Neverworld Wake

by Marisha Pessl

  I found myself wondering if Mr. Joshua had been in love with Jim. Or was it something else? Had he seen himself attached to Jim’s rising star—Jim, his one-way bus ticket out of town; Jim, his partner, pet student, meal ticket—all those hopes and prospects null and void now that Jim was dead?

  “Vida definitely remembers Jim,” said Whitley, grinning. She tilted her head, arching an eyebrow. “Kitten, dear? Now would be the optimal time to ask your parents to leave the room, unless you want them privy to all the gory details.” She plopped easily into a chair at the head of the table, hitching one leg over the armrest, and helped herself to a green bean. “We want to know everything,” she went on, nibbling the end. “Who started it? Who ended it? Where did the two of you sneak off to off campus? And why did you leave town the nanosecond Jim turned up dead?”

  Vida only stared, her mouth open, incredulous.

  “Please don’t insult our intelligence denyin’ it, child,” drawled Kipling, waving his hand in the air. “For one? Beatrice doesn’t lie. She’s the kindest, most honest person you’ll ever meet. Her middle name’s Good Witch a the North. And two, we don’t have a lot of patience. We’ve been livin’ this same day, known as a wake, over and over again? And it’s made us all a little tense.”

  “A little impossible to deal with,” added Cannon.

  “Excuse me?” asked Mrs. Joshua. “What on earth is happening here? Paul? Paul!”

  Mr. Joshua, standing beside her, seemed unable to move or speak, sort of like a wren hovering nervously around a park bench where a few breadcrumbs have just fallen.

  “You people are nuts,” said Vida in a hoarse voice. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  Smiling, Whitley grabbed a plate of food and launched it into the air like a Frisbee. It sailed across the room, chicken, corn, rice flying, crashing against the windows.

  For a moment, everyone was too stunned to move. Then Mrs. Joshua dashed to the side table and grabbed a phone. She dialed 911.

  “I’d like to report a home invasion.”

  “Tell her to hang up,” Cannon told Vida, scratching his nose.

  “We need the police. Now. There are children—teenagers—trespassing in our house—”

  “Tell her to hang up if you don’t like orange jumpsuits,” said Whitley.

  Vida glanced at her, startled.

  “Or public showers,” said Cannon, plopping easily into a chair.

  “They’re terrorizing us. My husband’s former students. Please come at once.”

  “Hang up the phone, Mom,” said Vida.

  “One of my pet peeves is when girls don’t support other girls,” said Whitley. “When they just help themselves to someone’s boyfriend like he’s some free smoked gouda sample speared with a toothpick at Whole Foods. It’s so unforgivable. And out-of-date.”

  “The Darrow School—”

  “I’d call off your pit bull of a mom,” said Cannon.

  “Mom,” said Vida sharply.

  Mrs. Joshua didn’t hear her. “Five forty-five Entrance Drive. Please hurry.”

  Vida leapt to her feet. She ran to her mother, shoving the woman aside as she wrenched the phone away and threw it across the room. It hit a small painting of a fox playing a violin, which immediately fell off the wall, revealing a bright rectangle of wallpaper spangled with black mold.

  Everyone fell silent in total bewilderment.

  Vida stood there gaping at us, wild-eyed, trying to catch her breath.

  “What did you do this time?” Mr. Joshua asked her.

  * * *

  —

  “I don’t know how many times I have to say it,” growled Vida. “We were friends. That’s all. All he did was ask me for a ride. He wanted my help getting off campus. He hid under a blanket in the backseat of my car as I drove past Moses. And that was it, okay? I really don’t know what the big deal is. You people are seriously insane.”

  “We don’t believe you,” said Cannon.

  “That’s your problem.”

  “Where did you take Jim?” asked Martha.

  “I already said.”

  “Tell us again,” said Whitley.

  “I don’t know. Some shopping center?”

  “In Newport?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you remember where it was? Or what it was called?” asked Martha.

  “No.”

  “What can you tell us?” asked Cannon.

  Vida shrugged. “It was some dingy section of town. Dollar stores. A pet store. The parking lot had some man in a chicken costume handing out heart balloons.”

  “And why did Jim want to go there?” asked Martha.

  “Maybe he wanted to eat fried chicken and buy a pet iguana? I have no fucking clue.”

  “You must have drawn some conclusion,” said Wit.

  Vida shrugged, irritated. “I thought maybe he was trying to score some weed. There were these dime baggers loitering around the parking lot.”

  “What time was this?”

  “Eight? Nine at night?” Vida sighed. “I offered to stay, give him a ride back to school, but he said he’d make his own way. And that was it, all right? I don’t see what the big deal is, and I had nothing to do with his death. I mean, please.”

  For the past twenty minutes, contemptuous and huffy, Vida had been relating the same story over and over again: Jim had only asked her for a ride that night. That was all. There was nothing more to it. They had not been hooking up. They’d been accidental friends. She had not wavered in this explanation. And though I was inclined to believe her, listening to her was still like a knife through my heart, because even if it was true that there was nothing romantic about their relationship, it still meant Jim hadn’t chosen to confide in me, that whatever he had been up to, whatever had upset him, he’d chosen to deal with it behind my back. And if he had lied to me about that, I couldn’t help wondering what else he’d lied about.

