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Authors: Zoe Barton

Always Neverland (2 page)

BOOK: Always Neverland
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“It's a little late for that,” Megan said sternly, which basically meant
no way
.

Arguing wouldn't help. I knew from experience that she would pretty much let me do whatever I wanted—
unless
it might get her in trouble. If Mom and Dad came home and saw me in the tree house at night, Megan would
definitely
get in trouble.

So, without having anything better to do, I said good night and climbed up the stairs to my room. When I fell asleep, I was still debating about whether I should risk climbing out of the window or just go back to the tree house in the morning. . . .

I woke up suddenly about an hour later.

It only took me seven seconds to realize that there was a strange boy in my room, standing at the foot of my bed.

Chapter 2.
I Learn a New Use for Super Glue

I
shouted and threw the first thing I could reach—my pillow.

It hit the boy in the back of the head, and he tumbled halfway across the room. I jumped up and threw my other pillow as hard as I could.

The boy was quicker than I expected. He darted out of the way, and the pillow plopped to the floor with a small
whoosh
. I was out of pillows, so I glanced around for something else. A library book sat beside the bed. I picked it up and got ready to aim.

But the boy wasn't standing anywhere in the room now.

He was
flying
, hovering in a corner and breathing hard. He held a sword. It was about the length of my arm, and it cast gold reflections into the shadows. His hair sprang out in wild blond curls all around his head. I couldn't tell if his shirt was made out of leaves or if he'd attached leaves to the fabric, but he definitely had a weird outfit on.

I was so surprised that the book slid out of my hand. “Oh!”

“Oh?” the boy repeated mockingly. He scowled. “That wasn't very nice.”

With his free hand, he rubbed his head. Something wet glinted on his cheeks.

“Are you
crying
?”

“Of course not.”

But he wiped his face with the back of his hand and sniffed suspiciously.

“I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hit you
that
hard.” But in the back of my mind, I was pretty impressed with the way I defended myself. It wasn't every day you got to fight off nighttime intruders.

“It wasn't the
pillow
,” he said, sheathing his sword. “It's my
shadow
.”

“Your shadow?”

“Over there.”

The boy pointed across the room. A dark, flat figure was struggling to open the window. It was shaped exactly like the flying boy, right down to the wild curls and leafy clothes, and it was having trouble getting the window up. Shadows must not be very strong.

Something about the scene seemed very familiar—like something I had read in a book or seen in a movie.

With a sudden, electrifying thought, I turned back to the boy. “I know who you are! You're Peter Pan!”

“Of course I'm Pan. Who else would I be?”

Peter Pan and his shadow in
my
bedroom? I pinched myself to make sure I wasn't dreaming. It definitely hurt.

I couldn't believe my luck! My winter vacation just got a
lot
more interesting.

The legendary boy flew to the window. When he grabbed his shadow's shoulder, it slapped his hand away and tried more frantically to lift the window.

“None of that now,” Peter ordered. Then he looked at me and added, “My shadow hasn't gotten away from me in a very long time, but it got stuck under the moving metal carriage outside and snapped right off.”

It took me a couple of seconds to realize what
exactly
he was talking about. “You mean, my parents' car?”

He didn't answer. Instead he dragged the shadow away from the window. It reached up and tickled Peter's stomach. Peter laughed, and when his grip loosened, the shadow made a break for it.

But Peter was faster. Before his shadow reached the window, Peter tackled it again. Then boy and shadow wrestled, tumbling across the rug. They banged into my nightstand so hard that my lamp toppled and fell.

I was still a little stunned, but I couldn't just stand there forever, especially when Peter looked like he could use some help. So, I jumped off the bed, picked up the book, and whacked the shadow. The poor shadow stopped fighting Peter and held its injured head in its hands.

I waited for Peter to thank me, but he just sat down, cross-legged, pulling the shadow closer by its foot.

The shadow tried feebly to get away, hooking its elbow around my desk chair. That didn't work. Peter just dragged shadow and chair until his own ankle and his shadow's foot touched.

Then he looked at me expectantly. “Aren't you going to attach it?”

I stared at him. To be completely honest, I had no idea how to get someone's shadow to stick on. That wasn't something they taught in school.

