Chapter 1

An Unexpected Visitor

Emma walked along the grass as the winter sun shone against her pale face and the wind blew through her brown hair gracefully. Despite the cold, Emma was still wearing short, jean shorts for that was all that they had given her at the orphanage. She shivered because of the few snowflakes falling to the ground, but continued on her way back to St. Agnes Orphanage. She glanced at an empty, bright red telephone booth on her way back from the library that lay on the corner, a few blocks south of the orphanage. She had managed to steal away for a few moments to hurry to the library to pick up an exciting read. As she came to the large door of the orphanage that had been her home for a few weeks, the bright smile vanished from her face, for the door had opened, revealing a terrible woman: Ms. Beatrice Smyth.

Ms. Smyth glared down at Emma for a brief second and dragged her into the lonely building. She thought that maybe she should not have risked her well being for a book, but she had wanted to engulf herself in another fantasy to escape the tragic event that had happened weeks before.

"How dare you run away like that!" yelled Ms. Smyth as she pulled Emma by the ear up the oak staircase, past some of the children who were watching the television in the other room. "And for what purpose?" she questioned and grabbed the book that she was grasping tightly in her small hands. "Peter Pan?" she spat when she saw the cover of the tattered book, and threw it over the side of the railing, sending it to the floor many feet below us. Emma longingly gazed at the classic book that's pages flew as they sailed to the ground.

"But Ms. Smyth," Emma began, but was silenced by a tightened grip on her arm. Ms. Smyth swung open the door to the hallway closet that was filled with the dirty laundry of the other children and teenagers at the orphanage and locked the door with her key.

"This should teach you not to leave!" Ms. Smyth screamed as she peered through the crack in the door and stared Emma straight in the eye with her cold gray eyes. Ms. Smyth turned on her heel and started down the hall to the children's rooms and hurried them off down the stairs for supper. Though Emma was painfully hungry, she did not dare pound on the door for someone to let her out, for she feared that Ms. Smyth would beat her. Instead, she slid down the edge of the wall and plopped down onto a dirty, old jacket. Being as cold as it was in the wintertime in London, she tightly wrapped the jacket round her body and began to shed a few tears because she missed my parents dearly.

Just a few weeks before, her parents had died tragically in a car accident, and having no family friends or relatives in the area since they had just moved from Surrey to London recently, the authorities had no idea where to place a fifteen-year-old girl except for in the vacant St. Agnes Orphanage. Emma was suffering from an awful loss and had expected the masters to console her, but they all seemed to ignore her, and Ms. Smyth abused her. Ms. Smyth forbade the children to talk to the "unwelcome, little brat," and they obeyed her, for they did not want to be abused as well. Emma would cry herself to sleep every night as she sat beside the window and gazed up at the stars, wishing that she could somehow escape her terrible nightmare.

Emma lay asleep in the closet, shivering from the cold, for a few hours. Finally, Ms. Smyth opened the door long after night had fallen, and shoved Emma's shoulder aggressively to wake her up. Ms. Smyth's blonde hair was pulled back in a tight bun causing her skin to look extremely pinched. Her small, silver glasses lay perfectly on her pointy nose, and her fierce eyes stared her down mirthlessly. She whispered harshly at Emma to wake immediately and get into the bedroom, and so she followed her orders.

The twenty girls lay quietly in their beds, dreaming of wonderful things, as Emma clambered into the bed that sat beside the window, not bothering to change into her pajamas. Ms. Smyth tossed her a look of disgust and hurried off out of the bedroom, her nightgown flowing behind her. It must have been the early hours of the morning, and Emma knew no one was going to be awake, so she lowered the thin sheets of her bed and crept out of bed and down the hall. She leaned over the side of the railing, and sure enough, the prized book had disappeared. Ms. Smyth had obviously thrown it away as a punishment, she thought. As if having her locked in an ice cold chamber was not enough!

Sulking, Emma walked silently back into the bedroom, passing the peaceful girls, and sat down in the window seat. The sky was beautiful that night, and she stared out at the stars and the brilliantly shining moon, wishing that her parents still had the opportunity to watch that same stars and the same moon that she was. A few tears had welled up in her eyes as she thought about her parents and how much she missed them, when suddenly she heard a noise in the hallway. Thinking it was Ms. Smyth, she dove to her bed that was only a few meters away, and pretended to be asleep.

Suddenly, Emma heard the door to the bedroom open, but when she opened one of her eyes to see who had entered the room, no one was there. Confused, she sat up straight in bed and peered around the darkened room, searching for whoever had entered. Little did Emma know, but a boy was just above her head, perched on one of the white rafters in the ceiling. He had dirty, blonde hair, and beautiful blue eyes that stared down at the girl magically. A small creature floated beside the boy, glowing a faint, golden color.

