by K. Ancrum
Wendy had never been more terrified in her life.
“Go,” Ominotago whispered. She was blocked from Peter’s view by the divider by the door, her lips barely moving. “You have to.”
Wendy forced a smile onto her face. “I’ll be right back,” she said to the group.
“Don’t get lost,” Curly teased with an answering grin, his eyes haunted like he was never going to see her again.
“I won’t,” Wendy replied flirtingly, and made her legs carry her across the train car.
Peter was waiting for her patiently. As she got closer, Wendy could see that his cheeks were red and his nose was a bit pink, as if he’d been crying. Unlike last time, she still saw the ghost of Charles’s terror, and her heart did not move.
CHAPTER 11
Peter held the door open for her, forcing their proximity as she ducked under his arm into the space between the train cars. To her surprise, James wasn’t there, and she couldn’t see him in the other car, either, though it was hard to see through the dirt encrusted windows.
The train was going significantly slower than it had earlier in the evening and it was quieter, but that didn’t make Wendy feel any safer.
Peter leaned against the door and pushed his hair back from his face with a shaking hand. “Things haven’t been going very well tonight, have they?” he asked quietly, not meeting her gaze.
Wendy wasn’t sure of the safest way to answer that question. She wrapped both hands around the railing chains and squared her feet for better balance, then she shrugged. “Things could have gone worse,” she said finally.
To her great relief, Peter laughed. “They definitely could have.”
He mirrored her gesture, curling his hands around the chains and sighed. “I didn’t want any of this to happen. I had been hoping to just show you a good time.” The moonlight illuminated his handsome face in a soft glow. “I was thinking that you and Tinkerbelle would become fast friends because you seemed so similar. I was going to introduce you to Slightly and Curly and Nibs, and show off the art Curly had made in our space. Then we were going to go to the Mermaid’s Lagoon together, and Bella was going to dance for you. She’d been practicing for weeks … She’s an icon and I was so excited to show it to you.”
Peter looked genuinely sad, and it was hard for Wendy to focus on remembering how scared and upset the others had been only minutes ago, but she was trying. Peter was so very talented at this. She couldn’t even put her finger on exactly what he did to create these situations. It was some combination of forcing you to feel his body heat through proximity, projecting insecurity, and shifting the way he used his voice. No hard edges; instead, all vulnerability and open body language. Letting Wendy control how close they were, physically cowering like she was the thing he should be afraid of—not the other way around. And then there was his beauty. If Minsu and Fyodor were pretty, Peter Pan was radiant. He literally looked like an angel as the wind blew his curls around his face and the starlight made his clear skin gleam.
As if he could tell she was appraising him, Peter tucked his bottom lip under his straight white teeth and let his auburn lashes flutter down to his freckled cheeks. “All I wanted,” he said in a very small voice, “was to make sure you had a nice time. I didn’t know my brothers would freak out and drag you to our house. I couldn’t predict the police would be harassing my friends. And the Crocodile … and Detective Hook?” Peter shook his head. “You should never have had to see them at all. That’s not anything you should ever have to deal with. Those are my problems, not yours.”
Peter rubbed at one of his eyes and looked out toward the moon. “I’m not having the best night, either,” he said sadly.
As if he were a victim of these circumstances and not at all the source of them.
Then he dug around in his bag and pulled out some sort of stick. “I hope you don’t mind, but it’s a bit too dark for me to see,” he said sheepishly as he dug out a lighter and lit the tip of the stick.
Wendy flinched as it burst into light, throwing sparks in every direction. Peter held the sparkler in between them, the golden light illuminating the leftover dampness beneath his eyes and the soft blush on his cheeks.
“You don’t have to forgive me,” Peter said firmly.
Wendy thought about how Tinkerbelle had looked hours ago, right after they’d first met, when Peter had spoken harshly to her and she’d clammed up as if Peter had been about to hit her.
“You’re right,” Wendy lied. “No one could have predicted that. Don’t worry about it. We’re almost to the party, and from what Minsu and Fyodor were saying, it sounds like it’s going to be a great time.”
