I don’t know what it is about Peter Pan that’s made me feel instantly disheartened, but I do. I don’t know why. I obviously don’t know this boy, except that I do, I think. I know him how you know him and we all know him…from once upon a dream.
And no one likes it when a dream is fractured.
“But you are a girl.” Peter kneels in front of me, and he puts his hands on my knees, and this is the first time we touch. My brain makes a note of it because I know my heart will want to remember it later. I’m wearing quite short bloomers and a white, cotton camisole, and he’s staring up at me, smiling.
Peter’s brows furrow, and his smile is confused but present.
“The best girl I’ve ever seen,” he tells me matter-of-factly, and my cheeks go pink.
This pleases him, my pink cheeks. I can tell because his chest puffs up a little and he jumps up off the ground, shoving a hand through his blond hair.
He walks around my room, looking at the posters on the wall.
“Who’s that?” He points to a poster on my wall.
I glance over at the poster and then give Peter a confused look. “That’s Mick Jagger.”
“Do you know him?” He frowns.
“No, but—”
“Why’s there this picture of Mick Jagger on your wall then?”
“Well, because he’s rather sexy, don’t you think?”
Peter pulls a face. “What’s sexy?”
I purse my lips. “Handsome,” I tell him. “Or pleasant to look a—” I barely get the words out before he pulls a dagger from his belt and slices my poster in two.
It all happens so quickly—a blink-and-you-miss-it sort of change in him—but Peter’s face goes like a flash from inquisitive to dark. The poster flits to the ground, our eyes following it.
“Hey!” I growl. “That was my favourite!”
“I’m your favourite now.” He gives me a curt smile.
I frown at him.
“I don’t like to share,” he says, inspecting his dagger before pocketing it again.
“Share what?” I cross my arms again.
He frowns at me. “You.”
And I wish that didn’t win me over, but it does in the slightest. Perhaps it’s because I’ve never really known the approval of a man before.
“Fatherless girls who are left unchecked are a danger to society and themselves,” I once heard one of my grandmothers’ more judgmental friends say. I’m unsure what she meant by that, but it may have been pertaining to an instance such as this one.
The thrill of pleasing him, even if it means losing a thing I loved before.§
It’s just a poster, I tell myself as I stare down at it and sidestep anything it may imply.
“Why are you an American?” I ask him, tilting my head.
“What’s an American?” he asks suspiciously before adding quickly, “I know what it is but I just want to make sure you do.”
I give him a look. “An American is someone from the Americas.”
“Right.” He nods. “Which is…？”
“A continent?” I frown. “And a country.”
“On…？” he says, eyebrows up.
I frown more. “Earth.”
“Oh.” He nods again. “Right. No, I know—good. Do Americans know everything?”
I roll my eyes. “I mean, they think they do.”
He shrugs. “That’s probably why I am one then, because I do know everything.”
I roll my eyes again as I look up at him.
He really is rather tall.
“Is anything that they said about you true?” I look up at him as I collect the remains of my poster and fold them up, putting them into a drawer.
“Don’t know.” He leans casually against the wall, folding his arms over his barrel chest. “What’d they say?”
“Well…” I stand up, walking over to him. “For one, they said that you were a boy.”
“I am a boy,” he tells me, proud.
“Barely.” My eyes fall down him and snag.
My grandfather,* before he died, he’d spend all his time in the garden. Ours was the best garden on the street, wildly beautiful, and I loved his hands when he’d come inside. I’d make him a cup of tea and pass him a Jaffa cake, and he’d eat it without washing up first, and it made me happy. Peter’s hands remind me of them, so I suppose he makes me happy too.
We’re toe-to-toe now, and I take his hand in mine, turning it over, inspecting those giant paws of his, and I love how rough they are. Instantly, I do. I know that’s a strange thing to say—there’s dirt under the nails—but still there’s something beautiful about his hands.