Neverworld Wake

by Marisha Pessl

  “Tell me and I’ll go back,” I said.

  He scowled, wiping the streaming rain off his face. “Her name’s Shirley.”

  “And?”

  “And she takes me with her to her chemotherapy treatment in Providence. Then we go back to her crappy apartment by a Stop and Shop and watch Night of the Living Dead. I cook her shrimp jambalaya and make a tuna salad for her cat named Canary. She thinks I’m a runaway from Mississippi. Sometimes my name is James. Sometimes it’s Jesus. She undresses in front of me and asks me to touch her. She’s religious. Thinks I’m some kind of savior from a different planet because I know so much about her. We talk all night. Now would you please go find your own disturbin’ experience to get lost in? This one is mine.”

  At that moment, the brown Pontiac rounded the bend. Probably because I was there, or because Kip had a fake smile on his face, quite different from his usual laid-back, lounging-porch-cat demeanor, the car slowed for a second—revealing a plain-faced woman, brown hair, white T-shirt, radio blaring the Cure’s “Close to Me”—then accelerated away.

  Kip ran after her, waving. “Hold on! Wait for me! Shirley!”

  The car tore around the bend, vanishing.

  “Look what you did!” he wailed.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Shaking his head, he took off over the bridge. He tried flagging down the next car, a red pickup truck, then a van, but no one stopped.

  “Leave me alone!” he shouted as he took off jogging down the road.

  I let him go. I understood. He looked forward to Shirley because for some reason she made him forget he was in the Neverworld. It was probably only for a minute. But that was a priceless minute in a century of worthless ones.

  * * *

  —

  After I’d learned where Kip went, I followed the others.

  I had to. If I had any hope of ever making it out of here alive, I had to make sure I didn’t lose them completely, that they didn’t fall into some psychological rabbit hole from which they’d never be able to emerge.

  I also needed a mission. I couldn’t sit through His Girl Friday one more time. I couldn’t watch my mom tell my dad with only a look that she didn’t like the seats he’d chosen because they were too near the screen. Then, two seconds later: the bearded homeless man dropped the can of Old Milwaukee on the floor, muttering, “Shit, man,” and the old woman behind him left to go report him as the man in the Brooklyn Book Drop T-shirt stuffed a handful of popcorn into his mouth (dropping three kernels in his lap). This symphony of normality played the same way every time. I knew every word, stutter, quip, throat clear, sniff, cough, scratch, and burp, like the stage manager who’d watched the same performance a million times from the wings.

  Then there was the fact that my parents seemed so happy together it made me feel even more alone.

  I followed Whitley and Cannon next.

  They snapped back to the wake three minutes before the rest of us.

  When I sprinted into Wincroft, they were already gone. They left no note. The only evidence was red brake lights retreating down the drive. Yet their cars remained in front of the house. This meant that they left in some other car, and together, which suggested that whatever wounds their words had left from the fight, they’d already healed, like the skin of superheroes.

  That didn’t surprise me. They never stayed angry at each other for long.

  Checking E.S.S. Burt’s classic car garage, I noticed wet tire marks on the floor. I went into his office, read through his insurance forms, and was able to figure out that the missing vehicle was a maroon 1982 Rolls-Royce Silver Spur.

  For the next few wakes, I tried to catch up to them.

  It seemed impossible. They hadn’t driven to the highway or any of the obvious coastal roads, so where did they disappear to, and so swiftly? Only countless wakes later, when I turned down an unmarked, narrow dirt drive, did I see the black wood sign painted in elegant Victorian script.

  DAVY JONES’S LOCKER. Another mile and there was a second sign: MEMBERS ONLY.

  I pulled into the parking lot. Davy Jones’s appeared to be some kind of exclusive marina crowded with yachts. There was a white clubhouse and an outdoor tiki bar. Tanned crewmen in blue polo shirts strode purposefully along the docks, wielding umbrellas and iPads.

  Parked directly in front of me was one maroon 1982 Rolls-Royce Silver Spur.

