Always Neverland (10 page)

Chapter 15.
Peter Gives Me a Tour of His House

W
hen Kyle and I got back with the clean blankets, I figured out a much better method for drying them than spreading them out in the sun like Button usually did. Better, as in much more fun. This time, I actually convinced the Lost Boys to try it.

We flew races with the blankets tied around our necks like capes.

Whoever lost the last round had to play referee for the next. Most recently, that had been Dibs, and he wasn't too happy about it. He watched us sourly from the finish line, which Button had scratched in the dirt with a sharp stick.

“On your mark!” Dibs called.

Across the clearing, Kyle, Prank, Button, Tink, and I all stood on the same thick branch on the Tree Home. (Peter still hadn't emerged from his house.)

“Get set!” cried Dibs.

Our blanket-capes flapped in the breeze. We leaned forward. The Never birds squawked encouragingly from the next tree.

“Go!”

We all jumped and flew as fast as we could.

Tink took the lead. As a fairy, she had more flying experience than me and all the Lost Boys put together. Of course, being a fairy also meant that her blanket-cape was way too big for her. One good gust of wind blew her off course.

That left
me
in the lead. I grinned and leaned forward.

“Wow, Wendy girl—your blanket's almost dry,” said Prank right behind me.

“Really?” I turned to look.

But the second I started to slow, Prank zipped around me and zoomed ahead. “Fell for it!”

“Hey!” I cried, trying to catch up, but Prank had already crossed the finish line.

“I like this way of drying blankets much better than Button's,” Prank said, turning to me with a huge, smug grin. “We should've gotten you for a Wendy girl years ago.”

It was hard to be mad at Prank after he said something like that. I'm pretty sure that's why he said it.

“Does that count?” Kyle asked, coming in right after me.

Button came in last, behind Tink. “I guess this makes me the referee again,” he said sadly. “I'm not very good at racing.”

“I could disqualify Prank,” said Dibs. He sounded like he liked the idea.

I shrugged. “I mean, it's not like we set any rules.”

Very wicked smiles spread across everyone's faces, and Tink rubbed her hands together gleefully. I started to worry that the next round would have more cheating than racing.

Unfortunately, I never got a chance to find out.

The door to Peter's red house banged open, and Pan himself emerged, his fists planted firmly on his hips. “All right—who wants to help me clean in here?”

Tink tossed her cape over the nearest branch and zipped over to Peter with a merry chime. It sounded a lot like “Me! Pick me!”

“Not you, Tink,” said Peter. “You're too little.”

The fairy stopped and drifted to the nearest branch with a sulky flicker.

Peter looked over at the rest of us.

All the Lost Boys shrank back, hanging their heads. You would've thought that Hook had just asked who wanted to walk the plank.

Kyle even squeezed his eyes shut and whispered, “Please no more cleaning.
Please
no more cleaning.”

“How about the Wendy girl?” Peter said.

I began untying my blanket-cape, trying not to pout. I didn't feel like cleaning anymore either, but I
would
get to see the inside of Peter's house.

“Bummer,” said Prank with an apologetic sort of grimace. Button and Kyle nodded, looking sympathetic.

“Why?” asked Dibs. “She's a Wendy girl. Isn't cleaning what she's here for?”

I shoved the damp blanket-cape at Dibs. “Well, somebody still needs to dry this.”

Quickly, I flew across the courtyard and past Peter, ducking my head through the red house's small doorway. Then I looked around eagerly.

Inside, Peter's house was bigger than it looked from the outside. Big enough for furniture. Not homemade Neverland furniture like the leaf hammocks that Button made, but
real
furniture: a small bed painted blue, a wooden nightstand with a lantern, a rocking chair set beside the fireplace, and a bookcase with lots of shelves. The striped wallpaper peeled in a few places, but the curtains in the window were very white, almost like they were new.

Strangest of all, it wasn't messy. Not a sock was on the floor; no pillow was out of place. I didn't even see any dust.

Confused, I turned to Peter. “But it's already clean.”

