Forever Neverland

by Susan Adrian

  The warmth fades away. When I open my eyes again, the light ball has left the path of trees, hovering next to a clump of dark green bushes with drooping pink flowers. Fuchsia.

  “Don’t go!” I say. “Don’t go.”

  It flies around the corner and I run after it, behind another café with empty tables out front. It’s deserted back here, hidden from the rest of the park.

  A face peeks around the edge of a thick tree, and I squeak. It’s the boy. The same boy from last night, with the red hair and the pointy nose, studying me. The light ball dances by his cheek, making his green eyes glow. He stands slowly, the light moving with him, and waves hello, like last night.

  “Hello,” I say, so quietly I almost can’t hear myself.

  “Fergus! There you are!” Clover yells from behind me. “Fergus!”

  I turn reluctantly.

  She’s panting, and her cheeks are red. “I couldn’t find you! Why’d you run off like that?”

  I point to the boy and the light. But when I turn back to look, they’re gone. There’s nothing there.

  I run to the tree as fast as I can. Nothing. I see only bushes and fence, and the cars rushing by outside the park. There’s nothing down the path but a trash can and a few regular people.

  “Fergus?” Clover asks. “Are you okay?”

  “The boy,” I say. “The boy from the window was here. And a ball of light.”

  Clover frowns. “What are you talking about? Come on—we have to get back. Grandfather is waiting for us.”

  “A ball of light,” I say, the words tumbling over each other. “A ball of light, dancing right in front of me.”

  She stares at me for a second, then shakes her head. “One of your myths? Come on. We have to go.”

  “No!” I yell loudly. She’s not listening to me. She always does this. If she would just listen, I could tell her about the boy and the light, and then maybe they would come back. They left when she came, both times. But if she understood what I saw, maybe she could see them too.

  She sighs, her arms folded. “Fergus—”

  “No!” I repeat. “Listen. Listen listen listen.”

  She tilts her head but doesn’t interrupt again. I can tell this is going to be hard to describe in words. But I’m going to have to try.

  * * *

  —

  I finally get Clover to understand about the boy from last night—she gets mad that I didn’t tell her before, and I get mad that she doesn’t believe me at first—but after we finish being mad, I get the words out so they make sense to her. I tell her about the light ball too, though that’s difficult to explain. Well, the boy floating at the window is difficult to explain too, but I think Clover believes I saw him.

  “We need to tell Grandmother and Grandfather about it,” she says. She always wants to tell grown-ups right away, whenever anything happens. We’re sitting on the path by the clump of bushes, away from everyone. I pluck one of the glossy leaves and feel it with my thumb.

  I want to wait to see what the boy wants before I tell anyone else. He’s clearly coming to see me, and it doesn’t feel like something for grown-ups. I quote from Clash of the Titans. “ ‘Oh impetuous…foolish…Ah dear, the young. Why do they never listen? When will they ever learn?’ ”

  She frowns again. “Titans?”

  I nod.

  “You mean they’re not going to believe us,” she says.

  “Believe me,” I say. The leaf feels smooth, though I accidentally prick my thumb on a thorn on the edge.

  “They’re not going to believe you,” she echoes. “Right. You’re probably right. But…if he was staring in our window, no matter how he got there, that’s creepy and we need to tell someone. Especially since he was here again today, hiding from people. It’s suspicious.” Her forehead does the Mom lines. “He might have been trying to lure you away somewhere.”

  If she saw him, she wouldn’t think he was suspicious. I know, deep down, that he’s not someone to be scared of. But I also think she’s not going to change her mind. She never changes her mind, and there’s not much I can say to budge her, like always. I shrug, and she stands up.

  “Let’s go back to Grandfather,” she says. “We still get to go to the museum, and then we’ll tell them after.”

