Never Never

by Brianna Shrum

  “You’re lying, I think. I’m sure you nearly jumped out of your skin,” the other boy crowed.

  James scoffed and raised his chin. “Well, I think I’ve had quite enough of this. I was just going home.”

  The other boy stopped laughing, then, and furrowed his brow. “So you aren’t lost?”

  “Not at all. Being here was quite intentional. Are you lost?”

  “Yes,” said the boy, raising his eyebrows, “but I know exactly where I am.”

  James frowned and then rolled his eyes. “Who are you anyway?”

  “Peter,” said the boy, a near-laugh in his voice. The sort that made James feel absurd for not knowing who Peter was already. “Peter Pan. Who are you?

  “James Hook,” James said, trying unsuccessfully to match Peter’s mocking tone.

  “That’s a funny name,” Peter said, wrinkling his nose.

  “No funnier than Pan.”

  Peter squinted, considering. “Yes, it is.” Then, he turned around and darted off, lightly illuminating the trees and the grass wherever his feet landed.

  James blinked hard and shook his head until the glowing had worn off, and regarded Peter for a second, part of him wanting to go home, the other part wanting desperately to follow the strange boy further into the park. He chewed on his cheek, gaze darting from the boy back to the edge of Kensington Gardens, and the comfortable, boring familiarity of home. In the end, the desperate half of him won out. James darted off in the direction of his new companion.

  “What are you doing in Kensington in the middle of the night, Peter Pan?” James asked, running, stumbling in an attempt to catch up to him.

  “Nothing. Just chatting with the fairies, looking for Lost Boys. It seems you’re not one of them.”

  “Fairies?” He slowed to a stop beside Peter. He set his hands on his knees and leaned over, self-consciously trying to catch his breath. “What are you going on about?”

  “Surely you know about fairies,” Peter said, that condescending chuckle back in his voice, too-large eyes lighting up, eyebrows drawn together. He may as well have laughed and pointed at James.

  James’s jaw twitched. He hated cockiness. It was horrid form. He particularly hated it when it was directed at him. He was compelled to answer Peter’s question anyway, because, well, he couldn’t figure why. Either way, he still wished to impress him. “Well, of course I’ve read about them in stories, but those are only for children.”

  “And you aren’t one?” said Peter, looking around, distractable, touching all the leaves and twigs in his reach.

  “A what?” asked James.

  “A children,” replied Peter, looking back at him.

  James raised an eyebrow. Pan was certainly no Eton man. Somehow, that mattered less than it should’ve, as James found himself opening his mouth to say that of course he wasn’t a “children.” Then an image of him several hours ago, blushing apple-red and struggling not to cry, flashed in his mind. He pursed his lips. Then, glumly: “I suppose I am a child.”

  “Good.” Peter let out an exaggerated sigh of relief.

  “I don’t see what’s so good about it.”

  “Well, I couldn’t speak with you if you weren’t a children.” He said this as though it were a given, as though no one associated with people who weren’t children, of course.

  James huffed and shook his head, black hair flying about, and tried to make some sort of sense of the situation. He wondered, for a moment, if throwing one’s lot in with someone like this was a very obvious way to get oneself chopped up and splattered all over the front page of The London Gazette. Pan the Ripper. How would he even explain himself to St. Peter at the gate? “Yes, sir, I’m afraid I got myself rather murdered, following an obviously deranged fellow wearing the guts of a tree into the dark in the middle of the night.”

  But there was some pull inside James that whispered at him to ignore the alarm bells. That no one ever got an adventure without giving up a little sense first.

  So, against his better judgment, but in accordance with his adventuresome half, he followed Peter further and further into the park, past the pond, past the open, manicured grass, and into the trees. James had never been this far back before, back where the tree branches were more fingery, the shadows more shadowy.

  “Where are you going, Peter?”

  “To see the fairies.”

  “Well, that’s foolishness,” said James, warning bells ringing louder and louder in his mind, but his legs disagreed, following Peter all the more quickly into the grove.

