Note:This is my first fanfic story. I hope you like it. It is my modern-day fantasy-free interpretation of Peter Pan about an average teen suffering from the fear of growing up.

Disclaimer: I do not own some characters and phrases


To Die Would be an Awfully Big Adventure

Prologue

Health class: my worst nightmare. My teacher was progressing to hand out diagrams of the male and female reproductive organs. When she got to me, I tried to avoid looking at the gruesome pictures.

"You're going to have to look at them eventually, Peter," Wendy said, giving me a smirk.

"But I don't want to," I whined as the teacher began the lecture.

"Sex education is important. We don't want you to have unprotected sex and pay for it in some way that could hurt you for the rest of your life," the teacher explained. "Did you know the time when most teens like yourselves have unprotected sex is after the prom and the Snow Ball?"

Argh. The Snow Ball was the worst pun I had ever heard. Couldn't they give our holiday dance a better name? I mean, really, it's stupid.

It was a few minutes before I whispered to Wendy, "Why do we have to learn about every little gland in our body? Why couldn't things just … well … be?"

"Are you listening?" she asked.

"No, I mean, they can just say 'don't have sex,' but why do they have to teach us the –" I shuddered " – the parts."

"'Cause someone asked where babies come from and someone else decided to find the answer," Wendy replied.

I thought for a few minutes. "Well, what if people never grew up? There would never need to be any new kids, and we wouldn't have to learn about this stuff."

"Yes, and if people could fly there would be no dependency on foreign oil," Wendy replied frankly, shaking her head.

I didn't understand how other people could be so comfortable with this stuff. Whenever someone mentions the word puberty I flush with embarrassment. As you can imagine, health class was much, much worse.

I started to pay more attention to the teacher then decided it was a mistake. Finally she said, "Okay, now I want you to work with partners to label the parts of the reproductive systems on the diagrams I passed out."

"Now you have to look at it, Peter," said Wendy, with a reassuring but joking smile on her face.

With I deep breath I looked down. All it seemed to be was a bunch of squiggles and lines. I decided to pretend it was so. I pointed to a little circle attached to a bigger lump by a little line. "What's that?" I asked Wendy, savoring the moment to look up at her beautiful baby blue eyes and away from the icky picture of the organs somewhere inside her.

She only took a moment away from her work to look up and say, "It's an ovary."

I shuddered, partially because I had to look down again and partially because Wendy could answer so calmly.

A girl behind me noticed and, crinkling her nose, she said, "Grow up."

I turned back facing front and buried my face in my hands.

I don't want to grow up.


Book Reference: This section is where I will tell you what part of the book this came from, and which characters are which and so forth. All my book references will be from the 1971 Brockhampton Press Ltd. edition. In this preface, I just talk about the background of what/who Peter is, much like the first chapter "Peter Breaks Through." In the book, it talks about a place in children's minds called "neverlands" where they play. On pg. 23 Mrs. Darling has a dream that Peter has broken the "film" that separates real life from the neverlands, and that her children are looking in on him. The reason I am telling you this is because I can't parallel this in my story, and it is important to knowing where peter came from, and written confusingly in the book.