Page 109 of Losing Wendy

“Peter, can I talk to you?” I ask.

Victor digs his heel into the earth. “No one’s leaving until we find out where everyone was when he died. Wendy, why don’t we start with you?”

All eyes turn to me, every one of them wide, keeping them from blinking back tears.

“You heard me. Where were you when you were supposed to be helping in the kitchen?”

My mouth goes dry. I grope for words, but I can’t find any. The words should be simple.I didn’t kill Joel. I never would harm any of you. But the truth of the matter is, I don’t remember anything from the time I pressed the faerie dust to my lips to the moment I woke in the rafters.

Instinctively, I check for blood on my clothes. I find none, but my glance betrays my intent, because Victor says, “Checking for incriminating evidence,Winds?”

“She was with me,” says Peter, crossing his arms. He gives no further explanation, and my cheeks heat. When I cross my arms, the boys’ gaze dips to my ring, which I’m absentmindedly twirling around my finger.

“I see,” says Victor. “So Wendy gets special treatment. No need to show up to your responsibilities as long as you’re having a tryst with Peter.”

John coughs audibly, sounding like he’s choking. My face goes scarlet with heat, but Peter steps in and puts a hand on Victor’s shoulder. “Stand down,” he says gently, protectively. “Wendy isn’t the murderer.”

“Then who is?” asks Victor.

Strangely, the Lost Boys’ faces turn, each examining the boy next to them.

It’s only then that I realize there’s no squeaking coming from my satchel.

When I open the flap, I find Benedict the mouse, belly plump from gorging himself on a pouch of faerie dust I stuffed in my satchel earlier.

He’s dead, too.

CHAPTER 40

We bury Joel in the light of the moon, the wind howling a dirge as we do.

We dig him a proper grave. I suppose we tell ourselves that it’s to protect his body from the elements, the scavengers Victor wished upon the man who killed Thomas. But that’s a lie, just like any of the others we tell ourselves. The maggots and worms and natural decay will get him just the same.

The only difference is we won’t have to watch.

So we bury Joel deep, and we tell ourselves it’s for his sake, when we know good and well it’s for our own.

As we file solemnly back into the Den, our fingernails caked with dirt clots, John pulls me to the side, still clutching onto Michael’s hand. He stood back for most of the burial, not out of a lack of desire to help, but because he didn’t want Michael getting too close to the body.

I think we all agreed with his decision.

But now John has a crazed look in his eyes. They’re darting back and forth, following some course that’s invisible to the rest of us.

He waits until the last of the boys files in and says, “It’s one of them. It has to be.”

I shake my head, like I’m a puppy slogging water out of my ears after taking a plunge. Except there’s no clearing the way that everything feels more muffled. Is that from the guilt of losing Joel, when he shouldn’t have been looking for me to begin with, or is this just how the world feels now when I come down off of a high from the faerie dust?

“Joel was their friend. He was…different,” I say, finding it difficult to air my concerns about Joel now that he’s dead. Nausea froths at the base of my throat at the thought of the dead mouse in my satchel, the pet Joel was so proud of himself for tending to. “But I can’t think why anyone would want to kill him. And besides, they’re just…”

John raises a brow. “Just boys? Wendy, a decade ago, most of them would have been considered grown men in Estelle. You think none of them are capable of wielding a weapon?”

My mind flashes back to Joel, coaxing a mouse to the fire. To Victor, spitting on the corpse of the man who killed his brother. To John, who dreams of forcing Captain Astor to take a blade to his own throat.

My cheeks drain of color.

“Don’t tell me they don’t have it in them. I think you should know better than anyone that we all do.”

The lifeless face of Peter’s assailant paints itself on the back of my eyelids when I blink.

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