Neverland (16 page)

“What’s that?”

“It’s my clubhouse. Beau’s and mine.”

“You mean that run-down old shed? Jesus, wouldn’t
that
be fun. We could play with spiders.”

“Nonie, you are so cynical.”

“I’d like to see your clubhouse,” Missy said to me. She looked so sad with her choppy hair and that peeling skin along her sunburned nose.

Sumter rubbed his hands together, scheming. “I’ve got beer there.”

I gasped. “Beer?”

“I snuck one of Daddy’s out. We could all share it.”

“But we’d get
drunk
,” Missy said, horrified by the idea. We were all such good kids in spite of our longing to be bad, and since beer was the vice of our fathers, we longed for a taste. “And then we’d get in trouble. Oh, boy, would we get in trouble big-time. Oh wow.”

But Nonie was genuinely interested. “You’ve got
beer?
And nobody found out?” She got up and brushed the dust off her behind. She had one of the largest behinds I’d ever seen on such a skinny girl and longer legs than Missy. I used to think that Aunt Cricket was right about her, that she was going to get in trouble sooner or later. “Well,” she brightened, “what are we waiting for? Let’s go.”

As we trooped along the edge of the bluff, batting at mosquitoes the whole way, I whispered to my cousin, “What do you want
them
along for?”

He didn’t answer me, at least not aloud, but in my head I imagined I heard his voice.

I don’t want them.
Lucy
wants them. Lucy
asked
for them. Lucy wants
all
of us
.

Neverland at twilight was all angular shadows crisscrossed along the walls. Nonie and Missy seemed as fascinated by the
Playboys
as we boys had been, only they couldn’t see much of them in the fading light. We had our flip-flops on so we were not too careful of the glass on the ground, and Missy picked up the rake and began sweeping the glass and other debris to the side.

Nonie glanced around. “This is kinda cool.” She shrugged. “Okay, so where’s the beer?”

Sumter lifted a finger in the air. “Follow me.” He set his teddy bear down on an overturned flowerpot and led us back to the crate. He brought a tall can of Budweiser out from behind his crate. We sat in a circle, Indian style. He popped the tab of the beer. He whispered something into the can.

I asked him what he was doing.

“Blessing it,” and he took a sip. “It’s warm.”

“That’s okay,” Nonie said, “I like it warm.” She plucked it from his fingers and took a long, hard swig.

“Since when have you had beer before?”

“I have. You just weren’t there. You were a baby.”

“Oh,
huh
.”

We passed the can around, all of us sipping, all of us wondering when we would start to feel drunk.

Sumter said, “Nothing like a beer on a summer evening.” It was what his dad would say.

“You think they’d be really angry if they smelled it on our breath?” Missy asked.

“Does a bear poop in the woods?” Nonie asked, and then giggled. “I mean, is the Pope Catholic?”

“You’re just acting drunk,” I said. “You can’t get drunk from two sips.”

“I took more than two sips. This place smells like it’s dead. Somebody die?” She was still giggling.

Missy started giggling, too, for no reason, and then I let out a giggle. Giggles were dangerous in that place, and I wondered where these would lead to.

“What if they catch us?” Missy’s eyes went wide, and all the giggles subsided.

Then we burst out laughing, louder.

The skin felt warm along the surface of my face. A light seemed to have come up in the room, for everyone’s face was yellow and rosy and dimpled like overripe peaches. I could see more things around us, a swirling pattern from the walls. Could you get drunk off just a few sips of warm beer? So it seemed. I tried to talk, but the words rushed so fast in my head that they never made it out of my mouth. Sumter was whispering to Nonie, who was pointing at me and laughing and nodding her head. Missy had her eyes closed and was moving her shoulders in time to some unheard music.

“Sumter,” I said, but he was busy talking to Nonie, who opened her left hand up for his inspection. He traced a line with his index finger down her palm.

“Sumter,” I repeated, and he looked at me for one second, but then returned his attention to my sister.

Missy started humming a tune only she could hear, but I couldn’t quite make it out. The light was coming up brighter in Neverland, until it seemed almost like daylight.

Sumter had something small and shiny in his hand, and he scraped it across Nonie’s thumb. She jumped a little.

It was the rusty hook that he’d pricked my own thumb with. Something deep within me fought to try to stop him, but the good warm feeling of the
beer held me back. A mosquito lit on the edge of my hand, and I just sat and watched it suck the blood out. I watched it get fat and round, but I did not swat it. Sumter turned to his right and grasped Missy’s thumb. She kept her eyes closed. She was now singing to the music in her head, but she sang the way I’d heard people sing in the Holy Roller churches when they were speaking in tongues. The hook went up and down into the thumb of her left hand and she let out a little squeal. I watched him milk her thumb and press it into his hand, while his other hand squeezed Nonie’s. My sisters reached around with their free hands and held mine, the beer can laying empty in the middle of our circle. I felt blood flow between us all, joined palm to palm. Our voices in my head mingling, too, repeating the oath of secrecy and loyalty to Neverland, and then to one other, and then to Lucy.

Yes!
Our voices cried, and it was both inside and outside my head.
Yes! No other gods before Lucy.

And then we began to fly.

At first we rose up unsteadily, still clutching each other’s hands, and I thought we were standing, but we were moving up under the roof of the shack. My head pressed against it and then we began moving
through
the roof, out into the evening, flying as if with some direction, all holding bands, now afraid to let go. Nonie was laughing, exhilarated, and Missy was pop-eyed with wonder.

