The shirtless boy nods, and I hope my face doesn’t show （though I am quite sure that it does） how hurt I am not only that Peter’s forgotten about me but that it’s obvious to other people as well.
“I’m Rye.” The shirtless boy extends his hand to me with a warm smile.
I stare at it for a second, sort of mortified that he knows so immediately upon meeting me how forgettable I am, but he doesn’t seem put off by me for it—standing there, hand all out, smiling, waiting.
I take his hand and shake it. “Daphne.”
He nods once, smiling more, and actually, he really does have a very lovely smile.
“The trees were whispering about a new girl on the island.”
“Were they?” I beam.
He nods again, and I decide I like his eyes. “Come on. I’ll introduce you.” He nods his head towards Peter and his sister.
I pull back, unsure, but he rolls his eyes.
“She’s not so bad.”
She is, however, more beautiful up close than she is from afar, which is desperately not what I wanted. It’s as though her eyes are actually made of garnets, and they do not look pleased when they fall on me.
“Cal,” Rye calls to her. “This is Daphne.”
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.