Read Escaping Neverland Online
Authors: Lynn Wahl
I watched Paige as she lay in her coma, feeling
like the biggest jerk in the world. I’d turned her over to Captain out of
shame, because of how terrible she’d made me feel about myself. Now she was
trapped here with me, and neither of us could escape.
She’d come to rescue me and I’d turned her over to
the Captain without even thinking about it. Her face looked like she’d gotten
hit by a truck. Her cheekbone was broken for sure, and I couldn’t wake her up
no matter how hard I’d tried. She’d had a concussion before passing out again
trying to fix the Captain’s hand. She hadn’t moved or woken up since.
I thought about the moment we’d had in the coffee
shop the night before we’d been captured. She’d been furious with me, but she’d
still climbed out of her window to come after me. She was so much a better
person than I was, the thought made me sick. No wonder she’d wanted to go to
the prom with someone else. She probably never even thought of me like that
before. Now she never would.
I dropped my head to the table. Sitting there in
the dark, I tried to rest, to close my eyes and just let it all go, but it
didn’t work. Not here. Not now. Not after what I’d done.
I had to do something to make this better. I
couldn’t heal her, but maybe I could help her escape. She’d passed out before
the Captain could order her not to escape or interfere with his plans. If I
could get her to wake up, give her what she needed to get off the ship, she
might have a chance.
The thought spurred me on and I flipped on the
light over the table set up for her sketching. With a few quick movements, I
sketched out the device I needed, adding an electronics diagram to map out how
I was going to get it to work. With the diagram completed, I slipped out the
room, not bothering to be quiet. I wanted her to wake up, not keep sleeping.
The doors to the workroom had been left unlocked
so I could look in on Paige. The Captain was worried that she’d die just when
he’d found another valuable power. He’d ordered me to take care of her. I
grinned for the first time since I’d seen the massacre of the fae.
Oh yes, Captain,
I thought.
I’ll take
care of her. She came here to rescue me. Now I’ll rescue her so she can get off
this ship and kick your ass.
I didn’t really know how she was going to do it,
but we’d been friends since kindergarten and I’d seen her take on bullies twice
her size without backing down. Paige wouldn’t give up. With that thought
spinning through my head, I began building the device that would help Paige
escape. When the strange little compulsion in my head from the Captain tried to
kick in and still my fingers, I focused on helping Paige and the urge slid away
under the more recent command.
The device was so small it took barely any
time to finish. Now to see if it worked.
I woke up to darkness. I fumbled into a sitting
position, straining for some sort of light. I could just barely see Jake
sitting by the table that held the sketchpads. He’d stayed with me. I sighed
and fell back against the bed. This one was much cleaner. I gave an involuntary
sigh.
The light over the table flipped on, and Jake
rushed over to my bed. “You’re awake,” he said. “I thought you’d never wake
up.”
His eyes were sparkling, reminding me of how he’d
looked when he’d had a new idea for a graphic novel or design back home.
“What’s going on?” I asked, suspicious. Had Jake made some sort of new monster
or something? At the thought, the Queen’s spell flared. The strength of it made
me nauseous, but it faded after a few seconds.
He put his hand on my arm. “Paige, I’m so sorry
for how I’ve acted . . . I’m sorry for everything. I was jealous of you, of
what you might be able to do here, and then the fae were killed and I realized
what a terrible person I am, I—“
I pulled him in for a hug, saving him the embarrassment
of any more tortured apologies. “I understand,” I said. “I forgive you.”
Jake pulled back. “Good. Now, I need you to get up
and put this on.”
Before I could protest, he pulled me to my feet
and handed me a tiny little backpack looking thing.
“What is it?” I asked.
Jake grinned. “It’ll make you invisible, so you
can escape the ship. The Captain didn’t order you to stay, so you can leave on
your own.”
I stared down at the device and then back up at
him. “Can you make two?” I asked.
He shrugged, looking confused. “Sure, why?”
For the first time since being captured, I felt a
surge of energy. “Because my ride carries two,” I said, leaving the explanation
for later. “Go. Make another one and we’ll get out of here.”
