Apparently Peter didn’t notice, because he continued on.
“Everything has been so messed up.”
Wendy felt like she was drowning in his words. It was too much, too fast. She didn’t feel very brave anymore, and she couldn’t maintain her look of skepticism. The wave of nausea washing over her was the same one she felt every time someone mentioned her brothers. “What?” she breathed.
Peter’s face became very serious. “That day, you, John, and Michael came with me to Neverland. When everyone thought you went missing, you were with me.”
“I— How—” Wendy struggled to find words. Under the panic and confusion, she couldn’t help feeling a flicker of hope about John and Michael. “You know about John and Michael?” she asked urgently.
Peter winced and looked at the ground.
She stepped toward him, pressing him for further explanation. “Have you seen them? Do you know where they are?” Peter’s few words sparked hope, a fleeting, dangerous thing.
Just a moment ago Peter’s words had been coming out in a rush, but now he paused. “It’s a long story … It’s complicated. It would be easier if you could just remember—”
“You have to tell me,” Wendy ordered, grabbing hold of his hand. She needed answers, and she needed them now.
Peter’s ears tinged red. He took a deep breath. “Like I told you, I used to come by your house to listen to you tell stories about me. I would travel from Neverland looking for lost kids who needed my help,” he explained. “And I heard you telling my stories to your brothers once, so I listened in from outside the window—”
“Right, the super-creepy window thing,” Wendy interrupted, dropping his hand.
“I mean, yeah, but—” Peter scratched the back of his head, red blooming in his cheeks. “It was just to hear you tell stories about me! I would go back and retell them to the lost ones back at Neverland—it sounds a lot creepier than it was, I promise.”
Wendy narrowed her eyes at him.
“Anyway, we actually talked one night, when my shadow went missing for the first time.” He said it so casually. “And then, well … when you guys got lost in the woods.”
Wendy’s heart hammered, demanding to be felt. For the past five years she had been wondering what had happened to her and her brothers. For years she’d had nothing and now the answers she had been looking for had fallen out of the sky. She didn’t know if it was out of desperation, but right now she wasn’t even questioning whether or not he was telling the truth. “Do you know what happened to us?” she choked out.
Peter gave her that look. That same look everyone always gave her whenever her brothers were brought up: tipped eyebrows and a frown. The universal look of pity. She hated that look.
“Maybe we should go somewhere else and talk about this,” he said quietly.
“No, you have to tell me now!” Wendy said, grabbing hold of his hand once again. She didn’t know if she could go another second without losing her mind, let alone wait long enough to relocate.
“Okay, okay,” Peter said, motioning with his free hand for her to keep her voice down. “When I found you, you were in the middle of the woods. I—I don’t know what happened before that.” He hesitated for a moment. “But it was almost dark and you were scared, so I took you back with me to Neverland.”
“Neverland, as in the magical island in the sky, from the stories?” Wendy asked. She was still struggling to accept all of this, but, more importantly, she wanted him to tell her the rest.
Peter squinted. “I guess that’s the easiest way to describe it, yeah.”
“Why didn’t you take us home?”
Another long pause. “I … You didn’t want to go home, you wanted to go with me,” Peter said with a small shrug.
If it weren’t so impossible, it would almost make sense. One of the last things Wendy remembered before the gaping hole in her memory was how, right before she and her brothers went missing, she had gotten into a fight with her father. He’d wanted her to move out of her shared room with her brothers and into her own room. He had told her that it was time for her to grow up and that she couldn’t keep playing make-believe with her brothers all the time.
Wendy remembered being so mad at her father. She knew he thought that was why they’d gone missing, that they