Darling

by K. Ancrum

  “I didn’t know I could look like this,” Wendy admitted. She wished her mom could see her like this, just as hard as she wished her mom would never find out what she’d gone through to make it to this chair in the back of this restaurant.

  Dorothy sucked her teeth loudly and put both hands on Wendy’s shoulders. “You don’t have to look like this every day,” Dorothy said. “Sometimes it’s enough to know that this is in there. You can reach for it whenever you like, because this look is a part of you. But it is always your choice whether you want to put in the work. There is power in not doing this, just as much as there is power in knowing how to do it.”

  Wendy didn’t know what to say.

  “You should say thank you,” Ominotago suggested when the silence got to be a bit too long and the moment began to fade.

  Wendy turned around to face Dorothy. “Thank you.”

  Dorothy snorted and waved a hand modestly.

  “I really mean it,” Wendy said earnestly. “You’re so good at this.”

  Dorothy folded her arms and beamed back at Wendy with her hard-won, morning glory face. “Darling,” Dorothy said softly. “I’m the best.”

  “Now, I wouldn’t go as far as—” the queen by the door began, but the door burst open, and Curly shoved his head inside.

  “Peter says we can come—Whoa, you look good.” He paused to stare.

  “Aanii, Curly, what does Peter want?” Ominotago asked urgently, waving a hand to block Wendy from Curly’s line of view.

  Curly went on his tiptoes to avoid her arm and continue gaping at Wendy. “Peter said we can come out, but the Crocodile and Detective Hook are sitting at a table. They’re not doing anything, though. They look mad.”

  “Oh, great.” Ominotago sighed.

  “The Crocodile looks madder, if that’s any consolation,” Curly said.

  Ominotago turned to Wendy and shrugged. “You ready?”

  Wendy nodded and followed Ominotago and Curly out the door.

  Compared to the dressing room, the rest of the restaurant was much less stressful. The mermaid motif was strong in the dining area. The walls were painted turquoise and purple, the tables were draped with gauzy blue-green ombre tablecloths, and at the center of each table was a white seashell with a candle in the middle. The tables were arranged in a semicircle around a small stage that was packed richly with fake seagrass and green tinsel. There was a machine pumping bubbles out into the restaurant from backstage, and the speakers played a light gurgling underneath the jazzy restaurant music. The waitresses, just as Wendy had guessed from backstage, were all drag queens. Their uniform was a crop top T-shirt and sequined miniskirt, and beehive wig in matching monochrome. They had white seashells glued over their chest to their T-shirts, mermaid style.

  Peter, Nibs, Tinkerbelle, Charles, Curly, Fyodor, Waatese, and Minsu were sitting at the large table closest to the stage. Ominotago’s friends were clustered together and had saved a seat for her between Waatese and Tinkerbelle. Nibs had his arm over the back of the chair next to him, which was Curly’s. There was only one seat left and it was next to Peter.

  Peter tapped the seat and looked at Wendy pointedly. She turned to plead with Curly to switch, but Curly’s expression shuttered closed and he shook his head quickly. Whatever argument the table had about where Wendy was supposed to sit had clearly already been firmly decided.

  Wendy made her way across the room and reluctantly settled into the seat next to Peter. He put his arm over the top of the seat behind her—not touching her, but close enough that Wendy could feel the warmth of his body and take in his smoky floral scent.

  He leaned over to whisper in her ear. “You look incredible. But you looked better in your room, dressed like yourself. Full of fire and anger, with sleep in your eyes.” He settled back so he could gaze at her in the low candlelight. “The Real Wendy Darling,” he finished.

  “Why?” Wendy asked.

  Peter tossed his hair back and chuckled prettily. He paused to pick a glass of red wine off the recently vacated table next to them and took a sip. He swirled the liquid around his mouth for a second and swallowed languidly before looking over at her. “You know why,” he said quietly.

  Wendy did not. She decided to wait him out. She didn’t look at his wine-red lips or his angel curls or his eyes like heated amber; she looked through him.

  “Because…,” Peter said, after some time, still gazing at her. “The Real Wendy Darling is capable of anything.”

