Neverland (21 page)

“Boys and cars,” Nonie said dismissively, although she seemed to be enjoying scrunching down behind the wheel of a smart red bumper car.

“Cage is closed,” Missy said when we got out of the cars. She pointed to the carousel. “I really want to go there.”

“Then go,” Sumter said.

Missy proceeded to tick off the list of rides that looked closed or stupid. “Trabant’s not going. Whirligig looks dead. Nobody’s set the sideshow up.”

“Shut up,” Nonie told her. “You can be so depressing. If you want to go on the carousel, we’ll
go
on the carousel, okay?”

“Girls stick together,” Sumter said to my sisters. “Boys stick together. We don’t want to go on no
girl
rides.”

“Oh, come on, Sunny.”

“Don’t call me that,
Messy
.”

We were off to such a good start that Julianne herself separated us, giving Sumter and me our six dollars, and then she herded the girls over to the House of Mirrors, which was always open and never fun beyond the first goopy mirror. I followed after Sumter, who led me around by each ride, invariably making the dismissive pronouncement, “For kiddies,” or “Closed.” The carousel was open, but of course this was for kiddies. “If they were
real
horses with spears through their middles, now that would be completely neat.” I wanted to ride the carousel, but went along with him anyway. We bought some candy apples. I was in the middle of devouring mine when Sumter grabbed me by the shirt and said, “Lookit.”

One of the better rides was open.

The Crack-the-Whip.

“No way,” I said, “I just
ate
.”

“C’mon, it’s the only good ride in the place.”

It was seventy-five cents to get on, which, after the candy apple, left me with a buck and a quarter. “I’m gonna get sick if they go too fast,” I said, handing the sleazy ticket-taker my stub.

“Who cares? Don’tcha just love Crack-the-Whip?” He raced ahead of the three other kids who were in line to grab what he considered to be the best seat. When I caught up with him, sitting down and pulling the safety bar down to our waists, he said, “When’s it gonna go? When’s it gonna go?” He began clanging on the safety bar with his fists, harder and harder. “Hurry up! Go! Go!” he shouted. But within a few seconds we were spinning and whirring around, and my stomach was heaving. The whole time the ride went, Sumter was just laughing his head off with pleasure.

After I wobbled out of the seat, clutching the railing that led down to the exit, I went around back behind the ride to throw up. Sumter stayed up front. As I was well into my second heave I looked up into bright
merciless sunlight and saw Zinnia. I had not seen her since the night of the giggling and tickling in Neverland.

“Poor baby,” she said. She was licking at an ice cream cone like it wasn’t ever going to melt. She offered me her paper napkin. I took it and wiped my mouth.

“Can’t you let a guy barf in peace?”

“Hey, I gave you my napkin.”

“Thank you.”

“You want a lick on my cone?”

“I just threw
up
.”

She shrugged. “I don’t mind.” She had a blurred Southern accent, the kind I loved.
Ah-doan-mahn
.

I shook my head. “You’re crazy.”

“Far as I can tell, this world’s a crazy place. Where’s Summer?”

“Sum
t
er.”

“You know who I mean.”

“He’s ’round t’other side. What you want with him?”

She dropped her ice cream down on the asphalt. She had chocolate all over her mouth as she approached me. I was still wiping my lips, and my tongue was sour with the aftertaste of candy-apple spit-up.

“‘Member kissing me?”

“‘Course.”

“Whatja feel?”

I blushed. “Nothing.”

“Nothing? You taste anything?”

“Huh?”

“Like water?”

“Well, ’course I tasted
water
. When you kiss, that’s what you taste.”

“You tasted sea water.” She stood right next to me, and my skin both crawled and cried out for her touch. I wanted to do things you’re not supposed to do until you’re twenty and married, and I didn’t even
know
what those things were. She continued, “You tasted sea water, on accounta
you’re like him. But he knows things you don’t, ’cause he’s more him than you are.”

My ten-year-old heart was churning like a washing machine. Her breath was sea water then, too—fresh and clean and all-surrounding. Her lips were parched and peeled back from crooked teeth.

“You tell him something for me.”

