off the ground, angling gently downward toward a park. Aidan and Sarah unfastened their seatbelts, slid open the van door, and eased themselves out. Floating now, they held onto the van and worked their way around to the back. Sarah opened the door; J.D., still inverted, was smiling at them.

  “Hey!” he said, as if he were sitting in his office, as opposed to shackled in a flying police van. “Isn’t this great?”

  “Terrific,” said Aidan, working the key into J.D.’s handcuffs. “Come on,” he said, pulling J.D. out. “Sarah, get his other arm.”

  Holding J.D. on both sides, Aidan and Sarah pushed off from the back of the van. It continued its gentle downward path as the three of them soared upward.

  “This is really great!” J.D. exclaimed. “Where are we going?”

  Sarah and Aidan looked back. In the distance they saw flashing police lights as more patrol cars converged on the accident scene, sirens whooping.

  Aidan looked at Sarah. “Where are we going?” he said.

  “I have no idea,” said Sarah.

  “I love the way we always have a plan,” said Aidan.

  “Just look at that full moon!” said J.D.

  In western Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, a farmer, having finished his nightly rounds, closed the barn door. He started back toward the house and had almost reached it when he stopped, listening. From the west he heard a deep whooshing sound, like a strong wind. But the night was still.

  The sound was closer now, and louder. The farmer moved away from the house so he would have an unobstructed view to the west. He froze when he saw it clearly by the full moon—a black cloud, low to the ground, coming fast. But what kind of cloud moved like that, or made such a noise?

  The farmer wanted to run—a reaction that embarrassed him, as he prided himself on being a tough man, and a man of common sense. He willed himself to hold still as the cloud came closer, closer…

  Birds. He could see now that it was birds. Ravens, they looked like—huge ones. So many of them. They swept over him, blotting out the moon, the beat of their wings now a roar. In a minute they were at the far end of his land, and then they were gone. The farmer stood absolutely still.

  The door to the house opened. The farmer’s wife came outside and saw him standing motionless in the moonlight.

  “Jake?” she said. “That noise…what was that?”

  “Birds,” he said.

  “Birds? Birds made all that noise?”

  “Yes.”

  He was still looking at the sky. She watched him for a few moments. “Is everything all right?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  CHAPTER 20

  MAC

  THEY FLEW AS FAR AND AS FAST as they could, Sarah and Aidan doing the steering, trying to avoid lights, J.D. between them, still feeling quite relaxed. They passed over what looked like a river, although J.D., acting as aerial tour guide, informed them that it was actually a long, narrow, winding lake called Lake Carnegie. About a mile later the starstuff began to wear off, and they gently descended into a dense stand of trees.

  The landing was not a thing of beauty. They bumped into some branches on the way down, dislodging J.D., who turned a slow, midair cartwheel before tumbling to the ground.

  “Are you okay?” said Sarah, alighting next to him.

  “I think so,” said J.D., sitting up.

  Aidan landed next to Sarah. “Where are we?” he said.

  “The Plainsboro Preserve,” said J.D. “It’s a nature reserve. There’s a reservoir over that way.”

  “Great,” said Aidan. “We have nature and water. Now all we need is food, shelter, and, oh yeah, some way to stop everybody in the world from looking for us. I mean, we made the police van fly. Then we flew. We’re gonna be all over the news.”

  “In which case,” said Sarah, “Ombra will definitely find out.”

  “Not to mention that the police will be very unhappy with us,” said Aidan.

  “Especially me,” said J.D., who was feeling less euphoric now that he was on the ground. “The cops think I kidnapped you.”

  Sarah crouched next to him. “Listen,” she said. “We can get you out of this. You go back, turn yourself in to the police. Then we call them from a pay phone and explain that you never did anything wrong, that it was all our idea. They’d have to believe us, because you surrendered and we’re still running.”

  J.D. stared at the ground, then looked at Sarah.

  “Nope,” he said. “I’m…okay. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but…I’m a Starcatcher. We can sort it out with the police when this is all over. But right now we need to figure out what to do about the starstuff so this Ombra dude doesn’t get hold of it.”

  Sarah touched J.D.’s arm. “If you saw him,” said Aidan, “I don’t think the word dude would come to mind.”

  There was no response from Sarah or J.D., who were looking into each other’s eyes. Sarah realized that her hand was still on his arm. She quickly dropped it.

  “Okay,” she said. “We need to get away from here. The police are going to be looking for us.”

  “Not to mention Shadow Dude,” said Aidan.

  “Is there a train station around here?” said Sarah.

  “Bad idea,” said Aidan. “They’ll be watching the train stations and airports.”

  “Then what?” said Sarah.

  “We need a car,” said Aidan. He looked around the woods. “Although I don’t see any at the moment.”

  “I know somebody who might be able to help us,” said J.D.

  “Who?” said Sarah.

  “A retired physics professor, Allen Macpherson, old family friend. He kind of mentored me when I joined the Princeton faculty. He lives in Monmouth Junction, not too far from here.”

  “You trust him?” said Aidan.

  “Yup,” said J.D. “He was really tight with my granddad
and dad. Besides, we don’t have a lot of choices.”

  “All right, then,” said Sarah, getting to her feet.

  “Which way?”

  “North,” said J.D., also rising.

  “Which way is north?” said Aidan.

  “That way,” said J.D. “I hope.”

  An hour and a half later, after some meandering, they came to a modest house in an older subdivision. J.D. rang the bell; a minute later, the porch light came on, and the door was opened by a gaunt, elderly, white-haired man in pajamas.

  “Hello, J.D.,” he said, giving no indication that he was surprised by the visit.

  “Hello, Mac,” said J.D. “Sorry about the late hour.”

  Mac waved away the apology. “Since Eleanor died,” he said, “I hardly sleep anyway. Come in.”

  Inside, J.D. introduced Aidan and Sarah to Mac. There was an uncomfortable pause, then J.D. said, “Mac, I need to ask a favor.”

  Mac looked at him, waiting.

  “I was wondering if I could borrow a car.”

  “All right,” said Mac.

  “Really?” said J.D.

  “Yes. I never use Eleanor’s car anyway. I’ve been meaning to sell it. I barely use my own.”

  “But…I mean, aren’t you curious about why I need it?”

  “I assume you need it to get away from the police.”

  J.D.’s mouth fell open. “You know?”

  Mac gestured toward the TV. “You were the top story on the eleven o’clock news. They’ve been showing photos of all three of you. And, of course, the flying police van.”

  “Oh, no,” said Aidan.

  “Oh, yes. There’s video from somebody’s cell phone. There are all kinds of theories about what happened. Some of them are quite entertaining, from a physics standpoint; one involves a giant magnet. The police are very interested in speaking with the three of you. I suspect others will be as well.”