Peter grinned as proudly as Prank did after he pulled off some great trick. “I know. I cleaned it already. But the Lost Boys aren't allowed in here. I tricked them so they wouldn't get jealous when I showed you around.”

“Oh.” I didn't mention that he had tricked me, too.

The inside of Peter's house didn't look too much different from my bedroom, or any other kid's my age. Besides the fact that it was in a tree, it looked pretty normal.

But in a weird way, I felt like I was looking at a secret. Even though he was famous, even though he had adventures that my friends at school never dreamed of, maybe he still wanted what other kids had. Maybe he was a little sick of adventures. Maybe, to Peter, having a normal life seemed more exciting.

“Where did all this come from?” I asked.

Peter shrugged, like it wasn't important. “Found it. This is what I wanted to show you,” he said, motioning me toward the bookcase. “It all came from Wendy girls.”

The shelves were cluttered with a strange bunch of stuff—a wooden badminton racket with broken strings, old playing cards yellowing at the edges, half a Frisbee with teeth marks, a very worn stuffed rabbit, an old-fashioned porcelain doll with glass eyes, a broken hula hoop, a deflated soccer ball. A very frilly apron hung from a peg on the side of the bookcase, covered in grass stains.

Looking at all of it made me feel very uncomfortable. I started going over what I'd put in my backpack, wondering what I could leave in Neverland.

Peter watched me eagerly, waiting for me to say something.

So I pointed to the object sitting on the very top shelf all by itself—a green acorn attached to a delicate silver chain. “What's that?”

“Wendy's acorn necklace. It saved her life,” he said proudly. He reached up and took the necklace down, holding it carefully. It was obviously very special to him. He turned the acorn over so that I could see the crack in it. “Tootles—he was a Lost Boy then—he shot an arrow at her, and it hit her right in this very spot.”

I gulped. “I'm glad that the Lost Boys like Wendy girls a little better nowadays.”

“Well, it was Tink's fault. She told the Lost Boys to do it,” Peter said, gently returning the necklace to its shelf.

I made a mental note to be more careful around Tinker Bell in the future. I mean, I already
knew
she didn't like me. But it was news that she could do something more dangerous than just pull my hair.

“And that,” Peter said, pointing to a wicker basket on the bottom shelf, “came with the latest Wendy girl. The one who helped make the food trees.”

I looked at it carefully. It was big enough for Kyle to fit into. So, Grandma Delaney
had
made the food trees. But I still had a hard time imagining her in Neverland, playing mother to the Lost Boys—she was so
old
.

“But this is what I wanted to show you,” Peter said, reaching into the back of one of the middle shelves. He drew out a book. It was beat-up, but still kind of fancy. Even though the leather spine was cracked, the fairy etched on the cover was gilded.

“How pretty,” I murmured, tracing the spine—
Children's Tales
, it said.

“I know you don't want to be a mother, but will you read the Lost Boys a bedtime story?” Peter asked hopefully, his eyes very wide. “The Lost Boys love stories.”

I glanced up at Peter, startled. I had
not
been expecting him to ask me that.

My stomach knotted. It wasn't
exactly
guilt. I mean, I still definitely thought I would make a better friend than mother.

But like I said before, Neverland's magic only works when you really
want
to become the thing you're Pretending to be. And even though I wanted to make the Lost Boys happy, I really
didn't
want to be like Mom. Even if I tried, I wouldn't feel even the slightest tingle.

“
Will
you read to them?” Peter said again, offering me the old book.

I nodded slowly, taking it from his hand with a tiny smile. I could tell them a bedtime story too—my
own
way. After all, I
could
Pretend to be the very best storyteller that Neverland had ever seen.

That night, while we ate pizzas that Button had picked for dinner, I read stories to the Lost Boys. And to Spot, who had smelled the food and flown down to beg for scraps. My fingers and toes started tingling as soon as I opened the book. I even made up voices for all the characters, which I thought was a nice touch, as I read “The Three Little Pigs,” “Aladdin,” and “The Nightingale.”

