Jimmy's Story : A Peter Pan Prologue

Peter once had a best friend in Neverland named Jimmy, whom we have never heard of because he left before all the Darling children existed. He missed his mother, because what boy doesn’t?  And life was grand.   That is, until his mother took a nap and slept forever.  He was forty years old, and his reason for coming back had left, never to return.  The world owed him nothing and the world—his world—kept changing that he was stuck in a downward spiral.. a dead-end job to pay for his mother’s ceremony, moving crates of fish in and out ships and onto the harbors and back; he had acquired this job by being asked if he needed one when a fellow fisherman thought he’d never be able to sell fish because when at the docks, he’d always prick his left hand with his fishing hook. The ocean would laugh, crashing its waves at his foolishness.

And now, at his lowest point, the ocean called for him but poor Jimmy could never answer; its waves were far too changing.  He hit rock bottom, and the world owed him nothing.

So he wanted to return to a place where the world never changed.

One day he left his job, his hated job.  Jobs never were for Jimmy, you see, and he left, trying to find Neverland.  And his lifelong belief in faeries along with his boyish heart—you prove you have a child’s heart by the amount of love you have for your mother, you see—were powerful enough for his faerie to find him once again, despite his age.  She sprinkled her pixie dust, and away they went, second star to the right straight on before the morn (because his job made him already accustomed to going to bed early and waking up almost at the crack of dawn, right when ships arrived).

When they landed at island, Jimmy remembered everything: every lagoon, every stone, every tree.  After all, they were all exactly the same from when he was first there almost thirty years ago; they never grew nor changed nor moved, they were all too boring for Peter and the Lost Boys.

But then, he saw: the stump of a tree.  That was it!  The Lost Boys have cut it!  Jimmy hurried to the stump and followed the footsteps leading away from it.

There he was, standing in front of children, who looked at him, wondering what creature he was.  They decided to take him to the Chief until—

"Wait a second—"

Peter.  A little boy with red hair and freckles spread across his rosy cheeks appeared from behind.  He squatted, meeting Jimmy eye to eye.  Jimmy remembered those eyes, those youthful eyes he once had, and through Peter’s pupils he saw his own reflection: and old man, traveling to the past, to a memory, where nothing ever changes, not even the power of friendship between two boys who flew away together.  Peter had to remember him, he had to!

"THROW HIM OFF THE PLANK"

"The plank!  The plank," the Boys cheered.

Jimmy reacted, “No, Peter, it’s me, Jimmy.  Don’t you remember?!”

Peter searched his mind, but a boy his age cannot possibly contain memories from thirty years ago, it’s impossible, it can never happen!

"Who’s that?  He never existed at all!" Peter cackled.  "TO THE PLANKS!"

Peter’s rejection and failure to recognize Jimmy was scarring; he thought this was the land that never changed and Jimmy soon realized his fault: he had changed and therefore, every experience he has in this land will be different from before.  He was older, he was mature, he missed his mother, and his very existence was denied by a boy who still had all his baby teeth?

No.

He shall be avenged.

When the Boys brought Jimmy to the plank, they tied him up in twine, fastening it with a fishing hook that had embedded itself into his finger, its prick causing a bleed.  He turned around for his last words, “There was never a Jimmy, Peter.”

Peter looked smug.

“But today, and forevermore," Jimmy released the hook from his finger—the twine was to unravel if he let go of it, but he made sure to make it discreet.   "There shall be a Captain James Hook!”

And with that he jumped into the ocean, a different ocean.  An ocean long enough, strong enough, and changing enough that would baptize him into a man amongst boys.