A.N.: You made it to chapter two? Wow, I didn't think anyone would. You get a cookie.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
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Susan Rush sat in her office, reading a newspaper and smoking a cigarette. She knew she should quit, as it was giving the wrong impression to the children, but dealing with them was stressful, and she needed something to calm her down.
There was a knock on the door, and she called for whoever it was to come in. It turned out to be the man from the shop down the road.
"Hey Susie." He said, looking nervous. He always did look nervous; his eyes had a tendency to shift from one side to the other, like he was looking for an escape.
"Hi...Archie?" She hoped she had got his name right. She'd been going to his off-license for the last ten years, so she should know it. Nothing he did made her think she'd got it wrong, so she continued, "Is there something I can do for you?"
"Um, I think one of your kids have got out." He told her, "There's a boy hanging around outside my shop, and he's wearing...foliage."
"Sounds like one of mine." Actually, it sounded like several of hers. Some of the younger boys in the home liked to dress up, and when dressing up clothes grew scarce, they were good and compensating.
She grabbed her coat, and followed Archie to the corner shop. She could see the leave clad figure from a while away, but the closer she got, the older he looked, and the less sure she was that it was one of hers.
"He doesn't live in our Home." She told Archie as they finally came to his shop. The boy, who looked about thirteen, wore a very well made suit of leaves, and his dirty blond hair gathered in loose curls at the top of his head. He was barefooted, and Susan was surprised to see he had a knife at his waist. He was peering inside the shop with a look of astonishment on his face.
"Hey you, kid!" She called out, but he ignored her, "Kid! With the leaves!"
Finally he turned to look at her, and she saw his wide blue eyes had fear in them, as well as surprise.
"Kid, what are you doing out here at this time of night?" She asked, "Aren't your parents going to be looking for you?"
"I don't have any parents." He told her. He sounded American, and this alone worried Susan. That on top of his comment that he was parentless caused cause for alarm.
"Where do you live?" She asked, and he looked around shiftily before shrugging, "Hum, ok. Look Archie, I'm going to take him back to the home and see if I can find out where he comes from. Thanks for telling me about him. Hey Kid, what's your name?"
"Peter." He told her, straightening up, "Pan."
She stopped for a moment before bursting out laughing, "Sure you are...Peter. Well, why don't you come with me? You must be freezing. I'm Susan."
III
Peter followed Susan down the road to the 'Home' as she called it. Peter, naturally distrustful of adults, had decided not to tell her where he had come from, just in case she tried to send him back. He was a little annoyed that she had laughed at his name, but she seemed nice apart from that. She reminded him a little of Wendy's mother.
She took him inside a building that had those same magical bright lights that hurt his eyes. But Peter was used the strange things. He remembered how bizarre Wendy's house had looked when he had first visited it, and even stranger when he had visited it just now. He found it was best to ignore what he couldn't understand.
"Sit down here." Susan showed him a chair beside a table, and then took the seat on the other side of it. There was a big box on top of a little one, and she was pressing buttons on it. He couldn't see what was happening, but she looked like she was concentrating, "So Peter, where do you come from?"
"Don't know." He said unhelpfully. He would not be sent back to Neverland.
"Well, where do your parents live?" She tried, and then remembered it time, "I know, I know, you don't have parents. Have you ever?"
"I did when I was younger." He admitted, craning to look at what she was doing. The box was humming, and when he had craned his neck far enough he could see that on one side of the box lots of pictures where moving. It looked like a lot of writing, and he instantly leapt up to take a better look.
"Peter, sit down!" Susan almost shrieked. The boy had leapt across the table to look at her computer, and was now standing beside her. Well, he must have leapt, although it looked more like he had flew. But that was just silly. Peter, who looked angry with himself, walked back to his seat and sat down, "Ok...Uh...Where was I...? Oh yeah, so where did your parents live when you were younger?"
"I'm not sure...near Kensington Gardens, I think." He told her. He liked Susan; she was nice and looked nice too. She wasn't too grown up, but just a little too grown up. And she smelt funny, which was something Peter was used to, living with a load of boys who didn't wash.
"Ok, Kensington Gardens..." She was pressing buttons on a flat thing on her table, and frowning, "Peter, what's your real name?"
"Peter is my real name." He told her.
"I mean, what's your second name?" She asked, frowning at him.
"Pan." He told her. He supposed she had forgotten.
"Peter, be serious." She scorned, which just confused him. Why was she getting angry?
