lost_boy | (no subject)

(no subject)

This was it, my very first birthday party.

I was nervous and excited and I was probably driving Eddie and Magnus both absolutely mad with all my checking and rechecking of things. I wanted to make sure everything was exactly right, because I had never thrown a party before and although Magnus had helped me quite a bit, I still felt like I needed to make sure I didn't make a mess of it. I knew the rules -- no going upstairs, no alcohol -- and I would make sure everyone else knew it, too, because I didn't want to disappoint Magnus with any terrible behaviour. He was doing me a very big favour, letting me use his place and his pool to have a proper party and I wasn't going to take that for granted.

There was food and drink of all kinds, and plenty of snacks. The pool was lit up with different colours that would get brighter as the sun set and all sorts of inflatable toys could be found so people could just float if they wanted to. At the shallow end of the pool was a little floating basketball net and a bunch of inflatable balls to use with it. There were toys for diving, even a little obstacle course under water with rings people could swim through. The towels were big and fluffy, the chairs were comfortable, and there was even a big birthday cake with my name on it and seventeen candles, although that was for later.

All I had really wanted, I told Magnus, was for it to remind me of his party with all the colours. The one where Eddie and I had first kissed, and he had come through for me. The decorations were fun and bright and everywhere I looked there was a different coloured light.

I had invited all my friends, regardless of their age, so that meant there were little kids on the guest list and adults, too. A part of me worried some of the other kids around my age might think that was weird, but in the end I decided I didn't care that much. I wanted my friends to be here with me, all my friends, and not all my friends were the same age. I liked that about them all very much.

As the first people started to arrive, I clutched Eddie's hand nervously, beaming at him, then kissed him quickly on the cheek before going to greet people. I was supposed to be the host, after all. It was my first party.

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"I knew about magic," I said thoughtfully, trailing my fingers slowly in the water before I reached for Rosie's boat and pulled our floats closer together. Side by side. With our curls, I thought someone could mistake us for siblings. "Before Darrow, I mean, I knew about magic. Peter used magic to bring us to his Island and the Island itself was magic, too. I think Peter made it somehow. I think... I think he and the Island were the same."

I smiled a little and said, "But Peter used magic to hurt people. Magnus is so kind to people and he gives of himself and he's so generous. It's a good thing to see. To know not everyone who uses magic will use it to hurt."

There's an ease to the way Jamie pulls her float up level with his, and Rosie looks over at him with a gentle smile. "The closest I came to anything magical back...well, before here, it wasn't home exactly, was that thing I told you about a few months ago," she says. "The doorway to Anterwold. And even that, I'm not sure if it was really magic or just something strange."

Mentioning their prior conversation--combined with all Jamie says now about Peter and the Island--only serves to remind Rosie about the conclusion she'd come to herself during that same conversation, both of them talking about their strange and sudden arrivals in a new world as Jamie helped her search for a prom dress. That her friend could be a Lost Boy, that the cruel and possessive tyrant Jamie described could be the same as the mischievous sprite she'd read about as a child, all still seemed too absurd to believe--and yet, she couldn't find any reason to question it, especially not in a place as odd as Darrow.

"That awful Peter of yours," she says instead, soft and sympathetic. "I'm glad he's not here."

"So am I," I said, then exhaled slowly. "He would hate this especially, a birthday party. He hated so much that I was growing up and that I was finding friends other than him."

I said it all so lightly, but I knew if Peter were to come to Darrow, he would do awful things. He would try to hurt the people I loved and he would be especially angry about those I was closest to. Rosie and Beverly and Regan and others. He would try to kill Eddie.

"I hope none of you ever have to meet him. But if you do, don't believe a word he says."

"All the more reason for you to enjoy yourself today," Rosie says, cheerful but with a firm resolve underlying the words. "For all of us to." Though at heart she'd always prefer to be nice, to be helpful and kind, when people didn't deserve that she had very little problem setting it aside; indulging in cheerful pettiness, or a bratty sort of stubbornness. Sometimes, it was exactly what was needed.

Rosie looks over at Jamie then, nodding once. "I hope he never comes here," she says. "But if he does, if I know it's him, I won't trust him at all."

Sometimes I wondered what Peter would do if he came here. I knew he would try to hurt the people I cared about and I didn't want that to happen, but I wondered if he would be as powerful as he had been on the Island. Maybe separated from it, he would be easier for me to defeat, which I would do without hesitation. I had loved Peter once, but I knew I loved my new friends, my real ones, much more.

"Is there anyone from home you would wish to see again?" I asked Rosie instead of thinking too much about Peter. "Your best friend or... family? Do you have siblings?"

I knew so much about Rosie, but I realized I didn't know about her family.

"I've got an older brother," she says, then pauses, tilting her head slightly. "Or rather, he was older, when I left--we're two years apart, so he was seventeen then, and I'm seventeen now, so...in a way, we've become the same age."

Rosie laughs a little, the sound of it falling away into a gentle sigh. "Of course I'd want to see my family again, my parents and my brother, but sometimes I wonder if they'd...approve. Of how I've changed since living here, the friends I've made and the things I've done. Or wanted to do."

"They're your family," I answered. "They love you. I don't think they would mind. Besides, it isn't as if you're not a wonderful person."

