Neverland State of Mind

Chapter 4

I walked down to Peter's house after my homework was done and I was surprised to find him waiting for me on the porch instead. I walked up and he smiled.

"Einstein has arrived. You should be proud of me. I already started the script for us. I'm half way done." He smiled; feeling accomplished for once. He handed me the paper and I noticed that his fingers looked really rough.

"What happened to your fingers? Why do they have calluses on them?"

"Uh...I tripped walking home from school and they were slightly sore and looked almost bruised so I put ice from the freezer on them and it almost burnt my fingertips." I took the papers and read through the script. I didn't think he'd seriously gotten work done, but it was actually a very well written script.

"Wow, I'll admit. I'm impressed. Why the sudden interest in actually doing your work?" He ran his fingers through his hair with a nervous laugh.

"Well...Mr.Hook kinda made a deal with me that if I behaved and actually tried to care about social studies as well as my other classes I'm assuming for two weeks than I was allowed to go to the dance and he wouldn't suspend me. Not to mention, I wanted to practice my writing skills since apparently that deal wasn't enough torture for me and he's making me write a one page essay on something I learned in his class in these two weeks. It's due the day before the dance." I couldn't believe that he was actually taking this seriously. I never thought I would see the day when Peter would actually put care and effort in to his work; not to mention he took the initiative to get it done himself instead of somebody having to beg or barter with him. This scared me for a second. If Peter could change like this with good enough motivation, could Tony actually change for an entire two weeks just for the initiative of getting me to be his girl? No, that's impossible.

"I can't believe him! It's gonna be torture but it's all worth it so that I can look breathtakingly charming at the dance."

"Well since you already got us five days ahead by writing half the script, maybe we can work on your tutoring for a little."

"Sure, but I thought after that that maybe we could just hang for a bit?" I looked at him and smiled.

"Sure. But first, it's math time." He groaned and as I got out a notebook to write warm up problems in, he made his fingers into a gun in his mind and pretended to shoot himself. He was over dramatically pretending to die on the floor. I rolled my eyes and wrote down three warm up problems dealing with slope.

"Oh come on! Math isn't that bad! It can actually be fun if you understand what you're doing. Just give it a shot." He ignored me; laying still as a rock on the floor acting like he was dead still. I knew the perfect way to get through to him.

"The sooner you get through my math tutoring for you, the more time we'll have to watch the full Peter Pan together. Not to mention, I brought one of my mom's famous chocolate chip cookies for you. I suppose I could give it to you, but you'll have to finish the warm up." He shot up immediately. He really could be a little kid sometimes. He grabbed a pencil and began to solve the first problem.

"Hey, you made all the math problems on the warm up about Peter Pan and Neverland!" I smiled at my success. He solved all the problems and he actually got a 100 on the warm up. I was very proud of him.

"I can't believe I got a 100 on it and that the math was actually kind of fun to do!"

"Do you remember my brother John?"

"Who?"

"My oldest brother John."

"You mean the one who is off to college to become a math teacher?" He shuddered at the word college because it meant becoming an adult.