I think the Lost Boys enjoyed the last one the most. The wheezy old-man voice I used for the emperor made them giggle. Peter got into the spirit too. He pulled out his pipes and played the nightingale's part, making up a tune whenever the bird sang in the story.

The Lost Boys listened without saying a word. Dibs sat in front, his eyes open very wide, the corners of his mouth curling up.

The sun went down halfway through the story, and Peter made Tinker Bell sit on my shoulder so I would have enough light to read by. Considering how much she hated me using her as a lamp the
first
time, the fairy wasn't thrilled. She crossed her arms and interrupted me with angry chimes, but once she noticed the illustrations, she didn't mind having a front-row seat.

“And they all lived happily ever after. The end,” I said, a little hoarsely. “I think that's it for tonight.”

I closed the book in my lap, and Peter took it out of my hands.

“Awwwww,” Dibs said.

“One more,” Kyle said.
“Please
.
”

“You know, I'm not the
only
one who can read these,” I pointed out wryly. “Somebody else could take a turn.”

The Lost Boys exchanged glances, and it occurred to me that maybe they
couldn't
read.

“Actually . . . ,” Dibs said.

“We've forgotten how,” Prank said with a shrug.

“Oh,” I mumbled. None of them looked at all embarrassed about it, but my cheeks were definitely burning. “Sorry.”

I felt so awkward about it that I started to reach for the book in Peter's hand, hoping that reading another story would make it up to them.

“No, we don't want her to read all of them,” Button said. “She has to save some for tomorrow.”

I smiled at him gratefully and rubbed my eyes. They felt kind of scratchy.

“Time for bed,” Peter said firmly, and I felt pretty grateful to him, too.

“Wendy girl, will you tuck us in?” Kyle asked, flying up to his leaf hammock. “Please.”

I stretched and rubbed my neck, sore after bending over a book so long. “I'm not sure that I know how.”

“It's not hard,” said Button, halfway up the tree.

“Kind of self-explanatory,” said Prank in a hopeful way.

“But Mom
never
tucks me in,” I said, and all the Lost Boys gasped.

“She never tucks you in, and then she
leaves
you?” Kyle said. It was obvious that he didn't like my mother very much.

I couldn't let them keep thinking that way about Mom. She wasn't as bad as I made her seem. I knew just what to do to change their opinion of her.

I flew up the tree and found Kyle's leaf hammock. He peered out at me curiously. “Okay, so maybe she doesn't tuck me in, but she always kisses me good night. No matter what. And she always kisses me good night exactly like this.”

I leaned past the netting around his hammock and kissed his cheek. “One to kiss the bad dreams away.” Then I kissed the other. “One to give good dreams.” And finally, I kissed his nose. “And one to keep the fairies from carrying you off at night.”

Tink chattered angrily. She apparently didn't appreciate me giving fairies a bad reputation.

I giggled. “Sorry, Tink, but that's how she does it. And she told me,
that's
how
her
mom kissed her good night when
she
was little.”

The Lost Boys all became very still. Kyle's eyes were closed, and he smiled, his blanket bunched up in the crook of his arm like a teddy bear.

“Me, too?” Button asked hopefully from the next hammock over.

So, I kissed Button good night in the same way. And then Prank. And even Dibs, because it didn't seem fair to leave one Lost Boy out.

From the branch above Dibs's hammock bed, Tink chimed at me in a sharp way, but none of the Lost Boys were awake enough to translate for me.

“Did you want one too?” I asked, flying forward, but she jumped off the branch and flew into the forest.

Maybe Mom's good-night kiss speech had offended her more than I thought. Fairies
are
really touchy.

By the time I looked for him, Peter had already flown up to his house, which I took to mean that he didn't want a good-night kiss either. But in the doorway, he turned and smiled at me with a half wave.

I climbed into my hammock, rubbing my eyes. I knew one thing about bedtime stories and good-night kisses. They made me miss my own mom a lot more.

Chapter 16.
I Rescue a Mermaid Princess

W
hen I woke up the next morning, I was really confused. The last thing I remembered was a breeze whispering around my hammock, gently rocking me to sleep.

