Students halted their activity when they saw Hades the secretary stalking through the halls. It was almost scary, seeing the secretary not seated behind his infamous mahogany desk. Cheerleaders stopped their chatter as the he passed by, their cheerful smiles slowly disappearing. A couple who was making out earlier quickly spread apart, the girl running as fast as she could down the hall, squealing. Random kids warily closed their lockers, keeping their eyes locked on Hades.
This was not an ordinary sight.
It was rumored that he had an earlier job as a secretary at another high school, and the only time he left his desk was when he had smelled, not found, smelled, half a teaspoon of crack powder a student left on the way out of his office. While searching the student's possessions, sure enough, there was drug, and a lot of it. Not only did the student go to juvie, but some say he was mentally scarred for life, for reasons unknown.
The student originally known as Ed from the notorious gang 'The Hyenas" was never heard from again.
Remembering this story, students knew that Hades was out for blood, and shit was about to go down.
When the bell rang to end the French class (which Peter slept straight through), he groggily walked to the girls who gave him the answers to the French quiz. He had to make his thanks yous fast, he needed to catch up with Wendy.
The girls were gathering their books when they both stopped to look down and blush as Peter approached them; Peter of course taking no notice.
"Hey, thanks for saving me back there," he rubbed his eyes, "I can hardly speak English as a language alone (and I was born here) so my guessing skills at other languages um... sucks,"
They both giggled. The one with the messy blond bangs handed him a piece of paper.
"You're welcome. My name's Eilonwy, by the way, and this is my friend Alice. Here's something to remember us by, just in case you need help with your French at home," she looked down, red covering her from head to neck.
Peter looked down at the piece of paper, which two numbers on it. Their numbers.
Holy crap.
"Well the problem is..." scratched his neck, "I don't exactly have a cell phone to remember you by,"
Elionwy looked at him as if he was a caveman. Alice smiled.
"Don't worry, my mother never lets me have cell phones either because I only play the pretty games on them," Alice said cheerfully in a British accent, "but if you have a home phone we can keep in touch too,"
This was the part that was hard. How does someone explain that they don't have a home phone either? That was always a problem at Animation High too; which is why the orphans always kept their heads out of the limelight, because having friends with families always lead to unwanted questions.
"Well, I-" but before he could explain, an unlikely savior came to his rescue.
"Okay girls, you better get on going. No one is in the classroom anymore, you're going to be late, late, late! Out you go,"
At that moment, Peter was saved by his childhood friend, Wendy Darling.
She had a habit of doing that.
Wendy pushed them both out of the classroom, leaving her and Peter alone in the French room.
Suddenly, a quick memory flashed through Peter's head.
"Wendy you're gonna fall!" Flynn shouted.
Peter couldn't remember how she managed to do it, but somehow she was standing on top of the monkey bars in the rusting playground in the projects next to the orphanage.
It was a calm day, the sky was blue with no cloud in sight. The area was deserted, the black kids knowing that venturing into that playground was a death sentence, not only because of the occasional shooting, but because every bit of the playground was about to fall apart. But of course, nothing deterred Peter, Aladdin, Flynn and Wendy's pure joy of playing on a real playground, even if the slide was about to split in half any second or the monkey bar couldn't hold more than ninety pounds.
Wendy had tears streaming down her face as the monkey bars let out a small groan.
"I can't get down! Somebody catch me!"
"I'll do it!" Aladdin immediately volunteered, but Peter rolled his and let out an exasperated sigh and pushed Aladdin out of the way.
"You're stupid, Wendy. You can jump by yourself,"
"She'll break her head open!" wailed Flynn
"Nah, she'll only break a leg," Aladdin said, staring anxiously at the girl perilously balanced on the monkey bars.
"Fine." Peter lifted his arms up, "just jump. I'll catch you,"
Peter knew it was going to hurt. That he was ready for. But he wasn't ready for how quickly she jumped off.
She crashed into his body at what seemed to him one thousand miles per hour, knocking him off his feet. His head banged against the playground floor, and his lungs feeling crushed by Wendy's weight.
He groaned in pain, only hearing in the background what he thought was someone (Aladdin) dying of laughter, and someone (Flynn) crying and screaming about how he 'could've gotten a head crack' (which was a concussion, in little kid language).
Peter had broken his leg from the impact and Wendy got off clean.
The moral of the story?
When someone asks to catch them when they fall, be prepared because you might feel the same pain as they would when they hit rock bottom. Or you know, call an adult when a kid is trapped on the monkey bars of doom.
"Hey Wendy," Peter said smiling, thinking about how he could have missed her name on the exam in Hades' office.
"Hello Peter Pan," said his old childhood friend.
And the ice began to break.
Peter and Wendy were walking together to Wendy's next class, the hallways nearly empty because they walking as slow as possible, wanting to talk to each other as much as they could.
He had already thanked her for telling him the last word in the French quiz, and they had briefly talked about Flynn and Aladdin. She showed her response to them still being stuck in the orphanage by showing a brief moment of pity, but then Peter quickly changed the subject.
"So what are you doing back here? Didn't you move to England?"
"My father was transferred here a few months ago for a job here, ironically," she said in her British accent.
"Ironically because I was here or...?"
"That, and because this was the same place where my family was dirt broke,"
"Oh yeah." Peter didn't come to the conclusion that because she lived near the orphanage, she lived in the dingy flats and, like most of the people in that neighborhood, lived on food stamps, "so now you're rich?"
"Oh Peter don't be so dense,"
"Who uses the word dense? Are you a grandma?"
"I do. Now shut up," Wendy said, "my father had a business opportunity from my uncle in London, he took it, and he is doing fairly well. Well enough to put three children through private school."
Peter stared at her.
"So... you're rich?"
Wendy let out an exasperated sigh, "YES. I am rich,"
"That's all you had to say darling," Peter mockingly patted her cheek, receiving an expression mixed with shock and pleasure from Wendy. She shook her head.
"And Peter, I must ask you. What are you doing he-"
"Shit!" Peter interrupted her, stopping in his tracks and turning around.
He ran behind a group of lockers, dragging Wendy behind him.
"What's going-"
Peter out a hand on Wendy's mouth as he pointed to tall, standing Hades just ahead of them, holding a piece of paper that had the Animation High crest on the top.
"Flynn and I aren't supposed to be here, and because of my cleverness, we got past him. He must have found out, and now he's looking for us. How far is your classroom?"
Wendy pulled his hand off of her mouth and pointed to a room next to them.
Luck doesn't always work out for Peter, but that was the one time it did.
The story with this chapter… oh my god.
I actually got my computer back a while ago, and I even wrote a quick chapter in Puerto Rico on my aunt's computer. So I emailed myself the chapter, to find out on my current computer that mircosoft word doesn't work. So I had to start over from scratch.
I wrote AT LEAST ten drafts of this freaking chapter. The only thing I kept was the first section with Hades walking the halls. My chapters involved flashbacks with kissing, situations where Elionwy, Alice and Belle were Wendy's friends and accompanied her and Peter to their next class, really really awkward reunions between Peter and Wendy, and a whole load of crap I would end up deleting.
And that wasn't the worst part.
Every time I would write on goggle docs, the internet would stop working. I would loose my train of thought, and when the internet started to work again, I would look at the chapter and almost give up. It was horrible.
I'm sorry it took realllllllllllllllllllyyyyyy yy long, but I did it for you guys. And for me, because I would keep telling myself:
"You actually know where you're going with this story. Just write."
So thanks for the support (especially from LearnMeRight and Suzerenma), and please let me know if the chapter needs adjusting (I stayed up until 1:30 half asleep working on this).
Bye :)