Darling

by K. Ancrum

  “I know, I know, but Eleanor! It’s just a party. I’ve been to plenty of those. And if anything was to go wrong, I could just hop on a train or a bus. Worse comes to worst, I can just Google Maps a police station and get an Uber there. I have some money, and he has another girl with him, so it’s not like I’m going out with him alone—”

  “You shouldn’t be going with him at all! There is a huge difference between going out with me and going out with some strange man to God knows where.”

  Wendy glanced over at Peter, who had swung his legs back inside the windowsill and was picking through her copy of Paradise Lost. He held it awkwardly, like he’d never read a book in his life and didn’t quite know why anyone would want to own such a thing. When he looked up and saw Wendy watching him, he shoved the book back in the pile with the others and shrunk away from them self-consciously.

  “I’m going to do this, so we need to compromise,” Wendy said.

  Eleanor was silent for a while. “If you straight up get murdered, what’s going to happen?” she asked quietly.

  Wendy sighed. “I promise. I promise you that I’ll be okay.”

  Eleanor let Wendy’s words sink into the night for a full minute before responding. “Okay. Turn your location on and FaceTime or text me every half hour. If I don’t hear from you ten minutes after the hour, I’m going to call the cops and send them your location. Take a picture of this guy and his friend when they’re not looking so we can have at least some record of who fucking kidnapped you. Also—and I swear to God—if you die, I’m going to your funeral and I’m going to yell at your corpse in front of your entire grieving extended family, do you hear me?”

  “Yes, Mom.” Wendy laughed dryly.

  “Wear a sweater and bring a little umbrella in case it rains. Don’t forget your charger, and wear shoes good for running.”

  “Mmkay.” Wendy unzipped the suitcase of clothes near her bed and started rummaging for her sweater.

  “Don’t drink any alcohol or do any drugs, and I swear to fuck if you get anything else to drink at all, watch it for the entire time you’re drinking it, and don’t leave it with anyone. Not even any girls. You don’t know these people, and they don’t love you like I do.”

  “Gayyy,” Wendy teased.

  “You know it,” Eleanor said quietly. “Don’t forget to take pictures and send them to me.”

  “I won’t. It will be okay. I’ll be back by midnight.”

  “You had better,” Eleanor snapped.

  Wendy hung up and grabbed her purse.

  “So. You coming or…?” Peter asked, raising a slim eyebrow.

  “Yeah. I just need to find an umbrella…” Wendy bent down to look under her bed.

  “You don’t need it,” Peter said calmly.

  “What if it rains? I’d rather be safe than—” Wendy started, but Peter interrupted her.

  “If you need anything out there, I’ll get it for you.”

  “You couldn’t even afford to get your jacket fixed,” Wendy declared.

  Peter hopped down into her room and crossed his arms. Wendy instinctively backed away toward the bed. He dragged his golden eyes from her tennis shoes up past the sweatpants she’d been sleeping in, the sweater she’d hastily thrown on over the T-shirt from her old school’s gym uniform, and let them settle on her face. “If you’re going out with me, I won’t let you get wet, Wendy Darling,” he said seriously. “If you’re going out there with me … I’ll get you whatever you want.”

  “Oh,” Wendy said.

  Peter grinned.

  “So,” he said brightly, “are we going down the trellis, or are we going out the front door? Tink’s not a patient girl, so we’ve got to make a choice quickly.”

  “I … I don’t have a key to lock the door yet,” Wendy stammered.

  “Okay, then on my back you go. You don’t look like you scale a lot of walls. I’d rather actually make it to the party than take you to the emergency room.” Peter turned around and crouched low so Wendy could climb on his back.

  Wendy swallowed, tightened her resolve, and wrapped her arms around Peter’s neck. His hair was terribly soft against her cheek. He smelled like smoke, metal, and—strangely—flowers. Fresh in a way that she’d never known boys to smell. Like maybe he used floral shampoo or something. She could already feel his wiry muscles beneath his jacket, but it still startled her when he curved his hands beneath her thighs and lifted her properly onto his back with a small hop. Peter was much stronger than he looked, she realized dizzily.

