I move past her and walk into the house, and the boys are sitting around the table.
Peter grins up at me happily and walks over, kissing me a lot and more than I deserve, considering things I shall no longer be considering.
“Girl.” He smiles. “I was wondering where you were.”
“Were you?” I smile, relieved and delighted.
“I have a new boy for us.”
I look at him, confused. “What?”
Peter points to a child I’ve never seen before. “This is…” Peter trails off, trying to remember, and I backflip over and around everything Jamison fucking Hook said about Peter.
“Holden.” Kinley smiles, proud of himself for remembering.
He’s young. About ten, maybe? Eleven at very best. Really golden hair, big brown eyes. He gives me a hopeful, nervous smile.
“Hi.” I smile at him as surely as I can. “Holden, I’m Daphne.”
When he doesn’t say anything immediately, Percival elbows him.
“I know.” He nods a lot. “And you are not my mother.”
I flash him an uncertain smile. “Right.”
“Nor my girlfriend,” he adds.
I nod again. “Also true.”
“She is my girlfriend though,” Peter announces, and I look over at him, surprised.
“Really?”
“Yeah.” He shrugs. “I wouldn’t like you to be anyone else’s girlfriend, so you have to be mine.”
“Okay.” I nod, squashing away a smile.
And then I notice something. I look around over my shoulder.
“Where’s Brodie?”
“Hm?” Peter asks, shoveling food into his mouth, and Kinley and Percival look over at Peter, waiting.
“Where is Brodie?” I sit on my hands, feeling a little bit concerned.
“Oh.” Peter shrugs. “He got lost at sea today.”
“What?” I yell.
Peter throws his head back, laughing, but I’m just staring at him, worried.
“I’m joking, Wendy.” He grins.
I don’t correct him.
“Where is he, Peter?” I ask clearly. “Really.”
Peter takes a drink and then has a bite of his bread roll.
“He found his brother.” Peter flashes me a quick smile. “And they lived happily ever after.”
* * *
* The table girl.
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
Thoughts are like helium balloons—someone said that to me once. They drift into your mind, and you can choose to grab the string—hold on to the thought tightly, think of it, dwell on it, mull it over—or you can let it go.
Neverland, in general, is a place where balloons of thought drift by frequently and easily, but were I to be entirely forthcoming, I’d be remiss not to admit that anytime the Jamison balloon drifts into my consciousness, I not only grab it by its string, but sometimes I leap into the air to reach for it and yank it down close to my face so I can look at it properly.
“Peter.” I sit down next to him, his brown legs dangling over one of the balcony nets, hands cupped together with a little blue bird sitting in them, staring at it intensely.
“Yes, girl?” he says without looking at me.
“You know that place in the sky where you can go—” I pause, trying to think how to say it without arousing potential suspicion. “The place…with the baggage?”
He nods, still not looking away from the bird, who’s staring back at him just as intensely.
“Can you go there anytime?”
“Yes,” he says, bored.
“Can I?”
“I suppose,” he says indifferently.
“I have some thoughts I should like to put away,” I tell him, and he looks over at me curiously, and then the bird makes a little tweet and flies away.
He gives me a frustrated look. “You just made me lose.”
“Lose what?” I frown, confused.
“Staring contest,” Peter says, wiping his hands on his trousers. “Now she’ll tell all her friends that she’s better than I am.”
I look after the bird and shake my head. “I can’t imagine she would do that.”
He stares after her too. “She better not,” he says, and were the sun not hitting the exact angle of his cheek how it is, lighting him all up like a glorious statue we’d pray to if we’re lucky enough to sit at its feet, I feel I may have feared for that small bird. But I don’t, because I’m at the statue’s feet, and it really is terribly golden. “What thoughts?” Peter asks, squinting at me in the sun.
“Terrible ones I shouldn’t like to bore you with,” I tell him politely.
“Are they about blood and guts?”
“Nothing so thrilling.” I give him a quick smile. “Just grown-up things.”
He pulls a revolted face.* “Yeah, let’s get rid of those then.”
“Please.” I nod, eager, and he offers me his hand. He can be sweet, I tell myself. Beg myself, actually, to remember that. “I’m desperate to.”
He pulls me to my feet and watches me with a curious face. Mindlessly, he pushes some hair behind my ear. “I’ll protect you from grown-up things.”
I swallow as I let myself be swallowed by his eyes.
“Thank you,” I tell him quietly as he takes my hand and floats me into the air.
That is a lovely feeling, the floating with him, up and high and away; it feels in these moments how I imagine it’s always meant to when you’re here. When you aren’t bogged down with thoughts about where a certain Lost Boy might be or whether that bird will really be okay in the end or pirates with warm hands and bad intentions.
Peter drops me to the shack in the sky and tells me he’ll be back soon—that he’d heard of a star coming loose in the sky and he has to go and convince it to tighten up.
I walk over to baggage claim a bit gingerly and flash the old man a smile—John, was it? He stands, setting down his fishing rod.
“Was wondering when I’d see you again.”
I nod at his bucket. “Do you ever catch anything up here?”
“Flying fish, mostly.” He shrugs. “Sometimes a meteor.”
“Oh.” I nod, impressed even though I don’t sound it.
“Dropping off some thoughts?” He nods his head towards the shack.
“Yes please.”
“You’ve been here awhile.” He gives me a look.
“Have I?” I ask, genuinely curious.
He nods a bit. “A couple of months.”
“Right.” I frown, thinking back, trying to puzzle out where all the time went.
“Have you enjoyed it?” he asks pleasantly, and I wish it didn’t roll over my face, the briefest of pauses, but it does.
Have I enjoyed it? Maybe? Time’s flown, and they do say that about fun. I suppose I just always imagined Neverland to be a wistful, mindless experience with long days and warm nights and swashbuckling adventures with an adoring, me-focused Peter Pan, but so far, it’s been a rather heady, multi-seasonal marathon of the heart where Peter adores everyone with breasts, and until (I think, possibly) yesterday (was it?), my attention was the tiniest bit divided between him and the other one.
But still, I answer with, “Yes. Very much so.”
He gives me a small smile, but I feel as though he mightn’t believe me all the way. I don’t think that bothers me though, because I don’t know if I believe me all the way either.
I stare over at him, and while I don’t mean to, I do find myself frowning at him.
“You do really look ever so familiar,” I tell him.