Lost in the Never Woods(26)

Wendy felt like she wanted to cry, laugh, and run away all at the same time. She shook her head quickly. “That’s not possible. Peter Pan isn’t real,” she told him. Even as she said it, she felt herself doubting her own words. A part of her wanted to believe, as silly as it felt.

One thing was certain: He knew who Peter Pan was. So, even though she fought against it, the truth was that he’d heard the stories before. At some point, she had told him.

“Wendy Moira Angela Darling!”

Her father’s voice cut through the night. Wendy looked around. They were at the edge of the woods. The crooked white fence of her backyard was no more than twenty feet ahead.

She could see the back door to her house through the sparse trees. The kitchen lit up her father’s bulky silhouette.

“Where have you been? It’s the middle of the night! I’ve been calling you for hours!”

Wendy knew her phone was in her pocket and on silent, as always. The ringer always made her jump, and she found the vibration setting just as jarring.

“I—” Wendy turned, but Peter was gone, leaving her to stand alone at the edge of the woods, her hands cold, the lantern gone with him. “Peter?” she hissed into the darkness. She stood on her tiptoes and tried to peer deeper into the trees. “Where are you?”

But no one was there.

Wendy swallowed and faced the house. Behind her, the breeze through the woods tickled the back of her neck. They were only slightly more terrifying than her father waiting for her at the door.

She half ran to the fence, clumsily climbed over, and steeled herself against her father’s angry glares and shouts as she crossed the backyard.

He stood there, red-faced, his large fingers gripping the doorframe. Wendy wouldn’t have been surprised if he ripped it right off. “Were you in the woods?!” he demanded. Spittle flew from his lips as he yelled.

Wendy tried to think up some reasonable excuse, but her mind was back in the woods with Peter. “No, I thought I saw something, so I was just looking—”

“Don’t you dare lie to me, Wendy!” he said.

Wendy’s face turned red. She didn’t know what to say. She couldn’t tell him the truth. If he knew she had been in the woods with the boy from the hospital—who the police thought might be connected to her and her brothers’ disappearance—well, Wendy had no idea what he would do, but it wouldn’t be good.

She felt guilty and, to her surprise, scared for Peter. He was out there alone with only the hunting shack as shelter. For the second time in the past twenty-four hours, she wondered if she would ever see him again.

“I—”

“And what happened to you?” His chest swelled and his face darkened from red to purple.

Wendy looked down at her torn pant leg, felt the throb of her head. Luckily, the pain had subsided to a dull ache. “I was sitting on the fence and fell off by accident,” she said.

“I forbid you from going into those woods.” His eyes glared into hers, but they had a glassy sheen. “I thought you were smart enough to know better after what happened!”

Wendy winced.

No, she couldn’t tell him the truth. Not until she figured out what to do about Peter. But this also wasn’t a situation she could lie her way out of.

“I’m sorry, Dad,” she said quietly.

Her father breathed heavily through flared nostrils. Wendy braced herself for more shouting, but his shoulders sank. “Just go to bed,” he told her, his voice now a low rumble. She almost preferred the yelling. The defeated tone just made her feel worse.

He moved out of the doorway to let her pass. As she did, he lifted his hand. Wendy thought he was going to place it on her shoulder, but he hesitated and let it drop back to his side. “Stay out of there,” he repeated.

Wendy nodded and crossed her arms over her chest. “I will.” She didn’t blame him for being mad at her.

She wasn’t the only one who’d lost something in those woods.





CHAPTER 8

Memories





Wendy listened at her bedroom door to the sounds of her father’s frustration. She noticed that he only did chores when he was using them to announce his anger, even in the middle of the night. Wendy knew too well what it was like to have someone furiously fold a sock at you, or resentfully wash a dish in your direction.

When things grew quiet and she was pretty sure her father wouldn’t come barging in to say, And another thing! Wendy went into her bathroom. She turned on the bathtub faucet and peeled off her jeans. They had two jagged tears, but it wasn’t a big deal since they were old anyway. She sat on the edge of the tub and scooped up handfuls of water to pour over the cuts in her leg. They weren’t very deep and stung only a little now. She’d gotten far worse scrapes from the edge of the pool during swim practice.

She dipped a facecloth into the water and watched her shadow mirror her movements against the wall. As Wendy let her leg soak, she dabbed at the dried blood caked to the angry bump on her head. She was a mess. The last twenty-four hours had been a mess. Everything was a mess!

As her leg soaked in the warm water, Wendy stretched for the cabinet under the sink and dug out her sewing kit. She did her best to mend the pant leg. To save money, she’d spent many afternoons patching holes and resewing the hems on her parents’ clothes. Her father’s suits weren’t cheap, so it made more sense for her to reattach a button or fix a pleat than to buy a new jacket. Her mother was petite, which meant standard scrub pants were always too long. The bottom hems wore out too fast from dragging on the ground, so Wendy would hem them whenever they got too worn. Wendy inspected her work, giving a tug to see if her stitches held up. They were a little askew, but the jeans were perfectly fine as junk pants if she only wore them around the house.