The Acorn Tattoo: The Neverland Series Part 1 Anniversary Edition

by Miller, Alyse

  After that night at the ballet, Claire had come to think fondly of Jake’s bashful grin as his Lost Boy smile, though she had never shared that with him. Over the next few weeks, amid their conversations and time spent together, Claire was surprised to find that her affection for Jake spanned between love and adoration. She felt both inspired by and in awe of the curious and lighthearted boy who reveled without exception in the simplest moments of life. He was equally as quick to remark on the grace of a falling leaf as to take her hand and dance in the rain, to smell the flowers of a florist’s cart, or savor the sweet taste of a freshly baked pastry as holiday treats began to appear in the windows of sidewalk bakeries. Jake’s sense of wonder was one of the things she loved most about him.

  Falling in love with Jake had been easy.

  The morning after the picnic, when Claire’s alarm clock buzzed her awake, it was a sweeter sound than before. The sunlight that streamed through her bedroom window and broke apart the last curly tendrils of nighttime shadow was brighter than it had been the morning past. Fresh rays reached their fingers in to paint her room in strands of honey-colored light. This morning, everything was suddenly lighter, more exciting, and more promising than it had been when the dawn rose the previous day. Claire’s room was alive with the embryotic dew of possibility and new beginnings.

  Normally, she rushed from the bed, hurrying to attend to the list of the day’s tasks. But today Claire lay quietly, taking long, leisurely minutes to watch the sunlight sweep across the walls of her bedroom. Feeling a little silly, she wrapped her hand around the bedpost, anchoring herself to the bed should the pleasant jumble of happy thoughts in her mind might magically lift her body from the bed and carry her out of the bedroom window, like the Darling children on the night they flew off to Neverland. This morning—this beautiful, wonderful, perfect morning—was too magical to rush.

  The market flowers Jake had given her as a centerpiece for their picnic filled Claire’s bedroom with the scent of things wild and blooming and untamed. Their dazzling hues made the bouquet seem a tiny secret garden in her bedroom. Claire studied the bloom of each flower. Each reminded Claire of the picnic in the park, of three little words, and of the boy with the acorn tattoo. Claire touched the tips of her fingers to the upturned corners of her lips. She was sure she’d never woken up smiling before. Not like this.

  Yesterday had been incredible. Beyond incredible. Every moment she spent with Jake was another dream she didn’t want to wake up from. Yet, at the same time, with him she was more awake than she’d ever been. She felt, simultaneously, both unbelievably happy and full of longing—two contradictory emotions that were the perfect complement. She was in love. And what made it all so much more incredible was that he loved her back.

  Claire rolled onto her side, pulling the blankets around her in a tight cocoon. Lying quietly, she pondered the familiar emptiness in the bed beside her. For so many nights and so many mornings, that space had long mocked her. Sometimes it made her cry, sometimes angry, and other times—the vast majority, really—just lonely. The pillow remained perky and unused, the same cotton square she had pulled out of plastic packaging to provide symmetry to the bed. Claire was a sound sleeper and the whole the left side of the bed went more or less untouched. When she was little, her foster brother Davie used to say she slept like a bear in hibernation—Claire Bear, that was his name for her. Even her best friend Nikole never stayed the night, nor had Claire ever invited a man to sleep in her bed. She was too old for some sleepovers, she guessed, but perhaps her heart was still not ready for the more adult kind of late night visits.

  For the most part, Claire was happy in her solitude. It was safe there, a place impervious to rejection. Even still, as much as she tried to resist it, for as long as she could remember, Claire had yearned to be loved—to be in love—to have her fear or heartbreak and loneliness washed away from her in a flood of promise and delivery. She wanted, more than anything, her very own prince to carry her off to happily ever after. Most days, she ignored it, busying herself instead with work or the fleeting satisfaction of spontaneous, simple projects she picked up at the craft shops. It was easier being alone if Claire could trick herself into believing she didn’t have room for anyone else. It was a small miracle she didn’t have a dozen cats to keep her company.