But I did know how to find out.

“Just a sec,” I told Peter. I went to my bookcase and searched the shelves. I knew that Grandma Delaney had given me
Peter Pan
for Christmas a couple years back, but it took me a while to find it. “Here we go.”

I flipped through the pages, skimming until I came to the part I wanted. “It says here that Wendy
sewed
your shadow on.”

“Yeah, sew it back
on
,” he said, sounding impatient.

“Sew? I don't know how to sew!” I didn't even know if we owned any thread.

Peter jumped up, still holding his shadow's foot. Tipped upside down, the shadow flailed both flat arms, trying to steady itself.

“Hold on,” I said quickly, worried that they might leave before Peter did anything really exciting, like teach me to fly. “I think there's some Super Glue in the kitchen.”

I crept out of my room and down the back staircase, walking close to the wall to avoid the creaking floorboards. Peter flew just behind me, holding his shadow in a headlock all the way down the stairs and into the kitchen. With his leafy shirt and the struggling shadow, he looked so out of place flying over the sink that I had to pinch myself again—to make sure it was all real.

Then I opened the junk drawer and started combing through it. I knew the Super Glue was in there somewhere. We heard brakes squeal in the next room.

Peter looked around wildly, one hand on his sword. “What's that noise?”

I pushed past dried-up pens and several pairs of scissors to the back of the drawer. “A car chase. The TV's on.” Megan had turned up the volume
really
loud. No wonder she didn't hear me shout earlier.

“TV? Would the Lost Boys like it?” Hovering a couple feet above the floor, Peter pushed open the door to the living room, peeking his head through curiously.

“No!” I grabbed his foot and yanked him back.

Now that he stood on the ground, I could see he was only a little bit taller than I was. He glared, cheeks bulging, like he was about to start shouting.

Legendary or not, I wasn't going to let him get me in trouble. Especially when I was doing
him
a favor.

“Stop it!” I said sharply. “Do you want to get caught?”

That got his attention.

“The great Pan is never caught,” Peter said, but he said it very quietly.

“Maybe so. But I'm not taking any chances.” I didn't want Mom to find out and reconsider the trip to the Christmas tree farm.

I held up the tiny bottle of Super Glue and gestured toward the stairs.

Two and a half minutes later, we sat on the floor in my room, and Peter forced his shadow to the carpet beside him, pinning its arms to its sides. The shadow hung its head, as if accepting its defeat.

“Mind lifting up your foot?” I asked Peter.

Instead of just raising his leg like I expected him to, the boy flew up and hovered several inches off the ground, feet still extended toward me.

“Thanks.” I unscrewed the top of the Super Glue and reached toward Peter's foot.

The boy flew very slightly out of the way. “Are you
sure
this will work?”

I'd figured that I had an 80 percent chance that shadows could be glued. But I told Peter, “I'm
positive
. Wendy would've done it this way, if she had Super Glue. It won't even hurt.”

After hearing that, Peter relaxed a little, and he did let me grab hold of his ankle. I squeezed a thin line of Super Glue across the boy's muddy heel, and then I reached for the shadow. It kicked me a couple times, halfheartedly—it didn't hurt; it felt more like a puppy trying to squirm out of my lap—but I managed to squish the shadow's heel against Peter's without getting any Super Glue on my hands. I let it go and dealt with the other foot.

Luckily, the glue held, even when the shadow clutched my bed frame and tried to drag itself away from Pan. I was almost as happy about what I'd done as Peter was.

“Gluing is even better than the sewing. Why didn't I think of this before?” Peter crowed and started doing a few backflips. When he stopped, his shadow swayed a little and put a hand to its head dizzily.

Then Peter zipped toward the window, not looking my way once.

Worried that he really
would
leave, I said quickly, “Since you woke me up and all, would you mind telling me why you came to visit?”

I was pretty sure he would just say that my window was closest when his shadow snapped off, but I was hoping to steer the conversation to other things. Like flying, for instance.

He turned back, grinning, his fists on his hips. “I came to take you back to Neverland, of course.”

He made this announcement as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, but I stared at him, almost afraid to believe him.