  “I don’t think so,” said Peter, and James huffed.

  “It is, though.”

  Peter stopped and stared at him, then cocked his head like James was the lunatic, and not him. “What’s so foolish about it?”

  James blinked several times in rapid succession. “I don’t believe in—”

  All of a sudden, Peter barreled into him and clapped his hand over his mouth.

  “Ssssshhhhhh.” James’s eyes widened and he just stood there, frozen. “Don’t say it. Never say it. When children say they don’t believe, a fairy drops down somewhere, dead. And you are children, aren’t you?”

  James nodded fiercely.

  “Then never say it, James Hook. Promise me.” He removed his hand from James’s mouth.

  “I promise.”

  Peter did an about face, expression shifting to a pleasant blank, then bounded off again, and James followed him and disappeared into the trees.

  Suddenly, James stopped and stood completely still, mouth agape, staring into the leaves. He stumbled backward and his eyes darted back and forth, and a shocked smile spread across the whole width of his face. There were little lights flashing and bobbing about, darting in and out of the shadows. Peter hopped on his toes, and they swarmed around him, glowing on his fingers, his nose, shining on wisps of his red-gold hair.

  One or two came within a couple centimeters of James, and he forced himself to stay put, not to back away as his entire perception of the world shifted around him. He laughed brightly as the faint sound of tinkling bells echoed in his ears, and he spread out his arms and fingers.

  Perhaps he was insane. Perhaps his companion was the mad one. But it didn’t matter in that moment. For he was spending tonight among the fairies, and he was absolutely certain that he already wished to do it again.

  TWO

  MOST NIGHTS AFTER THAT, FOUR IN THE COURSE of a week to be exact, James found a way to meet Peter at Kensington Gardens. He learned how to avoid all the creaky spots on the stairs quite quickly, and always managed to make it home before his mother had had a chance to realize he was gone. Pregnant women tended to be oblivious to most things.

  One particularly dark night at the week’s end, James was lying on his back next to Peter, shadowed by the trees, lit by the fairies, when Peter asked him a question he never had before.

  “How old are you, James?” Peter ran his fingers over the long blue-green grass between them, absently.

  James rolled his head over to have a look at his companion. “I’ll be thirteen tomorrow.”

  Peter turned toward James and furrowed his brow. “You will?”

  “Yes. Tomorrow’s my birthday.”

  “How awful,” Peter said, misery coating his words.

  James sat up and frowned. “What do you mean, awful?” Blood rushed to his cheeks, and he was glad for the shadow of the trees around them.

  “You’re growing up, of course,” said Peter, sitting up with James. Peter shook his head, clearly disappointed in something.

  James furrowed his brow. He’d always feared he was rather too young to be hanging around with a boy so much older and more interesting than he as Peter. Of course, when he was young he was too young, but now that he was old, he was too old. “I don’t understand,” he said. Growing up was something everyone did, whether Peter wished it or not.

  “It seems a terrible thing to have to grow up. To have to be a man.” Peter shuddered at that last
word, and stared away into the stars as the fairies lit the darkness around him.

  “I don’t know about that. I’m rather looking forward to it.”

  Peter leapt nimbly to a standing position and looked at James with horror in his eyes. “Are you mad? Why ever would anyone want to grow up?”

  James shrunk back, ears burning. He had never considered this question. Growing up was something he’d wished to do for as long as he could remember, so he’d never had reason to consider why. He just always had. “Well, I, um, I should like to think it would be a wonderful thing to be a man. To have myself a wife and children and to explore the world and conquer the sea. ”

  Peter looked at him, then, as though he’d never seen him before. A long shadow fell over the little wood, and James hugged his jacket around him.

  “That’s all nonsense. Being a man means you’re trapped forever. I’ll never be a man. I always want to be a little boy and to have fun.” He nodded decisively, a lock of stick-straight hair flapping down over his eyes.

  James laughed and hoisted himself up from the dew-sprinkled ground, sending a smattering of fairies flying all about. “Well, that’s all well and good, but you’ve got to grow up someday, Peter. We all have.”

