When she first walks into the shop, she doesn't see him, though he's aware of her before she passes through the door. She sees the Fender Strats on the wall and their prices. Her hair's still purple, which surprises him, and her ears are full of metal. He snorts, soft enough she doesn't hear, and asks, "Can I help you with anything?"
"What sort of financing do you kids offer?" She flips the price tags over to read them. She still hasn't looked at him.
"We'll work with you," he says. She presses her fingertips against the strings. More than anything, he wants her to look at him. "How's it been, Wendy?"
She leans her head back to look at him and blinks once. "Good, actually. How've you been, Metal?"
Her eyes are calm and clear. He used to be able to read her emotions through the set of her fingers, or the tilt of her shoulders. Her fingers are curled around a guitar, as they were before she looked up. Her shoulders are relaxed. If he knew her at all anymore, he might know she was surprised.
"Getting by." He wants to ask her why she's here. Why she's still crowned in violet, how she can still walk in that lazy, loping way. "Getting honest." He wants to know about things that happened years ago, that still bother him, wake him up in the night.
"Seems to be a lot of that going around these days," Wendy says. She doesn't explain. The silence grows between them. "I guess you've never understood why I did it. Although I'm not the one who shot Peter, you know."
"You might as well have." The anger's there, suddenly, and he wants to hit her. He wonders if she'd fight back, whether she'd want to or even be able to. He'd heard rumors she left her switchblade behind. "Why do you think I even want to know why you did it?"
Her eyebrows flicker upward. He remembers that expression. Condescending disbelief. "The elephant in the room." He blinks at her. "Everyone knows it's there, but no one talks about it? Nevermind."
"How could you do that to us? To the Lost Boys?" It's not the only question he's wanted to ask, but it's the one that will explain the rest of them.
She sighs and rubs her eyes with the heels of her hands. "I've got a better question for ya, Metal. How could the Lost Boys do that to me? Let me elaborate. How could you watch Peter killing off other kids, going after his silly-ass vendetta against me and against Hook - who, by the way, lost his whole hand to Peter, and Peter lost absolutely nothing until the end? You abandoned me first." She raises her eyes to his again, and they're still clear. "And I still protected you. Because after the rest of us were gone, he would've sacrificed you too."
"I know." He looks down at his hands. "But what are we now?" He gestures at the shop. "We're nothing."
She shrugs one shoulder, glancing at the Strats. "I'm buying John a guitar. He made all A's this semester. He'll get into grad school at this rate. I'm the primo bartender at a place on Rushmore. Before that I was a waitress at a Vegan place. I think once Michael decides about college or not, I may take a job as a fry cook."
He laughs, unwillingly charmed by her simplistic view of things. It hides the greater complications beneath it. "Did you ever think, Wendy, that you may be the only one who's happy like that? Odd jobs and so forth."
Genuinely puzzled, she asks, "Who said I was happy? Inside each of us," she says, poking him in the chest with a finger, "is a Lost Boy. We will never lose that. The other kids, I know for a fact, have really solid jobs. Entrepreneurs, innovators. Hell, look at my brother. Going to be a counselor. Wants his own practice. And what are we, the real Lost Boys?"
He takes hold of her wrist to stop her from punctuating each of her sentences with a jab. Her hand curls, unresisting, as his fingers slide from her wrist, thumb resting in her palm. "Music store clerk. Janitor. Night security at an apartment complex. Night shifts at convenience stores. Bar tender," he says, nodding at her. "Have you heard about Jack?"
Something flickers in her eyes. "I've heard." She knows more than she's telling, he's sure of it.
"How does that prove anything?"
"We want something better. We always do. If we were CEOs of the world, we'd want more." Her smile is older than her face deserves, and if it could, his heart would break out of sympathy. "Start at the bottom, so we have somewhere to go. Or nowhere to go, if we want."
He stares at her, wondering. He was born before she was. And yet. "When did you get so old, Wendy Darling?"
The smile twists. "I was never a child. Well, maybe when I first met Peter. But never before, and never after. Peter was always the child. Never me."
He lets go of her hand. She jams her fingers into her back pockets and regards him with the same unshakable calm. Time was when she would explode or laugh or dance around. He cannot imagine how she manages to live each day with this calm sort of certainty. It never occurs to him that she is only this way around him. It also never occurs to him that he is the same way as well.
"You might go see Romeo, sometime," he says to break the silence. "He'd like that."
She snorts. "He might. But I don't want to see Tink." It's the first time she's ever admitted that something about the night that ended everything might have gone against her plan. Her expression turns anxious. "I wanted to come back and see you guys. But I couldn't."
It's a peace offering, and he knows it. He doesn't want it. "It's too late for that now. And I don't forgive you." At the instant he says it, he feels no anger or hurt or bitterness. Her answers will never be what he wants them to be. She will never be able to atone for what she did to him.
"I didn't ask you to, did I?" she asks, smiling.
He shakes his head. "You never change, do you."
"Not on the inside." Once again, she is calm and remote, beyond his reach. She hasn't forgiven him either. "Not enough anymore."
While they stand in silence, he remembers a younger Wendy, before the hair dye and piercings. Even before the first bad blood between her and any of the Lost Boys.
They were sitting on crates outside a warehouse. He doesn't remember what time, just that the sun was out, and some beers had been demolished. She wore that violet plaid two-piece and some jeans with holes at the knees, and she stood with her hands on her hips.
"I," she said a little too loud, "am Queen of the World."
"Are you then," he murmured, laughing at her assurance. "Who's the king then?"
She waved her hand. "I need no king. But Romeo can be my consort, I suppose. I still get to make all the decisions."
"Then you have to have a Knight Errant."
"You can be my Knight Whatsit. And we can fight dragons together." She giggled, grinning, and tried to fall off the crate.
He caught her, barely, and as she drunkenly pulled herself up by his arms and then his shoulders, he thought, Oh. Suddenly she wasn't just a prodigy, a friend, a Lost Boy. She was Wendy, a half-naked girl in his arms, and he repeated to himself, Oh.
The woman in front of him still has the presence of her younger self, the assurance and the looks, but she will never be the girl from the afternoon he remembers. And he will never love her again like he did the first time he kissed her.
"Will you be making monthly payments?" he asks.
"If it's on that red Fender, hell yes."