The Bridge to Never Land (14 page)

They told him the whole story, starting with finding the map in the desk. It took more than an hour; J.D. wanted every detail, and had many questions. When they were finally done, he sat utterly still in his chair—the starstuff had long since worn off—staring at the box. Finally, he spoke.

“So to sum it up—you found the last of the hidden star-stuff, and now Ombra’s after you, and you can’t trust anybody because Ombra can get to anybody.”

“Or
be
anybody,” said Aidan.

“So you came to me for help,” said J.D.

“Yes,” said Sarah. “We need a Starcatcher.”

“But I’m not a Starcatcher. My grandfather was…I guess,” he said, looking at the box. “And maybe my dad, as well. But I’m not.”

“You are now,” said Aidan.

“You made a promise to your dad,” said Sarah.

“I did, but I didn’t realize—”

“—that you might actually have to
do
something?”

J.D. winced. “Guilty,” he said.

“Well, are you a man of your word?”

J.D.’s smile was gone now. “I like to think I am,” he said.

“All right, then. We have starstuff, and we need your help.”

J.D. thought long and hard. “Trouble is, I don’t know how I can help you. You know more about this than I do.”

“Are you sure? Your family were Starcatchers!”

“Seriously, most of what I got from my dad was really vague.”

“Good thing we just about killed ourselves getting here,” said Aidan.

J.D. was drumming his fingers on his desk, frowning. “Okay,” he said. “Listen, I’ve never believed it.”

“Believed what?” said Sarah.

“I’ve always dismissed it as the ramblings of a Victorian woman who had nothing better to do than brood over some…some fairy tale she’d been told as a child,” said J.D.

“Dismissed what?” Sarah pressed.

“There’s this book, supposedly a diary.”

Sarah was leaning forward now.

“My grandfather left it to my dad, who kept it in a safe-deposit box,” said J.D. “When I was going through my parents’ stuff, I flipped through it once. It made no sense to me. Of course, at the time I thought this starstuff business was ridiculous anyway. I almost threw it out.”

“But you didn’t,” said Sarah.

“No. It’s with some old stuff at my place.”

“Can we see it?” said Sarah. “Like, now?”

“And get something to eat?” said Aidan.

“I don’t see why not,” said J.D., rising.

“One thing,” said Sarah. “You call it a diary.”

“Right.”

“Whose diary?”

“Supposedly, a relative of mine from England, though I’m not exactly sure what the relationship is—something like great-great-great-aunt, if I have it right. I was told she sent the diary to my grandfather for safekeeping when she was getting old and frail.”

Sarah stared at J.D. intently. “What was her name?” she asked softly.

“Mary Aster Darling,” said J.D.

“Mary was her given name,” said Sarah softly. “She was known as Molly.”

CHAPTER 18

J.
D. LIVED IN A BIG, OLD TWO-STORY
wood house with a wide front porch facing a lawn that looked as if it were maintained by goats. The sprawling interior was a random jumble of worn furniture, books, laundry, cardboard boxes, magazines, CD cases, and musical paraphernalia.

“You live here alone?” said Sarah.

“Yup,” said J.D.

“Are you, like, rich?” said Aidan.

“I am…comfortable,” said J.D. “Thanks to an inheritance.”

“How many guitars do you have?” said Aidan, surveying the living room, where at least three Fender Stratocasters poked their necks out of the clutter.

J.D. frowned. “Eleven,” he said. “No, wait—twelve.”
“Do you play?” said Sarah.
“Badly,” said J.D. “But I love Strats. You guys hungry?”

“Yes,” said Sarah and Aidan together.

“I’ll order some pizzas,” said J.D. “You don’t want to know what’s in the refrigerator. Pepperoni okay with everybody?”

“And extra cheese,” said Aidan.

“Could you get the diary first?” said Sarah.

“In a hurry, are we?”

“We are.”

“Okay, then.” J.D. tromped up the stairs, returning two minutes later with a slim book bound in plain brown leather. He handed it to Sarah, who held it in both hands, looking at it reverently.