  Claire hadn’t always been like this, she reflected. Maybe it was simply a residual symptom of her orphan childhood, though her foster parents Tabitha and Mark Fisher had been a loving family and had given her something as close to real parents as she could have ever asked for. But, losing her parents had changed something in her child’s heart, broken it maybe, before it had time to form. It made her afraid, like loving someone too much was just a precursor to losing them forever. It wasn’t easy to remember her parents—not so much because it was painful, but more because it wasn’t. It was as if it was empty instead, as if they were never really there. The memories were so faded and forgotten that Claire had to fight to stretch her memory back as far as it would go to find them. But, if she tried hard enough, Claire could remember her mother and father. It was a quaint, simple memory. She remembered them dancing—gliding in circles that seemed to have no beginning and no end. Her mother had the same wavy strawberry hair as she did, the same wide red lips, and gray eyes. And when she laughed, the sound was so wonderful that it jingled in the air like tiny silver bells.

  It was a sad memory, yet one full of warmth and joy. This morning, maybe for the first time, it made Claire smile. That one memory was the measuring stick by which she’d always measured what she felt love would be. She pushed her toes free of the blankets, wriggled them in the crisp air of her morning bedroom, and squealed. If this is what love felt like, then it was the most magical feeling in the world.

  Chapter 3

  Claire flipped on the overhead lights at 7:02 a.m. to a sea of empty cubicles standing like mollusks in the shallow blandness of her gray downtown office. She’d taken the job as a staff journalist for the New York-based magazine after college, eager to work her way up the food chain to editor-in-chief. For the past four years, this office had been sort of her second home, cozy with the close-knit family of her coworkers. The second cubicle on the right had been hers before she was promoted to senior editor and moved to one of the windowed offices on the main floor. The cubicle had stained carpet thanks to Nikole Pendergrass. She’d come in one morning, overloaded with supplies, bumped into Claire, and sent her coffee mug flying. They’d had a good laugh, and Clair and Nik had been best friends ever since.

  She loved the new office and the new responsibilities of her fancy new job title, but sometimes missed the hustle and bustle of the production floor—the ringing phone lines, the clatter of nails against keyboards, the incessant gurgle of the overused coffee pots that peeked out from nearly every available counter space. An entire floor of writers, editors, and production staff. For Claire, who’d lived in books nearly her entire life, it was a mix between heaven and hell—a place of imagination and inspiration looming over an undercurrent of desperation and the inevitable insecurity of the creative. Like all the other good and bad that balanced out to be Claire’s New York, it was home.

  Claire’s large editor’s desk, which was more of a giant dining table than a desk, was piled high with stacks of papers and glossy page spreads. Every available inch not already covered in paper or electronics was littered with bright sticky notes scribbled with neon reminders. When she’d moved into the office, with its gray carpet, white walls, and polished executive furniture, Claire had remarked it felt like leaving the mayhem of an ER ward and entering the sterile isolation of a private hospital room. She and Nik had made the office as inviting as possible by trading in the two straight-backed visitor chairs for a cozy, lipstick red couch dotted with cheerful pillows with some of Nik’s painted flowery abstract canvases hanging on the walls. They’d found a funky pea-green shag rug at the flea market down the street and flung it over the gray carpet, added a few lamps, an
d created a little shrine of photo frames filled with familiar faces on the corner of Claire’s desk. Claire had lucked out having an office facing east. The sunshine awoke her office in the morning, and she burned scented candles to chase away the evening shadows on the all too often occasions that she worked well past nightfall.

  The red message light on Claire’s phone blinked and her email inbox belched a shopping list of new messages, each fighting their way to the top. Dropping behind her desk, Claire traded her sleek suit jacket for the fuzzy cardigan she kept draped over her chair and kicked her heels off under her desk. She rubbed her bare feet together. There really was no place like home. In many ways, Claire was more at home in this small square office than in her own apartment. There was more life here, more momentum and creativity spinning life through every moment of the day.

  At 7:15 a.m., just like every day, Claire’s office phone rang. “Claire Baker,” she said into the receiver. She always felt just a bit silly saying her name into the phone rather than hello. It was almost as if she was pretending to be someone else

  “David Hunter calling,” a deep voice slurred sleepily from the other end of the line. “Good morning, Ms. Baker.”