  “Curl your legs around my waist, Darling. I need my hands for climbing. I can’t hold you.” His cheek inadvertently brushed against hers as he spoke.

  Wendy was too beyond words to reply, but she dug her ankles deeper into his hip bones like he requested.

  Then, before she could really process all the sensory information about being this close, he was out the window and scaling down the side of her house. The wind blew hard, whipping her hair around his face. Wendy apologized anxiously, but Peter tossed his head to get it out of his eyes and laughed, bright and sweet.

  “It feels like flying doesn’t it?” he asked. “It’s better when you’re climbing higher up.”

  “How high do you usually go?” Wendy clenched her eyes shut in terror as Peter stretched to put his toe on the top of the downstairs kitchen window.

  “Higher than this.”

  He held on to the edge of the trellis with his fingertips for a second before swinging down to the kitchen windowsill. Wendy shrieked, even as Peter clamped onto the top of the kitchen window without falling. His boots landed solidly on the slim strip sticking out of the siding, where Mrs. Darling had wanted to put a flowerpot so she could look at marigolds while she washed the dishes.

  Peter tightened his grip on the ledge and paused. He shifted Wendy’s weight on his back so he could reach behind and cup the side of her head reassuringly. “We’re okay. We’re almost down.”

  Peter stretched a leg from the sill to the grass below and eased them into the alley. Then he leaned back gracefully so that Wendy could unwind her legs from around his waist and release her iron grip around his throat.

  “You didn’t have to hold him so closely.”

  Wendy turned around.

  The girl, Tink, was scowling at her. Her arms were tight against the side of her body and her hands were clenched into fists.

  “You could have just held him normally,” Tink said.

  Peter sighed like this was an old argument. “She was holding me normally.”

  “Who is she, anyway?” Tink spat. “And why did you bring her with?”

  “He asked me to a party,” Wendy replied blandly. She wasn’t going to be intimidated by someone who thought crushed velvet was an okay fabric to wear in the twenty-first century.

  “I wasn’t talking to you,” Tink growled. “I was talking to him. You have no idea what you’re doing, and your opinion is meaningless to me.”

  “I mean … you don’t have to come with us, if you don’t want to,” Peter said with a sharp grin. He flicked a spike on the shoulder of Tink’s leather jacket. “I’m sure Darling and I will have a nice time without you.”

  Darling? Tink mouthed in disgust.

  Peter’s grin grew wider.

  Wendy stuck out her hand to be shaken, boldly. “Wendy Darling. Nice to meet you.”

  Tink looked at Wendy’s hand and turned away from it with a wave of her own. “Whatever.”

  “This is Tinkerbelle,” Peter said. “My ex-girlfriend.”

  “Ex-something,” Tinkerbelle muttered.

  “Tinkerbelle is an interesting name,” Wendy remarked as Peter began leading them down the alley and toward the street. “Is it a nickname?”

  Tinkerbelle ignored her, opting to glare at the ground and trudge beside Peter in silence.

  Peter shook his head and answered for her. “It’s a nickname. She’s good at metalworking and fixing electronics, so I used to call her Tinker. After a little wh
ile, I added the ‘belle.’” He grinned. “I mean, look at her … it fits.”

  “That’s actually kind of cool,” Wendy said conversationally. “We had a program for engineering at my old school where you could transition straight into the community college and get your associate degree six months quicker.”

  “Well, lucky you,” Tinkerbelle snarled.

  “Okay.” Wendy stopped walking and put her hands on her hips and turned to face Tinkerbelle. “Will you calm down?”

  “You should go home and just leave us alone. No one wants you here!” Tinkerbelle shouted, throwing her arms out wildly.

  “Wow! I just might!” Wendy exclaimed, turning on her heel. “It was nice to fuckin’ meet you, Peter—”

  “I want her here,” Peter interrupted in a voice as unamused and dry as the leaves blowing down the street.

  Tinkerbelle seemed to shrink instantly. Her big blue eyes snapped to the asphalt, and her mouth twisted tightly as she clenched her teeth. Peter put his hand on Tinkerbelle’s shoulder and leaned in close to her. “Wendy is our guest. She’s new to the city, and I wanted to show her a good time. She’s been so brave tonight already, what with finding me in her home and climbing down the trellis. She deserves this. Can you make some room for her?”