I knew not all families were good, I knew sometimes they didn't love when they were supposed to and I knew sometimes families hurt the people who needed them. My father had been cruel and violent and he had hurt both me and my mother, but Rosie wouldn't say she wanted to see her family if any of them had been like that.

I would have loved to see my mother again, but I knew such a thing was never going to be possible.

"Well, if you think I'm a wonderful person, I must be," she says, tipping her head up to grin at Jamie. "No, you're probably right. It's just, at home, sometimes it felt as though I was always doing the wrong thing. Being too clever, or wanting too much, or...lots of things."

"Is it possible to be too clever as long as you use it in the right way?" I asked. I knew people could be too clever and use it to hurt people, I had certainly see that myself, but I thought as long as someone was clever and kind, it wasn't a bad thing at all.

And Rosie was kind. She was fierce and smart and kind. Those were all good things and her family should have been able to appreciate that. I certainly did.

Rosie ducked her head for a moment, smiling. "No, it isn't," she says. "At least, I don't think it is, and you don't think it is. But sometimes it seemed as though my parents didn't want me to bother with going to school for longer than I really needed to--let alone to university someday."

Looking over at him again, she wrinkles her nose, brief and wry. "Mummy wanted me to train as a nurse instead, or work in a shop. Only until I was old enough to get married, of course."

"Why only until you were old enough to get married?" I asked, wrinkling my nose a little. I thought being a nurse would be a very good career and that Rosie would be good at it, but only if she wanted to. And it didn't make sense that she would have to stop when she was old enough to get married. Plenty of married people worked at all kinds of jobs, as far as I knew.

Magnus was married and he worked in that nice bookstore I liked so much. If I ever got married, I didn't think I would stop working. Shouldn't you work harder if you were married? To support your family and pay all your bills.

There's something so sweetly, boyishly naïve about the question and the way Jamie looks asking it that Rosie has to smile. If nothing else, it covers up the odd and sudden spike of what feels a little like jealousy that he's even asking it at all. Things were always so different for boys; things they could ignore, or fail to consider, or assume were the same for everyone when in truth they were nothing of the kind.

None of that is Jamie's fault, not really, and Rosie sets it aside after another moment's silence.

"It's how it was supposed to be," she says, something faintly bitter still lingering in her tone. "Or how Mummy and everyone thought it was supposed to be, really. Once you're married, you keep house and do the shopping and take care of the children, and that's all. Even if you'd rather have adventures, or see foreign places, or...anything other than staying in Oxford the rest of your life."

Rosie forces herself to a halt, blushing at how much she'd said without entirely meaning to. "Sorry, it's not...this isn't really the sort of conversation that's suited to your birthday party, is it?"

I gave that a bit of thought and I understood what Rosie was saying, because sometimes it still seemed like that, even here. But at home in London, my mum had needed to work almost as much as my father, and I'd had a job, too, helping the book binder who paid me poorly, but helped me learn to read and write.

"That's stupid," I said, ignoring what she'd said about it not being the place for this sort of conversation. I didn't mind talking about something on my birthday that we might have talked about otherwise. "What if whoever you marry wanted to keep house and take care of the children? What if you didn't even have children? Then both of you could do whatever you wanted."

I paused again, then said, "And what if you didn't want to get married?"

"I'd thought about that a little," she admits, catching her lower lip in her teeth briefly as she looks over at him. "What if I never married, and...and had lovers instead, something sensational like that. When I was older, of course. Much older. Obviously."

She settles back against the float again, thinking. "How it could be different, and how I could make it different. I hope the version of me that's still at home succeeds at that, even a little."

Ever since Elio and Oliver had gotten engaged, marriage seemed like something more real somehow, even if I didn't entirely understand the complicated emotions that went into it. I was too young to know whether or not I wanted to get married someday, even having lived for as long as I had.

"Do you think it would be sensational?" I asked, grinning up at the sky. "Having lovers?"

Rosie knew more than I did in that regard. Eddie and I were still taking things slowly in a lot of ways and I was perfectly happy with that.

He puts an emphasis on the word, something that sounds a little teasing, and Rosie laughs. "Oh, goodness, when you say it like that..." she says, reaching a hand back into the water to flick some up at him again.

"I think everyone else I knew at home would find it sensational," she continues after a moment, more seriously. "Maybe even scandalous. Which I suppose is the appeal. A chance to be interesting, rather than boring or conventional like it seems they wanted me to be."

"I think it seems like a lot of work," I teased, although I was being honest, too. I loved being with Eddie, I loved being his boyfriend, but trying to be at least a partial boyfriend to a bunch of different people seemed like it would take a lot of time and energy.

But if anyone else wanted to do that, I didn't think there was anything wrong with it.

"Even if you don't have a bunch of lovers, I don't think you could ever be boring," I said, tipping my head to the side so I could look at Rosie. "It isn't possible."

She rolls her eyes, fondly, at the teasing, though everything else Jamie says sets something warm going within her chest. "I hope you're right about that," she murmurs, looking over at him. They're still floating close enough together that it's easy for her to reach out a little, winding her fingers with his and squeezing them briefly.

"Whoever I might have been at home, I might still become here. Or I might be someone completely different, but I certainly won't be uninteresting, either way." Rosie smiles. "And neither will you, I suspect."

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