Always Neverland Read Free

cheeks.
    â€œAre you crying ?”
    â€œOf course not.”
    But he wiped his face with the back of his hand and sniffed suspiciously.
    â€œI’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hit you that hard.” But in the back of my mind, I was pretty impressed with the way I defended myself. It wasn’t every day you got to fight off nighttime intruders.
    â€œIt wasn’t the pillow ,” he said, sheathing his sword. “It’s my shadow .”
    â€œYour shadow?”
    â€œOver there.”
    The boy pointed across the room. A dark, flat figure was struggling to open the window. It was shaped exactly like the flying boy, right down to the wild curls and leafy clothes, and it was having trouble getting the window up. Shadows must not be very strong.
    Something about the scene seemed very familiar—like something I had read in a book or seen in a movie.
    With a sudden, electrifying thought, I turned back to the boy. “I know who you are! You’re Peter Pan!”
    â€œOf course I’m Pan. Who else would I be?”
    Peter Pan and his shadow in my bedroom? I pinched myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. It definitely hurt.
    I couldn’t believe my luck! My winter vacation just got a lot more interesting.
    The legendary boy flew to the window. When he grabbed his shadow’s shoulder, it slapped his hand away and tried more frantically to lift the window.
    â€œNone of that now,” Peter ordered. Then he looked at me and added, “My shadow hasn’t gotten away from me in a very long time, but it got stuck under the moving metal carriage outside and snapped right off.”
    It took me a couple of seconds to realize what exactly he was talking about. “You mean, my parents’ car?”
    He didn’t answer. Instead he dragged the shadow away from the window. It reached up and tickled Peter’s stomach. Peter laughed, and when his grip loosened, the shadow made a break for it.
    But Peter was faster. Before his shadow reached the window, Peter tackled it again. Then boy and shadow wrestled, tumbling across the rug. They banged into my nightstand so hard that my lamp toppled and fell.
    I was still a little stunned, but I couldn’t just stand there forever, especially when Peter looked like he could use some help. So, I jumped off the bed, picked up the book, and whacked the shadow. The poor shadow stopped fighting Peter and held its injured head in its hands.
    I waited for Peter to thank me, but he just sat down, cross-legged, pulling the shadow closer by its foot.
    The shadow tried feebly to get away, hooking its elbow around my desk chair. That didn’t work. Peter just dragged shadow and chair until his own ankle and his shadow’s foot touched.
    Then he looked at me expectantly. “Aren’t you going to attach it?”
    I stared at him. To be completely honest, I had no idea how to get someone’s shadow to stick on. That wasn’t something they taught in school.
    But I did know how to find out.
    â€œJust a sec,” I told Peter. I went to my bookcase and searched the shelves. I knew that Grandma Delaney had given me Peter Pan for Christmas a couple years back, but it took me a while to find it. “Here we go.”
    I flipped through the pages, skimming until I came to the part I wanted. “It says here that Wendy sewed your shadow on.”
    â€œYeah, sew it back on ,” he said, sounding impatient.
    â€œSew? I don’t know how to sew!” I didn’t even know if we owned any thread.
    Peter jumped up, still holding his shadow’s foot. Tipped upside down, the shadow flailed both flat arms, trying to steady itself.
    â€œHold on,” I said quickly, worried that they might leave before Peter did anything really exciting, like teach me to fly. “I think there’s some Super Glue in the kitchen.”
    I crept out of my room and down the back staircase, walking close to the wall to avoid the creaking