  “Davie! What time is it in Seattle?” Claire’s eyes darted to a beaded picture frame that held a picture of her with her one-time foster brother. Davie had bought her the frame when they’d taken a summer cruise to the tropics several years before. The picture showed a happy pair on a beach—Claire’s sunlit hair flying out from underneath a floppy, wide-brimmed hat, her red mouth smirking and white cotton dress billowing in the wind. With his upper body crusted in sandy breadcrumbs, Davie had his tan arm looped around her and a tilted grin across his face. His linen pants were rolled up to his knees, trying to keep dry above the waves lapping at their feet. That sunny memory seemed like it had happened a lifetime away from dreary New York and rainy Seattle.

  “It is 4:15 on this delightfully dismal Seattle morning, my dear,” Davie replied, yawning. “And in New York?”

  Claire checked the time on her wristwatch though she knew exactly what time it was. “Seven fifteen here. You have impeccable timing, Mr. Hunter, as always.”

  “Ah, a relief,” Davie breathed, “Only three hours apart then, no more than yesterday.” Claire could hear the rustle of blankets moving as Davie stretched in his bed three thousand miles away. He called first thing every morning so that they could exchange the same familiar pleasantries. It was a morning routine they’d kept alive since they’d left their foster home for college—him to the University of Washington to pursue business, she on a scholarship to Columbia. Before that, they had simply eaten breakfast together, stealing food from each other’s plates—well, Claire stealing food from Davie’s plate while he pretended not to notice. In all the years since they’d left those cozy kitchen mornings, they had seen each other frightfully few times, but their morning calls seemed to make up for time lost across distance.

  “New York is frightfully dull without you,” Claire said, smiling even though it was true. One of her and Davie’s favorite games growing up had been to speak to each other as formally as possible, often with extravagant hand flourishes and repeated bows and curtsies. As kids, they would often forget that they were orphans and pretend instead to be noble children, whisked away to boarding school in order to learn the etiquette of royal behavior. It was a game they hadn’t forgotten as the years had passed.

  “The Seattle sky cries again this morning, lamenting yet another day with the absence of your effervescent smile,” David recited from memory. He sighed and the line was silent for a few beats. “I miss you something terrible, Claire,” he said, breaking into the common pace of everyday language. “We should think about changing things, shouldn’t we? Seattle and New York…it’s just too far. I’m sure there’s a job for me in New York, or you could transfer to the Emerald City. We could be close again.”

  He grunted into the phone. He was sitting up now. Claire could always tell Davie’s movements by his noises, and he always grunted when he sat up quickly. Unfortunately, for reserved and practical Davie, quick movements normally were a sign of irritation, which meant that he was probably getting moody now, too. Even separated by thousands of miles, Claire could see Davie clearly in her mind, his tanned hiker’s chest rising out of a pool of cotton. Davie always favored the stark cleanness of white sheets—a tangled mass of bedhead black waves falling across brooding eyes the color of Columbian coffee. “You would love the view here,” he added as an afterthought. He must have been looking out the window of his downtown apartment that faced Puget Sound. Claire had memorized the view from the pictures he texted her. He had a great view of the waterline, and she did like it, sometimes even more than the towering New York skyline. She especially loved the glow of the ferry lights as they twinkled across the waters of Puget Sound.

  “I miss you back,” she said, answering what he’d left hidden between the lines. She did too. Life without Davie was like life without her other half. They’d been together since they were barely old enough to remember life before each other, one constant in an otherwise ever-changing world. Now it had been almost a year since she’d seen him. He had flown out to celebrate the holidays with her last season. The year past was the longest they had ever gone without seeing each other in person, but they never mentioned it.

  Claire twirled a finger inside a strawberry curl and leaned back in her office chair. She stretched her long legs on top of a pile of papers, crossed them. “Oh, I have a surprise for you too.” She hadn’t yet told Davie about Jake. She’d been saving it until she was sure…there was no sense in surprising Davie with a love story if it was destined to end. But, this morning Claire felt like she might explode if she didn’t tell someone, even if Davie usually did not approve of her boyfriends. It was the one thing they argued about.

