Peter Pan

A Young Boy No More

By Raekitty13

Disclaimer: Umm, so the last chapter totally should've had a better disclaimer. Something along the lines of "Jessica gets really mad. If you don't like cursing you should probably skip this chapter." So I apologize for the lack of warning AND the late post.

Author's Notes:thank yous are awarded to - xXxSlytherinAtHeartxXx , Loslanna, Silver Eyed Slayer and anyone who has dared to read this far. Fear not for the end is in sight!

Chapter Nineteen- Wherefore aren't thou Pan?

Days turned into weeks, weeks into month, months into years as I desperately searched for Peter. My anger slowly ebbed away and as time progressed, so did my hope of ever finding him again. However, my faith in his wellbeing was always renewed when I looked upon my white Tinkerbell. She was the sole reason I continued living. Because of her existence I was able to believe that I hadn't killed the boy of my dreams. To her I felt I owed everything.

Nothing unusual ever seemed to happen. There were never any transfer students with gorgeous, skin kissed hair or unnaturally charming bright green eyes. All students seemed so dull to me. Never quite jumping out at me as he had, my Peter. As far as other students at Lake View High School went, there were never any all that interested in me either. Not even Tonya.

Since my shrink had moved in with me, my social life had hit rock bottom. And I didn't mind. Social interactions required that you behaved nicely and could at the very least hold a civil conversation. It was much more my style to simply let the world think I had dived pretty far off the deep end and was some kind of antisocial shy kid than to attempt arbitrary chit chat.

The best part about having no friends or mere acuantances was that it drove Daisy nuts and I literally, wasn't doing a single thing. My shrink told me I was being selfish and childish and blah blah blah. Even talking to him required more attention than I dare allot to anything other than finding Peter.

Did he even want to see me again? Was he searching as hard for me as I was for him? Did he remember me? What would I do when I found him?

It was sometime during my senior year, just after Christmas that the man with the dark curly hair started walking past our house with the ugliest looking white poodle I had ever seen. He automatically gave me the creeps.

If it hadn't been for the same commercial three times in a row, I never would have noticed him. I was too busy watching Professional Crime Stoppers, trying to pick up on new methods of investigating lost persons. But since that day he's been here around the exact same time. Three in the afternoon give or take about five minutes, fifteen minutes after school lets out, half an hour before my father comes home, an hour since Daisy has entered the house.

The weirdest part? Little Miss Daisy always has errands to run after the poodle man walks by. Never before.

I never really questioned it, or even put the pieces together until the first night of the Shakespeare Project. Tonya Darling, Jacob Krebs, Peter Tigan and I were lumped together, charged with the task of recreating Romeo and Juliet with just the four of us and a camcorder. It was due by the end of the school year.

Jacob had noticed him first. He had nudged Tonya and whispered, "Doesn't he look like a Pirate?"

"Pirates don't have poodles," Tonya remarked stiffly. None of us liked each other. That had been evident from the get go. The boys were all about goofing off, constantly picking fights with each other. Tonya and I hadn't talked since the night I destroyed Neverland.

"Nor do they have anything to do with Romeo and Juliet," I added.

"Don't side with me now, Jessica," Tonya's voice grew colder still. "If I was looking for a friend I would've asked for Tigan's opinion."

"Irrelevant," I sighed. "Whether we like it or not we have to get somewhere with this play. Who wants to play which part?"

The boys started bickering about who got to play Romeo and who got to play Tybalt and Mercutio.

"I don't want to be the sniveling romantic. You play Romeo."

"I don't want to have to kiss one of them! I'd rather kill you! You play Romeo."

"Guys," I reminded them. "Romeo kills himself."

"All the better!" They both ranted at me.

"He dies near the beginning, right?"

"Have you even read the play?" Tonya yelled. "I give up! Somebody hand me the camcorder. I'll be the camera woman."

Which started the boys yelling, I want to be the camera man! The ranting and raving never stopped until the back door to the garage shut ever so quietly. It was a slight click that made us all take pause. Miss Daisy was running to the store, again.

"Is this an everyday occurance?" Peter asked me. His green eyes boring into mine. They reminded me of another Peter. One he could never have been. His accent was all wrong, more American than English. His hair a tad too dark, his eyes too vacant to be my Peter. I had written him off at the beginning of the school year when he transferred. My Peter wouldn't have ended up somewhere in America, surely. I had returned to my room and Tonya to hers.

