Forever Neverland(45)

“Michael,” she leaned down and hugged him as if she hadn’t seen him in ages. He blinked and hugged her back, wondering at the sudden show of emotion. And then he felt the wetness on his cheek where hers had pressed against it.

He pulled away. “You’ve been crying.”

Wendy looked up and stiffened. She stood, straightening, her eyes on something behind Michael. She hurriedly wiped at her cheeks and eyes and motioned for her brother to come into the room.

Michael glanced once over his shoulder. Billy Jukes was leaning against a wooden banister, his one good eye locked on Michael and Wendy. It glittered in the noon-day light, his expression making it clear that he’d noticed the exchange.

Suddenly self-conscious, and feeling inexplicably protective of his big sister, Michael stepped into the captain’s quarters and Wendy closed the door after him.

“What’s going on? Why were you-” Michael had meant to ask her, once more, why she had been crying, but when Wendy moved away and he was able to get a good look at his surroundings, he could do no more than stand there, in awe, and gaze at the luxuriousness of Captain James Hook’s living quarters.

“Wow. . . .”

Wendy sighed heavily. “Yes. He does seem to have a lot of things, doesn’t he.”

“Holy smokes. . . .” Michael deftly ran his hand over a gold engraved harp that rested against the nearest wall. Beside it was a violin, polished and perfect in its intricate scroll work. Michael moved down the row of instruments, his shaking fingers running over the smooth wood and carved ivory. The occasional ruby or emerald inlay winked at him in the light streaming through the cut glass windows.

“We’re going to shore, you know,” he told her as he eyed the precious belongings of the notorious pirate captain.

“Yes, Smee told me,” Wendy replied.

“They said it would take them a while to get everything ready. I asked if I could come see you since we were leaving anyway, and Captain Hook gave Jukes the order to escort me here.”

Wendy was quiet. Michael was too absorbed in what he was seeing to notice that she was too quiet.

And then, as if jolted out of his admiration by his own words, Michael shook his head, dug his fingers into the front pocket of his jeans, and pulled out a folded scrap of paper. “I saved this when mom and dad were taking all of your stories and giving them to Dr. Coffer.”

Wendy took the paper from him and unfolded it. Her own handwriting covered every inch of the sheet, from edge to edge. It was one of his favorite bits from one of her best stories. He’d managed to swipe it just before their father had ripped through her room, a tornado of unfantasy, seizing and destroying the realms that Wendy had so carefully built up over the years.

He watched her reading the words now, a tiny smile playing about her pink lips. And he didn’t fail to notice when her eyes became shiny once more.

“Oh Michael,” she whispered. “Will we ever be able to go home again?”

Michael was not an ordinary ten year old. And so, when she asked if they would ever be able to go home again, he knew she didn’t mean it literally. He knew that what she actually meant was, “How will we ever face that again? How will we ever be able to live in that world when it refuses to believe in this one?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know.” And he didn’t know if he even wanted to, anyway. It was better here. He was tired of cleaning out the gun deck, but at least here, no one beat him up. Hook wouldn’t let his men lay a finger on him, in fact. It was strange, but even amidst his worst enemies in Neverland, he was safer than he was among his peers in the “real” world.

Wendy finished reading the paper and refolded it. “That was one of my favorites, you know.”

“Mine too,” he told her.

She handed the sheet back to him and he repocketed it. “I have a few as well,” she told him as she dug into her own jeans pocket and pulled out the papers she’d swiped from Dr. Coffer’s table during their last session. “It was the story I wrote for you the day he gave me those pills.”

“You said you didn’t have time to write,” Michael frowned.

“I know I did.” She shook her head and ran a hand through her long hair. “I’m sorry, Michael. I fibbed to you because – ” She sighed heavily. “Because Mrs. Pence took the story from me and turned it over to Dr. Coffer before I went to meet him for our appointment that afternoon.” She pinched the bridge of her nose with a slim thumb and forefinger. “It didn’t go well. At all.” She shook her head again and lowered her hand. “And I was afraid that after the way that appointment went, if I so much as read you another word of my stories, you would get into as much trouble as I was in.” She turned from him and made her way to Hook’s bed, where she sank down onto it and stared at the floor.