The Peter Pan Letters

Letter #2

Dear Reader,

Peter. That’s what he called himself. As if it was some sort of joke. I don’t know why Pan was added. Maybe giving him a last name made him seem more human, or maybe it occurred through all the jokes I’ve had to endure over the years. Either way, he was just Peter to me.

                You wanted to know the real story, so here it is. It wasn’t an accident he came that night. He wasn’t looking for anything. He was preying. On me.

                I was a storyteller, that’s what first attracted him. I entertained him. I was like the radio to him, nothing more than entertainment. His eyes had been on me for weeks before he finally came for me.

                It was a new moon, the stars twinkled very brightly, but there was still a deeper darkness that shrouded us like a cloak. He must have seen the opportunity in that night, my parents gone to a business party the nanny sent away for some silly argument with father. We were unattended, only a nightlight watching over us.

                I can’t say when he arrived, for it was very much like a dream at first. I woke slowly, half in dreamland, to find a boy hovering above me. At first I didn’t know what it was, for his skin seemed to be shifting, as if trying to find its color. He grazed his lips across mine, as if kissing me, and suddenly he was in focus, with creamy skin like my own. My eyes flew open and he backed up across the room.

                It didn’t occur to me until much later that he needed to touch me to look human, or that I might have been as frightfully strange to him as he was to me.

                “Boy, why are you crying?” I asked, as his body was shaking as if in tears.

                He stopped and stepped forward boldly. “I was not crying,” he denied.

                At the time I believed him a proud boy, unwilling to admit weakness, but I later found out he was in fact being truthful. There was so much of the scene that would change.

                “My name is Wendy Darling,” I introduced, holding out my hand like my father does.

                “You can call me Peter,” he said with a smirk, as if in on some joke I was unaware of. I let my hand dropped when I realized he wasn’t going to shake it.

                “What were you doing?” I asked, curiously, remembering him hovering above me.

                “When?” He asked, watching me curiously.

                “When I woke,” I clarified, “You were hovering above me.”

                “What did you think I was doing?” he asked.

                Right then I should have told him to leave, and gone to bed, but I didn’t. I stayed standing in only my nightgown, a blush creeping over my face as I answered him. “It looked to me as if you were giving me a kiss.”

                “What’s a kiss?” he asked, stepping towards me.

                I was speechless. I’d never had to explain a kiss, especially not to a handsome, raven-haired boy. He was very close now, close enough to kiss.

                “Was it this?” he asked, his face coming closer.

Like any thirteen-year-old girl, I panicked. He was going to kiss me! I jumped out of the way and grabbed the first thing off my dresser and held it between our faces.

“This,” I said breathlessly, “this is a kiss.”

He held out his hand and I let the thimble fall into it. He looked at it, and then smirked at me. That’s how we created the kiss.

I would write more now, but Jane demands my attention. Until next time.

Sincerely,

Wendy Angela Darling