Page 80 of Losing Wendy

My mother used to tell me that I had an uncanny gift for seeing everyone else’s perspective. She said I could tiptoe into their minds and peep out from behind their pupils. From the way she spoke, you would have thought it was an asset, but it’s not as simple as that. It’s having to rethink everything I believe each time a new point is brought to my attention. It’s evaluating everyone else’s opinion, everyone else’s story, with equal seriousness, regardless of whether they’ve earned it. It’s forgetting myself every time another person opens their mouth, then waiting for my own opinions to return to me only in the safety of quiet loneliness.

“I need some time to think,” I tell him, because I can’t trust my own thoughts with Peter’s voice in my ear, his hands on my waist.

With what I now know, I want nothing more than to comfort him. But what if I were to tell John the truth? Would he offer a perspective I hadn’t yet considered, one that sounded as convincing as Peter’s? I don’t doubt that John wouldn’t trust Peter’s tale, but how much of that is because John will never trust Peter, no matter whether Peter deserves it?

Peter presses something into my palm, leathery and sure. The hilt of the curved dagger is weighty, the leather supple against my chapped fingertips.

“I want you to keep this with you,” he says, nuzzling his face into my hair. “The shabby one Simon sometimes lets you borrow wouldn’t protect you from a wild hare.”

I fall asleep like that, in Peter’s arms, the very ones I once feared. We’re high above the ground, but I no longer fear falling.

I fall asleep with a dagger clutched to my lap.

CHAPTER 31

Iwake up in a panicked haze, hair mussed from where Peter’s been combing his hands through it. After insisting he take me back, I barely make it to the Den before the sun rises fully. Anxiety plagues my chest as I sneak back to my rooms.

Just as I’m about to crawl into the cot, someone clears their throat in the corner. I turn to find John propped at his usual position against the wall. Faintly, in the glow of the faerie light from the hallway, I glimpse him fidgeting with a twig in his fingers, twirling the stem and crushing the leaves between his fingertips.

“Where were you?”

“You were already asleep when I finished the dishes. Then I had to relieve myself.” I’m shocked by how easily the lie slips out of my mouth.

“I hate to hear it took you several hours. Must have been quite unpleasant.”

I can’t see John’s expression in the shadows, but I don’t have to. His voice, typically cool and even, is trembling.

“John.”

“You were out with him, weren’t you?”

I swallow, sitting on the edge of my cot to face him more fully.Like that will somehow help to make him understand, even when he can’t see my face in the dark.

“I was,” I finally say.

John goes very, very quiet for a moment. “I’d think he forced you, except that you’re lying for him. You lied to me last night about the coat, seemed so excited to be off. Your cheeks were flushed. I thought it was from the heat of the stove and the hot water from cleaning the dishes.”

Guilt pricks at my stomach. “I’m sorry I lied to you.”

“He’s our captor, Wendy. He’s the enemy.”

I shift again on my cot, my heart breaking at the way my brother, the boy who didn’t hesitate to slice off his own finger, is trembling. I understand what it is to fear Peter like this, to dread the day the shadows will come and take away everything you hold dear.

“All my life I knew he’d come and take you away,” John says. “All my life. Half of the time, I worried you’d go eagerly. I heard you talking to the shadows when we were children. There’s no telling how many times I caught you, hand outstretched to meet his. I used to sleep outside of your room in the hall, bring a blanket to drape over myself so I could listen. So I could hear if he came to take you, if you started to sound as if you’d been convinced.”

“Peter’s not exactly what we anticipated,” I say. “Even you have to admit that. We feared him for our entire childhood…”

“No,” snaps John. “I feared him. You…” He trails off, like he can’t bear to say the words himself. “You’ve always possessed an affinity for the darkness.”

Anger pricks at my stomach, but I tamp it down, remembering John is only looking after me. That he hasn’t seen the difference between the Peter of the shadows and the Peter of the light. John doesn’t know what Peter sacrificed to keep the Lost Boys alive.

“He hasn’t hurt us,” I say.

“Oh, yeah?” says John, holding up his stump of a pinkie finger. I can barely see its outline in the dim light.

“You did that to yourself, to be completely fair,” I tease, hopingJohn will join in on our usual game of being as morbid as possible, but he doesn’t.

“Wendy, it’s like he casts some spell over you. Like he always has.”

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