She waved her hand as if shooing a fly and turned, idly surveying her reflection in the mirror.
“It’s not about the vote,” I went on. “It’s about staying together. We could lose ourselves forever in this place. Remember what Jim used to say about friendship? About us? What we have is a loyalty that can see us through anything.”
Whitley bit her bottom lip, trying not to laugh.
“You still love him. Wow. He was the only person you ever saw in a room. And it’s still true, even though he’s dead. By the way. Did you ever wonder why he chose you? Out of all the girls at school?”
She rubbed some lipstick off her chin. I braced myself, because I knew what was coming. Her tantrums always began this way: she made some grand opening statement like a veteran prosecutor holding a jury rapt, the perfect set of words to slice her target in two.
“He chose you because a plain setting makes the diamond sparkle brighter.”
I said nothing, willfully reminding myself to ignore whatever Wit said when she was angry. Yet I felt my face flush, a nervous voice in my head chattering It’s not true.
“I disagree,” said Cannon, frowning. “The problem always was that you loved Jim.”
“He’s right,” muttered Kipling. “It was obvious, child. Like a wart on a lifeguard’s big toe at a public pool.”
“Oh, please.” Whitley glared at him. “You were obsessed with him. Admit it. Don’t think we didn’t see you ogling him, your Southern accent going all syrupy around him, like you thought you could seduce him with some third-rate community-theater impression of Truman Capote. And you.” She turned to Cannon. “You were happy when he died.”
“I was gutted,” he answered in a clipped tone.
“Gutted with glee, maybe.”
Cannon glared at her, his face implacable. “You hate the Linda? Well, too bad. You’re her to a tee. All that’s missing are the face-lifts, the cankles, and the army of men who have fled you like a storm warning for a Category Five hurricane. But don’t worry, angel. That will come in time.”
“There is no time,” noted Kipling, holding up a finger, half asleep. “Not anymore.”
Whitley stared at Cannon, mouth open, shoulders trembling.
“Cannon didn’t mean that,” I whispered, touching her arm.
She threw off my hand, seizing a bottle from the floor. Cannon ducked as it exploded against the mirror behind his head.
“You’re all monsters! Get out of my house!”
She elbowed me out of the way as she fled. Seconds later, she reappeared at the end of the hall brandishing a shotgun, aiming for my head. I took off down the staircase as a shot blasted the ceiling, chandelier swinging, bits of plaster and molding crashing to the ground.
“Get out! Termites! Leeches! Rats!”
More shots rang out as I reached the front door and pulled it open, colliding with Martha.
She was wearing a green poncho, soaking wet from the rain.
“Beatrice? What’s the matter?”
“Worms! Maggots! Those disgusting fish at the bottom of the ocean with switchblade teeth! GET OUT! ALL OF YOU!”
I didn’t answer. I sprinted outside to my truck and took off, blasting across flowerbeds, mud puddles, broken branches, swerving back onto the driveway as I tried to catch my breath.
I had to get away from them. I had to clear my head.
Everything they said, I kept reminding myself, was just the Neverworld talking. Being stuck here, day after day, made you think and feel the darkest things, as if daring the universe, God, whatever was out there, to prove that they weren’t true.
A plain setting makes the diamond sparkle brighter. You loved Jim. You were happy when he died.
I didn’t want to think about it. I drove straight to the Captain’s Crow, letting myself in with the spare key my dad kept stashed behind the outside wall thermometer. I’d make a grilled cheese, eat some Wreck Rummage, and fall asleep. I’d figure out what to do tomorrow, yesterday, today, whatever it was.
The moment I entered the restaurant, however, slipping through the tiger-stripe shadows, I realized something was very wrong.
The café chairs, normally overturned on the tables, had been tossed all over the floor. The glass on the display of ice cream was cracked. Within the smells of toast and sunscreen was something else—something rancid. I’d just slipped into the kitchen, wondering if Sleepy Sam had forgotten to take out the trash, when my sneaker kicked shards of glass. Bending down, I saw I’d stepped on my great-grandfather Burn’s pencil portrait. It had moved from its usual place over the door. Somehow it had ended up by the stove, facedown, the frame broken.
There was a robbery. That was my first thought.
Then I felt the wake descending, the blackest of sleeps pulling over me like a coffin lid, and I realized something else was going on, something strange.
I heard a faint tapping. Looking up, I screamed. In the window overlooking the alley by the sink, a face stared in at me.
The Keeper.
His gaze was neither hostile nor friendly, only stark, his jaw slashed by shadow. I realized that he was cutting away the ivy and vines of honeysuckle that had overtaken the wall, which my mom had never gotten around to pruning.
When I stumbled outside to confront him, he was striding down the alleyway.
“Hey!” I shouted after him. “What do you want?”
He ignored me, splashing through puddles, the clippings in a bag tossed over his shoulder, rounding the corner.
“Leave me alone!”
It was then that it occurred to me what he was.
The Keeper was a reminder.
The vote. The vote. The vote.
After the fight, they went their separate ways. The moment they sprang back to the wake, Kip, Martha, Cannon, and Wit dispersed like seeds off a dead dandelion. They left without a word, sometimes without even looking at each other.
I let them go. I had no choice.
Was it depression? Probably. Fury over their fate? That too. Or maybe they just wanted to see what it felt like to climb beyond the Danger signs and Keep Out barricades, the barbed wire protecting the edges of the lookout atop the skyscraper, and jump.
What happened to us didn’t matter. Peril didn’t exist. If the Neverworld Wake had one asset, it was that we could remain forever young, like the Alphaville song. We could live and die and live again, without consequence.
Kipling began hitchhiking.
The moment he appeared in the back of the Jaguar, he took off down the drive. After he did this countless times, his expression an enigmatic mixture of resolve and expectation—as if he were actually looking forward to something—I followed him. I tailed him out to the main road, where, just before the stone bridge, he began walking backward, sticking out his thumb.
It was always the sixth car that stopped for him. A brown Pontiac with a dented fender.
I watched him disappear into that Pontiac so many times, I just had to know what was so captivating that he couldn’t miss out on it, not even for one wake. So I caught up to him.
“Where are you going?” I asked him.
He turned, startled to see me, then annoyed. “What?”
“Who picks you up in the Pontiac?”
He kept walking. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Where do you go?”
“Leave me alone, Bee.”
“Just tell me.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“None a your goddamn business.”
“Then I’m coming with you.”
“No.”
He was furious. He actually looked like he was considering hitting me, or tying me to a tree so he could get away.
“Tell me and I’ll go back,” I said.
He scowled, wiping the streaming rain off his face. “Her name’s Shirley.”