"I dislike being serious." He told her, "It is too grown up. But my name really is Peter Pan."
"Ok, ok." The anger was gone from her face, and she was smiling, "I suppose, Peter Pan, that you've been spending all this time in Never-Neverland?"
Peter stood up quickly, fear in his eyes, and his hand went to his knife, which it always did when he was upset, "No, of course not!" he said, backing away.
"Peter, calm down!" She called out, looking worried, "I was only joking. Don't worry. Look, I suppose you're tired, you can stay here for the night, and we'll sort out everything tomorrow, ok?"
Peter was tired. He had been wandering around London for a good deal of the night, trying to find out how to grow up. Perhaps he could stay here with Susan, just until he was old enough to prove to Wendy that he was right.
"Ok." He agreed, and she opened a door to the side of her office. There she took him up a set of stairs and into the bedroom for new comers. Peter, not taking off any of his clothes climbed right into the bed, and then turned to grin at Susan, "This bed is very comfortable."
"Um, that's good." She said, a little taken aback, "Well, you get some sleep, and I'll see you in the morning. Should I turn off the light?"
"Sure." Peter nodded, lying down. So Susan turned off the light and closed the door to his room, shaking her head. She walked back down to her office, where she continued to look on the Internet for a missing child report from around Kensington Gardens. Then she remembered that that's where the Peter Pan from the stories had run away to, and gave it up as a red hearing. So instead she phoned the police and alerted them, but they said that no missing boys had been reported around her area. They told her that they'd look into it, and make a visit in the morning to see the boy, but there wasn't much else they could do.
He was strange, that was for sure. He wore that outfit, which she supposed reminded her vaguely of Peter Pan, so naturally, and they way he talked! Of course, his American accent made her think he wasn't from around here at all, but then how did he get here? And they way he had so trustingly followed her back to her house! If some psycho had found him, Susan imagined that Peter would have followed them just as trustingly.
"Who are you Peter?" She whispered to her computer screen, half wishing for the answer to pop up in front of her. But nothing came, so she turned it off and went to bed.
III
Peter had lay in the darkness quietly for a little while, before getting out of the bed and creeping over to the window. He opened it quietly, and whispered into the night.
"Tink? Tinkerbell? You can come in if you want." He called, and a little flutter of light appeared in front of him, "Ah, there you are Tink. I found myself a place to stay. Oh the cleverness of me."
But Tinkerbell wasn't happy. She stomped her foot and pulled faces, until Peter was forced to try and console her.
"Don't worry Tink, I have a plan." He told her, "I'll only stay here until I'm a little bit grown up, and then I'll go and find Wendy. She'll be grown up too, and then we can go back to Neverland, and stay slightly grown up forever. I won't grow old Tinkerbell."
But Tinkerbell could not be consoled. In her little fairy mind she had decided that Peter cared more for Wendy then he did her, and had chosen Wendy. She told him this, and he couldn't convince her otherwise.
"Please don't leave Tink, I'll forget my plan if you do, and then I'll never get back to Neverland." So Tinkerbell, still very upset, agreed to stay, and Peter grinned a self satisfied grin. He closed the window, and climbed back into the bed, which was very comfortable, and fell asleep.
III
Peter did not know this, but he had stumbled across a home for abandoned and orphaned children, and Susan was one of the carers. The home was called Summers Children's Home, after the founder, Fred Summers. There was a statue of his head outside the house, which the children loved to muck around with. Yes, unknown to Peter, twenty other children were asleep in the house. The oldest was a seventeen-year-old boy called Nathaniel, and the youngest was a three-year-old girl called Abby.
The children of Summers house thought of themselves as quite wild. They often snuck out, and played tricks on the carers. They weren't, in general, particularly bad kids (although some of them where), but they had their moments. But none of them had ever met Peter, and when they did...
Well, Summers Children's Home was about to change.
III
When Peter woke, he found some clothes laid out on a chair for him. They looked a bit like the clothes he had seen John and Michael wear when they had played in the nursery, but also quite different. And poor Peter was not exactly sure as to how he was supposed to put them on, so he ignored them.
"Tinkerbell, I don't think adults believe in fairies." He said to his small companion, "So you should stay out of sight. You can stay in here, or you can explore outside. I'll need to know my way around."
Tinkerbell agreed that she would explore the surrounding area, and report back to him, and flew out of the window. Peter left the bedroom, and then found himself in a house where he had no idea where anything was. On the corridor where his room was there were four other doors, and Peter decided to look in all of them.