“I can’t believe it,” she said. “Molly’s diary.”

“So say you,” said J.D. “Mary was the name I was given.”

“She actually touched this,” said Sarah. “She wrote in this.”

“I have something else you might be interested in,” said J.D. “I’d forgotten about it. It was in the same box as the diary.”

“What is it?” Sarah said eagerly.

“This,” said J.D., digging into his pocket. He pulled out a gold chain, which was threaded through a small golden sphere with a tiny hinge and clasp. He handed it to Sarah, who stared at it in disbelief.

“Her locket!” she exclaimed. “An actual Starcatcher locket!”

“You’re awfully dramatic, you know that?” said J.D.

“Tell me about it,” said Aidan.

“Is there anything inside?” said Sarah, fumbling with the clasp. “Because the Starcatchers used these to—”

“There’s nothing inside,” said J.D. “I checked.”

Sarah had the locket open now; it was, indeed, empty. She closed it and said, “Do you mind if I wear it? While I read Molly’s diary?”

J.D. waved it away. “Keep it,” he said. “And good luck figuring out the diary. I’ll go order pizza.”

Sarah cleared a space on the ancient sofa, plopped down, took a breath, and opened the diary. The paper had yellowed with age, but the writing—a neat, compact cursive, in black ink—was quite legible:

“Wow,” said Sarah.

“What?” said Aidan, who was attempting, so far without success, to tune a 1969 Stratocaster with a sunburst finish.

“This,” said Sarah, holding up the diary. “Aidan, she’s talking about the island!”

“What island?” said J.D., returning from the pizza-ordering mission.

“Never Land!” said Sarah. “It must be! Read this!”

She handed the diary, open to the first page, to J.D., who read it with Aidan reading over his shoulder.

“She’s definitely right about the enemy not being exterminated,” said Aidan. “We’ve seen that for ourselves. But who’s this ‘E’?”

“I don’t know,” said Sarah. “But I’m sure the island is Never Land.”

“You actually think it exists?” said J.D.

“Yes.”

“With a flying boy?” said Aidan. “And pirates?”

“And mermaids?” added J.D. “You really believe that, Sarah?”

“Do you really believe you were floating back in your office?”

J.D. grinned. “Touché,” he said. “Okay, so let’s say there really is a Never Land island. Where is it? We have satellites now, Sarah. They’ve mapped the entire world. We can see every speck of land. How come nobody knows about this
island?”

“That’s the point,” said Sarah. “That’s what the diary is saying. They didn’t want people to find the island. So they did something. They isolated it.”

“What does that even
mean
?” said Aidan. “How do you isolate an island?”

“I don’t know,” said Sarah, taking the diary back from J.D. “But it’s in here, and I’m going to find out.”

Lester Armstrong sped north on I-95, pushing the Escalade as fast as he dared.

It had taken him several frustrating hours to sort everything out with the Bensalem Township Police Department. Finally, after checking out his references and calling the Coopers in Pittsburgh, the police had agreed to release him without charges. Lester was free, but furious; he considered himself very good at what he did, yet a fifteen-year-old boy had gotten away from him easily and made him look like a fool.

Next time, kid,
thought Lester.
Next time you’re mine.

The one good thing was that a police sergeant had agreed, after hearing a plea over the phone from a sobbing Natalie Cooper, to put out a missing-children bulletin, which had been broadcast, with photos of Aidan and Sarah, by a Philadelphia TV station. The bulletin quickly produced a good lead: a motorcycle-shop owner called to say that Aidan had gotten a ride with one of his workers to the Princeton public library. The Princeton police had been alerted, and Lester was on his way there now, grimly determined to track down his quarry, especially the boy who’d made him look bad.

You’re mine, kid.

In a park near the town of Indiana, Pennsylvania, about fifty miles east of Pittsburgh, a three-year-old boy pointed at the late-afternoon sky.

