I started to say that I didn’t care what Peter thought about it, that I did as I pleased.
But that wasn’t really true, was it? I didn’t do as I pleased. I did what I thought was best and tried to keep Peter happy so he wouldn’t destroy everything.
I’d made myself a hostage to him for three weeks just so he wouldn’t drag any more boys here to his island, and to keep Charlie and Sal safe from his jealousy.
And I did remember some things from the Other Place.
The song.
Wide blue eyes staring, and a red mouth carved in a smile where there should be none.
“I don’t like to talk about it,” I said.
I finished up changing the bandage and collected the dirty things to take outside to wash.
“You’re a good father to these boys,” Sal said. “I thought maybe you learned from someone who cared about you.”
“I’m not their father,” I said, my voice harsh. “I don’t think of myself that way. We’re not playing families here on the island. We just work together.”
“You look out for them. You take care of them. That’s what a father does—or at least, what he’s supposed to do. Mine only beat me and my mother until I ran away. After that he only had my mother to hit,” Sal said.
She didn’t sound sad about this, or like she wanted me to feel sorry for her. It was just a statement of fact, but it arrested my anger.
“Did you love your mother?” I asked curiously.
“When I was small I did,” she said. “When I was older I hated her for letting him hurt me.”
“Maybe she was scared to try to make him stop.” I had a strange impulse to defend Sal’s mother.
“I wasn’t scared,” she said. “I shouted at him. I stood up to him. I hit him with a broken bottle once, made him bleed all over. If a little child can do that, then why couldn’t my mother stand between us?”
I didn’t know what to say to this. I could see it, little Sal with her dark curls and blue eyes, fierce and small with a bruise on her face and a jagged bottle in her hand.
“That’s what you do for the boys,” Sal continued. “You stand between them and Peter. You keep them safe. Because it isn’t safe, this island. It isn’t at all what Peter promised it would be, what I thought it would be.”
“What did you think it would be?”
She shrugged, and her hands moved restlessly in her lap. “Like a paradise, I suppose. A happy place that was clean and bright and where everyone was lovely to each other and there was lots and lots of food to eat. I’ve spent three years eating rats, or moldy bread that I stole off the end of a cart. If ever I had anything—a penny earned from shining shoes, or an apple that wasn’t half rotten—some bigger boy would come along and try to take it from me. I always had to fight, every day, just to stay alive. I was fighting when Peter found me, beating an older boy who wanted my cap.”
“That’s why he wanted you,” I said. “If he saw you fighting and thought you were good at it, he would want you here.”
“I thought,” she said, and she took a deep breath. “I thought that Peter respected me because I wouldn’t let the other boy bully me. He said I looked like a boy that deserved an adventure. I didn’t believe him at first, about the island, though.”
“I didn’t either,” I said. “I don’t know that anyone does. It sounds like a fantastic lie.”
“It is a fantastic lie,” Sal said, and her face was very earnest. “This isn’t a wonderful place for boys to play and have adventures and stay young for always. It’s a killing place, and we’re all just soldiers in Peter’s war.”
I shuffled my feet, not sure what to say to this. It wasn’t that I hadn’t thought all of these things before, or even said some of them to Peter. I had. But I was his first choice, his best, his right hand.
And I couldn’t, not yet anyway, say out loud to the other boys that Peter was a monster.
“It wasn’t always like this,” I said. “With the pirates, I mean. We used to just raid them but they never came looking for us after.”
“And what changed?” Sal said, her eyes narrow and sharp. She knew the answer as well I did.
“Isn’t this place better than eating rats and getting beaten every day?” I shouted, suddenly angry again. “Do you want to go back to that? Because Peter will send you there. I was going to look out for you, and say that he should let you stay, but if you don’t like it here, then I should let you go back to that life.”
I stomped out of the tree, not waiting to hear what she answered. What did she know about the island or Peter, anyway? She hadn’t been here that long, and she wasn’t even a boy, even if she pretended to be one. Peter said there weren’t to be any girls on the island. He made the rules and I ought to take her back to the Other Place myself.
And while I was at it, I should take Charlie too. He was learning to like it on the island—too much. He’d never seemed so happy as when it was just the five of us, no Peter to growl at him, no Nip to scowl at him. His mother would be missing him. She would be crying every night. I ought to bring him home.
Except that he was part of my heart now, and I didn’t want to let him go. And I didn’t want to let Sal go either.
Did that make me selfish? Did that make me like Peter?
Maybe it did, just a little.
But I had to believe that I was better than Peter. I wouldn’t sacrifice the others for my own amusement. I wouldn’t forget about them the moment they were gone.
That made me better, didn’t it? I only wanted them near me because I loved them.
Though, of course, it was because I loved them that Peter had to take them from me.
• • •
Nine days after the pirate assault on the mountain, Peter reappeared in camp. Nobody jumped up and surrounded him when he strode in like a returning hero. We were playing a game with sticks that Sal had thought up and we didn’t notice him at first.