  I make Clover let me explore the fountain in the middle of the park before we leave. I run the last bit when I see it—I didn’t really look at it before. It doesn’t have a pool or anything, only jets shooting up out of a flat circle in the ground. I step right over to one of the jets and put my hands in it, bubbly water pushing up under my fingers, then pouring over, cool and trickly. There are a lot of people, kids laughing and grown-ups talking and pigeons cooing, but I tune it all out and focus on the water, the sun making patterns of light. I always like looking at water, and feeling it at the same time is even better. I could just stay here.

  After a while, Clover tells me we really have to leave if we’re going to get to the British Museum. I remember the Hermes vase and the Zeus spear and the Parthenon room, and I get excited again. It’s okay to leave the water for that.

  When we come out of the park, though, Grandfather isn’t there.

  Clover stops and looks around, at the steps and the entrance and the little green building on the corner, but he’s just not there.

  “I guess he got tired of waiting,” she says. “We did take a long time.” I follow her across the street and up the steps again, all the way back up to the apartment. It’s a lot of stairs. But when we get there, Grandmother is alone, sitting in a flowered chair, a cup of tea steaming in front of her on the table.

  She looks at us sadly. “No British Museum today? Grandfather said you clearly didn’t want to go right now, so perhaps another day.”

  I feel the pressure in my head. We were supposed to go today.

  Clover sits on the sofa. “Where is Grandfather?” she asks quietly. “Is he angry?”

  Grandmother shrugs. “He went for a walk on his own. And he’s a bit upset, probably. It’s important to him that things go according to plan. Your mother inherited that from him.” She looks at us, and her face softens. “He’ll recover—don’t worry.”

  I tap my fingers on my leg. Grandfather’s angry on the first day, because of me. “Ball of light,” I whisper, to remember why I went into the park, why it was important. “Ball of light. And the boy.”

  Grandmother looks up sharply. “The boy?” She looks at me, then at Clover. “What boy?”

  I move to the window. I can see the city from here, a different view than the square. I didn’t mean to tell her like that. I didn’t mean to say it out loud.

  “Fergus saw a boy last night at our window,” Clover says slowly. “Um…floating outside our window. And then he saw the boy again today in the park. And a…flying ball of light…”

  She sounds unsure. I tap on my leg, humming. I know they won’t believe me. They’ll say I’m crazy. I hate it when people say that.

  But Grandmother gasps. “A pixie! And Peter. Oh, he’s back.”

  I turn around. She knows who he is.

  “Peter? And a pixie?” Clover asks.

  “Indeed,” Grandmother says. “Come with me. I have such a wonderful story to tell you both.”

  Grandmother reaches out a hand, her eyes bright, and I take it. Her hand is warm. She takes me to the wall of pictures by the stairs, Fergus right behind. I see him slip his voice recorder out of his pocket and hit the button.

  “Have either of you read the story of Peter Pan?” Grandmother’s voice softens. “Did your mother read it to you?”

  “I have,” I say. “From the library at school. But Mom got mad when she saw the book, and told me to return it. I’d already finished anyway.”

  Grandmother sighs. “Fergus? Did you read it?” He shakes his head. “Or perhap
s you’ve seen the movie?”

  “It’s a Disney movie,” Fergus says. “I’ve seen it four times.”

  She nods and clasps her hands together. “Then we have somewhere to start. That story, my dear ones, is true, roughly.” She smiles. “Wendy Darling was my grandmother, your great-great-grandmother. That’s her there, in the white dress.” I lean in again to the picture of the girl with the secret smile. She does look like Mom. That’s Wendy?

  “This picture, now…” She points to the next one. “That is Wendy with her brothers. Wendy, John, and Michael. And this house”—she points up the stairs, toward our attic—“is where it all started, in your nursery. Your grandfather doesn’t accept any of this. I tried to tell him about Peter once, but he wouldn’t believe it. But when I was your age, Peter came to that window and took me on a trip to Neverland.” She gazes up the stairs dreamily, like she’s there now.

  Wait, Peter Pan is real?

  “Neverland,” Fergus repeats. “Neverland. Neverland is real.” His forehead wrinkles. “Neverland is not real. It’s a story.”