  “Oh, do you?” Davie teased. In the background, Claire heard water run, turn off, then the sound of cloth slipping—the usual sounds of Davie starting to stir and get ready for the day. “And, what’s that, then?” His voice was muffled. He was buttoning a shirt. She smirked. Davie had always been an early riser, and always too old for his age too. Up early herself, by the time she rolled out of bed she would find Davie already up, dressed, and in the breakfast nook of the kitchen. He would rise with the sun to get a start on reading the paper and sipping coffee, waiting on her to wake up so he could tell her all about what was going on in the news. The only thing that had changed over the years had been the content of his morning updates, from movies and festivals to politics and finances. Without Davie around to keep her up-to-date on the world’s news, Claire’s understanding of daily headlines—except those dealing with the latest in fashion —had suffered.

  Claire took a deep breath, exhaled through her mouth. She balled her hands into little fists. So far, she hadn’t said it out loud to anyone, even herself. “I think I’m in love.”

  Davie made an abrupt choking sound and cleared his throat. “What? In love? With whom?” His questions pelted her, firing through voice that was strained and, by Claire’s opinion, a little harsher than necessary. Something clanged sharply in the background, probably a coffee cup slamming a little too hard on the counter. Claire rolled her eyes. Davie could be so unromantic.

  “His name is Jake, he’s a—”

  Nikole Pendergrass burst suddenly into Claire’s vision, interrupting her confession. Her hair, newly dyed to an unnatural shade of fiery red, was teased up into a point, like a flickering candle flame on top of her nymph-like head. She was a doll of a woman, not even five feet tall and petite, although she was often fond of complaining that her rear-end was “borderline substantial.” Claire argued that the only thing even close to being substantial about Nik was the amount of hairspray she employed to tease her hair into nearly upright shapes—but her hair was her trademark, after all. “Hey lady! What do you think of the new do?” She grinned triumphantly as she goose-stepped across the office, obviously pleased with
the matchstick-like torch atop her head.

  Claire gasped, her attention distracted from Davie’s agitated stutter on the other end of the line. Whatever he was fussing about couldn’t compare to the shock and awe of Nik’s new hair. “Oh my gosh, Nik. It’s so…red! What did you—”

  “Claire? Claire!” Davie barked into the receiver. Claire held up a finger to Nik, who responded in kind by rolling her blue eyes up into her head and back down again. She stopped mid-step to drop her arms heavily at her sides petulantly. Davie’s voice droned through the phone. Nik pointed her finger at Claire in a disapproving waggle and changed her pace to strut around the office, puffing out her chest and pretending to hammer it self-importantly. Honestly, she did an excellent impression of Davie. It was everything Claire could do not to start laughing. After meeting him at last year’s Christmas party, Nik had grown fond of saying that Davie would be the most eligible bachelor in town, if only he could just get over himself.

  “Sorry, Davie, Nik just did something spectacularly appalling with her hair, and—”

  “Never mind that, Claire. I don’t care about Nikole’s hair of the week. What is this about you being ‘in love’?”

  Davie’s fuming was loud enough for Nik to hear without the phone pressed against her ear. She abruptly stopped strutting and eyed Claire suspiciously. “Love?” she mouthed at Claire, “Jake?” She strummed an invisible air guitar and flipped imaginary hair backward in a freshly minted Jake impression, then plunged her finger in her mouth and pretended to heave violently on the carpet. It was ridiculous, really. Claire couldn’t hold it back any longer. She burst into laughter.

  “Claire!” Davie shouted into the phone, exasperated. If there was one thing Davie hated, it was being ignored.

  “I’m sorry, Davie. I’m sorry. Nik is making me laugh!” Claire twirled her chair away and blinked, trying to focus on the man growling in her ear and not her best friend enjoying an encore air guitar performance behind her. It wasn’t easy. Claire wasn’t good with distractions.