They walked on a little further and Preston watched the boy. “Well, here’s your room,” he said, grabbing the handle and opening it for him. The room looked like something from Before, the very room he used to sleep in.
“I remember this,” Preston said, walking in and taking a seat on the bed, his bed, he bounced on it a couple of times and the mattress felt like home, whatever home was, a certain smell, snowy shoes on a welcome mat against the wall, cereal in milk on a school morning. “It’s all the same,” Preston observed, “except that,” he said, pointing to a TV set and video game system. “My Mom would never let me have that in my room.”
“But you always wanted it,” the boy replied. “One of the perks of Neverland. Anyway, I’ll let you settle in, I’ll see you tomorrow.” The boy turned to go, but then he stopped, like a dog he seemed to smell something, as if the air had changed and he faced Preston.
Preston’s stomach started to hurt a little and he couldn’t remember why. It seemed as if there was a light around the boy, the same light he’d seen coming down through the forest when he’d first woken up and he wondered if the boy had been with him the entire time he’d been Here. Then he saw a woman; she was pretty and familiar with long light brown hair and soft brown eyes. He saw her smiling at him, he heard her laugh and knew he loved her very much and that made him sad because he also knew, though he knew not from where, that he’d never see her again.
Then he saw it, as if time had stopped it was both the blink of an eye and a hundred years. He could see his mother handing him a bowl of cereal that last morning. He heard Peyton knocking on his door asking him to go outside, he saw his friend and Eva running one way and he the other. He remembered the lady with the wart on her face and Mr. Hawthorne and those cookies. He’d seemed awfully persistent, why else would he so insist that he take cookies? He tried to put it all together, but the images just hung there. He saw other things; getting off a plane and going to meet Grandma in Florida, Christmas when he was seven years old and the way the brightly lit tree towered over even his father; he saw school when he was very small and learning to ride a bike. It wasn’t so much that his whole life flashed before his eyes, he could feel it quivering inside his body, a movie projected on autopilot. Preston turned to the leader, who seemed to know what he was seeing, though he was a bit disturbed by it.
“It doesn’t usually happen this quickly, you don’t usually remember so soon,” the boy said seriously.
“But I think I see it,” Preston replied.
“Well, if you see it, you see it. Now I can answer your questions.”
“Will I ever see her again?” Preston asked, referring to the woman with the brown hair, his mother.
“No,” the leader said sadly. “I’m sorry, no.”
“Can I ever go back?”
“No.”
“What comes next?”
“I can’t tell you now. It’s not time,” the boy replied very seriously, more seriously than a boy in ragged clothes, with messy hair should naturally act.
“Who are you?” Preston inquired wondering if he was only called The Leader.
“I’m Peter,” the boy replied. “They call me Peter.”
LONDON, eNgLaND 1901
A nurse, the kind with a large bottom and bushy hair tied in a tight bun at the nape of her neck, who looked as if she should have been pushing a gigantic pram, what with her long black skirt, tattered at the ends, and white dress shirt that showed off her heavy arms and chest, moved through Regents Park in London followed by (although sometimes it looked as if she were following) three rambunctious children. It was a spring day, the kind of day that anyone, from the flower seller on the street to the businessman out for a stroll, would call “fine.” The weather was not too hot, not the sticky summer that would come in a few weeks, nor were there any inconvenient chills in the air. The flowers had been blooming in Kew Gardens and along the Strand and near the house in Bloomsbury where the children lived. The grass was green and neatly clipped, the trees reached out, some branches scattered with white flowers while others had the fresh green leaves that Netty had grown to admire about London parks in the spring when the children could go out.
“Winifred, Winifred, calm down,” Netty called as the children ran on ahead of her. They were racing over a path, the raised dirt blowing on Netty’s black shoes, the ones she had just had shined on her way to the butchers. Their play was too much for her, but it was better, Netty knew, to get these children out of the house. The yard was so small, and not only that, there were the Missus’ flowers in the back and that dog they were always playing with. And she couldn’t very well keep them inside and so after they’d had their lunch Netty had dressed the children and taken them out, though now, seeing how they were behaving, she was beginning to wonder about the logic behind her decision. “Winifred, don’t run so much, you simply mustn’t . . .” Netty called, raising her skirts and rushing after the three of them.
There was Winifred, a girl of fifteen, who for all intents and purposes should have been sitting politely making gentle conversation with other girls her age. She should have been learning to sew—sew better than she could, not just those buttons she could barely keep in place—she needed to study her times tables and her spelling, to go over the history books her father left her. But instead she was still playing around in the nursery, still off in fairyland with those brothers of hers. There was John, he was nine, a studious enough young man who listened to his father and his tutor, who would be going away to school soon, to Eton like his father before him and his father before him. There was also Paul, better known as Michael to the children because the Missus, though she liked the name well enough, had said there was something too serious about calling a child Paul. “We’ll see if he grows into it,” is what the Missus had said after little Paul, or was it little Michael, was born. Netty had felt sorry for the Missus, that name had obviously not been her idea and yet she’d carried the child for nine months, she’d gone through the pain of childbirth—and Netty could just picture the screaming—while her husband had sat in the den reading the paper, and still she couldn’t name him.
“Winifred, stay back, stay back, don’t run so far ahead,” Netty called, stumbling to keep up with them as she ran up a hill. The children had just sprung over the top and Netty struggled, though the sun was in her eyes, to see them, sweat accumulating rapidly on her brow.
“On guard,” John called, his arm pointing out as if it were in and of itself a very sharp and pointy sword. “On guard,” he called again and Winifred stood in front of him.
“It is not ‘on guard,’ John, it’s ‘en garde’, it’s French, you have to pronounce it right,” the girl corrected, her long light brown hair tied back in a flimsy blue ribbon. It had looked much nicer before; she knew that, when Netty had done it for her. And her dress had looked much nicer then as well, as had her leather shoes. But then she’d gotten to see the light of day and she never kept anything nice and she didn’t really understand why that had to bother anybody.
“Oh, what do you know about French? I’m going to Eton,” John called and Winifred pushed her brother until he stumbled. He might have lost his balance and fallen over, smack onto the dirty ground, but at the last second he started flailing his arms like a madman and that seemed to do the trick. “You silly girl, hook it, you, hook it,” he called, holding an arm-sword out again as Michael appeared. “On guard,” he called once more and Winifred stepped back, laughing. “I’m Captain Redhanded Jack, you dirty old. . .you dirty old pirate,” the boy cried at Michael, who also held out his arm as a weapon. “On guard you yellow-livered son of a. . . .”
“John!” Netty called, hustling over the hill, her skirts gathered in her hands.
“And I’ll get