Chapter 41
CHAPTER 41
JOHN
S imon has been dead for all of five seconds before I realize how bad this looks.
My hands are covered in blood. Worse, in my panic, I’d moved the fallen blade out of the way. I don’t even recall touching it, but my handprints stick to the hilt in sticky scarlet blood all the same.
Blood pumps against my forehead, pounding nails into my skull. Simon’s corpse is pale in front of me, but I can’t seem to scrub the image of my parents’ lifeless bodies from my mind.
Caring gets you killed.
Think, John.
I close my eyes, breathe, and banish my parents from my mind. Banish Simon from my mind. Then I walk myself through my next few steps.
One at a time.
First, I have to decide what the chances are that Peter will believe me if I tell him I didn’t kill Simon. Simon’s been acting strange since the night he killed Nettle. It’s not illogical that he killed himself. Especially when he could see shadows, and the shadows had made Wendy violent.
But had Peter known about Simon’s ability to convene with the shadows? Surely if he had, he would have had Simon on a faerie dust regimen like he’d had Wendy.
A cog turns in my brain, but doesn’t quite fall into place. I’ll consider that later.
Task at hand. Will Peter believe me? I work through how this would look to him.
We’d just had a conversation about losing ourselves, our morals, for the ones we loved. He knows I’ve been hesitant to believe him about Astor taking Wendy from the island. He doesn’t know Tink confirmed he was telling the truth—in part, omitting the part about handing Wendy over. It’s possible he thinks I’m still searching for the person behind Wendy’s disappearance.
And it’s reasonable to think I’d be suspicious of Simon. I have been suspicious of Simon. He’s been acting odd since the night Nettle tried to kill me. I’m still convinced Wendy learned something that night she wasn’t supposed to. Something that’s had Simon spiraling.
I’ve been suspicious enough that whether Simon was involved in Wendy’s disappearance had been my first question when he was dying. If Peter follows a similar train of thought, it’s not a stretch to think I might have killed him.
Honestly, I don’t know that I’d put it past myself if I truly had been convinced by the evidence.
No. I can’t tell Peter.
Next problem: what to do with the body.
It’s still best if the others can assume it was a suicide. Had I not rushed in to help, I could have easily left Simon’s body as is, but now that his blood is all over me, some of it soaking my shirt, and my handprint is on the blade, I have to figure out how to make it look as if no one intervened.
The blade.
Once I clean my hands on my pants, I wipe the hilt off with the little of my shirt that’s not already drenched in blood. When Simon dropped the dagger, the hilt was still clean. I leave the blood staining the blade and position the hilt under Simon’s already hardening fingers.
Now his wound.
Much of his blood is absorbed into my shirt, but some of it had already pooled on the ground next to him before I got to him. It’s not much, but I spread some of it across his wound, trying not to focus on the clammy feel of the open skin against my wet fingertip as I trace a line from his wound to the ground and spread it over the indentions made by the textile.
I’m not pleased with my work and can only hope that the blood will have dried by the time someone finds him.
When I’m done, I dispose of my shirt in the thicket, then make my way back to camp.
Regrettably, it’s Smalls who discovers Simon’s body. I’d just been back at the Den long enough to throw a shirt on by the time the panicked shouting echoed down the rooted hallways from the center of the Den.
Peter hadn’t been home, so the Lost Boys made the trek to the body together. I’d stayed behind to watch Michael, my stomach still twisting with anxiety over what I’d witnessed. Victor had returned crestfallen, weary, claiming that in Smalls’s panic, he’d tried to stifle Simon’s wound, not realizing he was already dead.
Waves of relief and guilt had taken me with them at that news. Frenzied elation that Smalls had inadvertently covered up the evidence that I’d been around for Simon’s death. Hatred of myself for being grateful for the youth’s trauma.
Dinner is quiet that night, and every night after. No one had been shocked to discover that Simon had taken his own life. Even now, days later, no one questions it, even after all the murders that have taken place on this island.
Upon his return, Peter said it was suicide, and so it is.