  “That isn’t true.”

  “Yes, it is. Just look at yourself. You’re half a grown-up already. You’re at least an inch taller than I am and your voice is going to get all low and rumbly any time now. How old are you, anyway?”

  “I’m not sure,” Peter said, waving his hand and rolling his eyes.

  James shook his head, used to Peter’s particular brand of peculiarity by now.

  “Anyway,” Peter continued, hands on his hips, “I’m hardly ‘half a grown up.’ I’m a boy, and I’ll always be.”

  James scoffed and focused on the fairies bobbing overhead, making the green oak leaves glisten.

  “You think I’m joking?”

  James snickered and fingered a purple flower in one of the beds nearest him. “I think you’re daft.”

  Peter narrowed his eyes and peered at James, a half-smile quirking his mouth. “I can prove it to you, you know.”

  “Oh, can you?”

  “Yes, I can. I’ll take you there. To a place where you never have to grow up.”

  “Sounds brilliant,” James said, sarcasm dripping from his lips.

  Peter dug his fists into his sides at this, cleared his throat loudly, then his feet left the ground, and he began to float, until he was nearly three feet in the air. James sprang up, breath fleeing him, and stumbled backward. “Wh—what are you—what is…?”

  “Oh, this?” Peter asked, resting his chin on a massive tree branch. He grinned, clearly terribly proud of himself. “I do it all the time in Neverland.”

  “It can’t be true.” It wasn’t. James blinked hard once, twice, a third time. Each time he opened his eyes, he was faced with a flying, grinning Peter Pan. James considered the very real possibility that he was perhaps a nutter. Yes, James would be spending his thirteenth birthday in the loony bin, which was rather unfortunate.

  “Well, it is,” said Peter. The fairies clouded around his head, and James simply stood there on the ground, staring up, cool air dampening his curls of hair.

  A probing sort of fear burrowed into James’s chest when the reality of it all hit him. He could barely breathe for a moment as he watched the boy before him very clearly floating and flying about. It was no stranger than seeing a real live fairy, really. But it had taken him days to come to terms with the existence of those little beasties alone. However would he possibly work out the science of a flying boy? He sat in the grass, knees suddenly too weak to support him.

  After several minutes in which James was nearly catatonic and Peter was doing backflips and zig-zags and all manner of other acrobatics (because simply floating wasn’t impressive enough in its own right), James stirred. “Neverland, you say?” he whispered.

  “Neverland. Where you never, never have to grow up.”

  “Where is it?” he asked, feeling extremely foolish and extremely curious all at once.

  Peter pointed up at the sparkling sky, to something James couldn’t see. He wondered if it was due to the clouds overhead, or the spider web of branches, or his own incompetence. “Second to the right and straight on ’til morning.”

  James stared up at the stars, lips just slightly parted in a deluded, lazy state of wonder. “Is it a good place?” he said, still lost in the blackness, wondering which star was the second to the right. “I mean to say, is it somewhere a boy should like to live? Or at least to visit?”

  “Of course!” Peter shouted. “Full of fairies and mermaids and adventures and pirates.”

  “Pirates?” James exclaimed, gaze jerking back down to meet Peter’s. It was on this last point that Peter had him. Pirates were, after all, the boy’s only childhood tendency.

  “Oh yes. The Spanish Main. Full of bumbling, stupid, grown-up pirates. I’ve killed at least a dozen of them.”

  “Spanish Main?” said James, head cocked. The words felt more familiar on his tongue than they should have. And James felt a slippery, wriggling sort of disquiet in his gut at the term, but he couldn’t recall why. Like the reasons were grey and blurry and he couldn’t quite grasp them.

  “Yes,” said Peter, and James ignored his gut, worrying instead about the obvious disapproval in Peter’s voice.

  “Yes, of course. I thought I’d misheard.” He shifted uncomfortably, wringing his hands. “You say you killed them?” James’s face wrinkled into deep, concerned folds.

