Always Neverland

by Zoe Barton

  Button beamed. “I got our mother’s first compliment.”

  The expressions of all the other boys darkened, instantly jealous. I had no idea that making a comment would have that kind of reaction. Sometimes, back home, I had trouble just getting someone to take me seriously.

  I smiled a little. The Lost Boys turned to me with eager looks.

  “Will you make us cookies?” asked Prank.

  “Will you tuck us in, Mother?” said Kyle.

  I put the glasses on and stood up very straight, the same way Mom does before she goes to an important meeting. “In a minute,” I told the Lost Boys, and marched over to the other side of the clearing. The boys followed me and watched as I spread my papers out on a large rock, pretending it was a desk.

  They watched me spread them out and stack them up three times more before Peter lost patience. “Tell us a story, Mother!” he said.

  “Yes, tell us a story,” said Dibs.

  I didn’t look at them, but I stood up, flipping through the bark in my hands like I was reading quickly. “You’ll have to wait a little while longer,” I said, walking across the clearing to another rock. “I’m almost done.”

  Peter scowled. “Now.”

  Dibs took it up next, saying, “Now, now, now.” The rest of the boys started chanting it and stomping around me. “Now, now, now, now.”

  I looked at them all sternly. “Boys, this is very important work that Mommy’s doing. You won’t understand it until you’re older.”

  “But we’re not going to get any older,” Button said doubtfully.

  “I don’t have time for this,” I said, standing back up and straightening my shoulders the way Mom does when Dad says something she doesn’t like.

  They stared at me as I stormed across the clearing again.

  “You aren’t any good at this mothering business,” said Prank flatly.

  “She did try to tell us,” Kyle reminded everyone. “She said mothers are different.”

  “Mom said all of those things to me just this Monday,” I admitted.

  “You can’t be our mother. Not like that,” Peter said.

  Slowly, I took off the glasses, looking at the ground and trying not to seem too triumphant.

  I didn’t mention that Mom didn’t usually say things like that. She usually put her work aside until I went to bed. I also didn’t mention that Mom had apologized on Tuesday morning for what she said.

  I imagined how she would look if she had seen me acting this way, and then I really did feel ashamed. She was never this bad.

  But I didn’t feel so guilty that I gave in.

  “Can we keep her anyway?” Kyle said.

  “We’ve never had a Wendy girl who wasn’t a mother before,” Prank said uncertainly.

  “We need a mother,” said Dibs, putting his fists on his hips like Peter. “Get another Wendy girl.”

  “Let’s please keep her,” Button said to Peter. “I like her.”

  “And I’ve never had a Wendy girl before,” Kyle reminded him.

  I held my breath. If I went home, the weekend would be even bleaker and more boring that it had seemed the night before (especially since Mom would probably punish me for losing her iPod).

  Peter had his shrewd, judging look on. It couldn’t mean anything good. Then he started to pace, the hat’s feather bobbing behind him. After a second, Dibs paced too, a couple feet behind Peter.

  Tink chirped impatiently.

  “I guess we have to,” Peter said finally. The Lost Boys and I cheered, but then he added, “We need a girl around for the spring cleaning. You boys could use the help. That’s what Kyle’s been saying, after all.”

  I had forgotten about spring cleaning. I still wasn’t completely sold on the idea.

  I mean, this was Neverland. I wanted to go meet mermaids and explore the island, not dust or sweep or whatever. But I had barely gotten away with not being their mother. So, if all I needed to do to keep Peter from taking me home was a few chores, then I would definitely do it.

  “Absolutely,” I said quickly. “Let me just get something before we start.”

  Chapter 6.

  The Lost Boys Get Their Portraits Taken

  When I took the camera out of my backpack, hoping to take some good pictures while I was working, all of the Lost Boys stared. Even Peter peered around their heads curiously.

  The Neverlanders were fascinated by technology, but they didn’t really understand it very well.

  “What is it?” Button asked.

  I blinked, surprised. I would’ve never guessed that Peter and the Lost Boys didn’t know what a camera was.

  “It’s my dad’s camera,” I explained.