Sal made some boxes on the ground with the sticks, and set them apart at different lengths, some closer and some farther apart. Each boy would take it in turns to try to jump through all the boxes without missing one or breaking the sticks apart. I was the tallest and had the longest legs, so I was winning easily, though Crow seemed to take it personally that he was shorter and was trying to make up for it by jumping higher.
Charlie struggled the most, being the smallest, and we all cheered when he managed to jump through two boxes in a row.
There were three rabbits on the fire for lunch and the smell of meat cooking mingled with everyone’s happy laughter and it felt like home.
And then Peter came, and it was like a cloud settled over the clearing, and that home feeling went away. Smiles faded, even from Nod, who used to worship Peter.
But that was when Fog was still alive, and Peter hadn’t helped Nod bury his brother. He hadn’t seemed to care at all that Nod’s twin was dead, though they’d been on the island the second longest. That took a lot of the shine off Peter for Nod, and Crow did what Nod did, more or less.
The shine had come off Peter for Sal and Charlie long before then.
So when he looked all around and said, “What’s the matter with all of you? Don’t you want to know where I’ve been?” everyone just stared back at him in silence.
“I’ve been scouting out a new home,” Peter said. “I’ve found a much better tree closer to the plains.”
“There’s nothing wrong with this tree,” I said. I didn’t like to contradict him so sharply, but moving closer to the plains and the Many-Eyed did not seem like an excellent notion to me. “We’ve lived in this tree ever since we came here.”
“But there are so few of us now,” Peter said. “And I’m not allowed to get any more boys because you’re so boring, Jamie.”
The other four gave me curious looks at this. I hadn’t mentioned to anyone, o
f course, that I’d argued with Peter about bringing in new boys. I kept my disagreements with Peter to myself if I could.
The truth was that Peter could have gone off and collected new boys while he was missing for so many days. There was nothing I could have done about it if I didn’t like it. But he hadn’t, and then he’d come straight in and complained that I was stopping him from gathering new playmates, and I wondered why.
I didn’t like the way my thoughts tended. It seemed to me that maybe Peter wanted a clean slate, and that he’d rid himself of all the boys (and that troublesome girl too) by feeding them to the Many-Eyed. Then he would tell me he had to go off and find new boys because all the others were eaten.
“We’re not moving closer to the plains,” I said. “It’s too close to the Many-Eyed and too close to the pirates.”
“Well, the pirates have shown they’re willing to go anywhere on the island to get at us, so I don’t see that counting. I’ve been surprised at their spirit, you know, Jamie? I didn’t think they had it in them, but I guess that old fat Captain was holding them back. When they attacked on the mountain I was really shocked. Though once the shock was over it was sort of nice to have a fight that wasn’t planned by us. Those raids were getting so predictable.”
Nod moved before I had a chance to do a single thing. One second he was next to me, and the next he wasn’t, and Peter had no chance to defend himself, none at all.
I always thought of Peter as a smart and capable fighter, but watching Nod pound him I wondered why I thought this. He always beat the pirates, but then, he almost always fought pirates who were older and slower than he. It was me that fought the young ones, the dangerous ones.
Peter never scrapped with the other boys at all. He watched at Battle, and none of them would dare pick a fight with him because they all adored him.
Or rather, they used to. Now most of them were gone and those who were left didn’t adore him anymore.
Nod had knocked Peter down and was pummeling his face over and over. This was Nod’s way—to get on top of the other boy and hit him until he didn’t know which way was up. Peter was too astonished to fight back, I think.
I dragged Nod off Peter, his fists flailing, his legs kicking out.
“Don’t, Jamie! Don’t! I’m going to kill him! I’m going to kill him!”
Peter’s nose was bloody. He touched it gingerly, like he couldn’t believe he was hurt.
I don’t think I’d ever seen Peter hurt before. Somehow he never got a scrape, even when we fought the pirates. I might have a list of scars to remember all our battles by, but he didn’t.
It was strange that I never noticed this, in all those years. In my defense I was usually patching up another boy, or myself, and had no time to consider Peter’s injuries nor the lack of them.
“Nod,” Peter said, and he sounded so hurt that Nod stopped shouting and kicking. “Why did you do that?”
Nod seemed to wither under Peter’s sad look, as if he was remembering all the fun they’d once had together. I didn’t dare put him down yet, though. If Peter said something thoughtless, he might set Nod off again.
“You didn’t . . . You said . . . the pirates,” Nod said.
“What about the pirates?” Peter asked. I didn’t know if he cared so little that he was genuinely puzzled or if he did the best innocent act in the world.
“The pirates killed Fog, and you were talking about it like it was fun,” Nod said. His body drooped more after he said this. It seemed to take a lot out of him to admit out loud that Peter wasn’t wonderful and perfect.
I knew how he felt. It was why I always found myself making excuses for him, defending Peter even when he was awful.
That was the power he had over us.
“Well, it is fun, isn’t it? Killing the pirates is some of the best fun in the world,” Peter said.
“Not when my brother dies!” Nod screamed.
It was a good thing that I had a tight grip on Nod, else he would have launched at Peter again. My arm was around his waist and his limbs flailed in front of him, trying to reach Peter.