  “I really don’t have to go, if she’s that upset,” Wendy said. She glanced over her shoulder. She could still see her bedroom window.

  “No, please,” Peter said gently. “Stay.”

  Tinkerbelle closed her eyes like something was hurting her immensely, then her shoulders sagged. “Fine. I’m just— It’s…” She took a breath and started again. “It’s been a long day. I didn’t expect to have to look after someone tonight, and I really just wanted to relax with my friends.”

  “It’s all right.” Wendy shrugged. “You don’t have to look after me. I can look after myself.”

  “I’ll look after you, too,” Peter said firmly. “I’m the one who needs to make sure you get home safe.”

  Wendy could feel her cheeks burning and steadfastly willed her heart to stop racing whenever Peter said things like that. When she looked over, Tinkerbelle was watching her.

  Now that the tension was dissipating, Wendy took the time to actually look back at her. Tinkerbelle was staggeringly pretty. Also, now that she was seeing Peter and Tinkerbelle next to each other, she could picture how well they would have looked together when they were still dating. They even moved like they had grown used to being close. Peter towered over Tinkerbelle, who was clearly irritated by that, but he still had his shoulder turned toward her protectively. Tinkerbelle had her arms wrapped tightly around herself, but she swayed toward Peter like she couldn’t help it.

  Her clothes went well together, but they looked worse for wear in the same way that Peter’s did. Like they’d been washed too many times or worn for too long. The crushed velvet green dress had a few patches where the fabric had been stripped completely bald. Her jacket was a size or so too big for her. Not big enough to have been chosen that way as a cool “boyfriend” aesthetic, but more like she had either lost a massive amount of weight, or it had belonged to someone else before her. She had dark blue eyeliner crusted in the corners of her eyes like she had applied it the night before and just applied more on top of what was left. Her tights were practically strings left over from a pair of pantyhose, and the Vans she wore had duct tape holding them together.

  Despite all this, both still looked dazzling—Peter, tall, auburn-haired, and golden-eyed, and Tinkerbelle, blond and with a gaze as deep as the sea. Wendy’s hand itched to whip out her phone and take a photograph of both of them as they stood stock-still in the middle of the alley, looking like a freakin’ editorial. Eleanor would lose her goddamn mind at how cool they looked, but Wendy couldn’t do it while they were both staring right at her.

  “Look,” Wendy said. “If things get out of hand, or if I get lost or something, I’ll figure myself out. I have my phone, and I’m not an idiot. You don’t have to worry about me. Let’s just pretend that none of this ever happened and start from scratch. It’s nice to meet you, Tinkerbelle, I’m sorry you had a hard day, and I won’t cling to your ex-boyfriend. Now. Where the fuck are we going?”

  Peter laughed, threw an arm over Tinkerbelle’s shoulders, and led them to the end of the alley. “We’re going to a few places, actually. First, we have to go home and pick up a few friends. Then, we’re getting dinner at a place called the Mermaid’s Lagoon. Afterward, we’re heading south to the warehouse, where the party is.”

  “That’s a lot of traveling,” Wendy remarked.

  Peter nodded in the direction of the train station up the street. “The night is young.” That smile was plastered back on his face. “And what sort of adventure would this be without a bit of travel?”

  CHAPTER 5

  Wendy texted Eleanor while Peter and Tinkerbelle were busy fiddling with the train ticket machine. She opened the camera on her phone, zoomed in on one of the train platform’s round security mirrors, and got a decent snapshot of Peter’s and Tinkerbelle’s faces without either of them noticing.

  Eleanor: Oh wow, he looks like a model. Your idiocy from earlier in the night is beginning to make sense to me.

  Wendy: He’s really nice, too. He’s buying my train ticket and everything.

  Eleanor: Train tickets are $2.50, do not sell your dignity to men for $2.50.

  Wendy chose to ignore that.

  Wendy: I’m surprised you don’t have anything to say about his friend? She’s a knockout.