A dream?
I heard Nonie cry out.

No
, Sumter crowed,
we’re really flying
.

Our feet brushed the roof of Neverland, and we headed up above the trees, disturbing the uppermost branches in our ascent.

I’m scared
. Missy said to me, squeezing my hand tighter.

It’s not real
, I told her,
it’s Neverland
.

Seems so real
. She closed her eyes, afraid.

Below us we saw the ragged Retreat, the light on in the kitchen and the living room where the grown-ups would be, the upstairs dark. But we were flying and swooping together, the toes of our flip-flops brushing leaves off the tops of the trees. As we flew up higher I yelled to Sumter,
Where?

To the moon, Beau, all the way to the moon
.

There was no moon that night, and dark fingers were all around the edges of the sky.

Beau!
Some other voice intruded. I glanced down to the Retreat. It was Grammy Weenie. She had wheeled out to the front porch, opening the screen door.
Make him stop
.
Beau! He’ll hurt you!

Don’t listen to the old witch
. Sumter said.

We began flying faster upward, straight upward, and the peninsula below us became smaller and smaller, and the darkness became wider. The only light now was the twinkling tiara bridge.

To the stars
. Sumter was panting hard, as if he were running up stairs.

I looked upward, but there were no stars—just a ceiling of darkness.

It hurts
. Missy moaned, her fingers loosening their grip in mine.

It was getting harder to breathe, and I felt an enormous pressure on my eardrums, and then they began popping. Missy was screaming.
Let me go! Let me go!
She writhed around. Nonie, too, was in pain: Her nose was wrinkling, and her mouth contorted as if with a sour taste. I could barely breathe now. My neck felt stiff; my spinal cord wanted to wriggle out of my back.

We’re going too high, Sumter, get us down
. I gasped for air.

Missy’s nose started bleeding.
Oh, God.
She opened her mouth wide to take in deep gusts of air while blood dribbled out of her nostrils. Her body spasmed, jerking, and her hand tugged free of mine. Sumter let go of her, and we watched as Missy fell screaming back down to earth. Nonie’s head began shaking, her whole body shivering—
Head hurts, Sumter, please—

Don’t let go, Beau,
Sumter said, but I could see panic in his face as we continued to move upward.
She shouldn’ta let go, we’ll be okay. You’ve got to believe. Lucy wants us, all of us, to believe.

Nonie was writhing in my grasp; we heard Missy’s final scream as she hit the earth.

LUCY!
I cried,
LUCY! DON’T LET HIM DO THIS TO US!

My voice was high-pitched and shrill because I was as scared as I had ever been. The sky shattered from the sound, and I watched the earth below us rip apart like skin.

And then we awoke, all still holding hands, even Missy. We were sitting up around the beer can, and we had not flown, and it had been some kind of dream. The brilliant light around us was fading back into shadowy twilight. Neverland was a shack, and my sisters and cousin were dark with shadows.

“Wow.” Missy glanced down at her hands.

“That was neat,” Nonie said, gasping and laughing all at once. “Let’s do it again. Please, Sumter?”

When Sumter opened his eyes, he looked very cross.

I was still hallucinating. I sat in Neverland with my sisters, but I continued dreaming.

We all sat there.

Missy.

Nonie.

Sumter.

Me.

But their skin.

Blackened and smoking, the flesh peeled back around their skulls, hair burned completely off. Eyes had burst and run down across cheeks and noses and lips like melting wax. Missy still giggled. “Completely cool, I really thought we were flying.”

Nonie grinned liplessly at me, her teeth seeming huge and yellow. “What’s
your
problem?” Her arms dropped skin like bits of tattered carbon paper as she placed her crisp hands on her hips imperiously.

Sumter was the worst, though. His skull had burst in on itself, and wisps of flame danced along its edges as if he were filled with dying coals. “You see it, don’t you?” he asked. “You stupid . . . ”

I closed my eyes, and then opened them again.

Still the burned apparitions were sitting around me. Bile dripped from Missy’s gaping mouth while she giggled.

“You’re not supposed to see it. Why would Lucy
let
you see it?” The burst face waggled side to side. “Only
I’m
supposed to see it. It’s not
fair. Lucy, this is not fair, you said only me,
only
me
.”

“Make it stop,” I said.

Nonie wiped charcoal fingers through her crusty scalp.

“Make it go away.”

“Only me,” the burned Sumter-thing whimpered. “Only
I
can see. Not
him
.”

Grammy Weenie’s voice was in my head, what she’d said the other afternoon.
Don’t let it out
.

“Put it back, Sumter, just put it back,” I whispered.

“Don’t you tell me—”

“Put it back. Don’t let it out.”

His whole body began smoking furiously, like a furnace about to blow. I heard the crackling of his bones as they heated.

“Put it back. Where it belongs.”

“You can’t tell me—”

But the fire that was brightening in his open rib cage died. He seemed to be listening to something, some voice. “Lucy,” he said.

I once plugged a vacuum cleaner cord into a socket and held the plug wrong so I got a shock that threw me down. That’s what this was like. A triple flash of white light as if there were a white world beyond the skin of this one, and then I felt thrown across the room, although I was still sitting, cross-legged, in the small circle. I had not moved at all.

I was afraid to look at the others, but when I did I was relieved to observe they were all covered with flesh and clothes and only looked slightly tired. It was nice to see my sisters again, alive, in their cutoffs and un-tucked shirts.

“What’s your problem?” Nonie asked again.