I whispered, “Yeah.”

“You tell him it’s not always good. Tell him some things never get better.”

“Like what? Like what never gets better?” I felt sweat crawling from my belly downward.

“Like dying,” she said.

 

“THAT GIRL’S downright crazy,” I told Sumter when I came back around front. “That Zinnia.”

“She’s here? She’s
here
? How could she’ve leaked out like that? She’s
really
here?”

“Yeah, and she told me to tell you dying’s not so great. Is she a nut or what?”

Sumter stared at me as if seeing me for the first time. “Beau, that means you can—” He thought better of what he’d been about to say. “If I was to tell
you
something, you keep it secret? On your sacred oath to Lucy and Neverland?”

“Sure.”

“She’s a ghost.”

“Yeah, huh.”

“She and her brothers. They’re dead already. They were sacrifices. The first sacrifices to Neverland. Didn’t I tell you that already? You sure I didn’t tell you already?”

Of course I didn’t believe him. He was so good at lies. We went around behind the Crack-the-Whip, but all that was left of Zinnia was the broken cone and a puddle of melted ice cream.

“So, do spooks like chocolate?” I asked him. “A ghost give us head lice, too?”

“Jesus God it’s
hot
,” Nonie said when we ran into my sisters near the Coca-Cola stand. “I wish we’d just go home. Maybe they’re divorced by now.”

“I wouldn’t mind going on the carousel again,” Missy said, “I have fifty cents left.”

Julianne Sanders hovered around our perimeter. She was smoking a skinny cigar and talking to the man who sold the Cokes. They were apparently old friends, and Sumter whispered to me, “Probably her
boy
friend.”

“He can’t be. He’s white,” Missy said.

“He can be anything as long as he likes girls with hairy legs,” Sumter said. “Oh, Miss Sanders,” he called to her in that syrupy voice, and she turned and gave him a wise look. “We’re just gonna walk around a bit, we promise not to go too far.”

“You get into anything,” she said, looking us all over, but her eyes kept coming back to my cousin, “and you’ll get whupped.”

“Oh, Miss Sanders, we won’t get into anything. I promise you that, yes’m.”

 

“THREE lousy dollars,” Nonie said when we were well out of earshot from our babysitter. She kept her arms wrapped around her waist like she was hugging herself. She was walking stiff-legged and mad.

“I like the carousel,” Missy said as if she were the only human being in the world who
did.

Nonie sniffed at this, “If you had your own horse, you wouldn’t have to ride some stupid wooden one.”

Sumter said, “I know why girls like to ride horses.”

Missy glared at him.

“I know what we can do for free,” he said. “We can go on the roller coaster.”

“Yeah, right. It hasn’t run since before you were born,” I said.

“I mean climb it. I bet we can see all the way across the world if we get far enough up it.”

Missy decided to stay on the ground and watch, but Nonie was up for the climb. I was not. I was a little afraid of falling and was not fond of most heights. But Sumter started to dare me, and if there’s anything I’ve always been up for, it’s a good dare. My hand was sweaty, and I guess that helped: I stuck to each piece of wood when I touched it. I felt like a fly on the side of a building. There was great suction between my sweaty palms and the splintery gray-white wood.

“It’s just like climbing up a ladder,” Nonie said to cheer me on.

“If you weren’t wearing culottes, we could look up your dress,” Sumter said.

“Gross,” she replied, scrabbling up faster, until her behind was just a pale blue dot rising toward the sun.

Sumter stayed with me to both coach and taunt me. “Just think, when we get to the top, we can see the whole world. It’s not so far up, so don’t wuss out on me, cuz, or I’ll pry your fingers back one by one.”

My joints seemed to pop every time I made a move, and my arms were sore from reaching. Splinters scraped across my fingers, and I was sure at any moment I would fall and break my neck.

“Stay with me,” my cousin said, “Lucy’ll make sure you’re okay. We’re part of Neverland.”

“Yeah, huh,” I grunted. “We’re not exactly
in
it now. This ain’t one of your tragic shows.”

I heard a small voice in my mind, or maybe he said it aloud,
“Where I am
is
Neverland.”

