Darling

by K. Ancrum

  The lines were moving pretty quickly, but the girls in front of her were complaining loudly about the party being shut down.

  Wendy took out her phone and swiped so she could at least use this free time and the last dregs of her battery to contact Eleanor.

  She had seventeen text notifications, which wasn’t a huge surprise, but she only had 1 percent battery left. She swiped all the way to the bottom of Eleanor’s texts, noticing with a spark of humor that they descended from lowercase to caps lock, ending with a final text:

  I SWEAR TO GOD I’LL WAKE UP MY PARENTS AND COME FIND YOU MYSELF

  Wendy began typing a quick message, but before she could even get I’m okay for now out, her screen froze and then went black. Wendy clicked the home button desperately, but it was over. Her phone was dead. Wendy closed her eyes and whined, taking a moment to feel the full brunt of her own irritation and despair, but got herself back together, unclenched her fists, and kept on going.

  “What time is it?” Wendy asked the girls in front of her.

  They all turned around and a girl with hair as pink as her dress pulled her phone out. “1:03. Is your phone dead?”

  Wendy shrugged. “I think it died about an hour ago, and I’ve been floating through time ever since. I didn’t have time to charge it before I left home.”

  A girl with wild blond curls like Eleanor’s started digging in her purse. “What kind is it? I have a portable charger.”

  Wendy pulled her phone out. “Oh my God, thank you. It’s just a regular micro-USB—”

  “Like an Android?” the girl asked. “I have an iPhone, but the base should still work. Does anyone have an Android cord?”

  The girls in her group shook their heads, so she turned around and shouted to the rest of the line. “Does anyone have an Android cord?” Everyone within earshot turned around and shouted some version of “No.” Which sucked, but definitely wasn’t as bad as what happened immediately afterward. The yelling alerted the attention of all the nearby officers, who immediately zoomed in on Wendy. The officer closest to her, a frighteningly muscular white man in combat boots with his face partially obscured by a mask, grabbed Wendy’s arm and pulled out a walkie-talkie.

  “Got her, moving her now,” the officer said as he marched Wendy roughly away from the group. “Anyone else still unaccounted for? Over.”

  The girls gaped at Wendy as she was dragged away, the nice girl with the portable charger holding it dangling as she watched Wendy go.

  The officer took Wendy around the back of the warehouse, where there were significantly fewer people. Standing next to several unmarked cop cars was Detective Hook himself.

  He stared hard at her as she got closer, surly eyebrows furrowed dark over his eyes, maroon coat blowing in the wind.

  Wendy could see Tinkerbelle, Ominotago, and Curly in one car, Nibs and Fyodor in another, and Charles and Minsu being cuffed and ducked into a last car—which Wendy was getting hauled toward.

  But Detective Hook put up a hand to stop the officer pulling Wendy. The detective looked hard at Wendy’s face for a long moment, then waved her on to the car.

  Wendy was passed off to a policewoman, who cuffed Wendy with actual metal handcuffs, not zip ties like before. The officer pushed Wendy’s head down roughly as she was ushered into the car, and closed the door on her with sharp finality.

  Charles and Minsu looked miserable, but also like they were handling this arrest much better than their previous one. Their hands were cuffed behind their backs, and Charles was leaning heavily on Minsu’s shoulder again. The officer got into the front of the car, and without saying another word, she started the engine and pulled out of the lot.

  Wendy had never been inside the back of a police car before, but the entire situation had incredibly bad energy. She desperately wanted to ask Charles and Minsu if the police had gotten Peter, but even though no one had told her not to speak, she had a general sense that it probably would be a bad idea to start a conversation.

  Charles nodded firmly at Wendy. “The good news,” he said quietly, “is that we’re not far from the precinct. The bad news is that I now know what it’s like to be detained.”

  “They didn’t read us our Miranda rights,” Wendy said just as quietly. “Can’t we sue or something?”

  Charles shook his head. “It’s not that kind of arrest.”

