He floats over to me and tilts my face gently so it mirrors his. “Just me.”
I smack his hand away, feeling flustered because my cheeks are pink, and they didn’t go pink for Jasper England’s Icelandic-blue eyes, and they won’t go pink for Peter’s even if they already are.
“What a ridiculous thing to say!” I shake my head at him as I rummage around my room for a rucksack.
“I’ll look after you, girl,” he tells me, his face quite serious, then he reaches for my hand. “Come away with me.” He pulls me towards the window, eyes bright like the stars that are calling us. “You’ll never have to worry about grown-up things again.”
He floats backwards, pulling me up onto the edge of the windowsill, and I eye him carefully.
“Never really is such an awfully long time…”
In that moment, teetering on the border of everything I knew and everything I could know—standing on the cliff’s edge that would ultimately be the sharp drop-off into the rest of my life—I want to be able say that you could have swayed me either way, that if you promised me a life of safety and security and happiness that it would have been enough for me to bar that stupid window closed for all my days, but there is something so sweet about the unknown and something so thrilling about tumbling into something and someplace new, and even though I haven’t yet been, I suppose a part of me could tell that one day, Neverland would be both the great landmark and landslide of my life.
You might think I’m foolish for jumping out my window in the dead of night with a boy whose hair is as messy as his heart, but then, if you don’t understand the lure and pull of the boy in question, I’m terribly sorry to inform you, but you’ve never met Peter Pan.
* * *
* Charlotte.
* Or with Arthur. I used to hear a lot about Avalon.
? One in particular, I daresay, but that’s all you’ll hear from me about it.
? The one from the stories.
§ Sorry, Charlotte.
* But perhaps less so than previously thought, as it appears what I considered to be their primary eccentricity is evidently real.
* The one before this one.
? I believe he’s just gotten engaged.
§ Loved might be a stretch.
* Wendy’s husband, of course. Alfred Beaumont.
CHAPTER
TWO
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I don’t know how it happens or how he even does it, but I’m quite sure that Peter can fold time and space as though it were a piece of paper in his back pocket, because that bloody second star to the right that I’ve stared at all my life, in the scheme of things, really only took a moment or three to get to. Black holes are real, by the way, though it is my belief that you won’t have conclusive confirmation of that on Earth for a good few more years. He might be in cahoots with the black holes, actually. He told me that crossing the event horizon usually stings but that he asked it not to sting me, and to his credit, it didn’t. There is, however, much to be said about the inside of a black hole—far less ominous than one might think, what with its name and all, and I do insist that, in this particular scenario, its bark is worse than its bite. A swirling hot mess of everything in the universe that has existed or will ever exist sort of swimming above you and around you and maybe (I’m not totally sure but) possibly through you—quite the sight to behold.
Watching Peter Pan fly feels like watching a dolphin swim out in the open ocean.
He glides in the sky and skims the stars, and I’ve never seen anything like him, like a stone skipping across the sky, weaving through comets like a beam of light. He’s all the parts of the electromagnetic spectrum we can see and even parts of it that we can’t, all bound in wonderful flesh to the freest of souls. You couldn’t even try to tell me in this moment (because no matter what you’d say, I wouldn’t have believed you anyway), but there is a steep and formidable price paid for this boy to have his freedom, and he is rarely, if ever, the one to foot the bill.
As we are flying through the inky black of the night right on the edge of our atmosphere, out of the corner of my eye, I see Peter watching me.
I peer over at him.
“Girl.” He squints.
I raise my eyebrows, waiting.
“You really are very pretty.”
My heart swells more than I’d like it to, but I try to keep a level head. “But do you think I’m clever?”
“We’ll see.” He gives me a sly smile, and I frown a bit.
All I’ve wanted in my life is to be clever. Cleverness has been my raison d’être since I was ranked first in my class in year seven and my mother happened to be there. She was quite pleased. I’ve been ranked first ever since.
“Now, girl.”
I huff, annoyed. “Have you forgotten my name again already?”
“Daphne, girl.” He gives me a smug look. “Have you ever held hands with a boy before?”
I don’t mean to laugh, but I do. Just a small one. More of a sniff than a laugh actually, so I turn it into a cough.
“Yes.”
Peter Pan’s entire face darkens. “Who?”
“Um…” I purse my lips, trailing.
“You’ve forgotten his name?” Peter asks, hopeful and gleeful.
Jasper. And Steffan. A Welsh boy I dated last spring. We also kissed, but I don’t think Peter would care for that specific detail.
“Sure,” I lie.
Peter swoops over and takes my hand in his. “You will remember forever the day you held hands with Peter Pan.”
He throws me a devil-may-care smile.
And he’s right, I will. But I do wonder how he’s already forgotten that we held hands in my bedroom not an hour ago. I think it’s better not to say it; he seems not to like being corrected. Who does though, to be fair. I hardly think it’s a commentary on him as a person. At least no more than it is one of me that I won’t say to Peter something that he won’t like because I want him to like me.
How terribly silly of me. How terribly like the kind of girl I’m not. Imagine it, me, not saying the true thing to spare a man his feelings. Ridiculous.
And yet, it would be the first of many such occasions.
It would take me a very long time to learn that there are many different kinds of men in this world (and all the other worlds like ours) but a surefire, quick, and easy way to discern a true man among men is how much of yourself he allows you to be in his presence. A real man will allow you to be your whole entire self, with breathing room and space to change your mind and even evolve it. A mere boy might let you be yourself just an eighth of the way, if you’re lucky.
Peter squeezes my hand.
“Now, you’re going to need to hold tight, girl. The sun’s rising, and we need to catch it to the universe next door.”
And that is all the warning I get.
His grip on me fastens a little but nowhere near enough for what is about to happen.