"Peter Pan flew down and shouted, 'You're next Hook!' 'But you're dead!' Hook cried back, and Peter crowed with the air of someone who knows something you don't, and he called, 'You can't kill youth, you can't kill joy, you can't kill me!' And he was right, for no matter how mature we try to be, we're all kids when we get hurt and cry, so if you believe and always remain a kid at heart Peter Pan might come to your window one night." The kids in the library watched with wide eyes, and I smiled, "Who wants to hear the story of how Peter cut off Hook's hand and fed it to the crocodile?" A chorus of "ME"s and "Not that again," from the very back, "Okay," I said after a moment's thought, "How about how Peter became Peter Pan?" No child in the whole of the universe could say no to that, so I began with, "How there was once a boy, and a fairy flew into his window one day, that fairy's name was Tinkerbell. She was Peter's fairy, for whenever a baby laughs for the first time, the laugh breaks into millions of pieces and that was the beginning of fairies. Tinkerbell was Peter's fairy because she was from his laugh, and she sprinkled some pixie dust on the boy and since Peter was feeling happy at the arrival of what he viewed as a glowing bug with pretty wings, he flew out the window and into London town where the other fairies helped take care of him." Parents pretended to read a fancy book or magazine, but in truth they listened to my stories. "Once Peter grew into a boy, he got rather lonely, and decided to find some boy's in which he could share his adventures. The fairies told him of a place where one would never grow up, a place called Neverland, and Peter followed them to the Second Star to the Right, and straight on till morning. Peter made a rule, boys who fell out of their prams and were not found in seven days were taken to Neverland, and they were called the Lost Boys." "What about Hook, when does he come in?!" Somebody called, so I smiled and said, "There was once a pirate, most feared man on the seven seas. And that pirate's name was James Hook, but at the time he had two hands. Now, there is another way into Neverland, an orb, you tap it, you're teleported to a different area of Neverland, and if you hit it hard enough, thinking it's possessed because of the way it glows, you can bring a whole ship there. Now, Peter may not have liked grown-ups, but he loved a good sword fight, and he and Hook had some of the best. One particular day, Hook and Peter were fighting atop the mast, and Peter said, 'You know Captain, I wonder if you have a fairy,' Hook smirked a smirk that would give anyone but Peter nightmares. Hook said the accursed words, and children, because every time you say them a fairy somewhere drops dead, Peter let out a scream of rage and with one solid blow, cut off his hand. Hook fell to his knees, screaming and grabbing at his wrist, and Peter, in a moment of genius, threw the hand to the island's biggest crocodile, who not long after swallowed a clock so Hook has time to hide whenever he hears the croc coming, he loved the taste of his hand so much he wants to eat the rest of him. And to this very day, on the Second to the Right and Straight on till Morning, Hook somehow managed to survive being swallowed by the tic-tock croc and has sworn vengeance on Pan and the lost boys for making the beast and its' children hunt him forever in Neverland. Peter brought Wendy to his home about the same as in a book, but you can't be certain unless you'd been there yourself." Children cheered and adults smiled, recalling their childhood. "OR," I continued, and the spell of wonder was upon them again, "If you are lucky and get to go to Neverland, you might not be brought there in the way you expect, like in Peter Pan return to Neverland, Jane didn't fly there happily with Pixie Dust, she was thrown into a sack and put aboard the flying Jolly Roger, kidnapped and held hostage. She flew back home eventually after learning to believe, and told her children of the adventures she, and her mother Wendy had, and they told their children, because all children, except one, grow up." Smiling, I grabbed my book bag and the people listening made a noise that closely resembled, "Aw…" "Sorry, have to go, 'bout time anyway, getting dark." Nodding to the librarian on the way out, I hurried towards the small house that I'd inherited when my parents had died, it was supposedly the Darling home, and though it was so old it was impossible to tell. Hurrying in, I hung up my bag, paused mid-way to the fridge and grabbed the beat-up leather strap again. Grabbing a few cookies and milk which I put in the microwave to warm it up, no way I'm having a cold drink in the middle of a London winter. Finishing my snack quickly, I yawned and headed up to my room, I'd come to the library after a triple shift at Starbucks, so I was tired. Holding a battered Peter Pan book in my hands, I gave up trying to read it after seven tries, and I changed into a pair of black pants with a button, mostly because I don't really wear pajamas much, and a plain dark green shirt, my dark brown hair was held back in a short braid over my right shoulder, snow still dotting it.