Peter lifted his shoulders. “Lots of boys die, Nod. It never troubled you before.”
“It wasn’t my brother!” Nod said, and he let out a long and terrible howl.
The storm burst then, all at once. He stopped kicking and punching and suddenly slumped over my arm. I felt his chest heaving and his tears splashing on my skin.
Sal was up in an instant, prying me away from Nod and putting her arms around him. Nod collapsed on her, weeping into her shoulder.
Peter sniffed at this behavior. He never cried himself, so he didn’t see why anyone else should.
“I’m going to the mermaid lagoon, since none of you want to see the marvelous tree I’ve chosen for us,” he said.
“Nobody’s moving to that tree, Peter,” I said.
“Oh, I see,” Peter said, his eyes narrowing at me. “I’ve been gone too long, is it? Now they’re Jamie’s boys on Jamie’s island.”
“No,” I said. “It’s not that way. There’s no reason to leave this tree, and it’s safer here.”
“Well,” Peter said, his voice silky and dangerous. “It seems that way. It seems that they’re all following you now. What’s to stop me from collecting a new band of boys from the Other Place so I’ll have some boys to follow me?”
“You promised, Peter,” I said. “We made a bargain.”
“The bargain was that you would play with me,” Peter said.
“And I have. For many days I have been only with you, just the two of us as you wanted, roaming the island,” I said. “I kept my word. So you must keep yours.”
“If you don’t go with me to the mermaid lagoon, then you’re not keeping your word,” Peter said. “I want to play and I want somebody to play with. If you won’t do it, then I’ll have to find another boy.”
My eyes met Sal’s over Nod’s shoulder. She gave a tiny nod, to show that she understood.
“Watch out for Charlie,” I told Crow.
Crow nodded. He’d been taking in all of this with wide eyes. I wondered what he thought of Peter at that moment. I wondered if Peter realized that he was losing them all because of what he did, not because of what I did.
Peter clapped his hands when I joined him. The blood around his nose had dried already. He was lucky, as his nose hadn’t swelled at all. He didn’t seem to notice that I had no enthusiasm for his game. He was simply happy that I was going with him, and that he’d gotten his way.
I trudged beside him through the clearing, hearing him chatter happily about this and that and all the things he’d been doing while he was away—how he’d found this new tree, and also how he’d played some tricks on the pirates who were back at camp so they would think the island was haunted, the way they used to long ago.
“I don’t think you should bother the pirates anymore, Peter,” I said. “Haven’t you made them angry enough?”
“I only made them angry in the first place because of you, Jamie. Don’t you remember? You killed the Many-Eyed when you weren’t supposed to, and then you wanted to make it seem as though the pirates did it. You asked me to draw the pirates out of their camp and I did, and now you’re blaming me because the pirates are mad about it. That’s not very fair of you.”
“I told you to draw them out, not to burn everything down.”
I was ready to take the blame for the Many-Eyed, but not anything else. It was Peter who’d made that choice.
But it was the boys who paid for it. Like they always did.
“None of it would have happened except for you. So if all those boys are dead, it’s because of you, Jamie.”
All those boys. Billy and Slightly and Kit and Jonathan and Ed and Terry and Sam and Harry and Del and Fog and Jack and Nip, and all the ones before them that I’d buried in the field, so m
any that their faces swam together and their names were one name. They all watched me, and accused me, but it wasn’t because it was my fault that they were dead.
It was because I didn’t stop Peter, because I let Peter live, because I let Peter lie to them and promise them things that could never be. All children grow up, or they die, or both.
All children, except one.
chapter 13
Peter spent more time away from us after that, coming and going as he pleased, and nobody really minded. Things were more comfortable when Peter wasn’t around, especially as he was inclined to stare resentfully at Sally when he was in camp.
He didn’t say anything more about making her go back to the Other Place. I didn’t fool myself that this meant she was allowed to stay. It simply meant that he was trying to come up with a good accident for her, so that he could pretend to boo-hoo when she was gone.
When he wanted a companion he always made me go with him, and every hour I spent with him was a misery. There was nothing on the island that we hadn’t done a thousand-thousand-thousand times before, and Peter was unaware or didn’t care that I didn’t want to do it anymore.
What I wanted was to play quiet games with the others, or tell stories, or just laze about the tree and eat fruit if that was all we wanted. I wanted, finally, for there to be some measure of peace, to not face another day where one of the boys would die just because Peter couldn’t stand to be still.
One day when Peter had gone off on some mission of his own, I asked Crow and Nod to keep an eye on Charlie, and then I asked Sally to take a walk with me.
She was drawing pictures in the dirt with a stick, and after I asked her to walk, her face reddened.
“I just want to show you something important,” I said. Her blush made me respond in kind. It was like this with Sally. Everything would be fine, with all of us treating her like one of the boys, and then she would say or do something that had me feeling like a fool.
Nod watched us curiously as we left. He hadn’t been the same since Fog died, not as quick to anger nor as quick to laugh. I’d noticed something else too.
Lost Boy Page 16
