Peter Pan

Chapter I. PETER BREAKS THROUGH

All children grow up, except one. Wendy found this out when she was only two years old. One day she was playing in a garden. She picked a flower and ran to show her mother. She must have looked very sweet, because her mother put a hand to her heart and said, "Oh, why can't you stay like this forever!" That was the only time they ever talked about it. But from then on, Wendy knew she would have to grow up. Everyone finds this out after they turn two. Two is the beginning of the end of being little.

The Darling family lived at house number 14. Before Wendy was born, her mother was the most important person in the house. Mrs. Darling was lovely, with a dreamy mind and a sweet, teasing smile. Her mind was like one of those puzzle boxes from the East—open one, and there's always another box inside. And her smile always seemed to be hiding a kiss in the corner of her mouth that no one could ever quite get, though you could always see it was there.

Here is how Mr. Darling won her heart: many young men who had grown up with her all realized at the same time that they loved her. They all rushed to her house to ask her to marry them. All of them, that is, except Mr. Darling. He jumped in a cab and got there first. So he won her. He got everything except that hidden kiss. He never even knew about the puzzle-box part of her mind, and after a while, he stopped trying to get the kiss too. Wendy always thought that only someone as clever and bold as Napoleon could have won that kiss—but even he, she imagined, would have given up and stormed off.

Mr. Darling liked to brag to Wendy that her mother didn't just love him—she respected him too. He was the kind of man who understood things like stocks and shares (buying and selling parts of companies to make money). No one really understands that stuff completely, but he always talked about it so confidently that it made people respect him.

Mrs. Darling wore white when she got married. At first, she kept track of the family's money perfectly, almost like it was a fun game. Not even a single vegetable went unaccounted for. But little by little, she started slipping. Instead of writing down expenses, she began drawing pictures of babies with no faces. These were her secret guesses about the children she hoped to have.

Wendy came first. Then John. Then Michael.

For a week or two after Wendy was born, the family wasn't sure they could afford to keep her, since she was another mouth to feed. Mr. Darling was very proud of her, but he was also very honest about money. He would sit on the edge of Mrs. Darling's bed, holding her hand, and add up all their expenses out loud, while she watched him hopefully. She wanted to just take the risk and not worry so much, but that wasn't his way. His way was pencil and paper. If she interrupted with ideas, he had to start his math all over again.

"Don't interrupt," he would say.

Then he'd go through all his numbers—money at the bank, money at his job, money he could save by giving up his coffee—until finally he'd reach a total.

"Of course we can afford her, George!" Mrs. Darling would say. She already loved Wendy too much to worry. But really, Mr. Darling was being the more responsible one.

"Don't forget about mumps," he'd warn her, and start adding again—money for mumps, money for measles, money for whooping cough—and the total came out differently every time. But in the end, they decided they could keep Wendy.

The same worried math happened when John was born, and even more so with Michael. But both boys were kept too. Soon you could see all three children walking in a row to Miss Fulsom's kindergarten school, with their nurse leading the way.

Mrs. Darling liked everything to be just right, and Mr. Darling liked to do everything exactly like his neighbors. So, naturally, they had a nurse for the children. Since they didn't have much money—mostly because of how much milk the children drank—their nurse was actually a very proper Newfoundland dog named Nana. Nana hadn't belonged to anyone before the Darlings hired her. She had always loved children, and the family had met her in Kensington Gardens, where she used to peek into baby carriages. Careless babysitters hated her because she would follow them home and complain about them to their bosses.

Nana turned out to be a wonderful nurse. She was very careful at bath time, and she woke up instantly if any child so much as whimpered at night. Her doghouse, of course, was kept right in the nursery. She had a special skill for knowing which coughs needed medicine and which just needed a warm scarf. She still believed in old-fashioned cures and didn't think much of newfangled ideas like germs. It was a lesson in good manners just to watch her walk the children to school—staying calmly by their side when they behaved, and nudging them back into line if they wandered off. On the days John played football, she never forgot his sweater, and she often carried an umbrella in her mouth in case of rain.

