Chapter Two

                                    

                                          
2 days before Neverland
                          
I always knew I loved my brother, I always knew that I would've done anything to save him. I just never thought it would've gone this far.
                          
The worst part of life-changing events, is how they happen the moment you expect it the least.
                          
It was a normal spring evening, and I'd come home from Jason's house as usual. Once home, I set my school bag down next to my bed and went about my after school routine like I always did, having no idea what had been to come. 
                          
Newly washed hair dripping water down my back, I made my way back to my room and saw light spilling from the crack between my bedroom door and the frame. Frowning, I pushed the door open cautiously and looked around, suspecting that someone had been searching through my stuff for something. Considering that I only lived with my aunt and my brother, and neither were normally interested in snooping around my room, I didn't know what I expected. Crossing my all too familiar white and purple-walled bedroom, I got down on my knees and checked my desk and it's drawers, my shaking left hand resting on the soft white wood, its feel under my fingers was soothing and comforting, completely familiar, as I'd had this desk ever since I was five, the one I'd cheerily picked out with my Mom at Ikea. 
                          
My bedroom check revealed nothing, and I was forced to conclude that nothing had been disturbed, yet I felt a persistent nagging in my gut, my very first clue that something wasn't right. My eyes slid past my bed and landed on my bookshelf. I pressed my lips together. Someone had taken a book from the bottom shelf, the shelf even I didn't touch, because of the memories the books contained.
                          
My first thought was that it was my aunt who had swooped in to check if I didn't have any "books that you're too young for" as she would say, but I recalled that she hadn't come home from work yet. Combing my memory, I tried to recall which book was missing. I had spent so many hours simply staring at those book spines - hoping that wishing hard enough would change the past - that I remembered fairly easily. It was a fairytale book, one that my grandmother used to read to me to help me fall asleep. Just thinking about her still made my heart squeeze painfully, as it brought old, happy memories of a life lost so long ago, one that I still hoped I could some day give to my brother.
                          
"Ethan?" I called out softly as I poked my head inside of my little brother's room, not wanting to wake him up if he was already asleep. He was sitting on his bed, quite awake, and I grinned, knowing that he wouldn't go to sleep if no one told him to. I let myself flash a small affectionate smile. He was sitting cross legged, the missing book spread across his small laps, his bed lamp casting a golden halo on the wall behind him. He was so immersed in the story he didn't hear me.
                          
"Ethan," I called out a bit louder, stepping inside his room as I shut the door quietly behind me. His head snapped up and I saw his eyes travel from me to the book in his laps, back to me once again, this time sheepishly as he vainly tried to hide the voluminous book behind his back.
                          
"I'm sorry," he began quickly, "I know you don't like me looking in Mom and Dad's things but at first when I came in your room I was looking for you but then I saw that book and I really really wanted to read it and please don't be mad at me," he rushed in one single breath. He looked up at me pleadingly with his wide blue-green eyes, the eyes I shared with him and our Dad.
                          
Despite him using this same tactic for the last past five years, I never could resist his adorableness, especially when he was apologizing and being cute on purpose. "Hey, it's okay," I reassured him, sitting on the edge of his bed and smoothing down the covers just by habit. "I just wished you would've asked me first, you know some of those stories aren't for little kids."