Jake turned to go and then stopped. “I still can’t
leave. Are you going to draw another spider?” he asked.
I shook my head. “No. I’m going to try something
else. Something I should have thought of before. I’ll work on it while you
build another thingy jig.”
He rolled his eyes. “It’s an invisibility device,”
he muttered.
“That’s what I said,” I said, feeling my grin
stretch to my ears. It popped my cheekbone and I winced. I waved Jake off and
sat down at the table.
Jake’s features spooled out from my pencil like he
was sitting across from me. I’d always needed a reference photo to draw people
back home, but my ability here made it as easy as putting the pencil to the
paper and thinking about Jake. I drew him with his dirty face and fading
bruises, adding the last final details except for the eyes as he walked back
into the workroom carrying another device.
“Sit down,” I said.
He did, looking at the sketch pad with interest.
He ran his fingers over the bruise I’d drawn on his face.
“Jeez,” he said. “I look terrible.”
I raised an eyebrow at him and pointed at my
cheek. “I think I have you beat. My face feels like raw hamburger.”
Jake stifled a laugh. “Sorry,” he said. “It does
look kind of bad.”
I threw a pencil at him. “Shut up and hold still.”
I ignored his fidgeting and began shading in his
eyes. When the tingling started, I focused on Jake as I knew him, free and
healthy, unburdened by shame over actions he couldn’t control. Most of all, I
focused on the idea of Jake out from under the Captain’s control. As I finished
the drawing, I tried to add in the last touches that would portray Jake as the
guy I’d known back home, light-hearted and happy, but the pencil slowed and
skittered on the page when I tried. When I looked up at Jake, I realized that
he’d never be that person again. Instead of the tiny lines around his eyes that
appeared when he smiled, I drew in the bruised look of guilt I saw there
instead. As I drew in the last touch, a sweep of eyelash, the feeling swept
down the back of my neck and into my arms, jolting my hands off the table. I
pressed them back down, keeping my pencil in place.
It was hard. I felt the blackness threatening to
roll over me again, but held the effort right at the edge, pushing as slowly as
I could. Finally, the tingling stopped. I looked up at Jake. His eyes were
wide, his fingers buried in his hair.
“It’s gone,” he said. “Paige, you did it! Let’s
go.” He was up off his stool in a flash, hand wrapped around mine.
The Queen’s spell was still there, but it was
almost completely quiet. If I could get Jake away from the Captain, off of the
ship, it’d probably go away for good.
Jake, not paying any attention to me, flipped a
switch on the device on my back and then swung his around to flip the switch on
his own.
“Do you know how to get out?” he asked.
I nodded and looked at the space Jake had been
standing. I couldn’t see him at all.
“How do these things work?” I asked.
From where Jake had been standing, his voice
floated out, echoing in the metal room. “The device constantly scans our
surroundings and projects the images directly behind us over top of our
clothes.”
I glanced down at myself, a little weirded out at
not being able to see my legs. “What happens if we stand in front of a mirror?”
I asked.
Jake was quiet for a few seconds. “It would cause an
eternal feedback loop in the mechanism. We’d probably be invisible forever, or
sucked into the mirror.”
“What?” I gasped.
His laughter came from behind me, and I swatted in
his direction, catching his shoulder or back.
“Not funny!” I said.
Once I figured out where Jake was, I stomped
forward and grabbed my torn up sketchbook. The Captain had left my drawings of
Stormy and Lavender, not interested in them, and I grabbed them too. “Yes.
Follow me,” I whispered as we slid out of the workroom door. Being invisible
wouldn’t help if people could hear us.
As we passed Terence’s door, I slowed. I pointed
at the door. “This is Terence’s workroom. He asked us to save him, right before
the Captain showed up.”
I couldn’t see Jake, but felt his hand tighten on
mine. “We can’t, Paige. We’ll be caught for sure.”
I swallowed hard and nodded, then realized Jake
couldn’t see it. “Okay,” I whispered. I pulled him on, promising myself I’d try
to help Terence when I got Jake safely away.
When we came to the door leading down to the deck,
I tugged Jake over to it, praying that it would be unlocked. It was, the first
piece of good luck I’d had since landing on this cursed ship.
