“Do I need to insert a quarter?” She sipped her coffee.
“Very funny.”
“I dunno, I figured maybe you were a pulp comic or something. Had to pay to get the next issue.” She smirked. “Sorry. Not in character. I’ll get better at that.”
“I highly doubt that.”
“I’ll try my best.”
“That I expect you will.” He tapped his hook on the wooden railing. “Peter Pan is still alive, or the story would have ended. I do not know about your sister. It can be a draw if you both die. He may seek to kill you to keep the score at zero.”
“I was going to ask.” At least he offered the information, she supposed. If he was telling the truth. “What do we do next?”
“You have a choice to make today, my dear. We may either do this story the long way or the short way.”
“Like, abridge it?”
“Mm. In a manner.”
Sasha tried to recall everything she could about the Peter Pan novel. “Well, we haven’t met Tiger Lilly or any of the extremely racist depictions of the ‘natives’ yet.” She cringed. “Can we skip that? Or at least change them to be not so glaringly offensive?”
“You’re writing this, not me.”
“Yeah but I’m not trying to. It’s not a conscious effort.”
“I recommend you not be racist, then.” He smiled as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “Then we won’t have an issue.”
“I’m not the—this isn’t my book!” She threw up her hands. “J.M. Barrie was the guy who wrote ‘redskins’ living in wigwams, smoking peace pipes, and speaking in broken English, while living on a Caribbean island for some inexplicable reason.”
Hook was cackling in laughter. “You’re so upset.”
“Because it isn’t—” There was no point in arguing with him. She sighed. “Never mind.”
He put an arm around her shoulder and pulled her into his side. “Calm down, darling. I’m accusing you of nothing. Humans arestupid, hateful things. And your ability to think spitefully for whatever reason knows no bounds. You are always labeling groups aslesserandother. The target group is always changing and evolving. This story simply has products of a time when you simply had a few more acceptable groups oflessers.”
“What a horrible way to think about it.”
“Villain.” Leaning down, he kissed the top of her head.
It was such a strange gesture from him, she didn’t quite know what to do with herself at first.
Not to mention he had basically just said “don’t worry, humans are always being racist shitheads, you’re just always rotating who you’re picking on.” And she really wished she could argue with him, but he wasn’t exactly wrong, was he?
“I know.” He let out a hum. “Terrible thing, when a villain starts to make sense.”?*
“I thought you couldn’t read my mind inside the stories?”
“I didn’t need to. The look on your face tells me everything.” He patted her shoulder. “Now. I take it by your glorious objection to dealing with the ‘locals,’ that you would prefer an abridged tale? I think even if you strove to correct the glorious inaccuracies surrounding Tiger Lilly and her people, their inevitable slaughter at the hands of pirates might come off as a bit…” He paused, before sliding his hook along the steel pin holding a section of the rigging in place, creating a horrible metal-on-metal sound.“Excessive.”
The whole situation had become so surreal, the whole conversation so ridiculous, she had to let out a sad, broken laugh, and stare up at the sunny blue sky dotted with clouds.
“What?” Hook seemed lost.
Pinching the bridge of her nose, she really wished the answer to this whole thing had been drugs. “I’m debating the optics of fictional genocide with Captain Hook.”
“Hardly genocide, don’t be dramatic.” He scoffedas he walked away from her. “Just a little mass murder. Regardless, abridged you want and abridged it shall be! I’m eager to start our game in earnest, I will admit. As fun as this has been, and all. You!” He called to another pirate. “We attack the Lost Boys at sundown in their secret hideout. Prepare to go to shore. We’ll be sneaking inside, taking them prisoners, and bringing them back here. So we’ll need rope. Fabric to gag them. Knives. We’ll take them all except Pan himself.”
“But sir.” The pirate took his tricorn hat off and held it in front of him, gripping it in both hands in a show of deference. “It’s a secret hideout. How will we know where it is?”
