Wendy can’t handle visitors. All the meds they’ve got her on these days.

I told him about what I saw…at the grocery store, at the school.

He didn’t respond, but he also didn’t say I was crazy…which I took as a good thing.

“I saw him too,” he said, a few silent moments later, over a mug of coffee downtown.

“Where?” I asked.

“Uh,” he mumbled, looking down. “Everywhere.”

“You’re joking, right?”

John shook his head. “No. He’s been…following me for a while now.”

“How?”

John shrugged. “Everywhere I go, he’s there, waiting. It’s like he knows my next move before I do. If I’m at the office, he’s there, reclining in the window. If I stroll downtown to the antique bookstore, he’s there, drifting in and out of the aisles. If I’m on a delivery run, he’s perched on the restaurant, or the house I’m delivering to.”

“How often does this happen?”

“Enough.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?” I asked him.

“You were four years old when he came to us, Mikey, I guess a small part of me always hoped your memory hadn’t…developed by then.”

“If it makes you feel any better…I didn’t remember anything until yesterday.”

John didn’t want to ask this, but he did. “What do you remember exactly?”

I paused. “The dreams we used to have, and how Wendy spoke of him like he was a central figure in them. I remember Nana losing her mind the night he finally showed up. I remember Mom acting weird, almost jealous, of Wendy’s connection to him…” I trailed off, then looked at John. “You want me to keep going?”

John took a swig of his coffee. “Do you remember how we got to Neverland?”

“He threw sand at us, said it was magical or something, then told us to follow him.”

John nodded. “Out the window, right?”

“Yeah, he said that…” I trailed off, then let the memory return, “…he had this companion, this weird little bug, this bright firefly that hung around him like it was lost…” and then it hit me, the sudden feeling of weightlessness, and the odd vertigo that followed when my hands touched the ceiling. “We flew out the window, didn’t we?”

John held my stare, then nodded. Before I could reply, his attention turned to front window, and the block of vintage shops that bordered Beckett Blvd. At the end of the road, beyond its intersection with Oak Ave, stood an old-school movie theater with framed film posters and a marquee. “Do you see that?” he asked, then pointed to the theater.

I studied John’s face, then followed his finger. “No way…”

The older boy in his brown jacket stood on top of the marquee, fists pressed into his waist.  

And then he rose seven inches.