“I found you,” he said triumphantly. He continued to struggle against the two men holding him back, the smile never leaving his face. That look made heat bloom in Wendy’s cheeks and sent her stomach flipping.
The doctor stuck the needle into his arm and depressed the plunger.
“No, don’t!” The words flew from her mouth, but it was too late. The boy flinched but couldn’t pull away. Almost immediately, those brilliant eyes went glassy.
His head swayed, and he sank back into the hospital bed. “I knew I’d find you.” His speech was slurred and his eyes began to wander around the room in a daze, but he was so happy—so relieved.
Wendy slipped past a nurse and stood next to him. “Who are you?” she asked, gripping the bed rail.
The boy frowned and his eyebrows pulled upward, trying to stay awake. “You forgot about me?” His eyes swept back and forth in search of her face.
Wendy’s heart raced. She didn’t know what to do, and she was acutely aware of everyone watching. She had so many questions, but the sedative was quickly pulling him under. “What’s your name?” she asked urgently.
His drowsy eyes finally found hers. “Peter.” He blinked slowly and his head dropped back onto the pillows. He let out a small, drunk-sounding laugh. “You’re so old…” His eyes slid shut and he went still, except for the slow rise and fall of his chest.
Peter.
The movement around her started again. People were asking her questions, but she couldn’t hear them. She was swept up by people in scrubs, gently pulled away from Peter’s side. Wendy suddenly felt like she was going to vomit. Saliva pooled in her mouth as the room swayed around her.
You forgot about me?
Wendy buried her face in her hands. Her heart pounded. She could still smell the soil and wet grass of his skin. She squeezed her eyes shut and images of trees and twilight between leaves flashed through her vision.
Hands rubbed her back and guided her into a seat where she put her head between her knees, clasped her hands behind her sweaty neck, and pressed her forearms against her ears.
How did he know her? Why had he been looking for her? And who was he? He couldn’t be Peter Pan, her Peter. He wasn’t real, he was just a made-up story. Wasn’t he?
You forgot about me?
There was so much that she had forgotten—huge gaps of time just missing from her memory. What if he was one of them? What if he knew what happened?
Suddenly, the thought of him waking up terrified her.
All of the bodies around her backed away and she felt the light pressure of what could only be her mother’s touch on the crown of her head. Wendy looked up at her mom from between her arms.
“I’m going to take you home, okay?” The nurses behind Mrs. Darling were still staring, but Mrs. Darling was looking at Wendy’s hair, looping a finger around a lock of it and gently pulling it through.
Wendy nodded.
“Mrs. Darling.” Smith was still there. “We have more questions we need to ask your daughter.” The suspicion he had shown earlier was now replaced with a look of wary apprehension as he peered down at Wendy.
Mrs. Darling crossed her arms. “None of that will be happening tonight. My daughter has been through quite enough already, but we’ll be happy to speak with you tomorrow.”
Officer Cecco stood back and spoke quickly into his radio.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but—”
Wendy stopped listening.
She leaned her cheek against her knee and looked back at Peter’s bed.
The spilled tray had been picked up, and she could just make out one of his hands, the wrist bound in a padded leather cuff. They’d shackled him to the bed.
She remembered what those cuffs had felt like around her own wrists after they found her in the woods on her thirteenth birthday.
At first, she was just at the hospital to get her minor injuries checked out, but when the crying wouldn’t stop and Wendy kept waking up in the middle of the night screaming and thrashing, they started buckling down her wrists and ankles. To protect her, they’d said. She couldn’t remember much after that except for the steady ebb and flow of doctors, social workers, and psychologists.
Her brothers were still missing, and it was all her fault.
A nurse stood next to Peter, reading his vitals. Her mother and Officer Smith were deep in conversation. His face had turned a plum red, and her mother’s chin was tilted stubbornly. The other officer was now talking into a cell phone, his back toward them all.
When the nurse left, Wendy slipped out of her seat.
She walked to the bedside again. Her eyes roved over the contours of his jaw, his ears, his hair. She searched for some sign to prove that he wasn’t Peter Pan. He was definitely older than the boy from her stories and drawings. The Peter Pan she knew was a child who never aged. The boy in the hospital bed was definitely a teenager. It was a silly thing to grasp at, the idea that this couldn’t be Peter Pan because Peter Pan could never grow up, but it was something.
The boy had defined cheekbones and, even in the pale fluorescent light, his skin was sun-warmed and tan. His freckles stood out like flecks of cracked autumn leaves among the smudges of dirt.
There was a small crease between his eyebrows. Wendy leaned in closer. He was frowning in his sleep, like he was having a bad dream.
Wendy gently brushed her thumb across the crease, over and over, until his brow relaxed and his face was nothing but smooth slopes and planes.
She looked down at his banded wrist again, her eyes following along the back of his palm to his long, lean fingers. His fingernails were bitten down, almost to nubs, and the nail beds were caked in dirt.
The image of her own fingernails when she had been found came flooding back. Dirty, broken, with bits of red stuck underneath.
Wendy lurched back, a tremor rolling up her spine. She squeezed sanitizer into her palm from the pump attached to the wall and rubbed it vigorously into her hands. The sharp, acidic smell stung her nose.
“Wendy.”
She jumped and spun to see her mother down the hall, waving for her to come back.
“We’re leaving now,” her mom said, her hands tightly gripping her purse. Wendy thought her mother suddenly looked much older. As though something were pressing down on her shoulders, bowing her head and curving her back.
Wendy wiped the back of her hand across her sweaty brow. “What about my truck?”
“You can pick it up in the morning,” her mother said, digging into her purse for her keys.
Wendy nodded. “Okay.”
Mrs. Darling walked away at a brisk pace, and Wendy followed. As they passed through the sliding glass doors, two people in suits walked in.
As the doors slid shut, Wendy thought about Peter lying in bed and that smile playing across his lips.
CHAPTER 3
Closed Doors
On the drive home, Wendy sat in the back seat behind her mother. She curled up and pressed her forehead to the cool glass of the window, keeping her back to the woods. In an effort to keep her mind from wandering, she closed her eyes and repeated the lyrics to her favorite song over and over again in her head.
Tires rolling over gravel let her know they were home. Wendy sat up and pushed the door open, careful not to bump into the side of her father’s car.
“I have to head back and finish my shift,” her mom said.