Believe by Julie Mathison

Believe by Julie Mathison

Author:Julie Mathison [Mathison, Julie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Starr Creek Press
Published: 2020-08-04T04:00:00+00:00


Little Miss Sunshine

“No, no, Colin, absolutely not! The hook is not to be used for excavating the furniture!”

Miss Gorman had her hands full. Sabrina and I were watching from the fifth row because they were running the opening scene from Act Two, which is all about the pirates, Indians, and lost boys. I felt funny saying Indians, even in my head, when I knew Native Americans was more respectful. These were the things you learned in experimental schools.

“Scalp him, oho, velly quick!” Panther said, and followed Tiger Lily across the stage, hunched over like someone was riding on his back.

Mr. Barrie must not have been thinking about cultural sensitivity when he wrote his play.

“Ugh, ugh, wah!” the other braves cried, leaping around.

“Peter Pan isn’t quite what I expected,” Sabrina said.

I had to agree that parts of it seemed downright awful. It wasn’t the way I remembered it, maybe because Mom’s voice made everything feel like home. We’d decided that going to Neverland must be even better than Africa or Istanbul because it was everlasting, with fixed stars that shone like pinpricks in the dome of the sky. But it seemed like the story had changed since then, even though it was probably just me.

“Why do the Indians seem so dopey?” Sabrina asked. She’d turned up, back at school, the Monday after my trip to the farm, and we’d fallen right back into our old ways.

“Native Americans,” I corrected her. “You have to remember, it was a product of its time,” I added, using the exact same words Miss Gorman had when Jeannie Packer complained. Jeannie’s great-grandma was full-blooded Sioux, which made everyone jealous because most of us don’t know where we came from.

Miss Gorman’s words felt strange on my lips. Did she mean that, just because people thought that way, it made it okay?

“Hmm,” Sabrina said, and I could tell she wasn’t buying it either. “And how come nobody really wants to be in Neverland? I mean, the lost boys only end up there because they fall out of their prams, sort of like a punishment. Peter doesn’t seem happy. Everyone just wants a mother, even the pirates.”

I had noticed this too, but I didn’t really want to talk about it.

“It’s complicated,” I said, which I had noticed was often enough to end a conversation.

“Hmm,” she said again. She sat a moment, then turned to me with a flick of her dark hair. “So, tell me about the postcard.”

I went through it all again, how it had been done in Peter Pan code, and how I’d written back to convince Mom to let me join her. I left out my suspicion that Mom might just be humoring me. Sabrina is skeptical enough all on her own.

“Why wait? Now that you have her address, we could just go,” she said, but I rolled my eyes.

“We’ve already been through this. We don’t know anything about what we’d be walking into, Sabrina. These are gang members.” Somehow, Sabrina had managed to forget all her fears.



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