Pan's Revenge (8 page)

There’s no
one out here who could see me, so it should be alright to change on
the roof. My booty is a dark red t-shirt with long sleeves, a
leather jacket, and pants that look like the ones Angel wore when
she came to Neverland—a funny light blue material. Everything fits
perfectly.

The only
problem is my feet are still naked and cold. Raiding another house,
I grab a laced pair of black shoes that, after holding them against
my soles, seem to be my size. Back on the roof of Angel’s house, I
sit down and put them on, then I rock a few times back and forth on
the balls of my feet. The shoes feel comfortable, perfectly made
for running.

Now that I’m dressed, hopefully I’d fit into
this strange world. I silently glide down to Angel’s balcony. A
double wing door leads inside. One part is closed, the other stands
wide open, with silky white curtains drawn together.

As soon as I
slip inside, a whiff of her familiar scent envelopes me. Angel is
fast asleep in the four-poster bed on the other end of the room.
Her deep breaths sound peaceful in the silent darkness. I tiptoe
over to her side and gaze down at her face.

Her soft hair
and rosy lips tempt me to touch them. Much more so than last time I
saw her. Or maybe they looked the same back then and I just didn’t
notice? I’d love to skim my fingers across the tender skin on her
cheek, but I don’t want to wake her. Instead, I tug gently at the
duvet until her bare shoulder is freed. She’s wearing some strappy
silk top or dress the color of eggshells. It almost blends in with
her pale skin.

Pulling the
duvet down a little more, I realize there’s no chain around her
neck. She’s not wearing the ruby heart she got from James. The one
I gave her first. It’s not on her nightstand, or anywhere on the
desk next to the balcony doors. Damn. I would have loved to take it
back to Neverland and dangle it in front of Hook’s nose. The rat’s
ass would freak out, thinking I hurt his lovely girlfriend. Phase
one of my plan to take vengeance on my brother.

There are several shelves and a chest of
drawers at the other side of the room which I could search for the
gem, but I have a better idea. I’ll come back tomorrow and just ask
Angel about it.

Suppressing a
snicker, I slip out through the curtains and glide up into the sky.
Finding home is easy. I don’t need any more beans to show me the
way when it’s etched in my memory from the weird flight
here.

Dawn is breaking when I reach Neverland. I’m
starved and dead tired, but there’s no chance I can crawl into bed
when I return to the tree house. Five worried Lost Boys and an
anxious pixie are awaiting me. Tami flings her arms around my neck
even before my feet touch the ground.

“Oh, Peter!” she cries. “Thank the fairy
light, you’re alive!”

I hug her to my chest but then put her down
to her feet. “Of course, I’m alive. What did you think?”

“You were gone half a day and the entire
night,” Toby says and claps a hand on my shoulder. He has to reach
up now to do so. It surprises me, how little my aged appearance
seems to unsettle them. Then again, they had thirty-three days time
to get used to it, while I got the full scale slammed at my face in
a second.

“After what happened to you”—he grimaces and
his gaze moves up and down my front—“we just didn’t know if we’d
ever see you again. Where have you been? What happened to you?” He
frowns as if the next thing he’s going to say is the most important
question of all. “And where did you get these weird clothes
from?”

I almost
blurt out that I visited London but, just in time, I hold off. No
one needs to know yet. Not before I got a chance to talk to Angel.
Jaw set, I tell them in a cold voice, “Hook did this to me. Somehow
he found out how to make me age again. I got these things from
town.” Swallowing hard after a short pause, I say through gritted
teeth. “And he took the gold.”

Appearing
the most appalled of
all, Skippy sucks in a breath. “Hook found the
treasure?”

I nod. “It’s
all gone.”

Everybody looks as stricken as I felt when I
found the cave empty. Everybody but one little pixie. Her eyes
closed, she lets go of a relieved sigh.

Stan turns to her, quirking his brows in a
reproachful frown. “What the hell was that?”