  “What does a camera do?” asked Dibs, eyeing it nervously.

  “It takes your picture. This one’s special. It’ll give you a photo right away. Here, let me show you. Peter first.” When the bulb flashed, Peter jumped away so quickly that Hook’s hat fell off.

  I could see the image on the little screen in the back of the camera, but the others couldn’t. With a whirring sound, the picture started coming out at the bottom in short jerks as it printed. The Lost Boys gathered around to look at it.

  “It’s just a little piece of paper,” Peter said shortly.

  “Wait for it to come out.” The green of the leaves above Peter showed up first, and then his hat. The Lost Boys oohed and aahed. Then Peter himself appeared in the photo—his eyes, then his nose, and then his mouth, scowling slightly. When the picture finished printing and fell out, we could see Peter’s whole image, even his fists on his hips.

  “There you are!” I said triumphantly.

  Peter glared at the photo. He was on the verge of not liking it.

  “Oh, Peter,” I said quickly, before he decided to overreact and ban cameras from Neverland forever. “You look dashing. Fearsome, even. No wonder the pirates are scared of you.”

  That won him over. Peter picked up the hat again and drew his sword. “Another one,” he demanded.

  After Peter had a half a dozen pictures of himself, everyone else wanted one too, even Tink. She never did figure out what a photograph was. She propped hers against a rock and started fussing with her hair.

  “It’s not a mirror,” I told her, trying to explain.

  She hissed at me, fluttering her wings angrily. Then she hugged the Polaroid photo to her chest (it looked poster-sized on her) and zipped through the trees and out of sight, like she thought I was going to steal her picture.

  Just the tiniest bit of doubt nagged at me. Maybe Tink and I would never be friends.

  Kyle tugged on my pajamas. “One more? With me and Button together?”

  Smiling, I raised the camera again.

  Two minutes after I started worrying that I would run out of film, the Lost Boys took a break to admire their photos, sitting on a pile of blankets and passing pictures around the same way some of my classmates pass around baseball cards at recess. I sat with them, glad that the camera was such a hit.

  “I look like Peter,” Dibs said. He pushed a photo of himself in my face. “Wendy girl, don’t I look like Peter?”

  “No,” Peter said coldly, but you know, I did kind of see the resemblance.

  “There has to be something we can do with these,” Prank said, frowning in concentration. “Something really good.”

  I didn’t know what he meant, so I said slowly, “We could make an album or something.”

  “He means a trick,” Button told me. “Prank likes to play tricks on people.”

  “Prank, can I help this time?” Kyle said.

  Dibs snatched up Button’s picture and shoved that in my face. “Look how big Button’s cheeks are. What a fatso.”

  “That’s not very nice!” I told him fiercely.

  So far, Dibs was definitely my least favorite Lost Boy.

  Seeing Button look down with an embarrassed frown, I added stoutly, “Besides, they say that the camera adds ten pounds.” That was what my mother always
said when she thought that she looked fat in a picture.

  All the Lost Boys gasped, horrified, and Tink shrieked loudly, emerging from the leaves right above their heads. Even Peter seemed alarmed. They all stared at the camera with new respect.

  “What?” I said, distracted by the way Tink was touching her hips, her arms, her knees, as if reassuring herself that they hadn’t changed.

  “You’ve taken so many pictures,” Button said, looking at the pile of Polaroids.

  “That’s”— Prank paused, counting on his fingers—“a million trillion pounds!”

  “It doesn’t really add ten pounds. It only looks like it in the picture,” I said, but the Lost Boys just stared at their hands, as if waiting for them to swell.

  “Could we take pictures of the pirates?” Prank asked, grinning broadly. “Maybe we could make them so big that it would sink the Jolly Roger. How many pictures would that take?”

  “It only looks like it adds ten pounds,” I repeated, exasperated.

  I could tell Tink didn’t believe me, but she had a reason to be worried. Adding ten pounds to someone as small as she was would make her eight times heavier.

  Suddenly, Tink smiled one of her most evil smiles and chirped something to Peter. I’d known her long enough to start to worry.