  Almost immediately I spotted Whitley and Cannon.

  They were speaking to a group of retirees, three couples in their sixties or seventies, the women with short dyed hair and lean bodies like little bits of punctuation. The men were fat and bald. They were laughing. In fact, Wit and Cannon were laughing so much as I slipped out of my truck, keeping the umbrella low so they wouldn’t spot me, I couldn’t help gaping, incredulous at their all-too-convincing impression of being totally normal—like two people with tomorrows.

  They seemed to be waiting for something.

  Apparently it was an invitation to board the super-yacht the Last Hurrah, docked beside them. Because not a minute later, they were stepping with phony wonder up the teak steps, past the helicopter landing pad, and vanishing inside.

  Bewildered, I strolled up to the boat. The uniformed crew were preparing for departure.

  “Where you headed?”

  “Bermuda.”

  Minutes later, the yacht cast off. That night, like all other recent nights, Wit and Cannon never returned to Wincroft to vote. By the next wake they were already gone.

  So what were they up to? And why did the question fill me with such dread?

  * * *

  —

  I had thirty-three minutes.

  There were forty-seven minutes between the time I woke up in the Jaguar and the time the Last Hurrah cast off for Bermuda. By minute thirty-three it was too late. There were too many crew members buzzing around not to be spotted. I was caught a million times.

  “Excuse me? Who are you?”

  “Hey!”

  “You’re not authorized to be here.”

  “Is this the Dream Weaver?”

  “Is this Cleopatra III?”

  “I’m looking for Captain Martin. I’m his niece.”

  I’d leave, stuttering apologies, ignoring the looks of suspicion as I snuck back to my truck. I’d watch as Wit and Cannon boarded that same yacht and took off into the open sea.

  My only hope lay in immediately, the instant I woke, grabbing Cannon’s car keys and sprinting to his Mercedes—twice as fast as my truck—taking a shortcut along a dirt service road, and barreling ninety miles an hour through marshes and sand into the Davy Jones’s Locker marina.

  I’d park behind a tree and speed-walk to the small cruiser beside Last Hurrah, where, pretending to be boarding that boat, I’d wait for the teenage deckhand to check his cell phone, at which point I had twenty seconds to dash up the steps and duck into the first door I came to. It led into an ornate game room with a jukebox and pinball machines. I then had fifteen seconds to slip up three flights to the staterooms and vanish into the bedroom at the end of the hall.

  It overlooked the marina. It was there that, by cracking the window, I was able to eavesdrop on the outrageous scene—or, rather, con job. Whitley and Cannon, posing as newly married college sweethearts from Columbus, Ohio, had just been informed of a critical problem with their rented yacht, thereby leaving their honeymoon in tatters. Loudly they lamented their plight, which happened to be overheard by the owner of Last Hurrah, Ted Daisy of Cincinnati, who invited the poor young couple aboard.

  “Why don’t you spend the week with us? Plenty of room here for everybody.”

  “That’s very kind, sir,” said Cannon. “But we couldn’t.”

  “Nonsense. The downside is you’ll spend your honeymoon with a bunch of old geezers. But we promise to stay out of your way. Y
ou’ll have a chef, an activities director, and a range of toys at your disposal.”

  “What do you say, sugar?” Cannon asked Whitley.

  She nibbled a fingernail. “I’m not sure, honeybun.”

  I marveled at the way they had their act down, like a couple of seasoned Broadway tap dancers. How many wakes had it taken them to figure out the perfect formula for eliciting the invitation to board the yacht? Ten? Ten thousand?

  “You kids are coming with us. I insist on it. Ted Daisy. This is my wife, Patty.”

  “Artwell Calvin the third,” said Cannon.

  “Anastasia Calvin,” said Whitley, shaking her head. “I really don’t know what I did in a previous life to deserve such kindness. I think I’m going to cry.”

  * * *

  —

  What had I expected aboard the Last Hurrah? A relaxed vacation cruise? A beautiful, distracting dream where Whitley and Cannon could forget the Neverworld?