The breeze was stronger when I woke. It smelled salty, like the sea, which was a two-minute flight away from the Tree Home.

Then I heard a soft, questioning chitter and then a high-pitched hushing sound.

Instantly suspicious, I opened my eyes.

The sun sat on the horizon, just beginning to rise. I was in the middle of the ocean, so far away from shore that the trees looked tiny. White and purplish lights lined the edge of my leaf, chiming as quietly as possible. I recognized one of them.

“Tink! What are you
doing
?” I shouted.

The fairies were so startled that they dropped the leaf. My hammock bed plunged into the water.

An enormous splash came over the edge, soaking my pajama top. I shrieked, but the leaf was seaworthy. My hammock bed stabilized and floated as a swarm of fairies zipped around above my head.

It was easy to tell which one was Tink. She was chittering the loudest.

“Don't talk to me like that,” I told her sternly. “I was
asleep
, minding my own business. You were the one caught in the act.”

I don't think Tink wanted me to point this out, even if it was true. She dived at me, and I felt her tiny fingernails rake across my cheek. Her fairy friends followed her example, clawing at me so hard that I knew that some of them were drawing blood. I wasn't sure why
they
didn't like me, but maybe some of them recognized me from Prank's fake thunderstorm the day before.

I dived over the side of the leaf into the ocean, just to escape them, and I swam underwater a little way and surfaced at a safe distance from the fairy swarm, shouting, “I'll tell Peter!”

The fairies—in the process of hurtling toward me—froze in midair.

Tink's mouth slowly turned up at the corners, and she beamed an evil little smile at me. I knew instantly that she would get to Peter first and feed him some stupid story.

“Wait, Tink! Let's talk about this!”

But she and the rest of the fairy swarm were already zooming across the waves. In the dim predawn haze, they glittered over the ocean's surface like dancing Christmas lights.

I tried to launch myself into the air after them. I knew I had to have a lot of fairy dust on me after being carried halfway across Neverland, but I didn't lift an inch from the sea. Suddenly I remembered. Wet fairy dust didn't work.

There was no hope for it. I started to swim toward shore, trying not to think about the crocodile that sang Christmas carols or the story that Tink was telling Peter at that very moment. At least it was warm, I told myself. I would dry off pretty fast as soon as I got out of the water.

Then I noticed where Tink and her friends had been taking me. The
Jolly Roger
sailed along the shore, only a few hundred feet away. I froze, treading water, furious at myself for not seeing it before and furious at Tink for getting me into this situation in the first place. So much for winning over the fairy and becoming friends.

I watched the ship nervously. It wasn't that I was
afraid
exactly. But the run-in with the pirates the day before had taught me that Peter and the Lost Boys made pretty good backup.

The ship started to sail on by, and I breathed a sigh of relief. The pirates hadn't seen me. I was safe.

They passed close enough that I could hear the pirates laughing. “We've really got her now!” said a gleeful voice I recognized—Black Patch Pat.

Her?
Did he mean Tiger Lily? Or Buttercup?

I spotted a rope hanging from the deck and made my way over to the ship, swimming quietly underwater as much as humanly possible.

The rope whipped through the water like a swimming eel. I grabbed it, and the speed of the ship almost pulled my arm from my shoulder. I hung on, even more determined to see what was going on. After a few false attempts, I pulled myself out of the waves.

I knocked against the side of the boat with a thump so loud that I was sure that someone had heard me. I paused, listening.

“Ask her again.” The voice was as cold and slimy as the rope I was holding. It was Captain Hook. “Ask her again where Pan resides.”

I kept listening as I shinnied up the slippery rope, wishing that the fairy dust would kick in again. I didn't hear anyone answer, but there was this weird sputtering rasp.

“Cap'n, she still says she doesn't know,” said another voice—Smee.

“Bring more wood. Stoke the fire,” said Hook. “I
must
have Pan.”