Emma was not able to fall back asleep, and lay in her bed for a few minutes with her eyes closed, but her ears open for any sudden or unexpected sound. When the phone rang in the hallway unanswered, she decided to race out of her bedroom to pick it up, but the person had hung up before she reached the phone.

Then Emma noticed that her book, Peter Pan, lay in the trashcan beside her. She leaned down and reached for the book whose pages were almost all torn. She opened it for a brief second, gazing at the few words on the page being that of 'Tinker Bell' and 'Captain Hook', and smiled. She idolized that fantasy world that she could now enjoy.

The boy, wearing an outfit made entirely of leaves and roots, had remarkably flown down from the rafters to the floor beside Emma's bed and walked silently into the boys' dormitory that was immediately next to the girls. He was followed directly by his tiny fairy that lingered by his ear. The boy opened the door to the boys' dormitory and crept inside. He quietly closed the door just as Emma had spun around to walk back into the girls' bedroom. Instead of walking back into her bedroom, however, Emma stopped beside the closed door to the boys' dormitory when hearing a faint voice from inside.

"Tink! What are you doing? Stop!" whispered the boy as his fairy flew around in violent circles about the room, "You can't wake up everyone! We're only to take a few of the boys!" he said urgently as his fairy pulled on the tiny boys' ears, but it was not enough to make them wake up.

Emma pulled open the door, curious as to who was shouting a name that she had just read in the book. Standing in the small lane between the several beds stood a boy, a bit younger than her with tasseled hair and an outfit that looked as though he had just come from a jungle safari. The boy, startled at a girl in his presence for the first time in ages, jumped aback.

"Who are you?" whispered Emma.

"I am Peter…Peter Pan!" the boy stated proudly and bowed.

"What?" Emma laughed, not believing what the boy was saying.

"I have come to collect these boys to join me in Neverland as my faithful Lost Boys!" exclaimed Peter a bit too loudly, which caused Emma to push a finger to her mouth to hush him.

"You mean, you are the boy who had an entire novel written about him?" she asked, pointing to the book that she held in front of her.

The boy that called himself Peter Pan walked cautiously towards Emma and snatched the book from her hand unexpectedly. He gawked at the cover of the book because a drawing of a boy that looked identical to him was painted on. The boy flipped through the pages quickly, glancing at the pictures that showed him some of his passed adventures, like battling Captain Hook with Wendy, his first and only love, that had died years ago of old age.

"I'm a story," said the boy disbelievingly as a ball of light zoomed around his head. Amazed at the sight of a fairy, Emma began to believe that the boy was indeed the legendary Peter Pan, "I'm a story!" the boy exclaimed loudly, excited to have become a story of his own.

"You are Peter Pan!" Emma said happily.

"Yeah, of course I am!" said the boy, still looking through the pages of the book with drawings, "Who wrote this? Wendy did, didn't she?"

"No," said Emma, and pointed to the author's name on the cover, "J.M. Barrie did. He lived long ago of course."

"Wendy was always a wonderful storyteller," the boy continued, ignoring what Emma was telling him, and shoved the book back into her hands. "Well, it was nice meeting you," the boy said to Emma, and flew up into the air, hovering above some of the boys' beds.

"You can fly!" shouted Emma, completely forgetting that there were sleeping boys in the room that could wake at any moment. Peter shrugged and smiled at her, then tapped a boy on the nose to wake him up. He did so to five other boys, ones that Emma had never acquainted with before, and they all woke up groggily. When they saw that Peter Pan was flying just above them, they sprang out of bed and begged for him to hurl fairy dust on them so that they could think their happy thoughts and fly away to Neverland.

Peter wondered how all of the boys already knew of his secret on how to fly, but he did not bother to dwell on the subject and quickly grabbed Tinker Bell and squeezed her tight, sending fairy dust all over the boys' heads. The boys were all smiling brightly, and one by one, they all began to float higher and higher into the rafters above their beds. Emma thought that she was dreaming and pinched her arm to wake up. It was then that she realized that she was not dreaming, and that Peter Pan, the fictional character of her childhood, really did exist!

"I'm not dreaming! This is real!" yelled Emma and Peter glanced over to her and laughed once more.

"Off to Neverland we go!" yelled Peter and the young boys began to fly out of the window, "Second star to the right, don't forget!" he shouted after them.

"Wait!" yelled Emma, as Peter was about to set off behind the boys, "I wish to join you, Peter Pan!" He spun around in the air and tossed a cute look about his face.

"If you wish it," he said with a smile and seized Tinker Bell who was still zooming about the air, and squeezed her tightly, sending fairy dust on Emma. Her happy thought at that moment was escaping the orphanage and living a storybook life, and she soared up and up into the air. Peter reached for her arm, and they flew out of the window, just as Mrs. Smyth had entered the dormitory to see what the fuss was about.