At Miss Fulsom's school, there was a basement room where the nurses waited during lessons. The human nurses sat on benches, while Nana lay on the floor—that was the only difference between them. The human nurses acted like they were too important to notice her, and she had no patience for their gossip. She didn't like it when Mrs. Darling's friends visited the nursery, but if they did come, she would quickly change Michael out of his everyday outfit and into his fancy one, smooth down Wendy's hair, and fix John's messy hair too.

No nursery could have been run more properly, and Mr. Darling knew it. Still, he sometimes worried about what the neighbors might think. After all, he had his important job in the city to think about.

Nana bothered him in one other way, too. He sometimes felt that she didn't admire him very much. "I'm sure she admires you a great deal, George," Mrs. Darling would tell him, and then she'd remind the children to be extra nice to their father. This usually led to happy family dances, and sometimes the other servant, a young maid named Liza, would join in too. She looked so small in her long skirt and cap, even though she always insisted she wasn't a little kid anymore. Everyone had fun at these dances, but no one had more fun than Mrs. Darling, who would spin around so fast that all you could see was her secret kiss—and if you rushed at her quickly enough, you might just catch it.

The family was happy and simple—until the day Peter Pan came into their lives.

Mrs. Darling first learned about Peter while she was tidying up her children's minds. Every night, after her children fall asleep, a good mother quietly looks through their thoughts and puts everything back in order for the next day—kind of like organizing a messy drawer. If you could somehow stay awake (though of course you never can), you'd see your own mother doing this, and you'd find it very interesting to watch. You'd see her kneel down, smiling at some of the odd things she finds, wondering how in the world you ever thought of them. She'd find some sweet thoughts and hold them close, and quickly hide away some of the naughtier ones. By morning, all your bad thoughts from the day before have been folded up small and tucked at the bottom of your mind, while your nicest thoughts are spread out on top, neat and ready for you to think about.

I wonder if you've ever seen a map of what's inside someone's mind. Doctors sometimes draw maps of other parts of the body, but no one has ever managed to draw a map of a child's mind—it's much too mixed-up and always changing. It has winding paths on it, like a chart of your temperature when you're sick, and these paths are probably roads on an island—because every child's Neverland is a kind of island. It's full of bright bursts of color, coral reefs, wild-looking ships in the distance, savage warriors, hidden hideouts, small magical creatures who work as tailors, caves with rivers running through them, princes with six older brothers, a crumbling old hut, and one tiny old woman with a hooked nose. That would be a simple map to draw if that was all there was to it. But there's also things like your first day of school, religion, your parents, the neighborhood pond, sewing lessons, scary stories, grammar rules, chocolate pudding day, learning to use grown-up clothes fasteners, or losing a tooth—and all of this is somehow mixed into the same map, or maybe it's a whole different map showing through underneath. It's very confusing, especially since nothing ever holds still.

Of course, every child's Neverland is a little different. John's, for example, had a lagoon (a small lake connected to the sea) with pink flamingo birds flying over it, and John was shooting at them. Michael, who was very small, imagined it backwards—a flamingo with lagoons flying over it. John lived in an overturned boat on the beach. Michael lived in a tent called a wigwam. Wendy lived in a house made of leaves sewn neatly together. John had no friends in his Neverland, but Michael had friends who appeared only at night, and Wendy had a pet wolf whose parents had left it behind. Even though each child's Neverland was different, they were all alike in a family sort of way—like how brothers and sisters often share the same nose or the same laugh. All children who play imagine landing their little boats on these magical shores. We have been there too, once upon a time. We can almost still hear the sound of the ocean waves—even though we can never go back.

Of all the wonderful islands out there, the Neverland is the cosiest and the most tightly packed together—not big and spread out with long boring gaps between adventures, but snugly arranged. When you play "Neverland" during the day with chairs and a tablecloth for props, it doesn't feel scary at all. But in those last two minutes before you fall asleep, it starts to feel very real. That's exactly why children need night-lights.

Sometimes, while exploring her children's minds, Mrs. Darling found things she couldn't quite understand. The most puzzling of all was the name "Peter." She had never heard of any Peter, and yet his name kept popping up in John and Michael's thoughts. In Wendy's mind, his name was written everywhere. It stood out in bigger, bolder letters than any other word, and as Mrs. Darling studied it, she felt that it looked strangely proud and sure of itself.

"Yes, he is r—"