“Neverland! Really?” I glanced at the cover of
Peter Pan
, filled with illustrations of pirates, fairies, Indians, and even mermaids. I might get to meet a
mermaid
!

And I had wished my parents had taken me with them. Neverland sounded
much
better than any stupid grown-up party.

“You
are
the newest Wendy girl,” Peter said.

“Wendy girl?”

Peter looked at me in a shrewd, judging way. “On second thought, I don't know if I
should
take you back to Neverland. You can't be very smart.”

“Smart?” I was a little bit offended. I wasn't used to being called dumb. I mean, Mom usually said that I was
too
smart for my own good.

“You just keep repeating everything I say,” he added thoughtfully.

I couldn't argue with that. “How am I supposed to know what a Wendy girl is? I only know about Wendy Darling, the one who went to Neverland with her little brothers.”

“You do? You know about our adventures?”

I didn't remember them all that well, but I nodded anyway, picking up the book with his name on it and waving it in front of him. “You're famous.”

“Of course I am,” Peter said with his cockiest smile. “Let me explain.” He lay on his back, floating lazily in the middle of the room the same way that other people float in a swimming pool. “Well, Wendy Darling was the first Wendy girl. You're her granddaughter or great-granddaughter or great-great-granddaughter or something like that.”

I looked at the book in my hands again in wonder. When Grandma Delaney had given it to me, I'd just thought she was trying to get me to read more, but she must've been a Wendy girl too! She must've been trying to help me get ready for the day I would meet Peter Pan.

Peter yawned. “I've been bringing Wendy girls to Neverland
forever
.”

The way he said
forever
reminded me of how my classmates complained about doing their homework, or cleaning their rooms, or whatever boring activity they couldn't wait to finish. Maybe I should have been insulted, but I was too excited.

“I want to make friends with a mermaid!” I said. “And meet Tinker Bell. And Tiger Lily! Oh,
and
cross swords with Hook.”

Peter stood up, giving me a sharp, measuring look. “Well, that last one is impossible.”

“Oh no,” I said, disappointed. “Have you already killed him?”

“No, not yet, but
I'm
the only one who can fight Hook,” Peter said. “Everybody knows
that
, Wendy girl.”

“My name is Ashley,” I said quickly, realizing I hadn't introduced myself.

But Peter continued on like I hadn't spoken. “Besides, you're supposed to come and help the Lost Boys with their spring cleaning.”

“Aren't you a bit early?” I asked. “It's still winter.”

“Not in Neverland,” said Peter.

To be honest, I didn't like the sound of that. I mean, this was my Christmas vacation. I didn't want to spend it doing chores. But making friends with the Lost Boys sounded
great
. Anything was better than sitting here alone, waiting for my parents to take me tree shopping.

“Can we leave
now
?” I asked.

Peter sat up, considering. “I guess so. All we need is Tink.” He flew to the window, opened it, and let out a sharp whistle.

A little golden light reemerged from the woods beyond the tree house, the same one I had seen earlier. It headed straight for the window, tinkling like bicycle bells. I stepped forward, eager to meet the fairy. Maybe we'd be friends before I even reached Neverland!

I barely had enough time to duck before the golden light zoomed right where my face had been.

Then she landed on Peter's shoulder, her hands on her hips.

Now that she wasn't moving I could see the figure within the light—a tiny woman, very curvy, with a rose-petal dress and very blond hair. She was glaring at me.

“Hello, Tinker Bell,” I said as politely as I could. I wanted to make a good impression. Especially since it seemed like she was already angry with me for something. “I've always wanted to meet you. You're even prettier than I imagined.”

She chittered angrily. I frowned, wondering what I had done wrong. I was almost sure that it wasn't anything I said.

“Tink, don't start bugging the Wendy girl again,” Peter said wearily, but the light zoomed straight at me a second time.

I ducked behind the bed for safety, but Peter was faster. He plucked the little fairy out of the air midflight. As Tink struggled and squirmed, trying to break his grip, Peter shook her over my head. Golden specks fell from the fairy onto my hair.

“Since I'm famous, I bet you know what this is,” Peter said.

BOOK: Always Neverland
11.1Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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