  Peter rolled his eyes. “Pirates, James Hook. It’s not the same as killing regular folk.”

  James chewed his cheek and thought. Peter was rather older than him, and he seemed to know a great deal about things James knew approximately nothing about. Perhaps pirate-killing was one of them. “Killing, though? I don’t think I could kill a person, even if that person was a pirate.” Especially if that person was a pirate, thought James, but he figured it wouldn’t be wise to admit aloud.

  “Well, I’d never trust you to kill a pirate anyway. There’s too much London on you.”

  James recoiled, not sure what that meant, but quite certain it had been an insult. “Well, I hardly think—”

  “Like it or don’t. It’s how we do.” Peter waved his hand and leaned up against the nearest tree, flicking little fairies off in every direction.

  James frowned, trying very hard to focus on his morals. He knew Eton men had to have codes against killing. But every time his mind got close to refusing the venture, his heart got all twisted and distracted by the flying and Peter’s sparkling smile and the fairies.

  “Is it somewhere you can come back from?” he said.

  “Of course. I was born in London, you know. I go back and forth as I please.”

  James raised an eyebrow, and took a step toward Peter. “Born here? In London?”

  Peter looked past James’s shoulder, over to the beginning of the pond. “Grew up right here in Kensington Gardens with the fairies. ’Til I decided to stop, that is.”

  ’Til he decided to stop. James bit his lip. He wondered if it was really all that easy, deciding to stop. For the first time, James wondered if growing up was really something he wished to do.

  “That’s when I dreamt up Neverland. Been flying here and there whenever I please ever since.”

  James considered this boy and his offer and his promises of flight and pirates and adventure for what felt like an age, but it was more likely no longer than a minute.

  “And you could take me there? To Neverland?”

  Peter regarded him carefully, pinching his chin and piercing through him with those mesmerizing green eyes. “Perhaps.”

  The early morning started to become a sort of chalky grey-black and James rose to his feet, though he found they were stuck to the ground. He was torn between staying in Kensington Park like he wanted and going home, like he ought.

  “I’ve got to go, Peter.�
��

  “Well, go, then. But I’m going home tomorrow. Find me or not.”

  With that, Peter flitted away and James trudged to his house, head filled with fantasy and foolishness. His brain was so full of clutter and distraction that he barely even knew when he was through his bedroom door and crawling under the covers. Somewhere between sleep and waking, he could think of nothing but this mysterious magical place where boys stayed boys forever and battled pirates and frolicked with fairies and swam with mermaids. Eventually, slumber overtook him.

  HIS LAST THOUGHT BEFORE WAKING, AS IT NEARLY always was of late, was of his pirate ship filled with ruffians—a man with a golden tooth, a fat one with a quiet little smile, another with orange hair, a big one with tattoos. And a grand room for him, filled with golden goblets of things he most certainly was not allowed to drink.

  His first thought after waking, however, was of an entirely different variety. He awoke wondering if it were possible to change his black curls of hair to red-gold, straight ones. That was foolish, he figured, and so he resolved not to consider it at all. Thus, his second thought was not of Peter. It was unintelligible, but pleased, as the smell of baking cake filled every corner of the house. He padded down the stairs in his nightgown and into the dining room, where his mother was putting the finishing touches on a cake he couldn’t believe she had made. She beamed when she saw him.

  “Happy birthday, James!” His mother set the pretty cake down before him.

  His cake-related happy mood dissolved.

  How—what? Awful? Wonderful? He couldn’t puzzle out how he felt about it anymore. But his mother didn’t seem to notice the rather forlorn look on his face. His mood did brighten a bit when he came to the realization that, since it was his birthday, his mother was allowing him to have cake for breakfast. That was certainly a spot of luck. So, he found a reason to smile and ate his birthday cake and pretended that it didn’t mean he was a year older, a year closer to manhood. Before, he would’ve thought this a good thing, but now, well, Peter wouldn’t talk to him if he wasn’t a children.