“Busyness,” he growls under his breath like he’s trying to scare it away. “I hate busyness.”
How his face goes—so angry about it, so hurt—as though he’s losing the wonder from his own story and the memory is being waterlogged by the emotions surrounding what it might be like to be abandoned in a park by your mother when the reality isn’t numbed fully by one’s being saved by fairies and magic.
“And then what?” I ask him, catching his eyes and not letting them go. “Your mother was talking to a woman…”
“And then there was a gust of wind!” Peter declares dramatically. “The biggest gust of wind that there’s ever been in the history of time!”?
“And then what?” I smile over at him.
“And then I just rolled away.” He shrugs like it was nothing. “Away and away, down a hill and another hill until I was lost and alone.”
Funny, but there aren’t that many hills in Kensington Gardens. I don’t say that though.
“Were you terribly afraid?” I ask instead.
“A bit.” He shrugs again. “But less afraid than a normal baby would be.”
“So you were alone?”
He nods, his face different now. He blinks twice. “I was alone.”
I put my hand on his cheek, and he kisses me mindlessly, because I think he thinks a hand on his cheek means he must.
“And then Tink found me.”
I smile up at him. “What was she like?”
“Tinker Bell?” he asks, eyebrows up for a second before they go low again. “She was…” He trails to a frown. He swallows and wipes his nose, looking away a bit. I can’t tell whether he’s forgotten or he’s upset.
I watch him for a few seconds before I gently ask, “Where is she?”
“Hmm?” He looks over at me, frowning.
“Where is she?”
“Who?” he asks, and my face tugs.
I clear my throat. “Tink.”
He shakes his head. “You wouldn’t be allowed to call her that. Just I was.”
“Okay.” I nod. “But where is she?”
Peter yawns, stretching his arms up over his head. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, where did she go?”
“I don’t know!” he says loudly, sitting up.
“Well.” I look around, confused. “Do fairies die?”
“They can.”
“And did she?”
“Why would you ask me that?” He stands, arms crossed over his chest, and outside, the wind picks up. It’s quiet enough I don’t notice it in a conscious way, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.
I stand up too because I don’t like the feeling of him towering over me.
“Why do you remember some things, but others you don’t?” I ask him carefully.
Peter shakes his head. “What are you talking about?”
“I mean—” I shrug. “You don’t remember what you did tonight or what you had for lunch today—and they’re small, sure, that’s fine, forget them, who cares if you forget them—but how can you remember how you came here when you were a baby? Because no one can remember anything from when they’re a baby.” I shake my head at him, eyes wide. “No one at all, but you can?”
“I’m just clever, that’s all.” He starts to walk away.
Walk, not fly.
“But you can’t remember what happened to your best friend?” I call after him.
“Tinker Bell wasn’t my best friend,” he says without turning around, but he does stop moving.
“Of course she was.” I move off the nets onto solid ground.
He shakes his head. “She wasn’t.”
“Who is then?”
“No one.” Peter shrugs. “I don’t need one.”
I frown at him, a bit put off.
“Well, she was important to you, was she not?”
He shrugs again. “I s’pose.”
“Yet you’ve forgotten entirely where she’s gone?” I ask loudly and slowly.
“Yes,” he says back in the same tone, and his face pulls tight and ugly.
I’ve never seen him ugly before.
And it’s not the normal kind of ugly, where something is physically repulsive, which he could never be. It’s the other kind.
The waves are loud now. And they must be big because we aren’t on the water.
We’re not far from it, less than a half a kilometre back. The tree house isn’t built right on the shore, but I can hear the waves splashing up against the trees now.
“And what even happened to her?” I ask, shaking my head at him.
Peter scowls at me. “Why do you think something happened?”
I lift my eyebrows. “Well, did it?”
“I—” He scoffs, shaking his head. “No.”
“No?” I repeat. “Or you don’t know?”
“I don’t remember!”
“But you remember how you got here!” I yell.
And then he launches at me, flies from where he was standing ten metres away, and in a single second, he’s right in my face.
“I lied!”
My heart’s pounding. “What?”
“That’s not how I got here,” he tells me, still sort of yelling. “I tell everyone it is, but it’s not. I stole that story from a Lost Boy,” he tells me, but he’s not floating anymore; his feet are very much so grounded. “He was in Kensington Gardens, and his mother was ignoring him, so I took him.”
“Peter!”
“It’s better like this.” He shakes his head. “He was happy with me.”
“And now?”
He shrugs, rolls his eyes, says what he says next like it’s a betrayal lobbed against him specifically.
“He grew up.”
He starts to walk away from me, but I chase after him.
“So where is he?” I ask him, reaching for his wrist.
He shakes me off. “I don’t know!”
“What do you mean ‘you don’t know’?”
He looks at me, angry and frustrated. “I forgot where I put him, that’s all.”
“Put him?” I blink over at him. “Why would you put him anywhere?”
Peter throws me a look. “That’s an expression.”
“For what?” I ask loudly, and he doesn’t say anything back, so I take another run at it. “So you stole a boy from his mother in Kensington Gardens, and you’ve since misplaced him somewhere in Neverland?”
“Yep.” He overenunciates, and he sounds unaffected.
“Well, did someone steal you?” I stare over at him. “How did you get here?” I try to pull on his arm, and he spins on his heel as I do.
“I don’t know!” he bellows. “I don’t know! Stop asking me. I don’t know.” His eyes are dark now, no green or gold in sight. More like molasses. Wild now too, like those Atlantic storms get. “I don’t like your questions.” Peter growls, standing above me, nose pressed against mine but not in a way that feels sweet or good. “I don’t like how they make me feel. I feel sick with your talking. Always talking! I need you to stop. I remember what I remember and I forget what I forget, and if you ask me any more things, then I will forget you.” He roars, and thunder claps so loudly and directly above us that I jump in fright, right off the ground, and once my feet aren’t touching it anymore, I swim through the air to my bed.
Only my bed is his bed, and he chases right after me.
“Wendy!”
“Daphne!” I yell at him, staring up ragged from the nest.
“Daphne.” He sighs almost like he’s sad at himself. “I’m sorry. I know you’re just a nosy girl.”
I scoff, looking away.
“Sorry.” He frowns as he sits down next to me. He touches my cheek with his finger—pokes it almost. “Was that bad to say?”