  His words struck something deep inside her that pooled low and hot in her belly, and she instantly remembered the wind in her hair as they’d climbed together down the trellis. Peter slouched lower in his chair and spread his legs, and Wendy thought helplessly about his muscles under her thighs as she’d clung to his waist and the firm full-body gentleness of his grip as he’d held her in the kitchen. The scent of him was overpowering: the smoke, crisp like night air; and the flowers, green, making her skin itch to roll in grass, soft and tender beneath her fingertips. As if following the path of her thoughts, Peter scraped his nails over the fabric behind her chair, in a slow smooth rhythm that was almost hypnotizing. Wendy suddenly understood very clearly how a boy like this had captured a girl as smart as Tinkerbelle and a girl as proud as Ominotago.

  It was too much.

  Wendy turned away from him and toward the table closest to the door just to catch her breath as she was immediately faced with the other part of Curly’s message: the Crocodile and Detective Hook.

  The difference between the two men was immediate and jarring to the point of near hilarity. The Crocodile was massive in height and as wide as two average-height people put together. He was wearing an outfit that would have been funny on anyone else, but just served to make him look scarier. He had on a brown floppy hat, and a brown vest that bulged ominously like it was crammed full of tools. The sleeves of his black button-up shirt were rolled to the elbows, and his bulging, hairy forearms swelled out. He had a massive watch on one wrist and what looked to be a house arrest monitor on the other arm. His eyebrows were furrowed so far down over his eyes that Wendy would have been concerned about his ability to see if they weren’t glittering so brightly in the candlelight. The other alarming thing was that he had the man next to him—who was clearly Detective Hook—gripped tightly by the wrist.

  Detective Hook himself looked very normal in comparison to the Crocodile, aside from the near-demonic expression of fury twisting his features. He had black hair with silver temples, and that rectangular sort of mustache that cops seem to favor. His nose looked like it had been broken at least twice, and he had more stubble than one would consider professional. He was wearing a surprisingly nice blue suit and shirt, with a maroon overcoat draped on his chair. Every single molecule in his body was focused on Peter, to the point where Wendy felt like she could feel him cooking the air between them with his rage. Also, of course, he had the prosthetic hand replacement. It was more delicate than Wendy had imagined a hook to be, clearly functional as opposed to decorative, but it was still beautiful.

  However, noticing it made Wendy think about Slightly’s sweet face, and reminded her that this man, Hook, had seen a younger version of Slightly and decided it was okay to hurt him. This made her dislike him on the spot.

  The Crocodile saw her, but his eyes slipped off her disinterestedly, focusing on Peter. Detective Hook had a different reaction. Barely seconds after Wendy had turned in his direction to escape Peter’s magnetism, Detective Hook’s expression changed.

  When Wendy and the detective locked eyes, he switched rapidly from a tight grimace of anger to confusion, then surprise, then to an anger ten times more potent. He wrestled his hand out of the Crocodile’s grip and lunged to his feet so aggressively that the table they were sharing jerked loudly, screeching against the floor.

  “Get away from her!” the detective roared. All the diners stopped eating and looked over at the spectacle. Even the waitresses stopped and didn’t make a sound.

&n
bsp; Peter was unfazed. He smiled at the detective and waved chipperly.

  The Crocodile immediately rose, as if receiving an order, clamped Detective Hook’s shoulder in his monstrous grip, and hauled him toward the exit. Detective Hook struggled against the Crocodile’s strength, his face nearly purple as his anger choked him.

  “That’s enough!” the Crocodile said loudly, sharply, and in an accent way more Australian than Wendy would have guessed, and he heaved the detective through the door. There was an audible struggle outside as the two men grappled with each other. The diners watched their shadows through the window curtains in scandalized silence. After a while, Detective Hook got the upper hand, took a valiant leap in Peter’s direction, and managed to get his head back inside the restaurant.

  “I swear, I will see you in chains,” Detective Hook promised darkly before the Crocodile overpowered him and pulled the door firmly shut after them both.

  Peter shook his head. “Pirates don’t like the Molotov fireworks. It’s a lot of paperwork.”

