Peter Pan Teaches Wendy to Fly (She Doesn’t Learn)

In this tale, Peter Pan warns the girl: if she tries to fly, she’ll find herself splattered on cement—lips split open by gravel, teeth bloodied, vision blurry.

But the girl only laughs. And somewhere, maybe a fairy skips to life.

***

It’s midnight, and we’re kicking gravel in the neighborhood.

Next to me, he’s caught in a rhythm: head bobbing, fingers drumming, feet tapping to the bone-deep thrum of nearby rager music. An empty McDonald’s bag skitters across the road, dances with us before the wind whisks it past a row of parked cars.

Above us, the sky unfurls like a movie poster.

“So, you thinking about the future?” I ask. My words feel clumsy as soon as they leave my lips. “Like, college plans or big dreams and—”

“All I’m thinking about right now”—he slings his arm around my shoulders—“is ice cream. Favorite flavor?”

“Oh. Uh, mango?”

“Not chocolate?”

I ease myself out of his grip and shrug.

“Everyone loves chocolate,” he says, grinning as he grabs my elbow and pulls me toward an abandoned driveway.

In the dark, he’s almost a phantom, gliding on a lawn of old, scraggly flowers. For a moment, I have to squint—make sure he’s real and not just a shadow cast by distant street lights and pixie dust. I’ve almost always been uncertain of things: always found it difficult to peel dreams and memories apart; always had to sift through past conversations to discard the imagined ones; always had to tiptoe the plank of gravity between flying and falling.

I shake my head. “Anyway, I was saying, what d’you dream of—?”

“Dunno, honestly. I’ve gotta think about it, okay?” He comes closer—so close I feel the heat of his breath on my face. “Let’s head to that party? We’ve got prolly fifteen minutes before someone calls the cops.”

He’s real, all right: his clench on my arm drives away that uncertainty.

“Not today,” I say quietly. “I’m sorry.”

He shrugs, pulling out his phone. I catch sight of a video on his Instagram feed: bodies almost shedding their skins, slithering into other bodies in a dim blood-orange haze. The music grows louder, throbbing throughout the streets like a shared heartbeat. To our left, a light flicks on in a bedroom, followed by an irritated buzz of voices.

“You didn’t answer my question earlier,” I say.

His eyes are bright and hazel in his phone’s light. “Which one?”

“What you dream of. Your plans for the future. What keeps you up—”

“Stop questioning me just this once, okay? We’re not all so deep all the time.” He laughs and takes my arm. “Look, some friends are texting me about the party. You wanna come along?”

I lower my eyes, and he walks off.

At 2 a.m., he texts me: Hey about earlier we good? Sorry I was an idiot

At 2:40, What u up to?

At 3, Ok. Sorry. Got kinda stressed with u asking about my future when I still dont have shit figured out

***

Peter Pan warns her—confesses that he once graffitied the ground blue, scattered cotton as the clouds, and spun yellow candy floss as the sun.

***

A day later, my Psych class project partner comes over, flops down on my bed, and scatters open her pile of notes. Tucked behind my MacBook, I work on my half of the project. Fifteen minutes pass in the kind of awkward silence that you share with someone you’ve only exchanged passing small talk with.

Then she leans toward me, a strand of copper-red hair falling into her eyes. “Hey, uh, don’t mind me asking, okay? I saw your boyfriend at the party yesterday. How come you weren’t there?”

I pause, type out a string of random letters on my Word Doc, delete them. “Oh, I told him to go ahead without me. Had an essay to write.”

“Man, you never let anything distract you. You’ve got your stuff figured out. I could never.”

“Hey, don’t sell yourself short,” I say, but I don’t know if she’s right or wrong about me. All my life, I’ve been scheming to launch into the sky, but even ace report cards and college acceptance letters succumb to gravity.

She waves off my words. “So what’s he like? He any good?”

“Oh, yeah—yeah, he’s a great guy. Kinda nerdy. Endearing.”

“Nerdy? Him? That’s new. But you know I mean, like… ” She grins.

I flush. “I—we haven’t.”

Her eyes widen. “And he’s okay with that? I mean, it’s no big deal, you’re still cute together.” A small laugh. “Well, he a good kisser?”

And because I don’t have the energy to explain myself, to answer her follow-up questions, to justify who I am, I just nod.

***

Peter Pan warns her: flight is a dangerous business.

***

To answer her question, I doubt he’s okay with that.

Later that day, he and I are reading in his bedroom, surrounded by posters of garage rock bands he once said he’d introduce me to.

I peek at him over a magazine I’m not reading, open my mouth, close it.

“Yeah?” he says.

“What?”

He pulls out his earphones and puts aside his manga. “You were gonna say something.”

“I… I’m sorry for yesterday, for bailing every time you want to…” I trail off, unsure how to finish. Want to what? Go out? Party? Have fun? I think of a video of last night’s rager: him, wobbling on top of a table, knocking back a drink while his friends cheered from below. I think of the way he spilled half his drink, and how it glistened on his chin and soaked his shirt; of how his heavy-lidded eyes still shone with life, with electricity; of the angles in which the strobe lights struck him, making him appear mid-flight.

I wring my hands. “I’m sorry,” I repeat, but what I really want to say is, teach me to fly. All my life I’ve been trying to outrun gravity, and I’ve failed. And then there’s you: effortlessly gliding, floating, flying.