“Birds!” he said.

The boy’s parents looked up from their picnic meal of barbecued chicken and potato salad.

“My goodness,” said the mother.

“Wow,” said the father. “That’s a lot of birds.”

They were coming from the west, hundreds of them, flying in a densely packed group, looking almost like a fast-moving cloud. They flew low, so low that the family could hear their wings beating, so low that, as they approached, the mother felt the need to pull the little boy close to her.

The large black birds swarmed overhead in a rush of wind, their mass momentarily blocking the sun. The family watched silently as the swarm swept east, disappearing over a hill, leaving the park sunny and quiet again.

“What the heck was that?” said the father.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” said the mother.

“Birds!” said the boy.

“Yes,” the mother said softly, her eyes still on the horizon. “Birds.”

CHAPTER 19

D
USK CAME TO J.D.’S HOUSE
, followed soon by pizzas. Sarah chewed slowly through four slices, her eyes never leaving the diary pages. Night fell. J.D. occupied himself on the Internet. Aidan continued, without success, his efforts to cause the Stratocaster to produce some sound that even vaguely resembled music. Finally, he gave up and watched TV.

An hour passed, and a good part of a second. At last, Sarah closed the diary and stood.

“Okay,” she announced. Aidan and J.D. turned to her.

“Okay, what?” said J.D.

“Okay, I read it all.”

“And?”

“A lot of it I don’t understand. But I think I’m getting a rough idea.”

“And?”

“It’s pretty weird.”

“Weird how?” said Aidan.

“Okay,” said Sarah. “Like Molly says in the letter in the front, the Starcatchers were looking for a way to protect the island. So one of the Starcatchers, a guy that Molly calls ‘T,’ who I think was some kind of professor, suggested that they should get in touch with this guy she calls ‘E.’ So in 1905, Molly went to see this E in”—Sarah paused to flip through some diary pages—“a place called Bern.”

“Burn?” said Aidan.

“B-e-r-n,” said Sarah. “Where is that, anyway?”

“I believe it’s in Switzerland,” said J.D. “You said 1905?”

“Yeah. Is that important?”

“Not sure,” said J.D., frowning. “Go on.”

“Okay. So this E guy worked on this for a long time. A couple of years. There was a lot of back and forth between him and the Starcatchers. But finally he came up with a solution to protect the island, which was…well, that’s the part that’s really weird.”

“What was it?” said Aidan.

“A bridge,” said Sarah.

J.D. nodded. “I remember reading that. I think that’s exactly where I decided it was nonsense and gave up.”

“A bridge to the island?” Aidan said. “I thought it’s in the middle of the ocean somewhere? And how would building a bridge possibly isolate something?”

“I don’t think it’s a regular bridge,” Sarah said. “This guy

E was making it in his laboratory.”

“What?” J.D. said.

“And he used starstuff to make it,” Sarah said.

“Starstuff?” said Aidan. “To build a bridge?”

“To make it,” said Sarah.

“How do you know it was starstuff?” said J.D.

“You should have kept reading,” said Sarah. “Molly calls it ‘material,’ but it has to be starstuff. She says the Starcatchers gave E some material from the supply held by M, who has to be Magill.”

“Okay,” said Aidan. “They’re isolating an island with a bridge, which they’re making in a laboratory. Using starstuff.”

“I think that’s what the diary is saying,” said Sarah.

“That makes no sense,” said Aidan.

J.D. cleared his throat. Aidan and Sarah turned toward him. “I think…maybe, in a kind of incredible way…it
does
make sense,” he said.

“How so?” said Aidan.

“I can’t believe I’m saying this,” said J.D. “And if I hadn’t seen the starstuff for myself, I
wouldn’t
be saying this.”

Sarah and Aidan waited.

“I think I know what kind of bridge we’re talking about,” he said. “I also think I know who E is—who he
has
to be—although I admit I’m having a hard time wrapping my mind around it.”

“Who? Who is it?” begged Sarah.