Tami searches
his face for a long time, then her gaze skates over the rest of us.
“Now, come on, you all.” She flutters a few feet up and puts her
fists to her hips. “For once in
forever
, we don’t have to worry
about pirates ambushing us or Hook coming to slice all our throats
because of this darn treasure.”

I suck in a lungful of air to reply, but she
cuts me off with a raised finger that she points at my nose. “No,
you won’t, Peter! Maybe you and Hook had your peaceful moments. But
after what he did to you—making you grow up and all—it’s obvious
things haven’t changed. He’d be chasing us until he gets what he
wants. And it was his from the beginning.”

She glides down until her bare feet are
planted firmly on the ground again, then she stalks up to me and
stands on her tiptoes, gaze lifted to mine. The top of her head is
level with my navel right now, and still she manages to make me
back off. “It’s time to stop this stupid game and give us all a
break!”

After a long pause, I say in a low voice, “I
didn’t know you felt like this.”

“Maybe because you never asked, Peter
Pan.”

She’s right. I never did. All these years, I
simply assumed everyone was having fun and liked things the way
they were. The pixie, too. Big mistake, obviously. Arms folded over
my chest, I look at the Lost Boys, one by one. “Do you feel the
same way?”

Sparky digs a hole into the dirt ground with
his toe. His face turns an evil red from the base of his throat up
to the hairline of his buzz cut. “I think I’m actually with Tami on
this.”

All the boys gasp, turning to him. They might
have been prepared for Tameeka to back out, but Sparky’s retreat is
a surprise to everyone. He lowers his gaze to his toes—or he would
if his round tummy wasn’t in the way.

“Fine. Anyone else?” I snap. This really
isn’t my week.

Toby rakes his black hair back and ties it to
a ponytail at the back of his head, showing his undercut. He always
does this when he’s in battle mood. “I say we leave the kids home
and the rest of us go and bring the treasure back!”

Tami growls at him for this comment, but then
she takes Sparky’s hand and pulls him away from us, while Skippy,
Loney and Stan howl in agreement. They drum their fists on their
chests and dance around me like Indians.

“What’s the plan?” Toby asks.

Looking after the pixie and stout Sparky, I
feel a rift cracking between us. Is this because I’m older now? And
why am I the only one aging so fast? The other boys are still the
same as they were yesterday, last month, ten years ago.

Toby tugs on my jacket. “Peter…?”

Pulled out of my thoughts, I turn to him. I
do have a plan. But it’s too early to tell them about it. First I
have to see Angel again. “All in good time. Let me just sleep a
couple hours”—I stretch my neck and yawn—“and later today I have to
run an errand.” I want to time my next visit to London so that
Angel is awake. “We’ll talk about everything tomorrow.”

Running the zipper of his bear vest up and
down, Stan asks in a skeptical voice, “Since when do you have to
run errands without us?”

“Since I grew a beard,” I snap back. But then
I start laughing. Only because I look older now, I don’t have to
act or actually feel older, right? Grabbing a wooden sword from the
rack by the mattress mountain, I challenge him. “And don’t you ever
question me again. I’m still the better sword fighter out of all of
you.”

Never one to
miss out on a good fight, Stan draws his own sword and we battle
across the ground level of the tree until one of us is lying flat
on his back, begging for mercy. Today, this would be me, but only
because the pixie got in my way and I tripped backward over
her.

“
Die, Peter
Pan
!” Stan barks and pushes his sword at
me, which I catch between my arm and my ribcage, moaning and
coughing like I breathed my last.

The Lost Boys
cheer for my opponent. Tami, who’s still trapped under my left leg,
scowls at me and curses in a language not made for young girls. I
lift my leg and set her free, then I accept Toby’s and Loney’s
hands to pull me up.

They let me get to bed eventually. Exhausted
and fully dressed, I slump face-first into my pillow. Thank God,
sleep comes over me before I can start mulling over the doom Hook
pushed me into.

*

All is quiet
when I wake again. The Lost Boys must have gone out to either
play
Catch the Indian
or hunt dinner. My stomach rolls in protest at
the thought of missing another fabulous meal roasted over a
campfire. I haven’t eaten in…weeks! Raiding the pantry, where we
always keep fruits, nuts and sometimes even veggies, I grab a
handful of berries, a carrot, and two apples and plow through them
in record time.