  Eleanor: She’s ok. She’s not my type. I like brunettes.

  Wendy: Valid. She’s also kind of a bitch. Apparently, she and Peter used to date??? Peter helped me get outside and I guess we were standing too close and she was HEATED.

  Eleanor: lmao

  Wendy: She was like “get away from him” and we hadn’t even properly said hi. It’s like b I don’t want your boy

  Eleanor: u do tho

  Wendy: I DO THO

  Eleanor: MESSY

  “Come on, we don’t have all day,” Tinkerbelle said, pushing Wendy’s ticket into her hand. Peter scanned his card but then hopped the turnstile just for the fun of it. Tinkerbelle pushed Wendy through behind him, and they both followed him up the stairs to the platform.

  The train stop felt much stranger at night than when Wendy had come here with her mom. There was a completely different kind of population this late. None of the chipper stay-at-home moms in Lululemon with designer strollers were out anymore. It was just tired, late-shift workers, people in their thirties going out to have a good time, and a few college students. From this high up, the streetlights glittered in the distance, and the city looked like a movie set. Like real people weren’t living in all those buildings; they were just put up to complete a skyline for a postcard view. There was such a large difference between seeing places like this on TV and standing in the middle of them in real life. She turned to say something about this, but Peter was looking off into the night, his pretty face stony and expressionless.

  What’s wrong? Wendy almost asked, but to her surprise, Tinkerbelle tugged the sleeve of her sweater and then shook her head urgently. Wendy paused. Peter stood like that for almost a minute, so still it was eerie. People coming up the stairs to wait for the train gave the three of them a wide berth. Peter’s eyes shifted back and forth rapidly, like he was thinking very fast. Then he closed them, paused, and seemed to breathe life back into his body all at once. When he finally turned back to Wendy and Tinkerbelle, it was as if all that had never happened.

  “The train’s coming,” he said. “We’re heading up to Wilson.”

  “How many of the boys are coming with us?” Tinkerbelle asked.

  “Only a few of the older ones,” Peter replied. “Since we’ll be out late.”

  The train came into the station fast enough to blow everyone’s hair back before slowing to a stop with the doors directly in front of them.

  “THIS IS FULLERTON. TRANS
FER TO BROWN- AND PURPLE-LINE TRAINS AT FULLERTON,” the train blared loudly, and the doors slid open with a soft bang.

  To Wendy’s surprise, the train was already very crowded. Peter pushed through the throng and held the metal bar above the seats so that there was an alcove of space beneath his arms for Tinkerbelle and Wendy to stand in. Tinkerbelle ducked underneath and wrapped an arm around the back of his waist. Wendy, thinking about what happened the last time she was wrapped around Peter, reached up and grabbed the bar above them instead. She tried not to inhale the smoke-and-flowers scent radiating from Peter’s body.

  The doors closed and the train lurched forward.

  “So, how far is Wilson?” Wendy asked.

  “Not far,” Tinkerbelle replied. “It’s a decent walk from your place, but it’s walkable if you don’t have train fare. Maybe thirty minutes?”

  “Do you do a lot of walking around here? Is the area safe at night?”

  Tinkerbelle snorted. “Nowhere is safe at night. Especially not when you’ve got a face like yours.”

  Wendy thought they were done with the rude part of the evening. She scowled and opened her mouth to snap back, but Tinkerbelle clarified, “You know. Sweet and a bit stubborn, like mine. Plus, you’re a girl, and you know how that goes.”

  “I’d never let anyone do anything to you,” Peter said a bit absentmindedly. “The boys are always out there watching.”

  The corner of Tinkerbelle’s mouth ticked up, but it couldn’t really be called a smile yet.

  “There is that,” she said fondly. “But they only watch out for me.”

  She turned to Wendy. “You should be careful if you’re thinking about night jogging.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Wendy said.

  Tinkerbelle looked out at the city as it whizzed by. “I think you’ll like the boys. They like tough girls. Smart girls.”

  “What are they like?”

  Tinkerbelle bit her lip while she thought. “They’re kind, but a bit rough.”

  “They’re resourceful,” Peter said.