  Wendy took stock of the expressions at the table. Nibs and Curly looked carefully blank. Minsu’s and Charles’s eyes were as big as dinner plates. Fyodor was looking away from the table in the same way he had on the bus, what Ominotago had described as “pretending he’s not scared.” Waatese, on the other hand, was looking at Ominotago, openly terrified.

  Ominotago and Tinkerbelle were as blank-faced as Nibs and Curly, but they were holding hands tightly.

  “Go home, little brother,” Ominotago said quietly. “It is too dangerous for you.”

  Waatese immediately stood up.

  “You heading out?” Charles asked warily.

  “Yeah.” His voice was higher than Wendy thought it would be, and she wondered again just how young he was. “It’s getting late. I … have some homework to finish.”

  That sounded very obviously like a lie, but no one challenged it, and Waatese made his way to the door. Minsu and Charles gazed longingly at Waatese’s back as he was allowed to leave what was clearly a situation they yearned to escape from. Wendy wondered why they didn’t leave, too, but then saw how they crowded even closer to Ominotago protectively, and understood at once.

  The detective’s outburst had been dramatic, but it wasn’t enough to keep the crowded restaurant quiet for long. The waitresses returned to bussing the tables, and the rest of the diners went back to talking, but Peter’s table stayed deathly quiet, even while a waitress dropped off a few plates of fries and refilled all the drinks. Aside from Peter, they might as well have been wax carvings. Even Nibs seemed a bit shaken.

  Peter rolled his shoulders contentedly and looked at his phone. “It’s almost time for the show.”

  Like magic the ceiling lights grew dimmer, and the stage lights brightened.

  “Oh, great,” Wendy heard Fyodor say behind her, and it took all the discipline she had not to laugh in hysteria.

  The music shifted from background jazz to a swelling classical score, and a long, slender leg covered in feathers slowly peeked out from between strands of the tinsel seagrass curtain. The leg wiggled a familiar foot, then coyly snatched itself back behind the curtain. Then two feathered legs split the tinsel, wide and suggestive, before tucking back behind the glimmering strings.

  Peter leaned back over to Wendy. “This is Bella’s dance, the ‘Never Bird.’ She’s been doing it at this place for fifteen years, I’ve heard. That’s why it’s so busy. Generally, on the nights she’s scheduled, this place is booked out for weeks.” He smiled softly. “I promised I’d show you something special, so I pulled a few strings.”

  The curtains pulled slowly back to reveal Bella, the drag queen who had sat behind Wendy in the dressing room. Bella was obscured by two giant iridescent blue and green fans made of ostrich feathers, and was wearing a towering headdress, nearly two feet tall, with plumes of even more feathers. Her fans were so large, Wendy couldn’t see any of her body besides her long-lashed eyes and her downy legs. She looked incredible.

  Wendy heard a groan and knew it came from Fyodor, who evidently wasn’t prepared to enjoy this at all.

  Bella fluffed her fans delicately in their table’s direction and began dancing. It was surprisingly adorable. When the base thumped, she bumped her hip to the side, showing the tiniest sliver of the bodysuit Wendy knew she was wearing. When the tambourines clashed, she fluttered the fans around, changing their position. The gusts from the fans blew the bubbles delicately and made the seagrass billow realistically as Bella moved. Suddenly she moved the fan she was holding lower so the audience could see her red-painted lips, but only for a second before she snatched the view away, fluttering her feathers flirtatiously. Wendy surprised herself by laughing in delight.

  Peter’s eyes snapped back to Wendy, and he beamed at her.

  Bella seemed to notice Peter’s attention shift, and she sashayed across the stage until she was directly across from their table. Then she fluffed her fans hard, and two great gusts of wind blew over their table. Peter turned back to watch her, and Bella’s eyes crinkled in triumph.

  She twisted until she was at the very edge of the stage, then turned around and leaned, fans positioned at her front and her back until she was completely bent over in such a way that only Peter, Wendy, Curly, and possibly Charles and Minsu at the back of the table could see her whole face.

  “Hello, old friend,” Peter said, grinning sharply.

  “Old friend,” Bella echoed. “Better get going; the night isn’t as young as we are.”

  Peter laughed loudly and slipped a hand under Bella’s waist to help her back up and out of her contortions.