  “I suppose you’re right, Tink. We should really get started on our spring cleaning if we want to be finished before bedtime,” Peter said, turning to me.

  The photo shoot had been fun while it lasted.

  “Fine,” I said wearily. “Where’s your mop?”

  The Lost Boys exchanged glances. “We don’t have any of those,” Button said.

  “I’m not supposed to use my toothbrush, am I?” I had seen people cleaning with their toothbrushes in movies.

  “What’s a toothbrush?” Dibs asked, which made me worry that the Lost Boys needed a dentist more than a mother.

  “I don’t think it would help,” Kyle told me.

  “It’s not that kind of spring cleaning,” said Button.

  “Then what are we cleaning?” I said, starting to feel more hopeful about the whole business.

  The boys all pointed at once—straight up.

  I looked. The tree sparkled a little in the bright afternoon light. “Are you waiting for all the leaves to fall off? Because it’s the wrong season.”

  “We have a Never bird problem,” Button said solemnly.

  “They migrated back a few days ago,” Dibs explained, “and they’ve already built their nests.”

  I couldn’t understand where the Never birds were supposed to be building their nests if not in Neverland trees, but then Kyle complained, “I’ve had to sleep on the ground for two whole nights.”

  “They keep chasing us out,” Prank said glumly. “We can barely get near our beds.”

  I looked again at the ragged blankets scattered around the tree’s trunk. “Oh, you live up there.”

  “She’s not the smartest Wendy girl we’ve ever had,” Peter explained to the Lost Boys apologetically.

  “Hey!” I cried, insulted.

  “The Never birds chase all of us out,” Kyle told me.

  “All except Peter,” said Dibs with a proud smile.

  “Naturally,” said Peter, raising Hook’s hat and bowing extravagantly.

  “Well, how many birds are we talking about?” I asked, imagining hundreds.

  The Lost Boys looked at each other and didn’t answer. “We didn’t count,” Button said.

  “They’re big,” said Prank.

  “Bigger than me!” Kyle said, and when my eyes widened, he added, “Well, with their wings spread anyway.”

  “Huge beaks,” said Button.

  “And claws as long as your hand!” Prank said.

  Dibs rolled his eyes. “Not that long.”

  Kyle and Button both squirmed, glancing up at the tree fearfully, but Peter, Prank, and Dibs didn’t look scared at all. They kind of looked the way I felt when Dad asked me to rake up all the leaves in the backyard. To them, Never bird relocation was a time-consuming chore that they were more than happy to pass off to someone else, like their new Wendy girl.

  I didn’t know if I should feel nervous or resentful.

  “I guess someone better show me,” I said.

  “Not it!” Dibs shouted.

  “Not it!” shouted Prank and Button, and a half second later, Tink chimed in too. I turned to Peter, who pointed to Kyle.

  “Careful,” Button said. “They’ve got a nasty bite.”

  I gulped.

  Chapter 7.

  I Meet the Never Birds

  “If they’re dangerous, why are you sending me with the littlest one?” I asked Peter. It seemed like, if anyone was coming with me, it should be Peter. He had a sword.

  “I’m not little!” cried Kyle. He shot upward into the trees, scowling fiercely.

  “Now you’ve done it,” Prank said, shaking his head.

  “Hurt his feelings,” Button said sympathetically.

  “I didn’t mean it like that,” I said with a deep sigh. Even making friends with the Lost Boys was turning out to be harder than I’d thought.

  I flew up after Kyle, taking the camera with me. Since I’d already lost Mom’s iPod, I really had to take care of Dad’s camera, or both parents would be mad at me as soon as I got home.

  Kyle was perched on a slender branch pretty close to the top. He stared intently at something one branch above him.

  “Kyle, I’m sor—,” I started.

  He pressed a finger to his lips, signaling me to be quiet. “Don’t wake it up.”

  “Wake up what?”

  “The Never bird! It’s right there. Five feet from you.”