The only one who seems at all suspicious is Victor, who keeps glancing at me, signaling me to talk to him privately.
I keep pretending not to notice. Eventually, I’m going to have to decide how to respond to his questions. I imagine he’ll believe my story, but the consequences are rather dire on the slim chance he doesn’t. So for now, I’m working out how to present the truth so that it’s unquestionable.
Since Simon’s death, Peter’s been eating every meal with us. Every meal that he’s not away on one of the Sister’s quests, at least. A strange habit for him to start now, as he didn’t bother after the deaths of Freckles, Joel, or Nettle. Or Thomas, I assume, though I wasn’t at Neverland directly after that.
He sits at the head of the table, jabbing at the Lost Boys as he normally does. As if nothing’s happened. As if one of us didn’t slit his own throat. He tries to keep conversation going, plugs any silence that leaks into the room with a joke or an outlandish story about something he encountered in the other realms.
It’s a clear attempt to take the Lost Boys’ minds off of Simon’s suicide.
I wonder if he knows how ineffective it is. How the boys laugh and play along as long as Peter is in the room, then dwindle to a reserved hush as soon as he’s out of earshot. Not that there are many boys left.
Since Smalls discovered the body, Benjamin has stopped whittling, claiming his fingers ache. Victor is even more sullen than usual. Though he didn’t particularly care for Simon, something about the other boy’s death seems to have rocked him. The normally reclusive Twins have even stopped whispering to one another.
Across from me, Smalls pokes his onions with his fork. A memory of Simon passing him his untouched onions underneath the table berates my memory. As he plays with them, Smalls’s face turns a bit green. Probably running over the same memory. The ghost of the dead boy haunting him from even his dinner plate.
Peter must notice too, because he says to Smalls, “Watch out. If you don’t clean your plate, you won’t grow anymore.”
Smalls stares at the onions in front of him, looking like he’s about to gag. “I’m not very hungry,” he says.
Peter’s grin remains steady. “You will be later if you don’t eat.”
The rest of Smalls’s plate is wiped clean. It’s not as if the onions on his plate are going to provide him with much sustenance. Not enough that would make a difference between now and breakfast.
“Benjamin hasn’t finished his roast,” says Smalls, pointing.
Peter stiffens, almost imperceptibly. “Then Benjamin can finish his, too.”
With a huff, Smalls does as Peter says, putting the onions to his mouth and swallowing them with a grimace.
I don’t miss the way Peter’s gaze bounces across all the other boys’ plates, then lands on mine. I frown, then place the onions in my mouth.
They’re sweet, but strong. Overpowering, almost. Wasn’t that why I’d picked them to hide the taste of rushweed when I’d sought to paralyze Tink? They’re tangy, but with an aftertaste of something sweet. I’ve always thought the onions here tasted different from the ones back home, but I’d assumed they were a different variety.
My mind begins to whirl.
When we first arrived, Simon loved onions. In fact, he’d take Nettle’s. When Simon stopped eating them, I assumed it was because they reminded him of the boy he’d had to kill to save Wendy, Michael, and me.
But Nettle had gone crazy. Something had set him off, started him on this delusion of killing the other Lost Boys. And then Simon had stopped eating the onions. Then he’d gone crazy too.
Or had he?
At first, I’d thought Simon had been talking to himself. Hallucinating. But as I’d tried to stifle his wound, something about it had dawned on me as familiar.
I’d seen Wendy do that. Not talk to the shadows, but look out at the world like there was something else there. Something else the rest of us couldn’t see.
Until Peter had dosed her with the faerie dust. Faerie dust, which tasted of the nectar of honeysuckles.
The onions slide down my throat, and it’s possible I’m imagining the taste of nectar as they do. Possible my mind is playing tricks on me, desperate for a solution and conjuring the taste itself.
But now that I’ve tasted it, I can’t untaste it.
Only when I’ve cleaned them off my plate does Peter push himself from the table.
The next time Peter leaves on a mission from the Sister, I stop eating my onions.