Picking up his pipes as if, once again, what he said was nothing, he walks away towards the boy’s room while I study my hand more closely. What does this all mean?

“Don’t lose it, though,” he warns and I look up startled from my thoughts. “If you do, I might one day forget my way back to you.”

“But Peter…”

He stops and studies me intensely. “Always wait for me, Wendy. If you do, one night you’ll eventually hear me crowing.”

He gives me a wink over his shoulder just as he disappears into the jack and jill bathroom separating my room from my brothers’. I scurry after him, bumping into my dresser as I go and tripping over a bathroom mat. The sound of his pipes grows louder as I enter my brother's room and see him stop at John’s bed.

Every night he’s come, he’s never ventured into their room. Why now?

Suddenly, Peter flies up onto John’s bunk and kicks him to the floor. My hands cover my mouth in shock, keeping the scream inside that wants to break free. I don’t want to wake my mother or worse, him. But what Peter just did was so wrong and…

“I say!” my brother startles a moment later as he rubs sleep from his eyes and looks up at Peter. “Wendy, is that really him?”

I look between the two, John not much younger than Peter or myself. I lower my hands and I’m about to answer when…

“Michael!” John shouts. “Michael, he’s here!”

Michael bolts out of the bottom bunk and I watch as my brothers wrestle each other out of the way, trying to get closer to Peter, the boy they’ve heard so much about with the stories I’ve told them the last couple years. Through their questions and their bouncing around, Peter’s eyes hold mine and he stops my heart as we’re suddenly cocooned in this separate world, just the two of us, an anchor in the middle of all the madness, before he jumps off the bed and takes a couple steps towards me.

“You ready, Wendy?”

“For… what Peter?”

“The best part,” he smirks. Leaning in further, I stop breathing as he whispers, “My favorite part.”

I don’t know how I hear him over the noise John and Michael are making, but I do. It’s only Peter and I as I stare into his eyes and on a breathless reply, whisper back, “I’ve been waiting my whole life. I’ll always be waiting for you, Peter.”