  The policewoman driving them glanced at them placidly over her shoulder, but didn’t tell them to be quiet, so Wendy proceeded more confidently.

  “Aren’t you worried about your school stuff?”

  “Shh,” Charles said. “If things go the way we hope, that will be the least of our problems.”

  “My dad is not going to care what kind of arrest this is,” Minsu said mournfully. “And I only have about an hour to get home.”

  “You have got to give up the concept that you’re getting home on time,” Charles said. “And we should really stop talking.”

  Wendy sighed and sank lower in the seat. She put her head against the window and let the road rattle her brain around her skull for the rest of the ride to wherever they were being taken. After about ten minutes, they stopped at a large police station.

  The officer opened their car door and told Charles, Minsu, and Wendy to join Tinkerbelle, Ominotago, Nibs, Fyodor, and Curly in a line outside the station. Ominotago was at the back, her brown eyes widening as she saw Wendy cuffed with the rest of them. Wendy smiled at her sheepishly and shrugged. Ominotago’s face crumpled, and before the officer nearby had time to do anything about it, Ominotago leaned forward and pushed her forehead against Wendy’s in sweet apology for the circumstances. Even though the officer turned Ominotago right back around, Wendy could still feel the warmth of her friend’s touch, and it grounded her. She was thankful for it as they walked through the hallways of the station.

  It was busy inside, but Wendy didn’t see any of the kids who had been at the party. Everyone else in here was an adult, from the police all the way to the people she could see on their way to holding cells. She and the others were marched right past the booking area to the back of the station. The officer in front opened a locked door and pushed them all inside, locking it tightly behind them.

  To Wendy’s surprise, they weren’t in a cell at all. It looked like some kind of waiting room. It was sparsely decorated, but there were chairs, a table, a few magazines, and even a water cooler. None of these things would do them any good because they were all still handcuffed, but it was relaxing to know they were in a room where someone cared whether they had something to read.

  “What is this place?” Wendy asked. She sat down on a low couch and grimaced at how uncomfortable it was.

  Fyodor sat down next to her, smiling mirthlessly and raising an eyebrow. “Waiting room?”

  “It’s where they put you when they can’t decide if you’re a suspect or not,” Curly said, leaning against the large table in the middle of the room. Nibs mirrored his position; he rolled his shoulders as if he were doubly irritated by the fact that he couldn’t use his hands.

  “No,” Ominotago corrected. “It’s where they put you when they’ve decided that you’re going to be interviewed and they don’t know whether you’re a suspect yet, but want to have access to recordings of you talking and your DNA from drinking water from the cooler.

  “In our situation,” she continued, “because we slipped zip tie cuffs earlier and now they can’t trust whether we’ll follow instructions, they detained us in the ‘bad kids but not so bad as to be in cells’ area.” She lifted one of her legs up and tucked it under her cuffed arms, then did the same with the other so that her arms were cuffed in front of her body instead of behind.

  “Don’t do that,” Fyodor said, scooting low into the couch cushions. “They do not like that.”

  Ominotago shrugged, looped her cuffed arms over Tinkerbelle’s head so they were locked together, then kissed her on the cheek.

  Wendy glanced quickly at Fyodor out of the side of her
eye. She tried not to turn her head in his direction, but Ominotago—observant as ever—caught her look.

  “Since we can’t talk about the case in here, let’s talk about something lighter. I saw Fyodor putting the moves on you,” Ominotago said, smirking. “Glad that’s going well.”

  “Moves?” Fyodor scrunched up his nose in distaste. “What moves? I was very respectful.”

  “He was,” Wendy interjected even though she could feel her cheeks getting hot. “And he’s a very good dancer.”

  “It’s very cool and not at all ridiculous how you can get girls even during the middle of a police sting,” Minsu snapped bitterly. “What’s the point? You don’t even sleep with them!”

  Fyodor glanced at Wendy mischievously before answering Minsu’s remark. “I will let this thing you’ve said go because you are so frightened right now. But perhaps when you are less frightened, we will deal with this, da?”

