Peter rolls his eyes again.
“I made a fairy spell it,” he tells me, annoyed.
Rye sits all the way up now, frowning himself. “How do you make a fairy do something?”
Peter gives him a long, blank look. “There are ways.”
I get that feeling again. It’s small and I bury it immediately, throw some sand over it, focus on the wonder of it all. No one does the right thing one hundred percent of the time, right? Least of all me. I’m not perfect—I lied to him the other night, and I can be quite a know-it-all sometimes. Oftentimes I think I’m learning more and more, and actually I’m not learning at all. If anything, I’m unlearning everything I thought I knew, but maybe that’s okay. And anyway, Peter is the literal embodiment of youth and freedom and joy, and sometimes those things have prices.
“And then it was easy, really,” Peter says, glancing down at the fish in his hands. It’s stopped flip-flopping now. Just its tail’s moving every now and then.
“Once Hook was on the island, he searched till he found the fountain the fairies made, and he went straight to it, grinning like the big idiot he was. It took him just a second or two to realise he was sinking and th—”
“Can you let the fish go?” I interrupt him.
Peter scowls down at me, cross now. “What?”
“The fish.” I nod at his hands. “Please?”
He looks at his hands again, like he’s just remembered it’s there and it’s real and it’s alive and he’s maybe killing it. He gives it a kiss and tosses it over his shoulder.
I watch it tumble through the air and splash back into the ocean, but I hadn’t the heart to check whether it floated back up to the surface.
“Once he was stuck, I let the crocodile out of the cage I made it, and he went straight to Hook because Hook is his best flavour of blood, and I cut his cheek so that he could smell it. Crocodiles are like sharks, did you know?” He smiles at me pleasantly. “They can smell blood.”
I cross my arms over my chest, feeling uncomfortable now.
“Didn’t the crocodile start sinking too?”
“Yeah.” Peter nods and shrugs at once. “They both died. It was pretty amazing.”
I stare up at him, my mouth agape, but he’s just smiling away, and I feel broken for a second, confused in my mind about all the things I’m hearing, because he’s saying it like it doesn’t matter. Calla doesn’t seem fazed, and Rye looks maybe a little bothered, but all I can think is that was Jamison’s father, and Peter fed him to a crocodile, and he’s proud of that. My heart pricks in a strange way, imagining how Jamison felt when he learned that his father had died. When did it happen? Was he sad? Was he relieved? Sometimes death can bring relief, I know that. That’s true enough on Earth, so maybe that’s true here too.
Or maybe death works entirely differently here?
Maybe it’s not the terrible affair we make it back home? Maybe on Neverland, they’re more evolved, and they’ve found a way to visit people from the past? Maybe death is the next step up, and that’s why they’re so cavalier about it. Maybe death really would be an awfully big adventure.
“What’s your best story, Daphne?” Rye says, catching my eye, nodding his head. It feels like he’s telling me to speak.
“Um.” I shake my head, try to shake away the strange feelings I have but am actively trying to ignore. I look from Rye to Peter and offer them a shrug. “Last summer, I saved the queen’s nephew from drowning.” I look between them all; Rye’s listening, Peter’s frowning, and Calla’s staring at her nails. “I was at a pool party with my b—” I stop myself. “My friend, he’s friends with them all, and this little boy fell in the pool, and no one noticed, but I saw him there, sunk at the bottom, so I dove down to him, and he was okay in the end, actually, so that was nice.”
Peter frowns, unimpressed.
“She gave me an RVO,” I tell them.
“What’s that?” Calla asks with a frown.
“Oh.” I shrug. “It’s an award you get from the queen when—”
“Who cares about queens?” Peter crows. “Kings, maybe. But queens?” He makes a pfft sound.
And with that, I’ve had enough. I push myself up off the rocks and start to head back.
Back where? I’m not sure. Just away. From him.
I stomp down Skull Rock. The tide is low enough that there’s a sandbar connecting it to the mainland, and thank goodness for that. I don’t have the happy thoughts to fly.
He’s terrible. Honestly, he’s horrible, don’t you think?
He’s completely, entirely, completely awful.
Self-involved, petulant, vain—
“Wait,” he calls, flying after me. “What’s wrong? Where are you going?”
He lands in front of me, and I stare up at him.
The sun’s behind him now; his face is in the shade.
I know you’d like me to say he’s less beautiful, but that would be a lie.
Peter Pan is spectacular in all manners of lighting, at every time of day, regardless of where the sun may fall on him. Shadows on his face don’t dull his beauty; they sharpen it. The sweet angle of his nose is accentuated now with the new freckles the day awarded it, and his eyes are, in fact, noticeably brighter now that the sun is setting, as though all day long, the two have been competing to be the shiniest thing around us. There’s just a flicker of light that rests atop his cupid’s bow, as if almost there by some kind of magic, and I swallow heavily, because three seconds ago, I hated him, but now he’s in front of me again and it’s waning. What is that?
I shake my head at him. “You’re the worst.”
“No, I’m not.” Peter’s face pulls. “I’m the best.”
I give him an exasperated look. “No, you aren’t. You’re infuriating and rude and—”
“How am I rude?” he interrupts me.
“You interrupt me.”
He rolls his eyes. “Just now.”
“Still rude.”
He sticks his chin out a bit, crossing his arms over his chest. “Before that then?”
I stare up at him, my nose in the air. “To normal people, my story is impressive.”
He rolls his eyes. “Well, who cares about normal people?”
I point at him. “Rude!”
“Fine!” Peter rolls his head back, tired. “I’m impressed.”
I smack my hands on my face, annoyed as I push past him. “Don’t just say it!”
He growls at the back of his throat. “You don’t know what you want!”
I spin around to face him again. “What I want?”
“Yes!” he yells, getting right up in my face. “You don’t know! You’re just yelling because you’re a girl, and girls go stupid like this!”
“No!” I stare him in the eyes. “I’m yelling because I’m angry at you!”
He stares at me for a few seconds, blinking. Five times, to be precise. I counted them. They demanded me to.
Blink. Blink-blink. Blink. Blink.
“Girl…” Peter ducks to hold my gaze. “Why are you angry at me?”