She let go of one of the chains and wrapped her hand around the sparkler. Peter let go of it, something in him relaxing at Wendy’s words. Wendy took the sparkler in her own hand and held it up high, so the sparks didn’t ignite their clothing.
“Thank you,” Peter said. “God, I’m so sorry about everything. Thank you for giving this another chance.” He slumped against the door and looked out toward the moon again. “I don’t want to unload on you or anything, but doing this is so hard.”
“Doing what?” Wendy asked.
“This. All of it. Looking after Curly, Nibs, and the rest. Making sure everyone is okay. I know they talk about me behind my back and that they think I’m mean and stuff, but somebody has to be in charge. Somebody has to make the hard choices and sacrifices even if it makes them the bad guy, you know? I never wanted to be a dad; I just wanted to have fun with my friends.” Peter looked absolutely crestfallen.
He covered his face again and sniffed. “And then James shows up like it’s no big deal, and—”
Peter was crying again.
It was incredible how he cried like he was starring in a film. His face didn’t get puffy, snot didn’t drip from his nose, and his voice didn’t get all squeaky. He just naturally wept, his eyelashes clumping in wet spikes with just enough tears to drip delicately down his chiseled cheeks and angled jaw.
“James used to live with us,” Peter explained, his voice rough with anguish. “But he left. As soon as he grew up, he left and never came to visit any of us again. He was our family, and he just stopped visiting, and no one knew what happened to him. The twins cried for weeks. I … didn’t even know what to tell them.”
Wendy also didn’t know what to think. She watched as Peter wiped stubbornly at his face, as if he were embarrassed to be crying but unable to stop.
“And Curly thinks I drove him away, and I don’t know how to tell him that I didn’t,” Peter sobbed.
He rubbed his eyes harder. “I shouldn’t.” He took a moment to take a deep breath. “I shouldn’t be bothering you with all of this. You don’t even know any of us that well.”
“I—I’m sorry,” Wendy stammered, still at a loss for what to say.
The sparkler was getting low, spitting out its last bits of light.
“What do you even do when someone treats you like that, you know?” Peter asked, golden eyes wide. “We loved him, and he didn’t even say goodbye. And just now, he just left the train … Left us all, again.”
Wendy remembered Nibs’s moan of horror and the clench of Tinkerbelle’s hand and thought quickly. “Sometimes people just change as they get older, and they do things they might regret later. I’m sure if he knew just how much he meant to you all, he wouldn’t have left so suddenly.”
Peter was looking at the ground, at the train tracks rushing beneath them. Then he wiped his face again and took a few moments to compose himself. “I hate growing up,” he said to Wendy quietly. “I don’t want to change into someone who doesn’t care about my family. I just want things to stay the same.”
He pulled his gray jacket closer around himself and shivered. “You’re a really nice girl,” he said, incredibly heartfelt, and for the first time in more than an hour, Wendy didn’t feel like he was lying.
The sparkler she was holding breathed its last and went cold, plunging them b
ack into darkness. Wendy looked at the burnt tip for a second, then tossed the sparkler down into the rushing steel below.
Peter’s eyes tracked the motion, then dropped. “When you go home,” Peter began quietly, “and you start living your life. When you go to school and have fun with your parents and get taller and bigger and smarter. When you have the whole world ahead of you and all the opportunities there are to offer in your hands. When you’re old enough to have your own daughter who wants to go on adventures and wants to see the world, will you remember us? Me and Tink and Curly and Nibs? Because when people grow up, they forget how…”
Peter was still gazing forlornly at the ground, so Wendy looked past him and into the train car beyond. She could see everyone’s faces staring through the grime of the door. Tinkerbelle was half out of her seat and leaning forward to make sure Wendy was okay. Curly and Nibs were leaning into the aisle, doing the same.
Wendy looked back at Peter, then cupped his cheek. Peter allowed his face to be tilted upward until it was completely reillumined by the moonlight. This close, Wendy could see his imperfections, the sheen of makeup covering his dark circles, the turn in his nose that told her it had been broken at least once, the salt encrusted at the corners of his eyes, and the stubble that pricked at her fingertips.
“I will never forget this,” Wendy promised.
