"Come on, Pancake," I called behind me, "I'm tired of leading the way."
Peter came up to my side with a frown on his face. "I'm still not used to being called Pancake. I prefer you to call me The Sexy Beast."
Our footsteps crunched across the leafy terrain right outside of camp. To be honest, I'm not sure where the firewood was, I was just following my instincts.
But yet, I shook my head with a smirk and said, "sorry, but that name is already written in stone."
He let out an exaggerated and sarcastic sigh, but footed on in front of me. His voice echoed off of the towering jungle trees with each step we took. "You know what I admire most about you, Amber?" He asked, turning around with a sheepish grin.
I shrugged my shoulders and smiled back. "I don't know, what?"
Peter stooped down to collect a dry piece of firewood, then turned to me with the piece of bark in his hand. "The fact that you hold your willpower back when you're in the presence of a sexy god like me," he emitted a smirk, tilting his head like a clueless puppy.
"Shut up," I laughed.
"That's not a denial," he responded, pointing a stick at me.
I leaned down and grabbed a nearby fallen tree branch. My arm raised as the leaves rustled, falling deliberately like snowflakes back to the forest floor. I then turned to him, weapon in-hand. "That twig against my tree branch?" I taunted jokingly. "Are you sure?"
Peter shrugged his broad shoulders and elevated his stick. "You know me, I never decline a challenge."
I smiled, half-expecting for him to turn down my joking dare, but he held his position upright. "I hope you know I wasn't serious," I laughed, lowering my tree branch.
He chuckled lightly to himself. "Oh I know you weren't, love."
We both stayed silent for a brief second. My eyes flickered up and saw him staring straight back at me.
It was like a special effect, when the sunlight streamed in from above us, it illuminated specks of gold in his beautiful greenish warm gaze. And for a moment, I felt lost in words. The moment practically engulfed me.
Back at home, I never had any sweethearts. Mainly because I was always occupied with helping my family in a time of need.
But here, I was free from that burden. My heart was released from its tugging leash and defiantly, it dragged itself towards a mischievous Lost Boy.
Peter Pan.
No, I thought, deny it. The feelings towards him are just natural hormones. I'll get over it. And besides, what if he doesn't return my affection. I can't lose this game.
Peter took it as another opportunity to speak. His voice came out hesitantly, but surely. "Are you... falling for me, Amber?"
My mind snapped back to reality as my helpless stare fell to the ground. "I uh...," A surge of heat raced to my cheeks as I felt his hand lift up my chin. Carefully, I let my eyes waver back up to his face.
There he stood. His expression was soft, yet serious. His eyes were searching mine for a sign of attraction of some sort, yet, I still said nothing.
"I'll take that as a no," he sighed finally, dropping his gaze and his steady face from before. A nervous laughter escaped his lips as he ran his fingers through his auburn hair. "That's alright," he decided, placing a weak smile on display. "I've still got four days."
I smirked, "in your wildest dreams."
Together, we stalked around the jungles of Neverland, looking for a decent amount of firewood to take back to camp. The sun was high in the sky by the time we had collected several pieces each.
Do we really need this many parcels? I thought to myself as I continued lugging on behind Peter. I didn't know how much he thought we needed but this was far more than enough.
The silence pierced through the tension between us, so I made an effort to break it. "So...," I laughed nervously, heaving dry branches over my shoulders, "why is Sugar on Neverland anyway?"
Peter bent down near a shrub, picking out another piece of firewood before turning back to me. "Who knows? The shadow took her for a reason," he sighed, shaking his head. "Maybe she just felt lost."
I nodded in understanding, although I was still curious as to why the shadow would choose her. "Let's head back to camp," I offered, trying to change the subject. "I feel like we've got enough firewood that would last us for days."
Peter looked over his shoulder at me and saw how the numerous parcels weighed me down as I walked. Some pieces were originally twice my height, so I snapped them and heaved them into my arms. "Let me help you," Peter offered, slipping his hand around my waist and gathered spare pieces from my grasp.
"Thank you," I smiled as he lifted some weight off my shoulders. He nodded a subtle "you're welcome" and swiftly checked his compass. The needle wavered for a moment before landing on north, making him grin and slip it back into his pocket. "Let's play a game," he said, "follow the leader. All you have to do is mimic my actions."
I scoffed, "I feel like that's easier said than done. After all, you can fly."
"Oh I can do a lot more things than fly, sweetheart," he responded, a flirtatious smirk crept onto his lips. "I can make you weak to your knees."
"And so can I with just a kick in the groin."
Peter's eyes widened in fear for a moment before realizing I was joking. Smoothly, he recovered it to a laid-back gaze. "You wouldn't," he smirked, and added quickly, "I would know because I've had my full share of it."
I let out a laugh and rolled my eyes. "So are we playing Follow The Leader, or not?"