“If I’m right,” said J.D., “E is Einstein.”

“Albert Einstein?” said Aidan.

“No, Buddy Einstein,” said J.D. “Of course Albert Einstein.”

“But how?” said Sarah. “I mean, how could—”

J.D. held up his hand. “I’ll explain,” he said. “But if you’re going to understand, I’m going to have to teach you a little theoretical physics.”

Sarah sat on the sofa and patted the spot next to her for Aidan to sit down. “Teach away, professor,” she said.

“Okay,” said J.D. “To begin with, what we think of as—”

Bang!

Sarah screamed as the front door burst open, jagged pieces of the wood door frame flying across the room. A large man wearing padding and a plastic face shield hurtled into the room, others right behind him, all of them bellowing, their voices a jumble of harsh commands.

“Police! Police! On the floor, now! Down on the floor!”

Three of the policemen hit J.D., taking him down hard, face-first, paying no attention to his shouted pleas protesting his innocence. Others grabbed Aidan and Sarah, and in seconds they were being hustled out of the house.

A police van idled in the driveway. Sarah and Aidan were seated on one of the two facing bench seats inside. In the front seats were two officers, a male and a female, the female at the wheel. Between the cops and Aidan and Sarah was a metal mesh divider.

J.D., in handcuffs, was led to the van by two policemen, who opened the back door and pushed him inside. They sat him on the other bench and chained his handcuffs to the floor. One of the cops handed his weapon to a fellow officer and sat on the bench with J.D., nightstick in hand. The other cop slammed the rear door shut.

“You don’t understand,” Sarah pleaded. “This man is helping us. He didn’t do anything!”

“Stockholm Syndrome,” the male cop in the front seat said to the female, who nodded. He turned to Sarah and Aidan and said, “You’re going to be all right, kids. You’re safe now.”

“But we were safe!” said Sarah. “He didn’t—”

“We’ll sort it out at the station,” said the cop. “With your parents.”

The van started moving.

“Our parents are coming?”

“On their way from Pittsburgh,” said the female cop. “They’re very worried.”

“You had a lot of people worried,” said the male cop, lecturing now. “Your pictures were all over TV.”

“Oh, no,” said Sarah.

“No, that was good,” said the cop. “People saw you leaving Jadwin Hall with the creep back there. That’s how
we tracked you down.”

“He’s not a creep!” said Aidan.

“Like I said, we’ll sort it out at the station.”

Sarah leaned closed to Aidan. “This is bad,” she whispered.

“Tell me,” he whispered back. “They’re never gonna believe us.” He nodded toward J.D. “And I don’t know what they’re gonna do to him.”

She glanced back. J.D. was staring at the van floor, his face white with shock. A few hours ago, he didn’t know Sarah and Aidan existed; now he was facing arrest, maybe jail.
Because he tried to help us,
she thought.

“It’s not fair,” whispered Aidan.

“I know.”

“You two all right?” the female cop in front asked.

“No,” said Sarah, softly. Tears burned her eyes. She looked down; she didn’t want the police, or Aidan, to see her crying. A tear fell. It landed on Molly’s diary. Sarah realized that she’d been gripping it all along, so tightly that her hand hurt.

Then she realized that her other hand was gripping the backpack. She looked at Aidan. He was looking at the backpack, too.

Lester Armstrong was following the van. He’d been just a step behind the police since he’d gotten to Princeton.

He’d reached the library just after dark. As he pulled up, a man and a woman hustled out of the building and climbed into an unmarked, illegally parked Chevy—so obviously a police car it might as well have had a light rack on top.
Detectives
, Armstrong figured. No way they were there by coincidence; they had to be on the trail of the Cooper kids.

The Chevy started rolling and was joined a few seconds later by a Princeton PD patrol car, siren blaring. Armstrong followed in the Escalade, keeping a safe distance. The cops were moving fast; they’d obviously found something out. Armstrong’s plan was to stick close to them, looking for an opportunity—he was very good at this—to leapfrog their investigation and rescue the kids himself, thus earning a nice fee.

