But getting to know Peter is like trying to study water as it runs over a fall. Always moving, always rushing, somehow constant, and never the same all at once.
To make matters worse and harder, there are the obvious complications in that he nearly forgets absolutely everything.
He’ll disappear for chunks of time in the day, and he could be with Calla, or he might be out fishing or playing with the mermaids, or he could be soaring treetops with the boys, or actually, he might be doing none of that.
And I don’t think he’s being evasive, though it’s impossible to ever be entirely sure. It’s easier to presume he’s actually just as forgetful as he says he is.
He’s not home at dinnertime. It’s just me and the boys, and that’s fine. I don’t need to be around Peter all the time, though I see why it might sound like I think I do. I don’t. It’s just a strange feeling to be in a foreign place, almost entirely dependent on an undependable person. It feels like you’re playing a game of chess for the first time in your life against a master, in the dark, and only his pieces glow. That’s what it feels like to be with him.
“So how long have you been a Lost Boy, Brodie?” I ask as I have a big sip of water from a coconut shell. The water here, how it tastes, you wouldn’t believe it. Somehow sweet like nectar but not remotely overbearing, just perfectly balanced to nothing.
“I don’t know.” Brodie squints to remember. “A bit of time now.”
“Were you always bigger than the others?”
He shakes his head. “I think I was small once.”
“Does everyone get old here?”
He nods. “Except for Peter.”
“Were you very young then, when he found you?”
Brodie puts his chin in his hand, thinking back. “We were on a boat, I think?” He blinks a few times. “I can remember it only a bit. I can hear seagulls in my mind when I think of it.”
“We?” I tilt my head at him. “Your brother, you mean?”
He nods, straining at the thought. “I think so.”
“Did he not come with you?”
“No, Peter took us both.” He nods.
“Took?” I blink, confused, and Brodie shakes his head.
“No. Saved.” He shakes his head, looking past me to the memory. “He saved us. Our parents, my mum, she wasn’t”—he pauses, breathes out—“paying attention, and I went overboard. Maybe we both did?”
“And Peter saved you?” I smile at Brodie, feeling a rush of pride for Peter. How good of him.
Brodie nods, but he’s frowning still, a thought cracking over his face like an egg. “Yes,” he still says anyway.
I tilt my head and ask him gently, “And where’s your brother now?”
Brodie looks over at me like he’s just remembered I’m here. He blinks and breathes out. “I don’t know.”
And then there’s a smash.
I gasp in fright and grab Brodie’s arm instinctively before I look over and see Peter standing there in the sort of frame of the sort of door that leads to the dining room.
He’s just staring at us, broken glass around his foot.
“Oops,” he says, stepping over it and walking towards us.
“Hi.” I smile quickly, and I don’t realise that I don’t breathe out upon realising it’s Peter. I bring my knees up to my chest, because I’m relaxed, I think? That seems like something a relaxed person might do, don’t you think? Brodie’s shoulders stay rather tense though.
Then Peter walks over and sits down next to me, throws an arm around my shoulders, and stares at Brodie, saying nothing.
Brodie swallows, clears his throat, and then stands.
“Thanks for having dinner with me,” I call to him.
He doesn’t say anything as he looks over his shoulder, just nods.
“What were you talking about?” Peter asks once he leaves the room.
“Oh, nothing.” I shrug. “Just how he came to Neverland.”
“Did he tell you I saved him?”
I nod. “He did.”
Peter gives me a triumphant look. “Were you very proud of me?”
I brush my lips against his cheek. “I was.”
He leans back in his chair and smiles, breathing out, content.
“Where did you go tonight?” I ask, even though I already know the answer.
“Dunno.” He shrugs.
“Did you see anyone?”
He inspects his thumb. “Could have.”
“Calla?” I ask, feeling a hint of insecurity.
He stares at me for a long second, then flies off and tosses himself into one of the giant nets. I sigh and fly after him, less exuberant, and I supposed I collapse into the net more than throw myself into it.
He rolls from where he’s lying over to me, as though he’s tumbling down a hill, stopping when the whole side of his body is pressed up against mine.
“Do you know how I got here?” he asks me brightly.
I glance around, a bit confused. “Here…where?”
“Here, here.” Peter shrugs. “Neverland here.”
I should say—in case I wasn’t clear before—there’s something almost addicting about kissing him. Whenever he kisses me, there’s always the inevitable end of that particular kiss, and from that moment until I reach the next, I wonder about kissing him…when it’ll happen again, how it’ll happen again, why it feels like when you have a little bit too much champagne and your arms go heavy and your whole body falls to a funny, heavy kind of relaxed.
“Mmm.” I frown a little. “I should think that I’ve heard the story from Mary or Wendy before, but you’ll tell it better, I’m sure.”
He kisses me for saying that. I knew he would; that’s why I said it. So he’d duck his face lower than mine a bit, knock my mouth where he wants it, and press his lips that get bolder and bolder by the second up against mine.
He shifts a bit, pulls me on top of him, rolls himself underneath me.
He puts his right hand on my lower back and frowns at me for a second.
“It’s okay if I put just one hand on you here and the other behind my head, right?”
I nearly laugh, but I don’t because his eyes get a look in them if he feels you’re laughing at him.*
“You don’t have to hold me the same way every time, Peter.”
“Oh, I know.” He shrugs. “I was just making sure you knew that because I want my hand behind here, but I didn’t want you to be a girl about it.”
I breathe out, flicking him a look. “How did you get to Neverland, Peter?” I ask so as to avoid starting an argument.
“Well, it was a springtime morning, and I was in Kensington Gardens with my mother,” he starts. “I was the cutest baby you’ve ever seen.”
“I’m sure you were.” I nod.
“I was in a stroller, and she was talking away to some lady—you know how girls love to talk—”
I roll my eyes again.
“She wasn’t paying so much attention to me. Why do you think mothers do that?”
“What?” I frown at him. “Ignore their children, do you mean?”
He nods, waiting for an answer—very unlike him.
I swallow, thinking back to my own. I think she used to ignore me too. It was a nice thing to have forgotten. Actually, I don’t think I should like to remember with pinpoint accuracy the depth of how much she ignored me.
“Busyness, I suppose.”