Neverland (2 page)

“Really?” Brittney Renae dances over to us, clapping her hands when she sees the result. “Aw, this is so beautiful! You must never wash your arm again and leave this on forever.”

“Why? So I can use my forearm as a cheat sheet in case I forget my name?”

Paulina scrunches up her face. “What’s a
jeet jeet
?”

“It’s something you have in…ah, never mind.” Better to change the topic and save myself from being dragged into another what-and-why inquisition that always leaves me with a headache. Downstairs, the tall grandfather clock starts chiming eight. “Time for bed, girls.”

The twins smile, because getting ready for bed starts in the same way whenever we’re alone at home. Everybody finds a spot in Paulina’s bed, Brittney Renae brings a book, and I read. We do this before all the other stuff, like brushing their teeth and changing into their flannel PJ’s, because Brittney Renae likes to keep her costume on until the very last minute.

I sprawl out on the bed, leaning against the headboard, let my sisters snuggle up to me at either side, and open the book that Brittney Renae hands me. It’s
Peter Pan
. I’m not surprised. It’s their favorite, and I read this book to them night after night. The twins speak every single line with me while I read.

With the girls pressed to my sides, I soon get warm in the heated room. I pull my sweater over my head and toss it at the end of the bed then continue reading.

“The pirate took the kids aboard his mighty ship, the Jolly Roger,”
all three of us say with the same dramatic edge to our voices.
“He tied them to the mast in the middle and laughed into their frightened faces. The dirty crew hurrahed their captain, each waving a flag in their hands. For they all knew, today was the day that Peter Pan would lose the battle.”

“Oh no,” Paulina whines when I take a breath and turn the page. “What if the ugly Captain Hook catches him this time?”

I roll my eyes. She knows exactly how this tale goes. But every time we read it, she gets sucked into the story so much that her fears seem genuine and her tiny hands clench into shaking fists.

I let the girls look at the pictures for a while, before we reveal the ending together and everyone takes a relieved breath—including me. I don’t know why I do it. Possibly because of the twins’ infectious excitement whenever I read the story of Peter Pan.

I shut the book and put it back on Paulina’s nightstand. We will surely read it again tomorrow night. The girls know what comes next, and without complaints they both head into the bathroom to brush their teeth. While they’re gone, I open the French doors that lead to a semicircle Victorian balcony. In the moonlight the slowly falling snowflakes look like a romantic rain of stars.

A cold breeze wafts around my body. Goosebumps rise on my bare arms and remind me that the French doors in my own room have been open for the past couple of hours. I shut the cold out from my sisters’ room and head back to mine. It’s freezing cold in here, but before I close the French doors, I can’t resist stepping out into the dancing flakes. I drag my feet through the thin layer of snow on the concrete balcony, leaving a trail with my tennis shoes.

My hands braced on the marble railing, I tilt my head skyward and catch some snowflakes with my mouth. The flakes melt away on my tongue and more keep falling on my face where they tangle with my lashes. It’s that time of the year I like best. Everything is calm and peaceful outside. I look down at our wide English garden and imagine a deer coming out from behind the few trees at the very back. But nothing happens. We live just outside London. There’s no city bustling around here, but we’re still too far away from any woods to glimpse a deer or rabbit scurrying by.

“Angel!”

With my mouth still open and my tongue lolling out to catch more snow, I turn to the left and find the fairy bug out on Paulina’s balcony. We’re separated only by three meters of space and the crown of a common ash tree planted close to the house between our balconies. I straighten. “What’s up?”

“You forgot your sweater.” She holds out my black sweater in her tiny hands.

“Toss it over!” I walk to the left side of my balcony and stretch out my arms to catch the bundle of fabric. But her aim is as bad as my mother’s taste in music, and the sweater lands in the top of the tree. “Ah no.” I sigh and lean over the railing as far as I can, but there’s no way I can grab the sweater. It’s caught in the many twigs and branches.

It’s only a few inches away, so I get a hold on the façade of the house and climb onto the broad marble balustrade. This way I’m able to lean farther out and finally reach one sleeve. My fingers around it, I want to step off the railing again, but it’s slick from the snow, and I slip. A high-pitched cry bursts out of my throat as I struggle to catch my balance. I pray that somehow I’ll come down on the inside of my balcony. But when I catch a glimpse of Brittney Renae’s shocked face as I fall, I know this is going to hurt.

