Chapter 19. Growing Up

CHAPTER 19

Growing Up

As they stood at the door, everything was silent. There were no whispers, no murmurings, just a pull in her chest that urged her to go inside. Wendy took the key and slid it into the lock. Suddenly, the idea of going into her old room overwhelmed her. Until now, the locked door had stood like an entrance to a tomb. What if she couldn’t handle it? What if she was met with a flood of memories? What if the ache for her missing brothers hurt too much?

She looked at Peter and, as if sensing her distress, he moved, lightly pressing his shoulder against hers, and gave a small nod. Wendy turned the key in the lock and pushed the door open.

At first, she could hardly see anything. The only illumination came from the moonlight that streamed through the large bay window on the opposite wall. Wendy blindly moved her hand along the wall until she found the switch. With a flick of her finger, strings of fairy lights lining the four corners of the ceiling illuminated the room. Her father had rigged them up when Wendy was born.

She slowly stepped into the room, drinking it all in. Peter hung back, leaning against the doorframe, giving her space but watching intently.

John’s and Michael’s beds were set against the left wall while Wendy’s was pushed up against the right. They each had their own dressers and a large bookshelf took up room next to the bay window.

It didn’t feel like a preserved monument to her brothers. In fact, everything looked exactly how she remembered it, but with more dust. It was like John and Michael had just walked out a minute earlier. There was an opened box of colored pencils on the small table in the corner. Michael’s backpack was slumped with its contents spilling out in a corner by his bed. A book was laid open on John’s. Even the comforter on Wendy’s old bed was pulled back, probably from when she had woken up screaming the first and last time her parents tried to have her sleep in it after being found in the woods.

Wendy let out a soft laugh. “It’s like they never left,” she said quietly into the room.

Peter stepped inside and looked around, then over at her old bed. “Pink floral, huh?” he said, lifting an eyebrow. The corner of his lips twitched, threatening to curl into a grin.

“I had a very different aesthetic when I was little,” Wendy told him firmly as she followed him inside. “I wonder how they’ll change it when they come back,” she mused, trailing her fingertips along the edge of the blanket on her old bed. Peter’s eyes shifted to the floor.

She turned to the bay window.

The seat below had a soft pad and storage underneath. Wendy knew it was filled with more books.

“That was my favorite spot in the whole house,” she said, nodding to the blue-and-white-checkered seat. “I used to sit there and tell John and Michael stories before bed.”

“I know,” Peter said with a tired grin. “I spent a lot of nights listening to them just outside the window.”

“Yeah, that’s still creepy,” she told him, throwing a smile over her shoulder as she walked over to Michael’s bed. A small teddy bear sat slumped against the pillows. “I almost forgot about this little guy,” she said. She picked it up and brushed the dust off the top of its head. “Peter, this is Fuzzy Wuzzy,” she said, holding it up.

Peter gave a half bow and removed an invisible hat in greeting. “’Tis a pleasure, my good sir.”

Wendy let out a small laugh and shook her head at him. She hadn’t felt this close to her brothers in years. It was like they were in the room with her. She wanted to soak it all in. She couldn’t even imagine how perfect it was going to be to have them home.

Wendy walked over and sat on the window seat. “Michael was in love with this thing,” she said, placing the bear in her lap and moving its lumpy arms. “He took it with him everywhere. He did this weird thing where he chewed on the nose all the time, right? He did it so much that one time, when we were playing in the backyard, it popped off.” She pressed a finger to the bare space where the button nose should have been. “He was in hysterics, completely inconsolable. We must’ve looked for it for more than an hour, but we couldn’t find it.”

Peter slid to sit next to her. He tucked his hands into his pockets. “All because of a nose?” he asked with an amused look on his face.

“It was very traumatic.” Wendy nodded with a grin, bumping her shoulder against Peter’s. “I had to come up with a story about how Fuzzy Wuzzy had lost his nose in a daring lion taming–related incident,” she told him. “God, he made me tell that story at least a dozen times. Michael was always more sensitive. Then you had John, who acted like a little old man, even at ten.”

“Yeah, what’s all that stuff by his bed?” Peter asked, nodding toward it.

There was a collage of magazine, newspaper, and online articles printed out and tacked to the wall. “Oh, that,” Wendy said. “John was fascinated by things that scientists and archaeologists found at the bottom of the ocean. Shipwrecks, evidence of underwater cities, stuff like that,” she explained. “Whenever he found those stories, he would cut or print them out and then hang them up on the wall. He wants to be an underwater archaeologist when he grows up—or he used to, anyway. I have no idea if that’s still true.” Wendy frowned. It was strange to consider that her brothers had grown and changed enough that maybe she had no idea what they were like now.

“When you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up?” Peter asked. His tone was quiet, eyes locked onto Wendy’s with his head tipped curiously to the side. He sucked on the puffy cut on his lip.

“A nurse, like my mom,” Wendy said with a shrug. “I think most kids want to be like their parents when they grow up. And a nurse was a far more interesting option than a banker,” she added with a crinkle of her nose.

“And what about now?”

“Hmm,” Wendy hummed to herself, absentmindedly rubbing the bear’s ear between her fingers. She thought of all the forms and pamphlets back in her room. Of the academic roadmap she’d made for a nursing degree. Of the unfinished one for premed. “I don’t think I know yet,” she confessed. “Maybe a doctor?” A thrill ran up her spine. It was the first time she’d said it out loud. “But I haven’t decided. That’s what college is for, right?”

Peter’s expression fell and he busied himself with examining his palm.

“What about you?” Wendy asked, trying to bring him back.

“Me?” Peter said, furrowing his brow. He let out a small laugh that lacked any humor.

“Yeah, did you ever have dreams about growing up?” she persisted.