  “Oh, but it is real. It’s a wonderful place—terrible, mind, but wonderful, too—created partly by the imaginations of the children who go there, so it’s different for everyone. I remember so much….” She sighs again, a little huff. “No.” She shakes her head. “This is not about my time in Neverland. This is about yours. When Peter brought Wendy home, he promised that he’d come back sometimes to take her for a visit for a week or two. It’s even at the end of the book. He carried that on with my mother, Jane, and then with me.”

  “And Mom?” I ask, disbelieving. “Did Mom go to Neverland and never tell us?”

  “No.” She shrugs, and her face goes sad again. “Your mother never went, as far as I know. Your mother is very…based in the real world, like her father. She claimed not to believe in it, in Peter.” She shakes her head, her eyes wide. “How could you not believe, when it is true?”

  “Neverland,” Fergus says. “I want to go to Neverland.”

  I look at him, astonished. Usually it’s hard for him to change, or to try new things. It took an awful lot of planning, detailing and mapping everything, before he would feel comfortable coming here. I was even a little surprised he slept in a strange bed okay last night. But he wants to go to a mythical land? Without any maps or guidebooks?

  Seriously?

  “And so you can, it seems,” Grandmother continues. “That was Peter last night, of course. And this morning. And that ball of light? That was a pixie. J. M. Barrie called them ‘fairies’ in the book, but they prefer ‘pixies.’ ” She smiles at us. “Peter’s back to take you on an adventure. If you leave the window open tonight, he’ll come in. And you can go.”

  I stare at the picture again, my brain whirling. We can go? Tonight?

  Grandmother rests a hand on my shoulder. “You can go. It’s all right. Peter will watch out for you, and he’ll bring you back before too long. He’s done it with us all, except your mother.” She smiles again, a small and secret smile like Wendy’s. “It’s a family tradition.”

  Fergus runs to the window, looking out at the city. “It’s a story. We can go into a story.”

  My chest tightens. I don’t know if I want to go to Neverland. Wonderful…but terrible, she said. In the book there were pirates and wild animals, poison and jealous pixies. It was so unpredictable and scary. How could we possibly be safe there?

  And Mom didn’t go. Shouldn’t I be like Mom?

  But Fergus seems to want to go. Maybe because it’s like one of his myths. I think Peter came for Fergus today, not me. He ran away when I came. He wants to take Fergus on an adventure.

  Of course, if Fergus really wants to go, I’ll have to go with him. I have to protect him.

  I don’t like this at all.

  * * *

  —

  Grandmother gives us a book to look at “very carefully,” a first edition of Peter and Wendy. It’s not the first book that Peter Pan appeared in, but it’s the one with the story we all know, with Wendy and John and Michael going to Neverland. The book is heavy, green-brown with gold foil stamped on the front.

  Fergus and I lie next to each other on the floor of the nursery and open the book.

  I touch the inscription. “It is true.”

  In sloppy, scrawled handwriting it says To my own Darlings. With kindest regards, J. M. Barrie.

  Fergus wrinkles his nose. “It smells. Like the used-book store with the cats.”

  I laugh. It does.

  “But Wendy is real,” I say. “And she’s our great-great-grandmother. It’s so…weird. Why didn’t Mom tell us?”

  It feels like Mom was lying, not telling us a secret that big.

  Fergus turns the pages and stops at a black-and-white illustration that says The Never Never Land. A boy dressed in green leaves is playing on a pipe, with wolves and a crocodile near him, and a whole line of pirates. In the background there’s a lagoon and a big pirate ship. Even in the drawing you can tell it’s a wild place, with tall mountains and jungle and animals everywhere.

  “The boy,” Fergus says. “It’s the boy.” He touches it gently.

  I turn to the next illustration, Peter Flew In. It doesn’t look exactly like our attic, but close. Peter is standing in the window, and three children are sleeping in their beds. Ahead of Peter, on the floor, is a fairy—or pixie, Grandmother said—who fills the room with light. It really does look just like a glowing ball. You can’t see anything else. “Is that what it looked like?” I ask. “The pixie?”