Chapter 2

I FALL. A scream rips from me. The cold wind carries me in a spiral of fast-moving air. I open my eyes which for some reason I had kept shut until now. There’s nothing around me. Really, nothing. I face a clear blue summer sky. Panic rises in my chest. I’m still falling—where in the world am I?

In my right fist, I hold the sleeve of a black sweater that flutters over my head like a helium-filled balloon. It does nothing to slow me down. Then I remember.
Jeez, the balcony!
I lost balance. I should have landed on the ground by now and broken each and every little bone in my body. So why the heck haven’t I?

I turn and look down. Cotton candy clouds float beneath me. I can see my shadow on the fluffy white mass as I near them, and seconds later, I fall right through them.

My scream fades to a terrified whimper. As I emerge from the clouds, I finally see land beneath me. Luscious green hills, a thick jungle, and in the distance, colorful houses dotting an old seaport. The island I’m speeding toward is shaped like a half moon. There’s nothing beneath to break my fall.

This is insane. People don’t just fall right out of the sky. I pull the sweater to my chest and hug it tight with trembling arms. Oh God, I’m going to be mash in a minute.

I’m coming down too fast on the jungle. The Caribbean-blue water surrounding the island fades from my view. All there is below me are trees and bushes. A taller tree stands out from a little clearing and I miss the wide top by a few feet.

As I zoom past the top branches, I catch a glimpse of a face between the leaves. The person attached to it shoots forward and stops at the end of the longest branch. Holy cow, there’s a boy in a grass-green tee and brown leather pants scaling the branches of the tree. He follows my fall with his surprised gaze, then he cups his hands around his mouth and shouts, “Watch out! It’s raining girls today!”

It takes me a moment to realize he’s not speaking to me, but to a group of boys on the ground. Boys that I’m going to squash in seconds. They all tilt their heads up and stare at me with stunned expressions. And then the weirdest thing happens. Out of nowhere, each of them pulls a black umbrella and they all stretch it, as though I could be fended off like rain.

ARE THEY NUTS?

Facing my end, I shriek the hell out of my lungs. But right before I land, something catches me and lifts me high in the air again. It’s the guy in the green t-shirt who saves me. “Ugh, girl. You scream like a tortured pig. Mind stopping that?” he says, grimacing, and cuddles me tight against his chest as he freaking flies with me over the jungle.

My mouth wide open, I fall silent and gaze at his face. An instant later, my arms wrap around his neck in a death-hold.

He turns a sly grin at me. “Hi there.”

I say nothing. I just can’t believe it. This boy appears a little younger than I am, looks totally normal with blue eyes, thick brown hair and all, but he’s sailing on the thermal wind like a kite. And I with him.

“Are you afraid of flying?” he asks me.

“I don’t know,” my croak comes out. I think that I’m usually not, but then I don’t remember ever being carried across the sky like this.

“Well, if you are, you shouldn’t be jumping off clouds, you know.”

“I wasn’t.” A slippery balcony railing should have sealed my death. Then again…what if I was dead? And this was the other side? I pinch the boy’s cheek and he yips. Thank goodness he felt that. No dreaming and no waking up in heaven. A relieved sigh escapes through my clenched teeth.

The guy lands on his feet by his friends—all teenagers by the looks of them—with me still in his arms. Carefully, he releases first my legs and waits until I stand steadily on the grassy ground in the small clearing before he loosens his grip on me. He’s a few inches taller than me and slim. Doesn’t his mother feed him enough? But then he’s probably not fully grown yet. Most boys around sixteen look a little underfed.

He holds out his hand. “I’m Peter. Peter Pan.”

With some reluctance, I shake it. “I’m…” I begin, but that’s all. For some strange reason, there’s no information about myself stored in my mind. What the hell—?

He tilts his chin low and searches my face. “You forgot your own name?”

“Obviously,” I admit, totally forlorn, scrunching up my face. “And what’s worse, I have no idea why I just fell out of the sky.”

“You don’t know what you did in the clouds?” Peter demands.

“No. The last thing I remember is falling down the side of our house back in London. It’s winter. Everything should be covered in…” Uncertain, I look around and add, “Snow.”