We snuck down the stairs as quietly as we could.
When we were almost at the bottom, the door above us suddenly swung open. I
turned to look. It was one of the Captain’s men and he was coming straight for
us. I pulled Jake back against the wall, feeling my device scrape against the
metal, and winced.
The man stopped, head tilted, and then shrugged and
continued on. He passed so close to us I could see the sweat beaded on his
forehead and the breeze from his passing whiffed my hair. He continued on out
the door, letting it clang shut behind him.
I let out the breath I’d been holding and gave
Jake’s hand a squeeze. We waited a few minutes for the guy to get wherever he
was going before opening the door at the bottom of the stairs. It was
nighttime, the stars sparkling like diamonds overhead in a clear sky. The deck
was empty.
We stood there for a second, and then I let out a
sigh of frustration. How was I supposed to let Stormy know I needed her? I’d
been passed out for who knows how long. She couldn’t have been circling this
whole time as I’d ordered her to do. She was strong, but couldn’t be that strong.
With a fearful glance around, I raised my hands to
my mouth. “Stormy!” I cried out as loud as I dared.
I waited, but nothing happened. I tried again, but
Jake pulled me down to the deck.
“Shh,” he said. “There’s someone coming.”
We huddled there on the deck as two men passed by.
They were whispering together about some sort of campaign the Captain was
sending them on in the morning. Something about a gate and a meeting with
someone.
When they’d passed, Jake tried to tug me to my
feet in the opposite direction but I pulled back.
“Wait,” I said. “They were talking about meeting
with someone. If we could find out who they’re meeting with back on Earth, we
could expose them.”
Jake stopped. “Paige. We’re not superheroes. We
can’t keep running around trying to save everyone. You could have died.”
I felt my cheekbone. “Yeah. I know. But that
doesn’t mean I can just ignore it, Jake. This is big. The Captain could be
causing some major problems back home, and we’re the only ones that know about
it.”
I didn’t tell him about the spell the fae had put
on me or how it felt like it was pushing me to learn more.
He was quiet for a few seconds and then gave a
huge sigh. “Fine,” he said.
He let me lead us after the men. They were stopped
near the rail, passing a cigarette back and forth. Their accents took me by
surprise. It sounded like they’d just stepped off a New York street onto the
ship.
“So ya know this bozo the Captain’s got us
bringing over?” one asked.
The other guy shrugged. “Don’t know, don’t care.”
“Ah, c’mon. He’s like a governor or something.
It’s a big deal.”
The other guy took a drag off the cigarette and
threw it overboard. “Yeah, whatever. What does it matter anyway? We’ll always
just be the gophers.”
“You don’t believe the Captain about the reward?”
The guy shrugged and lit another cigarette. “Why
does the Captain have to reward anyone when he can just order someone to do
something and they have to do it?”
I personally agreed with the second guy. I
couldn’t see the Captain rewarding these random men he’d plucked off the
streets of Earth. I could see them dead and discarded, rotting at the bottom of
the ocean once the Captain didn’t need them anymore, but not rewarded. What did
they think they were going to get, some ritzy condo on the beach here on the
island?
I pulled Jake back away from the men. “I’ve heard
enough,” I said. The Captain was going to capture the Governor he’d been
working with, probably to show him the plans and ideas he had for the island.
If the Governor left, convinced that the Captain’s plan would work, the
Governor would be the go to man on the Earth side, lining up investors,
recruiting labor and the like.
We needed to get off this ship and back to Nuada.
I had to tell him what was going on. At the railing on the other side of the
ship, I frantically searched the sky for Stormy. When I didn’t see her, I
pulled out my sketch of her, trying to reach out to her through the drawing.
Stormy, I need your help. Please. Come to the
ship. We’re by the railing on the side closest to shore.
I sent the silent summons out and waited. I had no
idea if it would work. If the drawings I made allowed me to control my
creations, it made sense that they might form some sort of link between us. I
looked around, but no one else was on deck and the two men had gone back the
way they came. I reached around and switched off the invisibility device.