Next to the
kitchen sink, there is a catapult for garbage. I place the apple
core and banana peels into the leather strap and shoot them out
through the hatch into the jungle, one at a time. Usually, the boys
and I fight over who can operate this self-made little piece of
ingenuity. Today, however, it’s boring.

When all the
garbage is discarded and I’m ready to leave, I slide a glance over
to Tami’s door. It’s closed. This normally means that the pixie is
in her room. I’m wondering why she hasn’t come out. She should have
heard me being up and about. Oh boy, she must be pretty
mad.

I don’t like it when the pixie is in bad
mood, or any of the others for that matter. I grimace and sigh, but
finally I walk to the door and knock. “Tami? Can I come in?”

There’s no answer. After another knock, my
hand drops to the brass doorknob. A slight twist, and the door
cracks open. Used to simply walking inside, I’m not prepared for
the consequences of my new height. A moan escapes me as my head
knocks hard against the roof of the doorway. Stars dot my vision.
Damn, is this the kind of trouble I have to deal with from now on?
Rubbing my aching forehead, I stoop to fit through the door.

It takes a couple of seconds to recover and
for my eyes to focus again. Tami’s room is empty. Her bed, the
shape of a pink seashell, is neatly made. I turn and head out, but
then I stop and cast a glance over my shoulder. A music clock
stands on the chest of drawers that the Lost Boys and I carved for
the pixie ages ago. Even though I never told anybody, the tune was
always one of my favorite.

Since there’s
no one else but me in here, I sneak over and spin the key. The
porcelain princess begins to twirl on the small round platform. A
smile tugs on my lips as the sweet song starts out. I hum along,
but my voice is deeper than usual and strangely raspy. My happiness
slips away.

In front of
the chest, I sink to the floor, lean against the tower of drawers
and tilt my head back. How can everything change in the blink of an
eye? I don’t want to be old. I don’t want to look and sound like an
adult. My nails dig into my palms until I feel the warm drops of
blood in my fists. I hate that the Lost Boys have to lift their
chins now if they want to look into my face. I hate that tossing
garbage out of the tree with the catapult isn’t fun anymore. And I
hate Tami being angry at me. She never was before.

Why, Hook, did you have to change my life
when all was perfect?

Breathing deeply a few times through my nose,
I press my lips together and grind my molars. The pixie might be
happy there’s no reason for another battle with the pirates. But
for me, the real fight has just begun. I’m not done with Captain
James Hook yet. I swear I won’t rest until his dead body lies at my
feet.

Pushing up from the floor, I rush back to the
main room and zoom out through the hole in the treetop. It’s time
to start phase one of my plan to destroy my father’s greatest
mistake.

After last night, finding my way back to
London is easy enough. East and up, then straight on toward a set
of three stars in a triangle. Through a shower of falling stars, a
loop around the moon, and descending behind it. Finally, taking a
hard left curve at the clock tower.

I follow the
river for a mile and a half. Reaching the outskirts, I aim for the
street with Angel’s house. According to the bright sun high in the
sky, it must be around three in the afternoon.
The perfect time to arrive in London.

Best would be
to return to the roof and then sneak down to her balcony to meet
her. I barely landed, when Angel’s voice drifts up to me. She’s
calling for Paulina and Brittney Renae. If I remember it right,
they’re her little sisters. Stepping closer to the edge of the roof
at the other side, I spot her in front of the house, two strawberry
red-haired girls squeal as they come out the door and run toward
her.

Angel is wearing a black coat that’s shaped
like a dress and barely covers her knees, her feet stuffed in
painful-looking high heeled shoes. Amazing, how easily she can walk
in these. The girls flank her, taking her hands, and together they
head down the street.

Never letting
them out of sight, I follow, sneaking along the roofs. Less than a
mile away from their home is a park. Since the l
ine of houses stops quite a bit before the entrance, I
glide down from the last roof, using a massive chestnut tree for
cover.