Page 123 of Losing Wendy

When the Sister bestowed on me my gift, it was so that I would not falter if it came time to end them. She’ll see Thomas’s knowledge as a disease, ready to infect the others.

It’s all I can think about anymore.

The restof the journal is empty.

There’s a whipping sound as the pages slap together when I slam the book shut.

Letters, written in Peter’s script, coil and swirl in my vision.

End them.

It’s only a matter of time before the other boys discover the truth.

She’ll see Thomas’s knowledge as a disease.

End them.

End them.

End them.

My heart races and pounds,confusion rippling through me. It doesn’t make sense. I crack the journal back open, skimming over the passage, thinking I’ve understood it wrong, but the more my eyes scan over the lines, the more condemning they read.

I don’t understand.

Peter brought the boys here to save them. To keep them sheltered from their fates. Why would he ever think to end them, and what does that even mean?

And what did Thomas remember? What memory was dreadful enough to get him killed?

My mind rewrites the story Peter originally told me. He claimed the boys were brought to Neverland to keep from infecting their region with a terrible plague, to keep them from meeting their horrible fates.

But what if he lied?

No. That doesn’t make sense. Victor told me that all the boys were ill when they first awoke in Neverland, which supports Peter’s story.

Maybe it wasn’t so much that he lied, but that he omitted part of the truth. Perhaps the Lost Boys witnessed something they were never supposed to see, something the Sister wished to keep hidden. What if that’s why she was truly there that night—to silence witnesses, then excuse her actions under the guise of preventing the spread of a plague?

Conflicting thoughts muddle my mind, attacking me from all directions.

Even if Peter killed Thomas at the Sister’s command, it doesn’t explain the murders of Freckles and Joel.

Unless…

Freckles didn’t care for Thomas. Did his disdain have something to do with Thomas’s returning memory? What if Thomas toldFreckles what he remembered? If it reflected negatively on Peter, I could see Freckles not wanting to believe it. Could see him thinking that Thomas was trouble—spreading harmful rumors for attention.

That still doesn’t explain Joel’s death, though.

Besides, there’s something else Peter said in his journal that bothers me.

I thought I could keep them from growing up.

In Estelle, you aren’t considered of age until you turn twenty, but like John said the other night, that’s only been the case for a few decades. Most of the surrounding kingdoms still consider adulthood to commence at sixteen.

I think back to Peter, to the way he spoke of coming of age as if it were a death sentence.

I’ve never asked how old the boys are. I’ve been assuming that most of them are around fifteen or sixteen, except for Smalls. All I know is that Thomas was the oldest.

But something is changing in the boys.

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