  “I find it pretty far-fetched that he’d ask you for a ride if you weren’t more than friends,” said Whitley.

  Vida glared at her. “Like I said. We talked. Occasionally. He visited me at the art gallery and gave me advice sometimes. Jim was a card-carrying genius. He understood stuff. I talked to him about my issues, you know, and he gave me better advice in ten minutes than six years of Dr. Milton Yeskowitz with the goatee, the too-long thumbnails, and the bookshelf full of seventies self-help manuals called Learning to Love Yourself.”

  She said this with a scathing glance at her father, who stared back blankly. Both Mr. and Mrs. Joshua had been listening to their daughter as if she were speaking a strange dialect in which only every third word was comprehensible.

  “Jim reminded me again and again that my life was alive and I had to tame it. That was why I decided to move to Chicago. I told him I had the opportunity to intern at the lab, and he said I had to go. I had to seize the day. Even if I was afraid. Jim said when there’s a break in the path in front of you and you’re freaked out, you take a running leap and trust that you’ll reach the other side. He inspired me. And I helped him, you know. He was really stressed about his musical. He wanted it to be great. He wanted it to be up there with Oklahoma! and Rent. He aspired to greatness. More than anything, he wanted to go down in history. And he was going to. He showed me his notebook, and he’d written the most insane rhymes. He was a genius.” She shook her head. “It’s horrible what happened to him. But that’s life, right? All the amazing people die too soon.”

  “When was the last time you saw him?” I asked.

  “Don’t you people listen? I told you. When I dropped him off at that mall.”

  “You didn’t talk to him the night he died? He didn’t tell you to meet him at Vulcan Quarry?”

  She scowled. “What are you talking about? I haven’t been out to that quar
ry in forever.” She sniffed, shaking her head. “Soon as I heard what had happened, though, that he was not only dead but had been a major drug dealer or whatever? I went straight to the police and told them they were completely insane.” She rolled her eyes. “Whatever drugs they found in his dorm? They definitely weren’t Jim’s.”

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  “He told me who they belonged to.”

  “Excuse me?” asked Martha sharply, with a surprised glance at me. “What?”

  “Oh, yeah.” Vida nodded. “A couple of weeks before he died. It was all he could talk about. How he’d found out one of his best friends had been selling serious drugs to students for years.”

  “Did he say who it was?” asked Kipling.

  “He didn’t have to. As he was telling me, the friend called. ‘Speak of the devil,’ he said. I saw the name right there on his phone.” Vida wrinkled her nose. “It was kind of weird. It was just one word.”

  “What was the word?” asked Cannon.

  “Shrieks.”

  Instantly, a chorus of voices began to scream in my head: No. No. Impossible.

  No one moved.

  Whitley was gazing at the carpet, a blank look on her face.

  “I gave the name to the police,” Vida went on. “Told them everything. I said this person had something to do with Jim’s murder. I was sure. Knowing their secret was about to come out? They had to get rid of him. Shut him up, you know?” She widened her eyes. “But the police didn’t care. Or they’d eaten too many Krispy Kremes to peel their asses off their swivel chairs and do something, because I never heard anything about it. I wasn’t surprised. No one does anything anymore. The only one who did, who went above and beyond for everyone, was Jim. And now he’s gone.”

  She fell silent. There was a moment of uneasy stillness.

  Then Whitley leapt to her feet and ran out of the house.

  We took off after her.

  At the front door, as Cannon and the others barged into a downpour, I paused, taking a final glance back at the Joshuas, who were regarding each other sullenly, like three strangers held in a jail cell before charges were filed. Then I turned and sprinted out.

  Whitley was already disappearing down Entrance Drive.

  “Whitley!” shouted Kip.

  “Come on!” yelled Cannon. “Where are you going?”

  She ignored them, veering off the road and vanishing over the hill. When I caught up, they were far below, Whitley a dark figure flying past the tennis courts and soccer fields, Martha, Cannon, and Kip fanning out behind her.

  “Hold on!” screamed Martha.

  “Let’s talk about this!”

  “Whitley Lansing! Stop!”

  I raced after them as fast as I could, faint police sirens erupting somewhere behind me. Whitley? The White Rabbit? How was it possible?

  The rain was torrential now. Like ammunition blasting from the sky, it riddled my head and arms. It was hard to see where I was going. Tree branches cracked and thrashed overhead, thunder rumbling. I slipped and tripped my way to the bottom of the hill, where there was a swamp of thick, tarlike mud. My sneakers sank inches into the ground. I could see Wit and the others farther ahead, rounding the front of the girls’ dormitories: Slate Hall, Stonington Manor, the Gothic arches hulking and dark, misshapen shadows stretching long and fingerlike under the yellowed lamps. I veered through the garden behind Morley House and nearly ran over Martha. Apparently she’d slipped and fallen facedown in the mud.

  “Are you okay?” I shouted.

