Finally, at the reception in the library, after four glasses of a sour chardonnay, I had to excuse myself from the proceedings.
Outside, I nodded at the armed security guard patrolling the stone walkway leading to the library and asked if he had a cigarette. He just said no and that smoking wasn’t allowed on school grounds. I tried to make a joke but the security guard didn’t smile when he stepped away from me and into the darkness. The average platypus, I thought, wandering off. The average platypus.
The library was three stories tall and framed one side of a large open courtyard. The windows of the building were translucent panels emitting a soft white light that filtered out into the darkness. From where I stood I could see the shadows of parents milling around, their murmurings from inside the building a distant soundtrack, and behind them were the long rows of bookshelves carving through the space. In the courtyard was a bronze statue of the Buckley Griffin, the school’s half-eagle, half-lion mascot, and it rose up out of the courtyard, twelve feet tall, its wings outstretched, about to leap off its platform and into flight. I went down the steps to check out the griffin and to find some privacy, but when I reached into my jacket for the cell phone (calling Aimee Light had always been part of my plan for the evening) I realized I wasn’t alone.
There was a figure encased in shadow, slumped on a bench. As I moved closer it said my name and I saw that it was Nadine Allen. I hesitated when I realized who it was. I looked around to make sure the word “Bret” was directed at me, hoping uselessly that it was not—but then she said the name again in a wearying monotone and I sighed and just kept nearing her.
Without saying anything I sat next to Nadine on the small bench jutting out of a tall granite wall. We were below ground level, I idly noticed, looking up at the library, ignoring Nadine. But movement caused me to glance at her. She was lifting a plastic cup half-filled with white wine to her lips and leaning lazily against the granite wall, and I was relieved that she was drunk, because that would keep the dream safely projected onto the wide screen, where it played as an alternative to what I was actually seeing.
In the courtyard, a small waterfall splashed lazily into a man-made pond, in which I briefly glimpsed the orange flashes of koi. Trees swayed overhead and coarse, thick vines were draped along the granite walls that surrounded us, lit up yellow and green by the colored bulbs of ground lamps. Nadine pulled her jacket tightly closed, even though it was warm out (though rain clouds had begun to obscure the moon), and she finished her wine and then, without saying anything, leaned into me, and I let her. She was a pretty woman, youthful for her age, and I watched as she lightly touched the highlights weaved throughout her hair. And when she still didn’t say anything I turned my gaze on the bronze statue of the griffin. Nadine’s silence finally succeeded in unnerving me, and so I prepared an innocuous conversation (oh, weren’t they all?) about the dinner she served last night when suddenly she said something. I didn’t quite catch it and I asked her to repeat the words she had just spoken. Her head lolled against my shoulder, and she giggled.
“They’re going to Neverland.”
I paused and adjusted my shoulder, causing Nadine to sit up sluggishly. I turned to look at her face. Her eyes were half closed and she was seriously buzzed. I was going to give the rest of the conversation sixty seconds and then quietly vacate the courtyard.
“Who . . . is going to Neverland?” I asked.
“The boys,” she whispered. “They’re going to Neverland.”
I cleared my throat. “What boys?”
“The missing boys,” Nadine said. “All of them.”
I took this in. She was waiting for me to reply. I tried to make a connection.
“You think . . . Michael Jackson has something to do with all this?”
Nadine giggled again and leaned into me, but I felt nothing sexual because the mention of the missing boys began enveloping everything around us.
“No . . . not Michael Jackson, silly.” And then she suddenly stopped giggling. She made a flying motion with her hands, mimicking a large, inebriated bird. She lurched forward and started swaying. “Neverland . . . like in Peter Pan. That’s where the boys are.” Mimicking the bird had taken a lot of effort and she leaned back against the wall without focusing on me. Her face—lost and heavily made up and the almond eyes wooden tonight—was lit half green by a ground lamp.
“Your . . . point, Nadine?” I asked cautiously.
“The point?” She sobered up too quickly. The tone became harsh. Maybe I looked frightened, which was what spurred her on. “You want to know what the ‘point’ is, Bret?”