“Where’s London?” one of the boys whispers to another. “And what’s snow?”

“I don’t know,” says the other. “Maybe she lost her mind.”

“Ooh, that’s bad,” the first one whispers back, loud enough for everybody to hear. “I bet Hook hit her with a cannonball.”

I run my fingers through my hair and look down at myself. Everything seems just fine. I sure wasn’t hit by a stupid cannonball.

“What’s this?” Peter takes my hand once again and twists it so that the inside of my wrist is up.
“Angel,”
he reads out loud. “Maybe that’s your name? Would make sense you have it tattooed on you, since you seem to forget it.”

I examine the purple letters on my skin. Stars are brushed beneath the name. Is this real? It looks familiar but I don’t remember when I had one done. Rubbing my thumb over the tattoo doesn’t make it disappear. “Could be,” I agree with Peter.

“Well then, nice to meet you, Angel!” he cheers and shakes my hand again as if we just met. “Welcome to Neverland.”

“Neverland…” I test the sound of the word on my tongue. The name rings a bell. Somewhere far back in my mind. Too far for me to put a finger on. Whatever, I’ve always been a slouch in geography. Not so much in physics, though—I do know for a fact that humans shouldn’t be able to fly. So the really nagging question is this: Is Neverland real, or am I just about to go gaga?

When Peter releases me, the boys grab my hand one after the other and rather enthusiastically introduce themselves. They all look between fourteen and sixteen years old, but they jump up and down like excited preschoolers.

“Hi, Angel, I’m Skippy!” one of them shouts in my face. He has amazingly big ears and huge round eyes. He reminds me a bit of an elf, though he has inclined teeth like a troll.

“I’m Sparky!” says the next, already taking my left hand before Skippy even lets go of my right.

“This is Toby, and I’m Stan!”

“How are you doing, Angel? I’m Loney.”

“My name’s Skippy!”

Yeah, we heard that before.

“I’m Toby!” … “I’m Sparky!” … “Skippy, that’s me!”

More handshaking, and I’m getting a little dizzy. The guys pull on my arms and make me twist from one side to the other. They laugh and keep telling me their names as if each time was the first.

“Lost Boys, leave her alone!” Peter Pan shouts over the noise and I have my hands back to myself. I throw him a grateful look. He nods then steps forward and picks up the sweater that I dropped when they all got so excited about me. As he holds it up and glances at the front, his brows knit together. “Are you friends with Captain Hook?”

I mirror his expression. “Captain who?” Knowing his question has something to do with what he sees on my sweater, I reach for it, but Peter pulls it away quickly, then he pushes off the ground and levitates out of my reach. It’s totally crazy to see this boy flying like a freaking balloon.

“Captain Hook,” he repeats with a scolding growl and turns my sweater around so everybody sees the
Pirates of the Caribbean
image on the front. It’s a skull with a bandana, and crossed torches burn behind it.

All the boys suck in a loud breath and jump one step back. Two for Skippy. “You sure you aren’t one of his pirates?” he demands.

“Do I look like a pirate?” I snap back but quickly shut my mouth and inspect myself.
Do
I look like a pirate? I’m wearing the same clothes as a few minutes ago, when I was playing with the twins: blue jeans, a black tee and light grey tennis shoes. They don’t seem like the right clothes for a pirate ship, but then who can say what’s normal in this place, given there’s a boy hovering two feet above me?

Peter tosses the sweater at me. “If you’re one of his spies, you can tell your captain he’ll never get the treasure! And sending girls is so beneath him.”

“Hey!” I fold my arms over my chest. “I don’t know any pirates! I live in an exclusive neighborhood just outside London. We have a huge, clean house, a cook and housekeeper, and every second Saturday of the month my parents give a dinner banquet for friends and business partners. No one skewers anybody with a saber there!”

“So you admit you do know about piracy custom then!” Peter accuses me. I roll my eyes in refusal of this unbelievable situation and rub my hands over my face. Slowly, Peter levitates up and down in front of me a few times, scratching his chin. “Fine. Let’s say you aren’t a pirate. What are we to do with you then?”

I let out a long breath and suggest with a surge of hope, “Help me get back home to England?”