  “Go,” she gasped, waving me on.

  I kept running. As I swerved around the front of the aquatic center, a hulking glass-and-slate building, I saw that one of the glass doors had been smashed with a brick. I opened the door and scrambled inside, disembodied shouts and footsteps echoing through the darkness in front of me. I hurried through the dark lobby, past the many display cases of trophies and first-place ribbons, black-and-white photographs of the swim team. I sprinted down the checkered corridor, my muddy sneakers slipping and sliding on the linoleum, and thrust open the double doors to the Olympic-sized pool.

  Kipling and Cannon were inside. Whitley had dived into the water, and they were tracking her dark figure along the edge as she glided into the deep end.

  After a minute, she surfaced, panting.

  “What are you doing?” said Cannon. “We just want to talk to you.”

  “You can’t outrun us, child,” said Kipling.

  Glaring at them, she only sank back underwater.

  “She’s going for the door again,” said Cannon, running toward me. Sure enough, Whitley leapt up the ladder, shoving me aside so hard I tripped against a chair as she heaved the doors open, only to come face to face with Martha, who was covered head to toe in mud. Startled, Wit tried pushing past, but Martha was gripping one of the swimming trophies from the cases. She wheeled back and hit Whitley in the side of the head with it. Yowling in pain, Whitley fell to the ground.

  “Behold the White Rabbit,” said Martha, panting.

  She slammed the doors and wedged the trophy between the handles to lock them.

  “So it was you!” shouted Cannon, staring down at Whitley. “All along. How could you never say anything? How could you deceive me, day after day after— Unbelievable.”

  “I didn’t mean to do it more than a few times,” she muttered. She rolled upright, rubbing the side of her head. “My number started getting passed around, and the myth of the White Rabbit was born. It was impossible to stop.”

  “How could you?” I whispered in a low voice.

  Whitley glared at me. “Yes, Bee, we all know that you’d never do something like that in a million years. That you’re the good one. With a moral compass perfectly set toward sainthood. The rest of us aren’t so lucky.” She sniffed, staring gloomily at the ground.

  We said nothing, reflections of the blued water of the pool trembling across our faces.

  I couldn’t believe how she’d lied. For years. I’d never suspected her. Neither had Cannon, given the enraged look on his face.

  Yet it made a sort of twisted sense, considering that Whitley’s mother, the Linda, ruled a pharmaceutical empire. It wasn’t rare to hear Whitley talk about her mother’s business acumen with awe—how she, armed with her mink coat, high school dropout’s education, and Missouri-farm-girl common sense, could command New York City boardrooms and shareholder meetings, put macho bankers in their place with one of her perfectly timed ten-cent-gumball put-downs. If stupid could fly, you’d be an Airbus A Three-Fifty. The truth was—and it used to make me cry thinking about it, though I was always careful never to say anything to Wit—the Linda didn’t love her daughter, not the way Whitley needed. Ever since Wit was a baby, she’d been shuffled between nannies and nurses and au pairs, summer camps and boarding schools and educational groups, like some lost suitcase. I somehow understood. Whitley had become the White Rabbit to prove to herself, or maybe even to her mother, that she was worthy.

  I hadn’t forgotten Vida’s comment that unmasking the White Rabbit had possibly played a role in Jim’s death. I said this person had something to do with Jim’s murder. Knowing their secret was about to come out? They had to get rid of him. The comment nagged at me, glimmering with the unmistakable sheen of truth, though I didn’t want to admit it.

  “How did Jim find out about you?” I asked her.

  Wit glanced up at me, sullen. “He caught me.”

  “When?”

  “A week before finals. I always snuck out at three in the morning to do a drop. He was coming back from Vulcan Quarry and saw me entering the observatory. He followed me into one of the domes, watched what I was doing. And he went nuts on me. Made it into a bigger deal than it was. I mean, we were about to graduate. The White Rabbit was done. Jim started screaming about civic responsibi
lity. Doing the right thing. He insisted that I confess to the administration.”

  “So you decided to frame him,” said Martha. “You put your drugs in his guitar so he’d take the fall for you.”

  “No.” Whitley adamantly shook her head. “That was an accident. I always kept my supply buried behind the old maintenance shed at the edge of Drury Field. You know that place everyone says is haunted? Well, it’s not. It’s just cruddy, with a lot of old athletic signs and banners. One day, I saw this general contractor inspecting it. I found out they were going to demolish the thing and build a greenhouse. That night at supper I excused myself and dug up my stash. I meant to keep it in my room, only they were painting the hallways that night. The place was crawling with maintenance. I was desperate. This huge stash in my bag? If I was stopped…” She shuddered. “I ducked next door into Packer, to Jim’s room. I knew he kept his key under the carpet. I shoved the stash in his guitar. I meant to go back and move it the next day. Obviously. But that was when they announced Jim was missing. By the time I had a chance to go back, the cops had already searched his room and found everything.”

  Martha stared at her. “Jim was reported missing Thursday morning. The police found him dead late Friday night. So when exactly did you hide the drugs in his guitar?”