Soon, I reached the top. My hands curled around the rail of the ship. Slowly, cautiously, I peered over it, ready to dive back into the ocean if anyone looked my way.

A brazier was on the far side of the deck, and all the pirates had crowded around it, too absorbed to notice me. I couldn't understand why they would need a fire on such a warm morning. Orange flames fingered the grate as Black Patch Pat shoved a few sticks through the bars.

Then I saw her, hanging in a mildewed net, just a few feet above the fire. Buttercup.

Hook leaned toward her, pushing the net lazily so that she began to spin. “Now, my dear mermaid princess, once again, I ask you: where can we find Peter Pan?”

Buttercup looked terrible. Everything about her drooped. She didn't even raise her head as she rasped a few syllables.

I didn't think that she said anything, but apparently, Smee understood her. “Still doesn't know, Cap'n.”

“I bet she does,” said another pirate, one I didn't recognize. “You can see it all over her scaly little face.”

Buttercup choked on the rising smoke and started to cough, miserable. The ends of her blond curls were singed. Her lips were dry and cracking.

“I have been without my hat for two entire days, Buttercup,” said Hook in his cold voice. “That is two days too long. Lower the net,” he told his pirates.

Noodler let out a little rope. The net dropped. Buttercup squirmed, trying to twist away from the fire, but she couldn't get away. It was too close. The flames rose, as if trying to reach her.

This was torture! She didn't look like she was any older than me, but there she was. She rasped out the same noises over and over as loudly as she could, coughing from the smoke and struggling in the net. It must've been the mermaids' language.

It made me even madder to see the pirates just watching her gleefully.

“She still says she doesn't know,” Smee told Hook.

My heart squeezed. Maybe she didn't know where the Tree Home was, but she
did
know where Button did the laundry. She could've told Hook, but she didn't. Buttercup was being very brave, and she was
definitely
being a good friend.

“You know, Cap'n—I've been thinking. She might be telling the truth.”

“Impossible,” said Hook.

“Well, you know, Pan and the merfolk, they don't mix much,” Smee pointed out. “Those mermaids, they have a terrible habit of trying to drown the Lost Boys. The one named Prank, in particular.”

I knew one thing for certain: I had to rescue her. I didn't know if I could do it alone, but I didn't have time to go get the Lost Boys. It didn't look like Buttercup could last much longer.

For a second, the pirate captain looked disappointed. Then he straightened up, glaring at the mermaid slowly drying out over the fire. “She's the sister of the mermaid queen. She has to know
something
.”

She made a loud rattling sound, like steam hissing from beneath a pot's lid.

I thought it was just a scream, but all the pirates became very still.

“Did she say what I think she said?” Black Patch Pat asked Noodler.

“Treasure!” shouted Smee triumphantly, and Hook's mouth curled under his black mustache.

“Where?” asked the pirate captain.

Buttercup began sputtering something, and Smee listened intently.

I would never be able to rescue her with all the pirates gathered around her. I glanced around for a distraction. The anchor hung over the ship's rail only a few feet from me. A lever stood beside it.

A plan started to form in my mind. Thinking about all the havoc it would cause made me so happy that I started to rise into the air. The fairy dust must have dried out—just in time, too.

I dashed forward and hit the anchor's lever with all my might.

The anchor
whish
ed as it plummeted toward the water and plunked when it plunged, but I didn't wait around to watch. I rushed around the ship toward my next target.

The anchor caught the ocean floor just as a couple of pirates heard my approach and started to turn my way.

The ship swung. The deck tilted wildly. Pirates flailed and fell. The brazier under the mermaid toppled. Hook fell against the helm and clung to it.

I flew into Noodler as hard as I could. Already unbalanced by the tipping ship, he stumbled and fell. I snatched up the rope that he dropped, the one attached to the net trapping Buttercup.

The force almost yanked me out of the air. “Whoa—you're
heavy
,” I said to Buttercup.

The mermaid blinked wide, sea green eyes at me sleepily. I wasn't sure she recognized me. The smoke must have stupefied her.