"Fine, Miss. Impatient," Peter cocked an eyebrow jokingly and shifted the weight on his shoulders. "Follow me."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
His little game ended up making me soaking wet from the knee down, just because I had to mimic his actions. He waded into a pool of frigid shallow water just for his own amusement of watching me trail behind him, shivering.
I cannot say I enjoyed it, but hearing his laugh was worth it. In the end, when we got back to camp, he wrapped a warm blanket around me as he lifted the pieces of firewood off from my shoulders. "Head up and change," he smiled, holding both of our loads under one arm. "And hurry, you won't want to miss this."
Graciously, I nodded and skipped up the rope ladder to what I called my home in Neverland. A nice familiar dwelling greeted me at the top as I slipped in through the wooden doorway, leading to my closet.
As I tugged off my leggings and unlaced my boots, I took one look in the mirror and saw my dirt covered self. Wow, what this island does to you, I thought. We all could really use some showers in Neverland, especially the Lost Boys themselves. A few of them started smelling like my grandmother's mushroom stew...
I shook off my distracted thoughts and slid out the door as soon as my freshly worn clothes were thrown on completely.
Well, at least I thought I had finished.
Unfortunately, I ended up tripping down the rope ladder because I forgot to lace my left boot. I landed with a hard thud and cringed as I felt several eyes stare at my helpless state. Even so, at the moment I didn't even bother to consider how awfully embarassed I looked.
"Amber," I heard Peter laugh as his footsteps came closer to my dangerous landing zone. Seeing my situation, he saw an opportunity, and took it. "Did it hurt when you fell from heaven?" He asked, with a hint of sarcasm in his voice.
"It hurt," Sugar replied for me, "she landed on her face."
I managed to laugh through what I thought was a subtle insult. Since I was taught to ignore hurtful comments, I let it pass. My attention then turned to Peter, who lent an open hand. "I've had enough with the pick-up lines," I chuckled as he helped me up back onto my feet.
"But you love them," he raised an eyebrow, giving a knowing smile. He flashed his teeth and I swear, for a moment my heart skipped a beat.
"Shut up, British boy." Was the best come-back I could have thought of at the moment.
He shook his head and ran his fingers through his tousled hair. "As you wish," he grinned, before turning around and stepping into the middle of the camp. He drew the Lost Boys' attention away form my crippled mess as I straightened my posture and turned to him.
"We haven't played a game in a while as a group," Peter gave a lopsided smirk, mainly aiming it towards me as I made my way to join the crowd of Lost Boys. "So today to start off our early afternoon, we are going to play an intense round of Capture The Flag. Felix, care to explain the rules?"
I spotted his shaggy blonde hair as he pulled down his hood and circled the crowd. He balanced a blade of grass between his teeth as he delivered an easy-going smirk. "Sure thing, Pan. Two teams split up into two different parts of the island. They each hide three team flags in total while they try and find their opponent's flags. The winner is the team who's succesfully captured all three flags from the opposing group," he finished, nodding towards Peter as a cue.
"Any questions?" Peter spoke up, pausing and running his eyes across the camp's perimeter. "Good. I'll be leader of the Red Team. Whereas leader of the Blue Team will be Amber. Be good to her," he smiled at me approvingly. "Let's split up."
Sugar, Jonah, Owen, and several other Lost Boys were herded onto Peter's side. My smile widened as Felix, Swiftie, Weasel, and countless other boys joined my team. Like my father once said, "different minds can come together and make a hard-working oiled machine."
My team was just that.
"Red Team," Peter crowed, "Head east, I'll meet you there." In response, his group stampeded out of camp with Sugar trailing far behind. She groaned at the amount of running she had to do, but picked up the pace anyway. When they were all out of earshot, Peter leaned down to me and brought his voice to a whisper. "Between you and me," he murmured, with a slight roughness in his voice, "you're going down."
"I like your competive talk," I smiled back, picking out every detail in his thick accent. "But you should know, you've picked a hard opponent to go against."
"Hmm," he thought slowly, "I guess I have." Peter grinned and brought his face away from mine while heaving a sigh. "Best of luck to you, Amber."
I said the same back, and gave him a quick peck on the cheek.
"What?" He stared back at me, bewildered. "No kiss on the lips?"
Laughing, I shook my head "no", so Peter faked a dissapointed sigh. "Alright. I'll take what I can get," he chuckled. And with that, he teleported from my reach.
A smile slowly edged its way onto my lips as I turned away an marched out of camp.
"Where are we going?" A Lost Boy called out, clearly curious as to why we weren't heading in the opposite direction of Peter's group.
I turned around and faced him. Behind him, several more boys had the same confused expressions. All wanting an answer from me.
"We are heading towards the cages," I grinned back at my band of Lost Boys, "there is another useful team member waiting for us."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This book has now 6.4k reads! Thank you!
I'm personally working on another book right now titled "My Tiger Lily," although that's not the reason why my updates have been taking longer than usual. It's actually the intense homework load.
Note to teachers everywhere: Chill.
(There may have been a problem uploading Chapter 21. I've finally fixed it)
~Katie P.N.