Never (Never, #1) (56)

“Oh.” I nod a couple of times as I stare over at him. “Why?”

“Because it’s good.” Peter shrugs, and Rye sighs next to me.

“Oh.” I nod again. Another piano.

“Daphne,” Peter says in a voice that makes me feel stupid. “You’re not the only girl I play with.”

Piano.

“Did you think you were?” he asks me, smiling like he’s confused.

I stare over at him, do my best not to let it show on my face that it feels like a little bit of me is folding up inside myself, tucking itself away into a far back corner where I won’t be able to reach it again.

Peter smiles over at me mindlessly, nodding his chin towards Rye. “Come join us.”

Rye shifts uncomfortably beside me, and I glare over at Peter, unable to look away.

“No.” I shake my head.

Peter looks over at me, head tilted, like he’s trying to read a sign in another language.

“Why do you look…stupid and sad?” he calls to me.

Because I am those things, I think.

I say nothing, and Peter gives the mermaid a look as though to imply that I’m the one making things awkward. He sniffs, amused, and the mermaid covers her mouth with her hand, doing a terrible job of suppressing her laugh.

Something about his indifference and how strangely beautiful and cruel she is at once makes my eyes go glassy.

Peter squints over at me in disbelief. “Are you crying?”

And with that, the mermaid lets out a delighted little squeal, and Peter lets out one single laugh, watching me like I’m not the person he shares his bed with every night.

I turn quickly on my heel and walk back into the jungle.

“Where are you going?” Rye calls, walking after me. “I’ll bring you back to the grounds. You can stay with us.”

I turn to face him, crossing my arms over my chest. “Is he like that with Calla?”

Rye sighs, tilting his head. “Daphne, I—”

“Does he do that with Calla?” I ask tonelessly.

He says nothing.

“Yes or no, Rye?”

Rye sighs. “Yes.”

I shake my head at him. “I’m not going back to the Old Valley.”

He looks stressed. “Then where are you going?”

Where am I going? I don’t know. Except yes, I do. There’s only one place left that I can go, really.

I start walking again.

“At least fly there,” he calls to me.

I shake my head. “I can’t fly without him.”

Rye grimaces.

I look back at the rock, and Peter’s there, reclined on the rock, hands behind his head, the mermaid gazing at him all adoringly, finger running down over his nose.

And that’s enough for me. I take off through the jungle.

Flying would be faster, that’s definitely true, and though I’ve never tried, I really am sure that I couldn’t do it without him—that’s what Peter says anyway—and I don’t know if you can do it when you’re sad, because happy thoughts, that’s what Peter always says, and I have none. I’m not willing to feel like a failure at the same time as I’m busy feeling like an idiot.

I do eventually get nervous by myself out here, because I don’t feel I know it particularly well yet. Whenever we’re out here, it never feels like we take the same path. Whenever Rye takes me somewhere, we walk a travelled path, or if one of the Lost Boys takes me, we go down paths that I think look familiar to me, but when Peter’s there, we’re always going strange ways and taking corners and turns I don’t know we need to be taking. A small part of me wonders whether that’s on purpose. So I have to depend on him, but who could I say that thought to, and how would I prove it anyway? And to what end?

So I run through the jungle till I reach the shore of the crescent, and then I run along the edge of the bay.

I will say, it is rather difficult to navigate your way around an island you already don’t know very well when you’re crying; no one tells you that. It’s rather hazardous, and I nearly might have fallen a few times were it not for a couple of little birds that flew along beside me, guiding me and keeping me right with little pecks and flapping their wings against my face whenever I began heading the wrong way.

They come with me the whole way to the start of the town, those sweethearts. I check my pockets to see if I have anything I could give them, but I don’t. I just give them a sorry wave goodbye, and off they fly.

It’s getting dark now. I don’t know what time it is—as though time matters here. I haven’t yet figured out which sun they attach their time to. It couldn’t be too late in the evening, and now that I’m here, I don’t know why I’ve come.

Even though a bit of me does.

I’m sad, obviously. But why have I come here? That’s a question whose eyes I’ve been avoiding because it doesn’t make sense. I can’t really believe it. Peter’s been doing that with Calla and the mermaids? All those times he’s not with me, is that what he’s been doing?

He doesn’t even do that with me, that kind of kissing. It was a lot of kissing… He’s progressed without me, without even telling me.

I walk, brave as I can, towards the Golden Folly, climbing on board and walking straight to where Jamison took me the other day.