I wring my hands. “I’m sorry,” I repeat, but what I really want to say is, teach me to fly. All my life I’ve been trying to outrun gravity, and I’ve failed. And then there’s you: effortlessly gliding, floating, flying.

But the way he flies—is that the kind of flight I’m prepared for right now? Or ever?

He sighs and shifts closer. Evening sunlight enters the room through a slit between the gray curtains, casting an oppressive, muted glow.

“No, I’m sorry,” he says. “You don’t have to dumb yourself down for me. Ask me whatever the hell you want. Deep scary questions and all.”

“Thank you. I appreciate that.” And in that moment, with one foot of distance between us, I gaze at him and think: you’re the prettiest person I’ve ever seen.

Next thing I know: there’s a scuffle, and he’s pulling me to the center of his bed and yanking his shirt off and shoving his face into my face. What? No, no, no. I kick and roll and tumble off the bed and oh look, aren’t these wooden floorboards pretty?

“Shit. Shit. Are you okay?” he’s saying.

My heart is a bird, thrashing its wings against my ribcage.

“I—I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to freak you out.” He sits beside me and forces a laugh. “So… maybe just not today then?”

Not today, not ever. Definitely not ever, I want to say. But then I’d lose him. I’d lose the boy who’s supposed to cradle my dreams and teach them to fly.

***

Again and again, Peter Pan warns her. Still, she gazes at the stars and the sky, forgetting gravity’s harsh laughter.

***

The next day at school, everything’s different. He isn’t leaning by my locker during recess. He doesn’t have me tag along with him and his crowd in the large school lawn. He doesn’t flash me smiles every now and then, in the intervals between fistbumps and loud arguments with his friends about anime I’ve never heard of and soccer matches I haven’t watched.

After three days of silence, he shows up at my doorstep. (Just like he did three weeks ago—the first time he ever approached me: an easy grin, fingers fiddling with a paper plane, a confession about how he found me intimidating but decided to try his luck anyway. And that made no sense because it was me who could barely speak, me who could barely look him in the eye without flushing.)

It’s the same today as he tells me, “I needed time apart, sorry. It kinda hurt. Put yourself in my shoes. Wouldn’t you be hurt?”

I can’t imagine myself ever putting myself in his shoes, but I nod. Smile, even.

“But we’re good now,” he says, squeezing my hand. “And we don’t have to rush. We can wait for whenever you’re ready.”

His hand on mine, cold like slime.

***

Peter Pan sighs and warns her: flight, as she understands it, is a lie.

***

We head for the nearest park. He gets us chocolate ice cream—sticky, sickeningly sweet. Is this what lips taste like? I wonder. I’m staring at him then, trying to see him as more than just a person, as more than a lucid dream, as more than a poem.

“You like it?” he asks, wiping cream off his mouth.

Maybe if I squint, I’ll find the right… viewpoint—the right perspective with which to see him. How does he want me to see him? As a body, for once? Maybe a body is the only vessel for flight; why else would they call it being high?

“Hey.” He waves a hand in my face. “You like?”

I squint. Is that it? Flight? Not in the sky that’s filled with birds like bruises, but in the way he shines like he’s shed his skin? Framed by the blue expanse? Hair fluttering like a million miniature wings?

Is that it?

“Hey.” There’s a note of irritation in his voice now.

I shake my head. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

“No, I’m sorry.”

“What’s wrong?”

I shake my head. “I’m sorry because… we’re not—we’re not right for each other.”

He stares. “Why would you…” Then trails off. Tries again. “I mean… What are you on about?”

I shake my head again. “Listen.”

“I—I don’t understand.”

I go on, blinking very fast: “I’m not what you want. And… you’re not… what I want. I tried convincing myself otherwise, I tried, but we’re both waiting for each other in hopes of something that’ll never come.”

His face crumbles. From this distance, two feet away, he’s just as pretty, if not more—but this distance, god, I need this distance to appreciate that beauty. I need the space to step back and admire him from afar, and maybe that means I’m not wired right. Maybe it means I’m messed up, but every time he steps in to close that distance, my heartbeat speeds up—not with excitement.

“I’m sorry. We need to let go of each other.” I brace myself for the casual arguments, the brush-it-off laughter, the intentional confusion. And for a moment, I see it in his face—how he’s about to tell me I’m being stupid, and can’t I see we’re just having fun, and I need to stop thinking so deeply all the time. He reaches out his arm—to touch my shoulder, I think. Or my neck. My chin. Lips.

My body tenses. My gaze wanders away—toward the toddlers playing on the creaking merry-go-round, the gently-moving swings, the patch of dried grass beneath them. Anywhere else.

He freezes, retracts his hand, and nods a small, silent understanding.

“Thank you,” I say quietly. And as I walk away, melted ice cream dripping all over my fingers, I finally exhale. My feet touch the pavement, one step at a time, steady and sure. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. By my own rhythm.

***

Wendy admits it, eventually: her body has never been built for flight.

And there’s comfort in the way her feet tap the wooden floorboards of her room, the way she sinks back into her bed and waves goodbye to the boy who refuses to grow up. Eventually, he and the fairies fly away and spin themselves into stars.

From this distance, Wendy thinks they’re the prettiest she’s ever seen.