He rolls his eyes. “Or stupid.”
I huff a bit, cross my arms over my chest, and peer over at him through the light that the moon’s throwing on him. “Are you”—I blink twice—“Peter Pan?”
“I knew you knew who I was!” He points at me, victorious.
I squint over at him, shaking my head. “You can’t be.” I frown as I take a careful step closer to him. He’s about six foot one. Maybe bigger. Tall, for certain. “You’re…” I blink a few times, face nearly scrunched. “Big?”
He looks down at his bare chest and puffs it up a little, flicks his eyes up at me, and does this thing with his eyebrows that might make my heart go weak at the knees. “I know.”
“But you’re supposed to be…” I look for the right words. “A boy?”
He looks annoyed. “I am a boy.”
I tilt my head at him again. He doesn’t look like a boy. He looks my age, maybe even a tiny bit older.
My eyes pinch. “Well, so how old are you then?”
“Bigger than you,” he tells me quickly.
“I didn’t ask how big you are.” Though he is indisputably bigger than me. I stand a mere five foot six. “I asked how old you are.”
“Older than you,” he tells me, and it’s then that I notice he has an American accent. Evasive answer. No surprises there…damn Yanks.
“Which is how old?” I put my hands on my hips, beginning to feel cross.
“The perfect kind.”
I stomp my foot. “Which is what?”
He takes a step towards me, and now I can see his eyes.
Green. Unmistakably green.
Peter Pan looks me up and down. His head is cocked to the side.
“You’re the perfect kind of old too.”
I blush. I don’t know why.
I swallow quickly, shake my head, and refocus.
“Come on, Wendy.” The boy reaches for my hand, and I snatch it away.
“I’m not Wendy.”
He rolls his eyes and groans, a bit impatient and rude.
“Well, what are you then?”
“Do you mean ‘who am I’?”
He rolls his eyes and says nothing.
“I’m Daphne.”
His face pulls. “That’s a weird name.”
I pull one back. “No weirder than Peter Pan.”
“My name’s the best name.” He shrugs proudly.
I squint over at him. “Why Pan?”
“Why Daphne?” he shoots back in a dumb voice, and I think he’s a terrible pest.
I take a big breath and sigh at him to make sure he knows I’m displeased, but as I do, I accidentally smell him. You know how the air gets when summertime’s close? Like frangipani and the ocean. He smells how the air feels right before the storm. He smells like freedom, and I don’t mean to, but I breathe him in. And once I feel him inside my chest, there’s this peculiar sinking—it’s rather distinct—that the feeling of him being there might not ever quite leave.
Do you ever get a feeling like that? A foreboding? A grave permanence to whatever’s about to come next?
That’s how breathing Peter Pan in feels. Like taking the first step on a carpet rolled out in front of you.
His eyes flicker around my face with a curious intensity I don’t understand, and I wonder whether he’ll kiss me, he’s leaning in so close. Does he even know about kisses? My cheeks feel hot, and I swallow nervously before I shake my head at myself.
I mustn’t forget—because it’s undeniably a woman’s strength—that I’m dreadfully stroppy at him for, off the cuff, calling me stupid, getting my name wrong, and then calling it weird. I turn from him, arms folded across my chest and my brows high with indignation.
“Wendy, girl.” He cranes his head around my shoulder. “Why are you angry?”
“Wendy isn’t my name.” I move away from him and sit on my bed. I don’t think I much like him, if I’m honest. He’s not making me feel good inside myself, yet I so desperately want his approval, and I’ve never wanted the approval of a man before.
I’ve had boyfriends before. Lots of boys like me. I’m attractive enough in a conventional way, and I’m clever. I’m from a well-to-do (albeit considered eccentric*) family. I’m mysterious and aloof. I don’t care about the things some other girls care about. When Jasper England asked me to his family’s manor for dinner, every girl in my dormitory screamed, but I didn’t.
I went. I had a fun time. We kissed. He was good at it. He asked me what I wanted to do after I finished school, and I said I wanted to go to university. He asked if I wanted to get my MRS, because if I did, he could save me a lot of time.
When I said I wanted to get a degree in mineralogy, he stared at me like I told him I wanted to stick a fork in a power socket.
We dated for the entire summer,* because he actually really was a very good kisser, and at the end of it, Jasper asked if I was joking about “the geology thing,” and I said no, and then he dropped me home shortly after, and we’ve not spoken since.?
I don’t know what it is about Peter Pan that’s made me feel instantly disheartened, but I do. I don’t know why. I obviously don’t know this boy, except that I do, I think. I know him how you know him and we all know him…from once upon a dream.
And no one likes it when a dream is fractured.
“But you are a girl.” Peter kneels in front of me, and he puts his hands on my knees, and this is the first time we touch. My brain makes a note of it because I know my heart will want to remember it later. I’m wearing quite short bloomers and a white, cotton camisole, and he’s staring up at me, smiling.
Peter’s brows furrow, and his smile is confused but present.
“The best girl I’ve ever seen,” he tells me matter-of-factly, and my cheeks go pink.
This pleases him, my pink cheeks. I can tell because his chest puffs up a little and he jumps up off the ground, shoving a hand through his blond hair.
He walks around my room, looking at the posters on the wall.
“Who’s that?” He points to a poster on my wall.
I glance over at the poster and then give Peter a confused look. “That’s Mick Jagger.”
“Do you know him?” He frowns.
“No, but—”
“Why’s there this picture of Mick Jagger on your wall then?”
“Well, because he’s rather sexy, don’t you think?”
Peter pulls a face. “What’s sexy?”
I purse my lips. “Handsome,” I tell him. “Or pleasant to look a—” I barely get the words out before he pulls a dagger from his belt and slices my poster in two.
It all happens so quickly—a blink-and-you-miss-it sort of change in him—but Peter’s face goes like a flash from inquisitive to dark. The poster flits to the ground, our eyes following it.
“Hey!” I growl. “That was my favourite!”
“I’m your favourite now.” He gives me a curt smile.
I frown at him.
“I don’t like to share,” he says, inspecting his dagger before pocketing it again.
“Share what?” I cross my arms again.
He frowns at me. “You.”