Lost Boi by Sassafras Lowrey Read Free Book Online Page A

bringing them to meet us and to see Neverland. He struggled too with how to explain what his relationship was to Hook. They had nasty, bloody battles that fed them both inways they couldn’t talk about. Hook’s normal protocols for scene negotiation didn’t apply to his battles with Pan. They played hard, and they played for blood, and they played past breaking. Hook never forgave Pan for hooking him on the Crocodile, and Pan never forgot the morning he came to on Hook’s dungeon floor, sore and wrecked and unwilling to admit he’d been had. That very day, he led the Crocodile right to Hook; the man never saw it coming. Hook might have been sunk, but Pan was attached to the anchor. He couldn’t ever make himself want to walk away from that Pirate.
    â€œIt’s only a matter of time before you are gobbled up by it.” John Michael was shocked by the sweetness of Smee’s voice when she first heard it. Still quite attached to her lesbian identity and unable to gender the voice she now heard, John Michael wanted to know if it came from the sort of person that she would be allowed to find attractive. From under the table, all she could see was the cuffed denim ankle and the mirrored shine of Smee’s boots.
    Now, I’m going to leave Pan and John Michael at the Jolly Roger, since they are about to get tied up for a while, and tell you what happened at Neverland.
    When Pan was away from Neverland, we were like a litter of puppies who got destructive when left alone and crawled all over each other the minute our master walked through the door. On the night that Wendi came, us bois were extra nervous and kept pacing and looking out the window, waiting for Erebos to bound in with Pan tumbling behind. It didn’tmatter that we were all together. Without him, I felt unsteady, as though I could be blown away at any moment and no one would know I’d ever existed. Wendi was on the floor before me, and the bois had all circled around, waiting to see what I would do with this strange, clean, spy grrrl. What if Siren was right and she really could destroy everything? Wendi didn’t want to kneel there, I know that now. She wanted to hose us down, and do the filthy dishes that filled the utility sink in the corner and were stacked along the floor. I know now that she just wanted to patch the holes in our knees, and that she wasn’t so innocent that she didn’t know just how they had gotten there. Wendi wanted to tell us stories, to tuck us in, to pull our smoke-and-mildew-smelling sleeping bags up to our chins. She wanted to shoplift teddy bears for us from the thrift shop. Pan had promised her a pack of obedient boys who wanted a Mommy, not an ambush. I didn’t know any of this.
    While staring at the pink edges of a scar on Wendi’s plump thigh, I knew that Siren’s eyes were on me. Finally, when I could think of nothing else to do, no other way out, I cleared my throat and looked down at Wendi, avoiding her eyes and resting on the smooth inner bend of her elbow. I heard Siren whisper, “Shoot Wendi. Pan would want you to protect Neverland.”
    I grabbed the syringe from the table and pulled the black handkerchief from my back right pocket, using it to tie off the arm that Wendi held out to me. Her eyes were fixed onSiren, her face screwed into an expression that was intended to appear fierce but looked like a pout. My ears filled with the bois’ whispers and the rustling of pigeons above my head. I shot Wendi and she hit the filthy ground, cradling her arm. Wendi was drowning and could hear only the gnashing of crocodile fangs.

6
    The Little Family
    I t was only after I’d done it that I realized my mistake. Siren was silent, and the bois’ constant whispering had ceased. I’d wanted to protect Neverland, to make Pan proud of me, and there was no way I could have known that he wanted this grrrl, that he’d brought her here not only for himself