  “Pixie,” Fergus says. His hands fly up around his face. “A ball of light, dancing.”

  I shiver, suddenly cold. Pixies. In the book, Tinker Bell gets jealous and tries to kill Wendy. Wendy, who’s my great-great-grandmother. Do we really want to go to a place like that? What if the pixies are still jealous?

  It sounds dangerous.

  I flip almost to the end of the book, peering at the text. “In the book,” I say, “the pirates all died or left. So maybe there aren’t pirates now?” I turn the page, and we both lean over a picture called Peter and Jane. It’s the nursery-attic again, with Wendy as a woman, her hair up, and another little girl flying high in the air, her pigtails floating behind her.

  “That’s our great-grandmother,” I say. I read the last paragraph out loud.

  “ ‘Jane is now a common grown-up, with a daughter called Margaret; and every spring-cleaning time, except when he forgets, Peter comes for Margaret and takes her to the Neverland, where she tells him stories about himself, to which he listens eagerly. When Margaret grows up she will have a daughter, who is to be Peter’s mother in turn; and thus it will go on, so long as children are gay and innocent and heartless.’ ”

  “Margaret is Grandmother,” I say. “And that was supposed to be Mom, the last one. But she didn’t go.”

  Why didn’t Mom ever go? Was she scared? Or was she smart, to stay safe at home? Should I be like Mom, who stayed home, or like Wendy, who went with Peter to Neverland?

  “I want to go,” Fergus says firmly. He puts his hand flat across the page. “Peter Pan.” Then he frowns. “Pan. Like Hermes’s son.” He sits back on his heels, his words coming faster. “Peter is like one of the gods, immortal. He comes to the world only when he wants to. He’s like Hermes. They both fly. They’re both mischievous and get in trouble a lot.”

  His face lights up. “What if…Peter is really Hermes’s son Pan? He supposedly died, but you never know with gods. In that first picture, Peter is even playing Pan’s pipe. What if he really is one of the Greek gods, hiding in Neverland?”

  He jumps up, digs in his bag, and pulls out the Dictionary of Mythology, eagerly scanning the pages.

  “You really do want to go,” I say from the floor. He doesn’t answer, but it’s obvious he does. So it doesn’t matter
that Mom didn’t go, or that I’m scared. I know without any doubt: we’re going to Neverland.

  It would be nice if Grandmother and Grandfather had a big dog like Nana in the original book. A dog hug would help me feel less afraid, I think. And less alone.

  But if I’m going to Neverland, I have to be brave. I have to be like Wendy.

  It’s too late to be up, eleven o’clock. Normally, Clover insists we be in bed by nine, even when Mom is working or studying late. She’s stricter about it than Mom. But here we are, awake. Waiting for Peter Pan.

  I hope he comes.

  We left one lamp on in our room, by Clover’s bed, but it only makes the rest of the room look dark: black holes of shadow that might suck you in if you went too close. A breeze blows through sometimes and makes the curtains swirl. It startles me every time.

  The window is wide open. Clover and I are sitting on our beds, fully dressed—Clover said she wasn’t going on an adventure in her pj’s, and I don’t care what she wears. I’m wearing my soft Tardis shirt and my most comfy shorts, with no tags. She’s wearing her bright blue shirt, her hair in a bun on top of her head like usual. She made us pack our backpacks with things she thought we might need: extra clothes and underwear, our toothbrushes, towels. Grandmother said we shouldn’t bring anything, because “that’s not the point of Neverland,” but Clover said if she was going, she was going to be prepared.

  I’m bringing two of my mythology books because I would feel strange if they were here and I was far away. I like to have them with me. What if I want to look something up? I definitely will want to look things up. I also have my voice recorder, in my pocket. I can play my recordings of Mom if I want, or of Clover singing. Or of Grandmother telling the story of Peter. And I can record things…sounds in Neverland. Even Peter, maybe. Or pixies, if they make noise.