  “I’m not aphobic, it’s just unfair!” Minsu huffed. “ALL OF US are in ballroom dance. How are you the only one good at it?”

  “Why are you in ballroom dance?” Wendy asked.

  “Agility practice, for football,” Ominotago said, shaking out her dark hair. “And stop changing the subject.”

  “You changed the subject first. Where the fuck is Peter?” Wendy snapped. She knew they were doing that thing again where they forcibly calmed her down with their charming, witty banter, and she was no longer interested in indulging that.

  “We can’t talk about that. They’re watching us,” Tinkerbelle replied crossly, like Wendy was an idiot.

  Ominotago clicked in the back of her throat with disapproval. “Be gentle with her, Tink, she doesn’t know how any of this works.” Ominotago addressed Wendy again. “I meant what I said earlier about getting you home, but under the circumstances, that is no longer possible. But they should be coming to get us soon, and they’ll explain everything.”

  Wendy’s outburst had let the wind out of the sails for the entire room. The group broke off into their own quieter conversations. Charles and Minsu gave each other some sort of pep talk in the corner by the windowsill. Ominotago and Tinkerbelle whispered to each other, locked tight in each other’s arms. Nibs and Curly were speaking in that near-silent way they seemed to only do when incredibly stressed, their red and dark heads of hair pressed close together.

  Fyodor sat silently next to Wendy. He had his eyes closed, and Wendy could see the purple veins above and below them.

  Now that she wasn’t the focus of the entire group, she took the time to admire how his blond hair had begun falling out of his pompadour at the front. The handcuffs, which were tight on her, were probably even tighter on him. His arms, which had looked very nice when guarding the back of her head from getting smacked, looked even nicer bound behind his back. In all seriousness, Wendy wished very hard that Fyodor had been the first guy she’d met after moving here. He wouldn’t have broken into her house—he clearly didn’t do things like that. Maybe they would have met on the train, instead. Maybe they would have met while Wendy was on her way home from school. Maybe he would have caught her eye and introduced himself, but she would have ignored him until he said something so funny, she wouldn’t have been able to help but laugh. Fyodor would have understood why a strange girl would have been anxious talking to him or going out with him alone. A boy who asks before fixing the flowers in your hair wouldn’t think having another girl accompany them was enough to make Wendy feel safe. Fyodor would have waited for Eleanor to come with them—someone Wendy knew—or introduced himself to her parents, or something like that. He would have taken her to the party and nowhere else. He wouldn’t have abandoned her with scores of different groups of people, only swinging back to check on her as an afterthought. Fyodor, who’d saved her from getting hurt during a stampede instead of saving himself, wouldn’t do anything like that. He hadn’t even seemed like he wanted to be thanked for any of those things. He just did them because he felt like he should, and that was it.

  Wendy followed the line of Fyodor’s arms from his cuffs back to his face, and his eyes were open now.

  He gazed back at her steadily, uncritical of being appraised. Just watching her watch him.

  The door of the waiting room opened, and two officers came in. Everyone stopped talking and watched warily as one of the officers hoisted Wendy off the couch. The other officer searched her pockets until he found her wallet. He fished out her ID and compared its picture to her face. When he was satisfied, he put the wallet back in her pocket and walked her out of the room. Wendy kept quiet as they moved her down another hallway with dimmer lights to a much quieter wing of the station.

  The officer stopped in front of a door near the back of the station. Wendy flinched in surprise as the officer behind her unlocked her cuffs. They opened the door, lightly nudged her inside, and closed it loudly behind her.

  CHAPTER 14

  There was only one table in this room, and Detective Hook was sitting in front of it. His maroon jacket was draped over the chair behind him as if he’d come straight to this interrogation from the party. He had a stack of folders to the right of him, but had one single, large image in his hand, balanced between his index finger and the curved end of his prosthetic.