The police headed toward the Princeton campus, their destination a large brick building called Jadwin Hall. From the idling Escalade, Armstrong watched the detectives go inside. They emerged a few minutes later, without the two kids but in a hurry, and walked briskly to their car, cell phones glued to their ears. They roared off, again accompanied by the patrol car.

Armstrong followed them to a residential neighborhood not far from campus, where they stopped in front of a large, wood-framed house with an unkempt lawn. Armstrong killed his lights and pulled to the curb a half block away. A few seconds later a black panel van screeched to a stop in front of the house.

Uh-oh
, thought Armstrong.
SWAT team.

This was not good. If the kids were in the house, there was no way he’d get to them ahead of the SWAT team. By the look of it, he’d wasted his day.

The raid was efficient, professional; fifteen or twenty seconds, and it was all over. Armstrong felt slightly ill as he watched the cops bring out the two kids, including the boy who’d eluded him. They also brought out a man whom Armstrong didn’t recognize. All three were loaded into a police van and driven away.

Armstrong saw his fee going with it. Unless…

He slammed the Escalade into gear, a plan forming in his mind. The Coopers wouldn’t reach Princeton until the next day. What parents would want their kids held in a police station overnight? Wouldn’t they be happier to have their kids released into his custody, and for him to put them up at a nice hotel until they arrived? If they hadn’t left yet, they might even authorize him to escort the kids home, shortening the process and getting this whole miserable experience behind them. He’d have to charge them for this service, of course. But money was usually no object for parents who’d lost their kids.

He fished his cell phone out of his pocket and dialed. He was counting on paperwork to slow the police down so that he would be the first to give the Coopers the good news—and the first to receive their gratitude.

He could practically smell the fee.

Aidan and Sarah were communicating with their eyes. He looked, with an exaggerated stare, at the backpack, then at her. She nodded, then arched her eyebrows.
Right, the star-stuff. But what do we do?

Aidan’s eyes tracked slowly back toward the steel grid separating them from J.D., then forward to the front seat. He touched his belt, then nodded toward the male cop in the shotgun seat. Sarah looked and saw a key ring clipped to the officer’s wide police belt. One key was smaller than the others, silver in color. Sarah figured that must be a handcuff key.

She looked at Aidan and nodded.
Got it. The key. Then what?

He pointed to the backpack again, then at his seatbelt, then at the seatbelts worn by the two officers in the front seat. Sarah looked puzzled. Aidan pointed at the cops and made a little floating motion with his hands. Suddenly, Sarah got it. She nodded.

Okay.

Aidan looked down at her backpack again, then at her. He mouthed one word.

Now.

Sarah, her hand trembling, slowly unzipped the backpack. She slipped her hand inside, found the gold box. She nodded to Aidan.

Ready.

Aidan checked to make sure his seatbelt was fastened; Sarah did the same. She drew the golden box from inside the backpack and put her hand on the little wheel. The male cop looked back.

“What do you have there?” he said. “Is that gold?”

Sarah closed her eyes, gave the wheel a quarter turn, and tilted the box just slightly. The van filled with brilliant golden light and a musical sound that seemed to come from everywhere.

Aidan, his eyes also closed, leaned forward and felt around until he found the front seatbelt latches; he quickly released them both.

Sarah turned the wheel shut. The light was less brilliant now, but the interior of the van was still filled with a golden glow. The male cop was still in the shotgun seat, but now he was upside down. This did not appear to trouble him; he was humming happily. The female cop, who’d been driving, was floating with her back against the windshield, a rapturous smile on her face. “Hello back there!” she said, apparently to the officer guarding J.D., who was floating against the van’s ceiling.

“I love you, Janine!” he responded. “I’ve always loved you!”

“I know, Tommy, I know,” she replied. “But I’m driving!” She gestured vaguely toward the steering wheel, the motion causing her to somersault slowly in midair.