Read Online Whispered Magics by Sherwood Smith - Free Book Online Page B

encourage them.
    I rubbed my ears, then pulled my hair away so my ears could
extend in antennae form. And soon as my signal went out, my ship appeared and I
began sending them my weekly report.
    You’ve been seen. We’ll
have to be more careful, but maybe it wasn’t such a mistake after
all . . .

Illumination
    “Yo, Anna.”
    The wind rustling the winter-dry branches outside my window
almost masked Ben’s whisper.
    “Ready to see the ghosts in Neverland?”
    His voice was low, but I could hear the challenge. He didn’t
expect me to go. He didn’t expect me to believe him.
    “Sure,” I said, and scrambled out my bedroom window onto a
branch, and dropped to the grass.
    We ran through the deserted streets of downtown. Neither of us
spoke until we were almost to Neverland Park. Then Ben said, “We’d better
hide.”
    He still expected me to scoff—or to run back home.
    I shrugged.
    Even in the dark, I could see his surprise. As
if ghosts playing in the town park weren't as strange as the two of us being
outside together at midnight: Ben, the school’s bad kid, and I, Anna, the best
student in school.
    Ex-best student.
    “Here’s where,” he said as we pounded across the grass toward
a line of thick shrubs. Leaves skittered behind us down the pathway, driven by
the chilly wind that numbed my lips and made my eyes water. I crouched beside
Ben in the bushes.
    “There they are,” he said, staring across the playground, his
breath making a faint glowing cloud.
    We have the best park in five counties, designed and built by
someone who grew up here, went away, and made it rich, then came back old.
Neverland Park was meant to be the closest thing to Peter Pan’s island you
could get on Earth, a place where kids could play forever. Except there is no
forever on Earth.
    About twenty kids swung from the ropes and twirled on the
carousel and climbed all over the ladder-slide. At first I thought Ben and
those kids were scamming me, but then I noticed some things. Weird things.
    Like breathing. Ben’s and my breath made clouds that glowed in
the arc light reflections, and we were just sitting there. Those kids were all
playing, some of them with their mouths open, but I didn’t see anyone’s breath.
    And then there were the clothes. Oh, most of them looked like
kids anywhere: jeans, T-shirts, crummy shoes. But one girl on the swings wore a
pinafore like straight out of Little
Women , her long curls bouncing on her back as she kicked her feet. And
walking along the top of the monkey bars was a boy in kneepants and a loose
shirt like in Tom Sawyer.
    “Ghosts,” Ben said, with a strange kind of satisfaction.
    I sucked in a long breath, and the cold made my lungs hurt.
“Where d’you think they come from? And why are they here?”
    Ben snorted. “They’re from wherever ghosts come from. If I was
a ghost I’d rather mess around at Neverland than hang out alone at some old
house just to haunt it, wouldn’t you? Twenty bucks,” he added matter-of-factly,
sticking out his hand.
    I don’t think he believed I’d pay up on the bet either,
because his eyes went wide with surprise when I yanked a crumpled bill from my
jeans pocket and slapped it into his hand.
    His mouth went sour. “You’ve got lots of twenties lying
around?”
    “In my mom’s purse,” I said. “Where I stole that from.”
    He snickered, and turned to watch the kids playing again.
    We watched for a little while longer, until my feet were numb
and my fingers and nose ached. Then Ben turned to look at me, his narrowed eyes
so steady I could see the bouncing, running ghost-kids reflected in them.
    “What are you going to tell them at school?” he asked.
    “Nothing,” I said. “They can make their own bets.”
    He shrugged, backed out of the bush and stood up. I followed,
and again we were silent as we ran back toward my house.
    When we reached my street we both stood there, breathing
raggedly, then he said, “Want to watch ’em again