"A bunch of annoying seniors yelling obscenities at each other and demanding that the other play the leading role in a Shakespeare film?" I demanded, harsher than I originally intended. "Not so much."

"Not this," he waved his arms, indicating us. "That!"

He was now pointing out the window where Miss Daisy was picking the Poodlephilic Pirate up off of the side of the road about a block down from ours.

I wanted to puke and dance all at the same time. Miss Daisy was either being super helpful today—a huge change in her personality that suggested she was finally on her last leg—or she was potentially cheating on my father.

It was the first real surge of joy I had felt in a long while.

"It happens every day," I answered and suddenly, we had our Romeo and Juliet skit. It was totally rewritten and used people other than students, but Daisy was our leading Juliet, planning to marry Paris while seeing Romeo—the nasty looking poodle pirate—on the side. The guys agreed to do voice overs and we found out that we could easily follow them around.

We also learned that we really didn't want to follow them THAT closely and record EVERYTHING they did together. It was vile and hardly appropriate for our class. Furthermore, I had concluded that I finally had a way out of living with Miss Daisy, once and for all. One my dad couldn't refute at all.

One day while we were splicing scenes together, enemy statuses long rewritten, Tonya started sneezing like crazy. We all stopped and looked up at our lead computer guru. She sneezed again and then pointed to the small white cat curled upon Peter's lap.

Tinkerbell!

Peter. She purred softly from the depths of his lap.

"Sorry," he muttered, picking her up, attempting to shoo her along. "It's just that she seems to be calling my name every time I pet her. Like, she knows me or something."

"I'm deathly allergic," Tonya replied. "And cat's can't speak, Peter. Jeeze…"

"What's her name?" he asked, ignoring Tonya's comments.

"Tinkerbell," I answered quietly.

Tonya snickered. "Really? You named your cat after that story? Let me guess, the black one is Peter Pan?"

"Peter Pan?" Peter Tigan asked. "Who's that?"

But there was something in the way he asked the question that told me he already knew.

"How do you not know the story of Peter Pan?" Jacob asked, eyeing him funny, like he knew Peter knew more than he was letting on too. "It's not a favorite of you Yankees?"

"I wasn't born a Yankee!" Peter scoffed. "There was just an accident back in the states that must've killed my parents. I can't really recall it. I was adopted by my mom and dad, we stayed there for a while, I think they were trying to make sure I really was an orphan. Then we moved back here."

"Not a Yankee, eh? So how come you don't know THE story of Peter Pan?" I asked. "Tonya Darling and her family have been famous for decades telling it. The Boy who Never Grew Up; you should tell it now, Tonya."

She was after all our narrator for our film. She was a good story teller, always had been. I think it runs in the Darling Blood. It was, after all, what had first lured Pan from his world and into ours, that sweet story telling talent of Wendy Darling.

Tonya protested at first, but Jacob and I helped her out. Along the way, Peter himself pointed out a few discrepancies and I knew. I never should have let his American accent persuade me otherwise.

It suddenly became clear why we were all always so tense over this project. Everybody here, Jacob the lost boy of Tonya's dreams, all hated me. I had demolished the one safe place we had ever known. But it was funny, because out of the four of us, it was Peter who really didn't seem to hate me the most, like he should have.

Was it because he couldn't remember what had happened?

Was anybody going to bring up the fact that we had all been to Neverland together?

"Peter," Jacob finally exhaled. "I think we should tell them, Mate."

"Tell them what?" And I could see that he really had no idea what Jacob was talking about.

"You're Jacob, the lost boy," Tonya suddenly turned to Jacob, a look of utter fascination racing across her face. I hadn't even thought of it. "Aren't you?"

Jake nodded and she continued, "Is he really Peter Pan?"

Had we all been looking for him?

"Now hold up a second. My last name isn't Pan, I didn't wear any girly green tights and I didn't live with a fairy named Tinkerbell. Fairies aren't even—"

"NO!" I shouted, jumping off the seat I was sitting on, plastering my hand all over his face, aiming to keep his mouth shut. "Don't say it."

"Real." He finished, like he was suddenly the only sane person in the room.

And then my small little white cat died.