  “I’ll see you later, dove,” he said quietly.

  Nibs and Curly were already starting to rise when Peter turned to the table.

  “All right, let’s go,” Peter declared. “We have places to be.”

  Wendy half expected both the Crocodile and Detective Hook to be lurking outside waiting for them, but the detective had left. The Crocodile was leaning against the side of the building, smoking, so out of the way and silent that Wendy didn’t spot him until he reached out a meaty arm and grabbed Peter by the wrist.

  To Wendy’s surprise, Peter laughed in the Crocodile’s face and snatched his arm back. “You don’t have to get so testy,” he said. “I’ve never been late.”

  Wendy looked frantically at Ominotago, but the other girl didn’t seem alarmed, just tired. Fyodor looked mildly disgusted, but also unsurprised, which made Wendy feel safer. Peter flipped open his messenger bag, handed the Crocodile an envelope, and turned away.

  “More,” the Crocodile said to the back of Peter’s head with a voice that sounded like two boulders rubbing to- gether. “Tonight you’re a hassle.”

  Peter scowled and whipped back around. “You’re always a hassle,” he snapped. Then he rummaged in his bag for his wallet and gave the Crocodile what looked like at least a hundred dollars.

  “What the fuck?” Wendy started to say quietly, but Tinkerbelle tapped her and shook her head sharply. The Crocodile’s beady eyes snapped over to Wendy, jolting her enough for her to take a step backward. The bounty hunter looked them all up and down one by one before moving his grizzled head back to focus on Peter.

  “See you next month,” the Crocodile rumbled. He flicked his cigarette, then pushed himself off the wall next to the restaurant and slunk back inside.

  Peter took a steadying breath and turned back to Wendy. “Protection,” he explained. “Keeps the coppers off our backs.”

  “That’s normal?” Wendy couldn’t help herself. She could make excuses in her head to rationalize a lot of things that had happened tonight, but this wasn’t one of them.

  “It is for me,” Peter replied with a grin that didn’t reach his eyes. “Let’s go.”

  CHAPTER 10

  After Detective Hook’s outburst, it was a bit easier to see the dynamic of the group as a whole. Everyone was on edge and not doing a great job of hiding their emotions. Everyone but Peter,
it seemed.

  Wendy watched from the back of the group as they made their way toward the train station. Minsu and Charles were doing the least to disguise their hatred and disgust toward Peter, only changing their expressions when Peter looked at them directly. Now that Charles had properly cried out his terror from nearly being arrested, he seemed more serious and way more focused on using his large body to physically block Ominotago from view. Charles looked at Peter the way one would look at a sleeping lion: wary and ready to defend himself. Fyodor refused to look at Peter at all unless directly addressed. So aggressive was his refusal to participate and determination to stay faced away that Peter loudly began pointing out when they were turning, as if he thought Fyodor was about to walk in the wrong direction.

  By contrast, Nibs and Curly looked at Peter often, as if waiting for orders he hadn’t given yet. They leaned toward him the same way Tinkerbelle had leaned toward Peter in the alley when they’d first met. Nibs and Curly also moved in lockstep with Peter, like a pack, with Peter at the front. Tinkerbelle and Ominotago walked at the rear of the group. Peter seemed incredibly agitated by Ominotago’s presence, but was putting up with her for reasons Wendy didn’t yet understand. Unlike the rest of the people Wendy had met tonight, Ominotago didn’t seem afraid of Peter at all. Now that she thought about it, Ominotago was also the only person who had seriously disobeyed him and gotten away with it.

  I don’t take orders from him, she’d said. Ominotago had stated that like a fact, as resolutely as Wendy would say that there were fifty states in America.

  Tinkerbelle, she realized, was mimicking that. Her shouting in the alley was less impactful than Ominotago’s conversational tone. Her rebellion was always followed immediately by cowering and silence. She was fighting back without the right weapons and without durable armor.

  The air around the group was thick with tension. Nine different people walking together, wrestling with Peter’s gravitational pull in their own ways while the boy himself gave off nothing at all. No fear, no guilt, no concern. Strolling down the street like the entire neighborhood was the inside of his house. Like it was midday instead of 11:33 p.m.