  Wendy approached the only other chair in the room and anxiously sat down.

  Detective Hook looked at her hard for another moment, then placed the photo flat on the table and pushed it toward her.

  “Do you know who this is?” he asked.

  His voice was low and rich, a far cry away from his hysterical shouting at the Mermaid’s Lagoon. It was disconcerting.

  Wendy pulled the picture toward her. With a spike of terror, she realized it was a picture of herself. A mug shot. Or. Actually … not her … Wendy hadn’t been anywhere near a police station in her entire life. She looked up at Detective Hook in confused terror. He sighed and put another photo in front of her, this time a candid, with the subject smiling big and freely with her afro hair permed and flat ironed, and Wendy suddenly knew her.

  “This … is my mom?” Wendy asked.

  Detective Hook leaned back in his seat. “You look like her, you know,” he said, crossing his arms. “The hair is different. Yours is curlier, but that might just be a change in fashion. Your ID says your name is Wendy?”

  Wendy nodded. She didn’t know where this was going, but her blood felt like ice.

  Detective Hook sat back up and picked out another folder from the pile.

  “You need to sign these nondisclosure agreements before we continue.” He placed a few pieces of paper in front of her and handed her a pen. “Ominotago, Fyodor, and the rest have already signed theirs. Your mother has, too, actually. It’s about twenty years old, but I could pull it for you, if necessary.”

  Wendy read the paper carefully and despite her better instincts signed the bottom. It had been a solid seven hours of confusion, but at least if she went to jail, she would go to jail with answers.

  Hook put the cooperation agreement in the envelope, and Wendy was pleased to see the paper underneath hers had Ominotago’s name on it, so at least he wasn’t lying about that.

  He put the folder of documents to the left and took another folder off the pile, pulling out another mug shot and placed it in front of her.

  “This,” Detective Hook said with incredible gravity, “is Peter Pan.”

  The mug shot was old.

  Peter stared back at Wendy from the image, looking not entirely different from when they had met. There were small changes: His eyes were a bit brighter, he had a bit more fat around his face, and his auburn hair was chopped in a rakish mullet—just long enough to still look cool, decades in the future.

  Wendy could hear her heart pounding in her ears.

  Detective Hook jabbed the center of Peter’s face with a thick index finger. “When we took this mug shot, I was still a beat cop. I’ve been a detective for seventeen years.”

  Wendy’s eyes scanned the image as s
he sat there numbly. The unbroken nose, the rosier cheeks, no stubble at all.

  “I don’t…” Wendy started, at a loss for words as she tried to do the math.

  “Peter Pan is thirty-six years old.”

  Wendy pushed herself away from the table. She leaned over and tried not to vomit. She put her head on her knees and swallowed hard over and over until her throat burned with the bile she’d forced back down her throat. With that one sentence, the context of everything had changed. She had been alone in her bedroom in the middle of the night with a thirty-six-year-old man. She allowed a thirty-six-year-old man to lure her out of her family home. She had watched a thirty-six-year-old man threaten a child.

  She had let down her defenses around him because other kids weren’t inherently scary most of the time. Peter must have been using that to his advantage. She remembered with violent clarity the moment they met. When Peter was facing the window in her bedroom, silhouetted by a streetlamp, and she thought for exactly one second that he was a man. But when he turned his face to her, she corrected herself. She looked at his small, cute face and bright wide eyes and thought, This is a kid like me, this is a boy in my house, this is a boy who might need help. This is a boy.

  Wendy remembered the hot press of his body as he’d climbed down the side of her house and how she’d liked it, and she felt like clawing her own skin off to get rid of the memory of the feeling. Things he had said ran through her mind at rapid speed. This is Bella’s dance, the ‘Never Bird.’ She’s been doing it at this place for fifteen years, I’ve heard … You want to look like you’re fifty in your thirties, keep smoking like this … I’ve had this jacket for a very long time … Fyodor calling him a man, Ominotago calling him a man. Everyone calling him a man but her.