“Who's
that
? Is there a new Lost Boy?” said a voice behind us. The pirates had noticed me.

“Nah, that's the
Wendy girl
,” said Smee. “The one who stole the hat off our dear cap'n's head.”

“Get her, you dogs!” Hook shouted.

A bunch of pirates scrambled and slipped across the deck toward me.

With one hand, I pushed Buttercup past the side of the ship, over the water. We were still pretty high up, at least thirty feet, but I didn't have time to cut her free from the net. There wasn't any more that I could do. “I hope you can still swim,” I told the mermaid, and I let go of the rope.

Buttercup and the net plunged into the ocean below. I zipped out of the pirates' reach as soon as I could, hovering anxiously over the water still churning from her drop.

“Man overboard!” someone shouted.

“Not
man
, pea brain.
Mermaid
,” replied Black Patch Pat, peering over the side. “Mermaid overboard.”

Bubbles and more bubbles rose to the surface, but no Buttercup. I swallowed, wondering if mermaids could drown.

“Salty Sal and Noodler, take off yer boots,” said Smee. “You're the only ones who can swim. You're going in after her.”

“No, no, no,” Hook shouted. “Morons, the lot of you! Raise the anchor and right the ship first.”

The ship wobbled a little in the water and steadied, perfectly level. Someone must have gotten to the anchor pretty fast.

I didn't know how long I had until the pirates started loading their cannons, but I didn't want to escape to the island before making sure my friend was all right.

“Buttercup!” I shouted, not even sure that sound carried underwater. “Buttercup, please!”

“Much better!” Hook said, practically singing. “Now, Smee, did the mermaid tell you the location of the treasure?”

“Yes, Cap'n. She certainly did, Cap'n.”

“Then we have no reason to go after her. She has already told us everything she knows. Now, Smee, if you'll tell me the location of that marvelous treasure . . .”

Buttercup surfaced finally. Her lips were cracked and bleeding in two places, but she was smiling.

“You're okay!” I cried.

She said something to me, I was 100 percent sure. Her lips moved. But it didn't sound much different from the water gurgling through her webbed fingers.

“Buttercup, I can't understand you unless you speak my language,” I reminded her.

“Oh,” she said, and in English, I could hear how hoarse she'd become. “Ashley, you saved my life.”

“We're not out of this yet,” I told her, pointing to the ship.

“Right you are, Cap'n,” we heard Smee say. “All right, men. To Queen Maris's palace—two minutes' swim from the fairies' tree along the coral reef, take a sharp right at the school of angelfish, and then veer left by Jellyfish Canyon—”

Buttercup hung her head, ashamed to have given away the mermaids' secrets. The water brought out all the green in her blond curls.

“What kind of directions are
those,
Smee?” growled Hook.

“They're the ones she gave me, Cap'n,” Smee said, sounding a little unsure.

“Don't worry. It sounds like your directions might slow them down a little bit,” I told Buttercup. “I think you should still warn the mermaids, though. Especially your sister.”

When I flew toward shore, Buttercup swam just below me, looking unconvinced. “But they're going to be so
angry
,” she murmured. I had the feeling that she was worrying about Queen Maris's reaction the most.

“Well, if
I
were a mermaid, I wouldn't be as mad if you gave everybody a chance to prepare themselves.”

Buttercup brightened up considerably. She waved me forward, smiling widely, and I leaned closer, expecting her to whisper something else in my ear.

Then she grabbed me around the shoulders. I stiffened, but it was just a hug. It was wet and smelled like seaweed.

She
did
gurgle something in my ear. It sounded a lot like the mermaid version of
thank you
.

As I watched her dive deep into the ocean and swim fast toward Mermaids' Lagoon, I felt something warm and tingly in my stomach, a new happy thought. Peter had been wrong. I
had
made friends with a mermaid.

Buttercup outstripped the pirate ship easily, but I saw Hook standing at the prow, watching her with a patient smile on his face. Smee stood beside him, screwing on a new hook, one with two points. Captain Hook was planning a battle. My new friend was in more danger than ever.