  That wasn’t it. Not at all.

  I should have known. Their relationship at Darrow had always been incendiary. They had sex in closets and classrooms, on rooftops, in the woods, on the balcony of the chapel, never once getting caught. They stalked hallways with their arms around each other like boa constrictors, students and teachers alike eyeing them nervously, though no one complained. They were in the top five of our class, after all. Whitley talked about their love as an insatiable need. I saw it as a lethal bullet speeding toward a target. Whether that target was one of them or some unsuspecting third party, I had no idea. They fought, made up, hated each other, couldn’t live without the other for even one second.

  They called each other Sid and Nancy. They stole things for fun. Anything on campus, no matter how big or small, could be targeted, like Mrs. Ferguson’s AP Physics exams; a $12,000 seascape from an art gallery; Rector Trask’s XXL tartan vest, which he notoriously donned for Darrow’s Holiday Feast; even a John Deere excavator from the library construction site. They’d help themselves to whatever it was, resulting in a weeklong uproar of faculty announcements and threats of expulsion, a few unsuspecting students being summoned into a dean’s office to detail what they knew—until, with equal quiet and swiftness, the object reappeared. Their knack for burglary was not due to the usual reasons for acting out, like anger or some perverse craving for attention. It was a simple love for the art of deceit—being a step ahead of everyone—not to mention their ongoing need to outdo each other.

  Everyone whispered they’d be legendary if they stayed together. I secretly thought their connection was too close, like twins. Cannon didn’t have Whitley’s temper, but he had her intensity and knack for manipulation, dropping a word here, an inference there, that would be the gram of uranium to turn a benign situation nuclear. They broke up couples, made teachers cry. When they finally called it quits senior year, their breakup was eerily silent, a biological weapon that had abruptly dispelled with hardly any smoke, defying all scientific explanation.

  “Everyone knows adolescent love has a short shelf life,” Whitley explained with shrug.

  Now it was clear that Whitley and Cannon boarded the Last Hurrah for no reason other than that they’d decided that boat was their mad, twisted playground to tear into, as if they were two wild monkeys locked in a cage.

  It was their padded cell. The soundproof room where they could scream their heads off.

  The first night, I watched Wit get so drunk she vomited all over the dinner table on the platters of lobster and sirloin steak.

  “Whoops,” she said, wiping her mouth.

  The second night, she danced provocatively with Ted Daisy. When his wife, Patty, saw what was happening, she called out in a drunken voice, “Ted! Ted?” like their fifty-year marriage had suddenly turned into a phone call with poor reception.

  On another occasion, Cannon and Wit stripped down to their underwear and, climbing up onto the ship’s railing, screamed, “Carpe noctem!” Holding hands, they jumped, falling the fifty feet into the sea. Alarms sounded. Women screamed. Engines gasped to a halt. The crew members swarmed, shouting orders, two diving in with life vests.

  “Find them!” shouted Ted Daisy, desperately peering over the railing. He looked like he was having a heart attack. “I’ll be damned if I’m going to jail because of those wackos!”

  “We’re going to lose everything,” wailed Patty.

  “We should have tied them up the moment we realized something was mentally off with them. We should have called the coast guard.”

  “It’s your fault!” screamed Patty, her stiff blond hair standing up like pieces of potato chips. “You invited them aboard because you wanted to impress that little blond piece of ass. You thought you had a chance with her. Ha! Hope you’re happy now!”

  Hysteria. Panic. Fury. Despair. Fear. Alarm.

  It all happened aboard the Last Hurrah on a day that would not stop happening.

  I watched from back rooms, spare bedrooms, an electrical supply closet. I put on the extra crew uniform I’d found, and no one looked at me twice. I kept waiting for the right moment to appear, to try to talk down Cannon and Wit, bring them back from the razor’s edge. I couldn’t find it. I knew them too well. When they were like this, there was no stopping them.