  I looked nervously. “I don’t see anything,” I whispered, beginning to worry that maybe Never birds were invisible, at least to people who hadn’t been in Neverland for more than a few hours. I wondered if I should pretend to see it, just in case they really would send me home if I turned out to be unhelpful with the Never birds as well.

  Kyle pointed. “Right there.”

  I saw the nest first, and then a slight movement right above it—every time the bird breathed.

  “Oh,” I said, relieved. The bird was completely camouflaged. It looked exactly like the tree trunk, right down to the dappled gray color and the pattern of the bark.

  “There’s a green one over there,” Kyle said, pointing to the nest in the branch to our right.

  That bird’s feathers were as green as the leaves around it.

  “It blends in!” I cried, delighted. “Like a chameleon!” It was so cool that I couldn’t resist taking a picture.

  The flash woke the Never bird. It noticed us with a squawk and launched itself in our direction. Kyle and I zipped out of the tree so fast that I almost dropped the camera. (So much for taking good care of it.)

  Once we were gone, the Never bird returned to her nest, all her leaf-colored feathers still ruffled angrily.

  “Maybe I should’ve turned the flash off,” I whispered to Kyle, breathing hard.

  “Peter was right. You really aren’t the smartest Wendy girl we’ve ever had,” Prank said thoughtfully, rising into the air next to us.

  I was getting really tired of people calling me stupid. “If you came up here just to insult me, you can go right back down,” I told Prank coldly.

  “Peter sent me to help you.” It didn’t sound like Prank was very happy about it.

  “The Never birds are really hard to get out,” Kyle said.

  “Hard enough that maybe we should find you guys a new tree to live in?” I said, my heart still beating really fast. A Never bird’s beak looks a lot bigger when it comes within a few inches of your face.

  Kyle and Prank shook their heads sadly. Prank flew down into the trees. He pushed a few of the leaves out of the way to reveal a hammock bed hanging from the branch. It was made out of two leaves, the six-foot-long kind. The bottom leaf was waxy and flexible and full of battered blankets. Each
end was secured to the branch with strong rope. Looking around, I saw three other hammock beds hanging from the branches around it.

  I was impressed. I mean, back home, I just had a tree house. Peter, Tink, and the Lost Boys had a Tree Home.

  The closest Never bird—just a few branches above us—squawked at Prank, ruffling its feathers threateningly.

  “Watch—it’s going to chase me out,” Prank said, creeping closer to the bird. He didn’t sound worried at all.

  “Is it a good idea to tease it?” I asked, but as soon as the Never bird took flight and dived at Prank’s head, he dived out of the tree.

  “Same deal as last time,” he said. “They’re getting so predictable.”

  “We could move the beds,” I suggested hopefully.

  “Maybe, but we couldn’t move Peter’s house,” Kyle said. He pointed upward.

  High up, almost as high as the Never bird’s nest, a little red house sat, lashed to a few sturdy branches. Lacy white curtains hung in the windows, and flowers grew on the roof. It didn’t look like a house that Peter would pick out for himself.

  “He’s very attached to it,” Kyle added.

  “It’s very old,” Prank said. “From the time of the original Wendy.”

  “Maybe you could all sleep in there!” I said excitedly, hoping that I would get to see the inside, but the two Lost Boys shook their heads.

  “We’re not allowed in there,” Kyle said.

  “Well, what did you do last year?” I asked, beginning to worry that I would run out of ideas.

  “Kicked the nests out of the tree, Never bird and all,” Prank said with one of his wicked grins.

  “But there could be eggs inside them!” I cried. “We can’t do that!”

  Prank looked a little disappointed, but he shrugged. “It was dangerous, anyway. One of the Never birds caught Button. He still has the scars.”

  I thought hard. I was determined to come up with a plan that would prove I wasn’t the dumbest Wendy girl ever. “Have you ever tried luring them out with food?” I asked. “What do they eat anyway?”

  “Lost Boys named Kyle,” Prank said seriously.

  Kyle went very still and very white. For a second, I believed Prank, but then I caught the beginning of a smirk on his face.

  “That’s not true,” I told Kyle, giving Prank a dirty look. “He’s making it up to scare you.”