The first one was another bedroom, with four beds in it. It was pink, and had many toys scattered around it, and Peter decided it was a room for girls. The next door revealed another children's room, but this one was obviously a boys. It had five beds, and smelt like the Lost Boys.
The next room was very while and shiny and cold. It was a bathroom, but Peter had never seen one so he did not know this.
The final room was another bedroom, but this one had only one, large bed, and looked like it belonged to an adult. He shut the door, and turned to look at a set of stairs that led even higher into the house, but suddenly caught the smell of food. It was coming from downstairs, and he followed it. Directly opposite the bottom of the stairs was the door that led to the room he and Susan had sat in, but to the side there were more rooms. The first one he opened was another adult bedroom, and the next was another shiny cold room, but the final door revealed a very large room where the smell of food was coming from. And lots of noise. Noise that disappeared as soon as he walked in.
"Oh Peter!" It was Susan, and she was looking at him in surprise. She was stood by a very large table, which was surrounded by children, all looking at him. Some looked quite a bit older than him, "You didn't change into those clothes I left you..."
"They weren't mine." He explained, looking at all the children. They were sniggering, and Peter felt himself blush, and felt annoyed.
"I thought they might be more comfortable then...what you're wearing." She said, and then frowned at all the laughing children, "I don't know what you're giggling about Sam Deeley, I've only just convinced you to wear clothes around the house."
A boy who looked about five and reminded Peter of Michael blushed and looked away.
"Should I go up and change?" Peter asked, glaring at the children who still stared.
"If you like, yeah." Susan nodded, "You can have breakfast when you come back down. Some people will be here in a while to talk to you."
Peter left the room, and heard them all start to talk about him as he left. But he wasn't interested in what they had to say. He'd win them all over soon enough. He always ruled over boys, and he had charmed Wendy quickly, hadn't he?
Up in his room he started on the problem of the clothes. The top was easy enough, although the sleeves were a little bit tricky, and the trousers were easily put on once he realised that it would be easier if he sat down for the first bit. The buttons were a little bit tricky on the trousers, but he soon managed them. He took a guess with the socks and got lucky, although her wore one of them inside out. He took one look at the shoes and decided it probably wasn't worth the hassle.
He stood in front on the full-length mirror in the room. He wore a pear of loose jeans (although to him they were just dark blue trousers), and a baggy plain red t-shirt. He looked like any teenage boy his age, although maybe a fair bit grubbier. Then again, maybe not...
He walked back into the big room with the children and the food, and this time Susan smiled when she saw him.
"Yeah, that's much better." She indicted to a chair, "Do you want to join us?"
Peter sat at the table, and Susan handed him a plate, which he just looked at. Susan frowned slightly, and then just shook her head.
"Ok everyone, this is Peter, he came last night. He might be staying for a while, we don't know yet." She indicated to Peter, then started pointing around the table, "Ok Peter, you probably won't be able to remember this all right now but I'll try introducing you. Ok, that's Holly, she's just turned seventeen, and that's Finn, he's twelve. No? Sorry, he's thirteen. Lisa, Lisa, you're eight now, aren't you? Yeah, that's right."
And so it continued. Maggie was four, no five? No, four. Sam, cheeky little devil, he's five. That's Justin, he's fourteen. Karla's twelve, and so is Jolie. Peter's head spun with it. Abbey's three, Asher and Dylan are seven. Brian and Poppy, so grown up, they're ten! Leah's fifteen, and so is Tom. Peter didn't care how old they all where, but Susan insisted on telling him, and the numbers rang in his head. Ricky's nine; Shem's thirteen, same as Naomi. Conner's sixteen, and Nathaniel's seventeen. And she was done. If Peter had been asked to recite just one of their names and ages, he would have failed. And then came the question he had been dreading.
"Peter, how old are you?" Susan asked.
"Quite young." He told her, looking around shiftily. His stomach growled loudly, and he grinned, "And quite hungry."
"Oh yeah, of course." She grinned sheepishly and began putting food on his plate, "How old are you exactly?"
"I'm not sure." Which was, of course, how Peter Pan had replied in the book. Susan had stayed up all night reading it in the hopes that it would reveal something about the boy. It hadn't.
"You don't know how old you are?" One of the girls asked. Perhaps Karla.