  I remained where I was, peering out at the nightmarish scene through a crack in the door, terrified, sick, sometimes crying, wondering when it would stop.

  Then one night Cannon smashed a decanter over Ted Daisy’s head. Ted shoved him into a display case stacked with crystal goblets. They began wrestling, overturning coffee tables and the dining room table. Then Cannon was sitting on the man’s chest, strangling him.

  I’d had enough. I ran out of the closet and knelt beside Cannon, trying to pry off his hands. The old man was spitting and blubbering.

  “Stop it!” I cried.

  It took Cannon another minute to let go. I tried CPR, compressing the man’s chest, counting the way my dad had taught me. I checked his pulse. He was alive, but barely.

  “You have to stop,” I whispered.

  Cannon surveyed me like I was a distant relative whose name he couldn’t recall.

  “You’re making it worse. Because we remember. These people don’t. But you do. And the destruction will eat away at you.”

  “Oh, shut up, Bee,” said Wit.

  She’d risen from the sofa, where she’d been passed out cold.

  “What are you even doing here? Spying? When will you realize we want nothing to do with you? We’re not your friends anymore. You blew that when you went MIA after Jim. You think you can just ditch your friends like that and get away with it?”

  She shuffled toward me, her eyes red and threatening. I turned and ran, barging past the other guests, who’d been woken by the noise and were now, in their white terry-cloth robes and matching slippers, gaping in shock at the scene. I ran to the third-floor deck and spent the rest of the wake in one of the rescue boats, sobbing, hoping no one would find me.

  I never returned to the Last Hurrah.

  Cannon and Wit went the very next wake. Wit left me a message scrawled in high-drama red lipstick across the kitchen counter.

  STAY AWAY.

  The threat was unnecessary. I could never go back there.

  Would repetition eventually render even the Last Hurrah boring, whereupon they’d return to Wincroft? Would one of them decide they wanted to live, to escape the Neverworld, to vote? Or would they simply move on to devouring something or someone else? The Neverworld held an infinite number of playgrounds, so it was possible, horrifying as it was to consider, that I’d never see them again.

  I couldn’t think about that. Not yet.

  Instead, I turned my attention to Martha.

  It was funny how I’d almost forgotten her. And I suspected it was just what she wanted.

  Martha no longer spent the da
y hiking Wincroft. Now she would hurriedly enter the mansion, retrieve a raincoat, and drive off, never returning.

  “Where do you go?” I asked her.

  She whipped around in surprise. She hadn’t seen me sitting in the rocking chair on the porch. Recovering, she pulled out her car keys, then opened an umbrella.

  “I visit this silly Baptist church buffet up in Newport.” She shrugged, her face turning red. “I’ve turned it into my personal biosphere. Like I find a guy and see if I can get him to say ‘I love you’ by the end of the night. Or I approach a woman and see if I can get her to leave her husband. I’m trying to prove a theory about human nature. That anyone is capable of anything at any time, given a certain set of conditions.”

  She was lying. I could tell.

  “Can I come with you?” I asked.

  “I prefer to be alone, actually.”

  “What about when you were hiking around with binoculars? What were you doing?”

  “Bird-watching.”

  She was lying about that too. She seemed fully aware I didn’t believe her, yet she stared back at me, undaunted.

  “Aren’t you worried?” I asked, trying to ignore the anger in the pit of my stomach. “Upset? Scared? We’ve lost them all now.”

  She smiled thinly. “I suggest you resolve yourself to your fate, Bee.”

  And with that she turned and hurried down the steps to her car.

  * * *

  —

  The next wake, I headed straight to my truck. While Martha was inside getting the raincoat, I hid in a driveway down the street, and when she pulled out, I followed her.

  Unfortunately, my confrontation appeared to have tipped her off, because as soon as I pulled up behind her on the interstate, though I was three cars back, she took the first exit and drove in meandering circles around deserted office parks before pulling into Birchwood Plaza. She spent the next four hours wandering Urban Outfitters and Barnes & Noble and eating a calzone in the food court.