Unlike her classmates, Avery doesn't really care about boys, romance and fashion. Her phone contains fewer contacts than there are pens in her pencil case. Her classmates don't seem to care about her excistance, and at home it's basically the same s...
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His hand felt cool against her lips, as if he had been outside for a long time, and she was puzzled as to why this was the first thing on her mind right now. Just as her nose noticed that his hands had a deep scent of earth.
Forcing herself to replace the thoughts, she looked up into two deep brown eyes, which glide over her face observingly. She did not move, and although she expected to be frozen by fear, she was not. His eyes expressed not danger, but curiosity and anticipation, like a squirrel from the St. James's Park who dared to grab a peanut her hand. His pursed lips betrayed his caution, as he did not dare to smile. His clearly visible Adam's apple moved once as he swallowed, making her realise he was as nervous as she was. The moment he frowned once to gauge her, his gaze became so piercing it made her quiet. Not because of the hand was on her lips, but because his gaze seemed to absorbe her thoughts. She felt his grip around her mouth slacken, then he cautiously withdrew his hand.
'Don't scream, okay?' his voice sounded composed, friendly even. He sat up straight and smiled cautiously. 'I scared you, didn't I?'
Avery nodded, not quite sure what to do. Should she call for her parents? Or wait and see what the boy wanted from her? Could she kick him hard enough to quickly get to the bedroomdoor?
He remained unmoved, daring her to take her eyes off his face for a moment, for his appearance was anything but ordinary; The frayed clothing, which seemed to be held together with leaves and lianas across his athletic body, the dagger around his hips, which made her gulp for a moment and the necklace with the accorn hanging around his neck. Nothing seemed average. The tousled, dark-blonde hair had something alluring about it, though she could clearly see the outlines of a lost leaf hidden away. In her eyes, the boy did not seem much younger than she was. His appearance, however, made her doubt that opinion. She looked at him again and saw that he was smiling.
'Who are you?' she asked.
He thrust his chest forward and put his hands in his side. She was startled by his sudden movement and flinched.
'My name is Peter,' he said, 'Peter Pan.' He made a kind of bow and looked at her again. His eyes twinkled and his smile surrounded his whole face with joy.
'May I know your name?' he then asked.
'Avery Johnson,' she replied, not entirely sure if her brain had processed the previous answer correctly. 'You call yourself Peter Pan?' she asked indignantly.
The boy shook his head. 'Peter is the name I was given. The Smart Boys called me Pan, because of my pan flute.' He could not concentrate for one second, as his eyes kept focusing on new objects in her room.
'You seem... Very energetic,' Avery thought. She couldn't suppress a chuckle.
The boy grinned at her and as he did so, he pushed himself upwards from the mattress, dit a somdersault in the air and landing neatly on both his feet. Avery didn't quite know whether to laugh or shake her head. 'Okay,' she said, 'if you really are Peter Pan, how come you look so old?'
Avery kept looking at him. Although he disguised it well by quickly fixing his facial expression, she noticed the split-second in which his smile disappeared from his face. 'That's just the way it goes,' was his reply and he shrugged.
Avery frowned. He had to be crazy! And she had to be crazy to allow someone like that to invade her room and strike up a conversation with him. Still, she could not send him away yet laugh at him because of his wild imaginations.
'You are lying,' she observed, 'where you come from, time stands still. You don't age there. You look less than a year younger than I am, so you can't be him, because he didn't want to grow up. And if you are my age, then you are almost an adult already.' She looked at him sternly. Could she provoke him like this? Could she get him to leave her room without her labelling him as the city idiot?
He just sighed exaggeratedly. 'Women really do talk too much.' He dove forward, grabbed her hand and pulled her towards the window. Before Avery knew it, she was standing next to the boy with her feet on the windowsill, looking down on her garden from three stories up. She let out a scream and instinctively took a step backwards, losing her balance and falling over. Before she hit the ground, he caught her and gently set her on the ground.
'Are you crazy? I could have fallen. Do you believe in your fabrications so much that you want to throw me out of the windo-' She stopped in the middle of her sentence, when the boy floated backwards and took a seat on the windowsill. She was stunned. Her eyes shot from left to right along the window frame in an attempt to detect even a hint of wires or ropes, but there was nothing around his body. Her head was spinning at full speed. A myriad of reactions and words sprang up in her mind, but each one died on her lips as she reminded herself who she had in front of her. It took a moment until she could bring herself to speak, but then she cleared her throat briefly to demand his attention and asked, 'What are you doing here, Peter?'
A tender smile formed around his mouth and the look in his eyes softened. 'If you know who I am, then you know what I came here to do.'
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