Peter shook his head. “No, I can’t grow up—or I wasn’t supposed to, anyway,” he said, looking down at himself.

“But everyone thinks about possible futures for themselves,” she said. “There wasn’t anything you wanted to be? Other than just yourself?”

“No, I never had that feeling,” he told her. “I was Peter Pan, the boy who never had to grow up. I got to live in Neverland and anything I could think up, I could become. A pirate, an explorer, a scuba diver,” he listed, staring out the window. “Growing up meant responsibilities: school, jobs, getting old and eventually dying—”

“But you had all those lost kids to look after,” Wendy pointed out. “That’s a big responsibility, isn’t it?”

“Yes, but it’s still fun,” he countered. He chewed on the inside of his cheek, thinking. “In Neverland, I could do whatever I wanted. I was free.”

“But were you, Peter?” Wendy heard herself ask.

He paused and then shook his head, not understanding.

“You could do whatever you wanted, play whatever make-believe games you could come up with, but lost kids were always coming and going—you said so yourself,” Wendy said. “And it was always just make-believe. Didn’t you ever want something…” She tried to find the right words. “Real? You never felt like you were missing … something?”

Peter’s celestial eyes locked on hers. “Not until I met you.”

There was a low rush in the pit of Wendy’s stomach. It was so sudden, so simply put, that she wasn’t sure she had heard him right.

He watched her carefully.

Wendy shook her head, trying to think clearly.

“You … what?” she asked.

Peter took a deep breath. “I was fine with what I was, what it was my job to do,” he told her, watching her intently. “Your mom was the first person I met who wasn’t a lost kid. She was the first person who became my friend, who didn’t live in Neverland with me. We would have pretend sword fights in her backyard, she would tell me stories, and I told her what it was like in Neverland. But, just like everyone else in your world, she had to grow up.”

This was the most Wendy had heard about Peter and her mom. “So you couldn’t visit her anymore?”

Peter nodded. “I had mostly forgotten about her after a while, too,” he said. “Your mom remembered me, but she forgot that I was real. When I decided to look for her again on a whim, I found you, sitting in this window.” He looked like he was struggling to find his words. The tips of his ears were tinged red, but he didn’t look away, so neither did Wendy. “When I heard you telling my stories, I felt like I had to meet you. I wanted you to see me, to see that I was real,” Peter said.

He spoke with a rushed urgency, like he was trying to explain himself.

“When my shadow first went missing, I thought it was punishment for letting myself get—get distracted by you, because I was trying to get close to you. I wanted to,” he added insistently. Wendy’s eyes momentarily snagged on his hand as it reached toward hers, then hesitated. “Then when you found me struggling with my shadow, you acted like it was completely normal, and you were the one who was able to reattach it, to sew it back on.”

“But how?” Wendy interjected.

Peter shook his head. “I don’t know. I thought maybe you had your own magic? There was something different about you. You felt different to me. Important.” He cast her a sidelong glance. “Special.”

Wendy’s hands gripped the teddy bear in her lap tightly. Her heart fluttered in her chest.

“Then you started telling my stories less,” Peter continued. He spoke faster, his words tumbling from his lips. “I could see that you were growing up, that you were going to move into your own room, become a teenager, and forget about me. When John and Michael were—” Peter let out a frustrated noise and started again. “When I found the three of you in the woods, you begged me to bring you along to Neverland, and I wanted to. I didn’t want you to grow up and forget about me, too. It—” He gave her an uncertain look. “It hurt to think about.”

Wendy could hardly understand him. She felt dizzy. “What are you saying?” She felt out of breath.

“You were the oldest kid ever to come to Neverland, Wendy,” Peter told her. His fingers finally pressed to the inside of her wrist, heavy and warm. “It’s meant for children. I think that’s why I started losing my magic and Neverland began falling apart. It’s my fault all of this happened…” His face was twisted.

“But you didn’t know that would happen,” Wendy said. Her body was acutely aware of him—where his hand was on hers, the way his body was angled toward her, how she was close enough to feel his body heat. The acorn pressed against the center of her chest. It felt hot.

“I went against the rules,” Peter told her. “My job is to look after lost kids. I’m not supposed to interact with the others. I could watch, I could listen in when you told stories, but I wasn’t supposed to approach.” He paused and wetted his lips. “And then everything went wrong,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t want you to hate me.” He spoke slowly, deliberately.

Wendy’s brows furrowed. She didn’t understand what he meant, but she couldn’t think through the heady fog. Wendy didn’t remember leaning in, or Peter moving closer. Their shoulders pressed against each other. Peter’s startling blue eyes were wide. His cheeks flushed. His fingers brushed against hers. Wendy’s heart fluttered in her chest.

At first, she thought she was trembling, but it was Peter.

“You’re shaking,” Wendy said.

Peter’s throat bobbed as he swallowed, giving a barely perceptible nod of his head.

“I thought you weren’t afraid of anything?” Wendy heard herself say. She was lightheaded and breathless.

“I’m terrified,” he said quietly. His starry eyes held hers and she couldn’t look away. She didn’t want to.

“Of what?” Wendy asked.

Peter’s words brushed against her lips. “Losing you.”

Wendy leaned in closer and placed a hand in the center of his chest. She could feel his heartbeat thudding against her fingertips. His palm pressed against her cheek. Her head swam as she drowned in the smell of humid jungles and salty oceans.

The acorn around her neck burned bright in the small space left between them. It gleamed in his eyes.

“Can I stay with you?” Peter whispered, ghosting over her lips.

Wendy balled the front of his shirt in her hands, pulling him to her.

There was a moment of lips pressed to lips, the taste of honeysuckle, and an unbearable lightness that made her feel like she would float away if she didn’t hold on to him.

But then the window burst open, an exploding backdraft of darkness that tore them apart and threw Wendy to the ground.