Peter turned his head and kissed the swell of her palm—so gently it felt like a brush of a feather, but with too much heat and stickiness.
“Thank you,” he said, voice rough, “for being so nice to me.”
Peter straightened himself to his full height and stretched, leaning against the train car door as the wind blew his curls around riotously. The train was now going so fast and the wind blowing so hard that one of the flowers Dorothy had pinned in Wendy’s hair finally flew off. Peter reached out and caught it, plucking it from the air like he was picking it off a tree, rather than grabbing something flying at God knows how many miles per hour past him, and Wendy was once again sobered by how dangerous this boy was.
He didn’t try to put the flower back into her hair—though Wendy could see the thought occurring in his eyes for a moment. Instead he tucked the sprig of baby’s breath into his own hair and smiled bashfully back at her, looking ten times sweeter and more innocent than Wendy knew he was.
“Are you ready to go back in?” he asked. “I’m sure the others are missing us.”
Wendy nodded. Absolutely. She was absolutely ready to not be alone with Peter.
Peter pulled open the train car door and held it open so Wendy could walk safely in front of him. By the time she had a foot in the train car, Tinkerbelle had sat back down and Nibs and Curly were back in a signed conversation.
Fyodor had apparently found a light and was passing a cigarette back and forth with Tinkerbelle. They looked up as if surprised to see Peter, and Tinkerbelle handed the cigarette back to Fyodor. He took one last hard drag before dropping it to put it out, but Peter snatched it before it hit the ground and shook it warningly in Fyodor’s face.
“They’ll make your skin look like shit,” he said, putting the cigarette out against the window. “You want to look like you’re fifty in your thirties, keep smoking like this. If you’re really serious about modeling, Fyodor, you need a solid skincare regimen, not this crap.”
Fyodor clicked his tongue in the back of his throat and pulled a comb out of his pocket to straighten his pompadour. It was subtle, but Wendy could tell that everyone was relieved she was back. She could hear the mild giddiness in Minsu’s voice as he continued talking to Charles. She couldn’t tell if this was another fake conversation, because everyone seemed so engaged. It was different when you were a part of a situation and you see the shift from silence to mid-discussion—this felt like walking into a warmth that existed for ages before she got there. The only person who wasn’t involved was Ominotago, who had her phone out and was again focused very hard on texting.
“We’re close,” she said without looking up. “We have to walk for a few blocks, but we have only one stop left.”
“Does it have a cover this year?” Charles asked.
Ominotago shrugged. “It might, but anyone who comes in with me is good to go, so it’s kind of a nonissue.”
Peter had returned to his place behind Nibs and Curly. “I spoke to James before he left,” he said. “He won’t be bothering us again. It’s better this way.”
Curly and Nibs nodded stoically, as if they expected this clear falsehood.
Fyodor clicked his tongue in the back of his throat at Wendy to get her attention. “Your uh—from the … Can I?” He reached out a hand toward Wendy’s hair, waiting for her to give permission.
Unsure what he was asking but willing to give whatever it was a chance, Wendy nodded.
Fyodor leaned over and delicately adjusted the pins holding the sprigs of baby’s breath in her hair, which apparently had been thrown into disarray by the screaming wind outside the train car. He didn’t press too close or stroke her curls without her permission; he just fixed it and nodded crisply when he finished. Then he turned back to his conversation with Minsu and Charles without needing or expecting appreciation of any kind.
Wendy felt Ominotago’s eyes on her, so she stared down at her and Tinkerbelle, who now looked amused as well as relieved.
Ominotago jerked her chin at Fyodor and raised an eyebrow as if to say, See?
Wendy did, in fact, see. She pursed her lips at Ominotago, grinning when Ominotago’s dark eyes seemed to twinkle in answering amusement.
“THIS IS HOWARD. TRANSFER TO PURPLE-LINE TRAINS AT HOWARD,” the train car speakers blared.
“Everybody off,” Peter demanded as the train doors opened. “We’re already late.”
* * *
The walk from the train station was less tense than the walk to the train station, now that Wendy was capable of participating in the “lighthearted discussion that is really just a mask for horrifying tension” thing everyone seemed to be doing. Peter also seemed satisfied that their conversation in between the train cars was enough to smooth over whatever he assumed Wendy had been thinking. He was less hyperfocused on surveillance, and settling in to have a good time.
