Never (Never, #1) (23)

Peter turns around in the water, squinting up at me. “Oh yeah! I forgot about you!”

I press my lips together, trying to hide yet another look of crushing disappointment on my face.

“Hello,” I say to her as I muster my warmest smile.

“This is Calla.” Rye glances from her to me.

Calla says nothing, just stares up at me with pinched eyes.

I offer her another smile. “Pleasure.”

She still says nothing.

I glance at her brother.

“Callie.” He kicks the water from the shore. “Say hi.”

She stares at me for a long few seconds, then rolls her eyes. “Hi.”

And then she dives on Peter again, and away they play.

The water sounds quite loud, both the splashing and lapping against the shore, but none of it nearly as loud as the sound of them laughing.

There’s too much skin on skin. Peter’s scooping her up in his arms and tossing her about like he was doing to me a few hours ago in the nets, and her legs fan delicately through the air before she crashes into the water and he dives down and scoops her up again.

She jumps on his shoulders, wrapping her legs around him, and I have never felt invisible before, but I do. And I hate it. If I had the proper ears for such things, I’d hear it put a crack in the lens, not the one through which I see Peter but the one through which I see myself. Him ignoring me, him all over Calla, doesn’t make me like Peter less—though I wish it did. All it does is bubble up within me the most tragic of side effects. A terrible thirst.

I am invisible to him. And now I must be seen.

Rye stares over at his sister and Peter, gives me a long look, and then all too knowingly nods his head in another direction.

“Should we go for a walk?”

I probably nod too eagerly, but I need to get out of here. It’s rather demoralising watching yourself fade from someone’s focus.

Fate and all, I remind myself. It’s my window he came to. It’s me he brought here.

It’s also me who he’s forgotten.

Rye bounds up ahead of me a few steps before turning back, eyes warm and sunny, and he reminds me a bit of a golden retriever.

“Where to?” He grins.

I shrug. “You tell me.”

He thinks for a minute. “Have you been into town yet?”

Yes is obviously the answer, but I find myself shrugging and saying, “Barely, only for a minute, just—”

I shouldn’t like to admit it,* but I know I want to go into town because I want to see the pirate again.

You can forget a lot of things in Neverland, quite easily if I’m honest. I don’t think of my grandmothers so much. Well, I mean, I do because Peter calls me Wendy all the time, so I remember her that way, but I don’t think of her in the way where my heart is sore and I miss her. I don’t think of my friends back in London. I don’t think of how the flowers smell in our garden. I don’t think about warm cups of tea. But I do think about Jamison’s hands on my waist and the colour of his eyes? and the shape of his mouth.

Mostly I think about the shape of his mouth, I think because I don’t feel I have a particularly good grasp on it.

I like to have a grasp on everything, that’s all. I just like knowing everything. I consider myself rather well learned, yet I’m insufficiently educated on the shape of that pirate’s top lip, and sometimes when Peter’s fallen asleep and I haven’t quite yet, in between that place of sleeping and waking where you’re meant to find Peter Pan, with him right next to me, my mind wanders to wondering how it might feel to trace the outline of Jamison’s jawline with my middle finger. I do suspect it might feel like running one’s hand along the edge of a marble countertop.

Rye and I walk for a while in silence, but thankfully, it’s a nice enough silence that’s still filled richly with the wildness of Neverland. Twigs snapping under our feet, rivers racing, birds chirping, and Rye humming away tunelessly.

“Thank you,” I call to him. “For offering to take me away.”

He looks back and throws me a quick smile. “I want to see that about as much as you do.” He laughs. “Trust me.”

“So they’re close then?” I ask after a minute.

“Used to be.” He glances back. “They had that golden age from when Calla was about nine till she was fourteen or something, I don’t know. Back then, they were inseparable.”

“What happened when she was fourteen?”

“She turned fourteen.”

“So?” I frown.

Rye turns around and cups imaginary boobs, smirking at himself. “He couldn’t pretend she wasn’t growing up anymore.” He turns back around, touching trees gently as we pass them as though he’s greeting old friends. “But now that he’s older, they”—he spins around and cups the imaginary boobs again—“probably act more as an incentive than anything.”

I sigh.

“Don’t worry.” He gives me a quick smile. “He’ll forget about her later too.”

I sniff an indignant laugh. “Why do we like him again?”

“Beats me.” He shrugs as we step through a clearing onto a beach.

He points at a pirate ship I recognise. Gorgeous white sails that fold like duvets, dark wood, lots of navy, lots of gold. The ship’s figurehead is a tiger. I thought that was strange initially. Actually, I suppose I still find it rather odd now.