“I suppose you want me to heal you, don’t you.” Tink cocked her head to one side and flipped a lock of blonde hair over her shoulder. “What would you do if you didn’t have me around to clean up your messes, Peter?”
“Get some sleep, for one,” Peter grumbled, running a hand through his dirty blonde locks and slowly sitting up. He looked around absently and then blinked. “Speaking of which - why did you wake me?”
“We have a problem.” Tinkerbell blew out a sigh and then sat down on Peter’s bed beside him. “A big one.” With that, she gently touched his forehead, and in a shower of pixie dust and wind chime breeze, Peter’s bloodshot eyes cleared, becoming sea green once more.
The shadows on Peter’s face receded and he sat up a little straighter. “Thanks Tink,” he said softly. She nodded and gave him a small smile.
“Now, what’s the problem?” he asked.
Tinkerbell hesitated for a relatively short but heavy moment before she finally said, “It’s Wendy, Peter.” She sighed and seemed to slump beside him on the bed. “She’s the Neverland child.”
Peter stopped moving. He stopped breathing.
Tink continued. “And she’s definitely not okay.”
John Darling closed his locker, turned the dial on his combination lock, and swung his book bag over his shoulder.
“Johnny, check this out.”
John turned to face his school friend, Adam, a much shorter blonde boy with glasses and clothes that always seemed to have come directly from a mannequin; not a wrinkle to be found from head to toe.
“It’s an article about dream interpretation using fMRI techniques,” Adam continued, his rather high pitched voice tinged with excitement.
“Let me see.” John took the magazine from him and started to look it over when a third boy approached.
“Johnny, is your sister coming to the game tomorrow night?”
John looked up. “Oh, hi Nick. Yeah, probably.” John blinked, recalling the fight he and his sister had had the night before and the medication bottle that he’d spied in the side table with Dr. Coffer’s name on the label. “Actually. . . I’m not sure,” he added, uncertainly.
“Oh? Is she okay?” Nick cocked his head to one side, studying John. Nick’s eyes were a hazel color so light that they contrasted starkly with the tanned complexion of his handsome face. He was at the Morrison School for the Gifted through a soccer scholarship and, because he practiced every day, before and after school, he rarely wore anything but his soccer jersey. Lately, due to the changing weather, he had begun wearing jeans during class and had gotten into the habit of pulling a denim jacket on over his jersey. The easily tossed-on wardrobe managed to flatter Nickolas enough that he had the yearning, if quiet, attentions of most of the genius girls in the school. And for some reason that utterly befuddled him, this truly irritated John Darling.
Still, although Nickolas Noble wasn’t as bright, by John’s standards, as he considered himself and his closer friends to be, he had to admit that Nick was a nice enough guy once you got to know him. All soccer aside, that is. Soccer, after all, was simply the Americanization of foot ball, which John had always considered a huge waste of time anyway, and-
“John?” Nick prompted again, his eyes searching his friend’s face.
“Oh. Sorry. Yes, she’s fine. Just busy is all,” John replied.
Nick nodded and the three boys walked out together, speaking in this manner for several minutes. But, once outside, John glanced up to peer past the student cars and busses. Something had caught his attention. Nick was speaking with Adam about something having to do with there being different kinds of genius, but John was no longer listening to the discussion.
Their voices droned out and seemed to fade away, as if he were in a bubble, and his vision honed in, tunneling toward an alley across the street. There, the dark outline of a figure, perhaps two, on what appeared to be a motorcycle, piqued his curiosity. He gazed at the outline for a long moment. He squinted against the late day setting sun, trying to make it out more clearly.
And then blinked.
Was that a spark of light he’d seen?
A flash of something like glitter?
He closed his eyes and shook his head as if to clear it.
“You okay, man?” Nick asked suddenly.
“Umm. . . . ” John opened his eyes again and refocused them on the alley. Whatever he had seen before was gone. No dark figures. No motorcycle. No pixie dust.
His breath caught and his mind reeled.
What had he just thought?
“D-man, you don’t look so good,” Adam said, looking up at his friend from behind huge, bug-eyed spectacles. His expression was one of genuine concern.