"I know that I am young." He told her, starting on the food on his plate. It was toast and sausages, and he ate them with his fingers, ignoring the knife and fork, "I have been for a while. But I'm now ready to grow up."
"Ok." The girl nodded, then looked away. At the other end of the table the oldest boy...Nathaniel?...laughed and smiled at Peter.
"You don't look too young to me." He told him, "Does he Susan?"
"You leave him alone." Susan warned, but only half-heartedly. Nathaniel teased all the younger children, but never meanly, "Peter, some men want to talk to you, they'll be here in about half an hour, so finish up your breakfast and aren't those sausages burning your fingers?"
Peter, who was holding a scolding hot sausage, just shrugged and took a bite, "They're very good." He told her.
"Asbestos fingers?" One of the older girls suggested, poking her sausage and then pulling her finger away quickly, "Ouch!"
"Who are the men who want to talk to me?" Peter asked, finishing his sausage.
"Um, just some men who are trying to work out where you come from." She admitted.
"I don't come from anywhere." He told her, grinning. Some of the children laughed, and most of them found themselves warming to this strange boy, especially the younger ones.
"Well, they'll want to talk to you anyway." Susan told him, "You don't have a toothbrush, do you? I think Laura bought some new ones the other day so you can have one of those."
He finished his breakfast and followed Susan up into the second floor.
"I'm just going to pop into Laura's room for a moment, she works here with me. Her husband's granddad started this place. Just give me a sec." She disappeared into the adults bedroom and then came out a moment later carrying a green stick with white hairs on them, "This can be your toothbrush, it hasn't been used so don't worry about that. There's the bathroom, you can just brush your teeth and have a quick wash. The men will be here soon."
It didn't occur to her that Peter had no idea what a toothbrush was, why would it have? So Peter entered the big white room with a look of fear in his eyes. He held the toothbrush away from him, and looked at it.
"Tooth Brush." He said, "To brush teeth? Why?"
But he had been given an order, so he did the best that he could. He didn't actually do too bad a job considering that he didn't use water or toothpaste. Of course, he had never brushed his teeth before in his life, but that hadn't mattered in Neverland, where there was no such thing as tooth decay.
Once finished he went back down stairs, and found Susan waiting for him.
"Go wait in my office Peter." She told him, and then looked him over, "Did you wash?"
"No." he said honestly.
"Oh well, there's no time now. They'll be here in a few minutes." She ushered him into the office where he sat down in the chair. True to her word, several minutes later Susan returned followed by several men in matching suits.
"Peter, I didn't want to scare you, but the men who have come to see you are policemen." She looked like she had confessed a terrible secret, but Peter just looked at her blankly.
"What are policemen?" he asked, and the adults looked at each other in astonishment.
"I suppose it doesn't matter." She mumbled, "Um, they want to ask you some questions, is that alright?"
"Yes." He nodded.
"Miss Rush, would you mind leaving to room?" One of the men asked, and Susan nodded and walked out, leaving a now nervous Peter on his own.
"Miss Rush says that you're calling yourself Peter Pan." One of the men said.
"Well, it is my name." He replied.
They continued for a long time, asking him question after question. Where do you live, where are you parents, what are their names, what is your name. They never believed him when he said it was Peter Pan.
"I don't like this." He said finally, "I liked it better when I was on my own. I came here to grow up and everyone is getting angry with me. Do you want me to go away again?"
The men finally did leave him alone, and stood outside with Susan for a long time, talking to her. Peter soon grew bored and longed for the company of Tinkerbell or the Lost Boys. Or Wendy. He would have loved for the company of Wendy.
Finally Susan returned, looking tired. She smiled at Peter as she walked into the room and sat down on the chair.
"They're going to send round a woman to be your Social Worker." She explained, "Do you know what a Social Worker is?" Peter shook his head, "She a woman who's going to talk to you and try and figure out what's going to happen to you. They say that if they can't find your family there's a good chance you'll stay here, with us. Would you like that?"
"I'd get to play with the children?" Peter asked, and Susan nodded, "Then I suppose I'd stay. I'm getting rather lonely."
"You're not going to tell us anything about you, are you?" She asked, "Is it that you don't know the answer to any of our questions? Or do you just not want to tell us?"
Peter just smiled. He was going to live in this house, with these children, and he would grow up, but not very quickly. And then, when he was a little grown, he would go and find Wendy, and the two of them would return to Neverland, and everything would be back to normal.
Oh the cleverness of him.
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