 

WE DIDN’T reach the top, although we got close to it. Nonie stopped first and said, “End of the line here, look.” Above her, one wooden slat was
cut off from another. We could not go farther unless we went sideways for several yards and then climbed up and over.

“Look down,” Sumter said.

“Jesus,” Nonie gasped.

I clutched the wooden bar between my fingers and shut my eyes tight. The heels of my Keds dug into the lower shelf I was standing on.

“Beau, open your
eyes.
It’s beautiful. You can see everything!”

“I’m gonna fall,” I said.

“No you’re not. I told you, Lucy’ll make sure you’re okay.”

I opened one eye, and then the other.

Below us, we did see the whole world, the whole wide world of Gull Island.

“I see it,” Nonie said. “There it is, the Retreat!” She had one arm hugging a pole and the other stretched out, pointing. I looked in that direction.

“I see Neverland,” Sumter added.

I didn’t want to tell either of them this, but as I looked down, feeling my stomach swooping as if it were falling without my body attached, I saw more than just the shack, even through the trees.

I also saw Grammy Weenie in her chair, sitting out beside the shack.

The climb down went slower and was scarier, at least for me.

Julianne Sanders stood below us with Missy, shouting, “You are gonna break your neck! Come down right now or I am going to whup you! Watch your step—wait until I tell your daddies, just wait till then!”

So of course we got in trouble. Sumter got spanked with his daddy’s belt, and Nonie and I got no supper that night. But we were already grumbling about the grown-ups anyway, so this was like throwing gasoline onto a campfire.

And then the unthinkable occurred—perhaps what was to be, for my cousin, the final straw. The thing that sent him over the edge.

It was just after supper, and Nonie and I had just gotten swatted by Aunt Cricket for sneaking downstairs and swiping Oreos from the pantry. Sumter came barreling into the kitchen like a locomotive and ran smack into his mother. He was crying hard, but there were no tears to come out.

“He’s
gone
,” he gasped, sounding weaker than I’d ever heard him; his lisp had returned, also.

“Who’s gone?” Aunt Cricket hugged her son against her skirts. “Tell me, Sunny, who’s gone? Daddy?”

Sumter was clutching her, enraged. He stomped his feet on the linoleum. It felt like a small earthquake. “Bernard! Bernard’s gone, that’s who!”

Nonie shrugged and whispered to me, “Big deal.”

Sumter heard her and glanced back, pointing at her. “You took him, didn’t you? Didn’t you?”

“Give me a break. I haven’t even seen your dumb old bear since Tuesday. Have a cow, why don’t you.”

Sumter let go of his mother and lunged at Nonie, knocking her down. She yelped. He had his hands around her neck and was strangling her. Aunt Cricket moaned, “Sunny, Sunny, oh, dear God,” but was not going to interfere.

“Get off her,” I said, tugging at the nape of his T-shirt. “I said get off.”

“Traitor,” Sumter snarled at me. He swatted at me with his fists, and I fell on him and started wrestling around.

“The bear’s probably where you left it in—”

“I wasn’t gonna—I was gonna say in the
car
, you dumb—”

I heard his voice in my head.
Remember your oath. Neverland. Remember your oath.

In my own head I asked him:
How did you do that?

He didn’t answer.

We struggled for a while longer, batting at each other’s chests and faces with our half-curled fingers. We fought in ways that did little real damage,
although I would later see the scratches across my face because Sumter had not clipped his fingernails in a while.

In our fighting my shirt got ripped, and I fell off him, to the side, taking great heaving breaths. Sumter sat up and brushed himself off.

“Oh, Sunny.” His mother lifted him up, almost into her arms, but he was too heavy. I could tell she wanted to cradle him. She brushed her fingers through his shiny hair, his head pressed back against her breasts.

And it struck me, then, about their resemblance.

Not only did he not look anything like Aunt Cricket, but when she held him, it was as if he were a pet, a doll, and not her son, as if she never saw him as a child at all, but as something she didn’t understand, something she could not comprehend—so she held him close to her breasts, not for comfort, but so that she wouldn’t have to look at his face.

Because he did not look anything like her at all.