Page 142 of Losing Wendy

Except…that’s not right. This is the same Simon I met my first day here. That Simon had already strangled his friend. The boy who had nudged me and flirted with me and teased me had already gotten a taste for murder, already wrestled with his craving for taking lives.

I wonder then how often the people whose smiles wash awayour pain are only masking their own, overexerting themselves to make sure everyone else is okay, when inside, they’re withering away while no one else notices, too caught up in their own problems.

“I’m sorry, Simon,” I say, placing my hand on his shoulder as Peter watches over John and Michael.

“For what.” Not a question as much as a resignation.

“For not seeing. For not noticing.”

Simon doesn’t look at me. He just pauses for a moment, as if he too has a blade lodged in his ribcage. “Don’t worry about it, Winds,” he says.

Then he goes back to digging.

My heart aches for my friend, anxiety welling in my stomach. I’m still not sure what Peter will do with him now that we know he was complicit in the murders. Part of me wishes to keep that to myself, but hiding the truth seems like the worst thing possible for Simon right now.

Seems like it’s been the worst thing for all of us.

When the grave is done, I meander back to Peter’s side. He’s leaning over John, whom we’ve spread across the grass.

“He hasn’t quite woken up yet,” says Peter. “He was dosed pretty heavily with somnium oil. Might be a few days before he comes to.”

Anxiety stirs in my chest. “But he will wake up, won’t he?”

Peter turns to me and nods. “He’ll wake up. I’ll make sure of it.”

Anxiety still prickles at my insides, but there’s something about Peter’s words that makes them seem even more trustworthy than they did before. Despite not telling me that Neverland was a prison, I know he only kept it to himself to protect the boys. To keep any of them from turning out like Nettle.

“What happened tonight, Wendy?” Peter asks, landing his sparkling blue eyes on me.

I glance up at Michael.

“Do you think he’d understand if he overheard?” Peter asks.

“I’m never sure what he understands,” I say. “Sometimes I think it’s quite a bit more than we give him credit for.”

Peter nods, then reaches into his satchel. At first I think he’s going for faerie dust, and my heart gives a little lurch. But then he pulls out a set of earmuffs and puts them on Michael’s head. At first I think Michael will shake them off, but his face goes slack with peace as the muffs block out the wind. He actually lies on his back, still for a while, staring up at the stars.

“He never does that,” I say. “Stays still like that.”

“Maybe he’s chasing something the rest of us can’t hear,” says Peter, softly. His words tug on the knots in my belly. There’s no way Peter just happened to have earmuffs on hand.

“You made them especially for him?” I say.

Peter scratches his head. “I might have borrowed them from a wealthy family from another realm. I assure you they had plenty to spare.”

We sit in silence for a while as Simon continues digging Nettle’s grave.

“You’re not going to ask me why I poisoned you?” I ask.

“I’m considering whether I want to know.”

I bite my lip. “You mean you already know, and you’d rather me not confirm it.”

Peter sighs, running his hand through his hair.

So I tell him. I tell him of the horrors I found in his journal. Of the assumptions I’d made about him murdering the boys. How those assumptions had been confirmed by Peter’s conversation with the Sister. I tell him of Nettle’s aversion to the onions, of how the shadows whispered to him, of his plot to kill Thomas and make Simon believe it was his fault. When I get to the part about Freckles’s death, I pause.

“Which one of them did it?” Peter asks.

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