The following is an excerpt from the first chapter of Zach Neuman’s original story, The Origin Story of Peter Pan. Zach is a senior at Yeshiva College majoring in psychology with a marketing minor. He is from Woodmere, New York.
The playground square was coloured with green grass and grey stones, surrounded on three sides by crisscrossed black railings that reached to enormous heights and were topped by metal spikes. To everyone outside of the orphanage, it looked like a prison. To the orphans of St. Augustine’s at Carmelite House, it was paradise.
The moment the bell for break rang, all of the boys rushed out of the workshops to enjoy a few measly minutes away from work, and ran into the green square. They even settled with half-filled balls and short sticks for games. They were so engrossed that none of the boys looked out beyond the black bars — except one.
That boy’s head leaned against the black bars, gripped in his fists like a prisoner. Yet his head stayed up in an optimistic gaze at the people, streets and the sky. It was the only time David got to see the world beyond the orphanage.
At night he could look out from the huge windows in the dormitory, but here everything looked more alive, like there was more to it than what he saw at night. Some of the people even slowed down to stare at his pale, freckled face, as if he was on display, but they never stopped to talk to him. He knew already that living behind these bars meant you were ignored by the outside world. Orphans weren’t very popular in London.
Yet he kept looking out, regardless of the stares. It was also the time he kept a lookout for certain people he didn’t want to tell anyone else about. Maybe, just maybe, he would find his parents, who were his best chance of reaching the world outside. He had always dreamed of them; what they would do together, where they would take him. He imagined his Father’s smile, the warmth of his Mother’s embrace. He thought they would live in an area where there was always colour, places to run, trees to climb, and night-lights to help him sleep at night.
Yet here, on a brisk spring Saturday in 1913, clouds blocked the sky and dulled the outside world to grey. The only bright points came from the leaves budding on the trees, like glittering stones on silver bark. Springs in London were always grey; the clouds that in winter were once filled with snow now seemed packed with rain. Maybe that’s why everyone appeared so dreary and bland, including the nuns.
Maybe the outsiders thought that he deserved to be behind the bars of the orphanage. But they didn’t know anything about him. Plus they were mostly what David began to call grown up.
He learned to hate that new word, especially since it came from the person he despised the most: Father Kenneth, the only man among the nuns, with cold eyes and a sturdy white beard. Father Kenneth had said this word when he and David and the other boys in his work shift were starting to learn more of the New Testament between work shifts. He had said this was the “first step to becoming what you all truly want to be–good grownups.” Whatever Father had to say, it never crossed well with him, even if he rarely spoke to the boys outside of sermons.
David was supposed to have learned a lot that day, especially after what the class had been told at the beginning, but he hadn’t really been in the mood. The teachers blamed it on his daydreams, yet it was those same dreams that enthralled his friends at night. It warmed up the cold dormitory as he spun a tale about some place they had never seen or heard of before. Places where clouds flew below the ground, where water flowed upwards, where people could fly higher than birds; places where people were so tiny they used prams to get around, or where ravens could talk and pigeons wore little suits and walked with canes and brown top-hats.
Yet time always flew when he lost himself in daydreams.
The end-of-break bell rang him back into reality, into the one thing he hated most; the single-file line back to work, underneath the arch with angels carved into the sides. His hands ached in anticipation as the overseeing adults forced them into lines from youngest to oldest. Not knowing how old he was, David was always put in the middle of the line, between the sixteen and six.
They marched in tight rows, their hard shoes clomping on the cobblestone floor. He followed his row of workmates, most of whom were taller than himself, until a nun walked straight up to him and tapped him sharply on the shoulder.
“David, please come with me. Father Kenneth wants to see you.” It was Sister Agnes, and she looked like she was trying to hold back a smile.
The surrounding boys didn’t know what to think as he was pulled out of line. Out of the hundreds of boys here, why him?
To find out what Father Kenneth wants from David and what this all has to do with Peter Pan, continue reading Second to the Right: The Origin Story of Peter Pan, now available on Amazon.