But Wendy wasn’t calm enough to think they weren’t still being watched.
She joined Fyodor and Minsu in an argument about college admissions. She laughed good naturedly when Peter teased Ominotago and Tinkerbelle about being joined at the hip, and didn’t react to the disgusted tension of Fyodor’s jaw or the clenching of Charles’s fists that accompanied their own fake smiles. Wendy felt more in tune with these people than with her friends back home as they worked together, synchronized as a well-oiled machine, to keep the mood up. Wendy hadn’t known solidarity like this before—and though she still didn’t know what was going on, she finally understood just how important it was to continue to keep in step.
They walked for nearly three miles, until the residential and commercial areas faded from bright lights and landscaping to unkempt gravel and boarded-up windows. Wendy could hear the party long before she could see it—its bass reverberating through the night air. The closer they got, the more people their age joined them in heading toward the huge warehouse at the end of the block.
A group of girls in glittery minidresses ran up behind them. One of them boldly slung her arm around Peter’s waist and surged up to give him a kiss on the cheek.
“Nice to see you back, Peter,” she said sultrily.
Peter pushed her off with a friendly smack to her hip. “Go find some trouble somewhere else. Have a nice night, ladies.”
They dashed ahead to wait in line by the door.
Wendy felt sick. How many people did Peter know who had no idea who he really was? How many “special girls” had met him in the middle of the night?
As if reading Wendy’s thoughts, Peter turned to her and said, “I never encourage them, but if they need anything, I’m around. I carry headache meds and umbrellas and these
little sticks you can use to make sure no one roofies your drink.”
“That’s … that’s nice,” Wendy said tentatively, glancing at Ominotago behind Peter’s back.
Ominotago shrugged but shook her head like she already knew this and it did not change her opinion of him at all.
Wendy trusted that look more than Peter’s explanation and kept silent as they joined the line.
Minsu licked a finger and smoothed down his eyebrows. Charles watched and nodded when he finished. Fyodor pinched his cheeks until they were softly pink and combed his hair back one last time. Wendy thought it was cute watching them primp like this, and judging from the look on Tinkerbelle’s face, she felt the same.
When they got to the front doors, the bouncers were tall and broad and did actually look a bit like Ominotago and Waatese. Wendy remembered Minsu mentioning that these were Ominotago, Curly, and Waatese’s cousins. They seemed college age, not actual adults, which was a surprise. Instead of forking over a few dollars, Tinkerbelle and Ominotago greeted the bouncers excitedly. The boys scooped them up into tight hugs and slapped Curly on the shoulder. They shook hands with Charles, Minsu, Fyodor, Nibs, and even Peter, though one of them couldn’t resist a tight-lipped frown at having to do so.
“This is Wendy,” Ominotago said, throwing an arm around her shoulders. “You haven’t met her yet, but she’s with us, too.”
The bouncers stamped everyone’s hands and opened the doors.
CHAPTER 12
The lights were off, but the inside of the warehouse could never have been described as dark. Aside from the music, which was as loud and bass-heavy as Wendy had assumed it would be, there were rainbow strobes placed strategically next to disco balls and hanging mirrors that threw flashes of colorful light all over the space, illuminating it like the inside of a kaleidoscope. The warehouse had one large bar in the very center of the first floor and two on opposite sides of the second floor, which was more of a mezzanine that overlooked the dance floor. The machinery had been pushed to the sides of the warehouse ground and walled off with velour drapery and police tape, so no one was able to get close enough to hurt themselves. There was a giant net stretched across the ceiling with tiny holes cut into it, from which tiny slivers of metallic confetti slowly fell as the music and general rowdiness shook the building. Scattered across the mezzanine were couches someone had clearly shipped over from the dump, and there were so many balloons on the ground that you could barely see your own feet. The DJ was set up on a platform of crates overlooking the crowd, and there were large neon signs for the exits and bathrooms. Wendy remembered what Minsu had said earlier—know all your exits—and was glad to see they were easy to find.
