Brian had been making good money as a newsie. He hawked the Brooklyn Eagle down on Court Street and had a really good corner. Between the money he brought in and his brother Randy's mysteriously ample earnings they were getting by. They shared a room and cooked on a hotplate but for two teenaged orphans they were doing well. Then things suddenly went wrong. First Alvin showed up dead in Prospect Hill Park. It was bad. Not just dead but really nastily dead. Some kids had found the body and Brian had seen it before the cops had finally gotten wind and roped the whole area off and chased them all away. He wished he hadn't. Especially what they'd done to Alvin's dick. Worse than bad, his body was propped up on a four-foot wooden pole that had been jammed at least a foot up his ass. The kids who found Alvin couldn't decide if he'd had the pole stuck up his ass before or after he was dead. They hoped for Alvin's sake it was after. Worst of all, Alvin had worked for the same guys Randy did.
Randy never came home that night and Brian finally fell asleep in the armchair waiting for him. At about 1 o'clock there was a tapping at the window. Little John, one of the kids that taken him to see Alvin's body, was on the fire escape. Brian eased the window open.
"What are you doing out there?" he whispered.
"Randy says you gotta run and you gotta run now," Little John said and immediately disappeared.
Then Brian heard steps on the stairs and two voices talking quietly on the landing. He was out the window and halfway to the piers before he stopped running.
At first Peter thought he'd made a mistake. Brian looked awfully old to be a Boy, 13 maybe, but no, he smelled right. Not just the boy smell. The Lost Boy smell. So he followed him peeking over the edges of rooftops and around street trees.
The first ferry to the city didn't leave until 4 and Brian had decided to wait under the pier where no one could see him. Out of sight and out of harm's way. Or so he thought. He'd just settled down and was leaning back against the crusty dried seaweed that covered the top few feet of the piling when he saw him, squatting down, balanced on the balls of his feet on the crossbeam like he'd never considered the possibility of falling off.
"Who are you?" Brian asked.
"I'm Peter," Peter said, "and they're right behind you. They saw you jump the turnstile and know where you've gone. You really do have to learn to sneak better. Follow me."
Peter slipped quietly off of the crossbar and onto the water.
"Is that safe?" Brian asked.
"Of course it isn't," Peter said. "You could always wait here `til they find you."
So Brian slid into the water and kicked off his shoes. Peter was treading water.
"Do you trust me?" he asked.
"No," said Brian.
"Good."
Peter grinned and pushed Brian's head right under the water.
It was just a quick dunk but for one key moment he was completely submerged. That's all it took. Brian hated having his head under water and he surfaced sputtering and ready for a fight. Then he noticed the moon. It was full. It shouldn't have been. And the pier was gone. And Brooklyn was gone. And there was a beach and a bonfire and naked boys cooking fish speared on sticks.
"What the..." Brian started.
"Neverland," Peter said. "Welcome to Neverland."
Brian woke up the first time in the middle of the night. He was sleeping on something warm and furry on top of a pile of something that smelled like pipe tobacco. He was in an alcove off of a cave and the walls were covered by roots! Overhead a fairy lantern was hanging from a root that was sticking out of the ceiling but the fire-fairies had had drunk their fill of inga bean juice and were barely glowing. Out in the cave he could hear whispering.
"Please, no more. You already did it three times and you're so big!"
"Sshh," another voice said, "you dared him to do it to you all night. I heard you and you didn't even cross your fingers."
"I'm crossing them now," the first voice said.
"Too late," said a third slightly older voice. "I'm ready for number four."
Brian could see shapes moving in the dark. The larger one crawled on top of the smaller one and wrapped a hand over his mouth. He knew he'd asked for it and as sore as he was he wasn't going to struggle.
"You don't want to wake everybody up, do you? They'll all want a turn."
Then the hips started moving and Brian could hear through the bigger one's fingers the high pitched moans of the boy under him.
"Ahhh, ahhh, ahhh."
Brian woke up again late in the morning. His alcove was totally dark and he should have known how late it was from the fact that the fire-fairies were all fast asleep but he'd never seen a fairy lantern before and had no idea what that meant. He stretched out on the bearskin and sat up. Suddenly he remembered where he was and how he'd gotten there. He was in a cave under a tree up a hill overlooking a beach where there'd been a bonfire. And he knew why the crack of his ass was so sticky!
"New Boy! New Boy! New Boy!" everyone was shouting as they ran down to the edge of the water to where Peter and Brian were standing with their feet being lapped by the waves.
"What's his name?" one of the Boys asked.
"Brian," said Peter, "and he barely made it. They almost had him."
Brian was too flummoxed to talk and there was so much to see. There were at least twenty boys there, maybe more, both Boys and Prentices and they all crowded around Brian and Peter as they walked up the beach to where the fire had been built past the high tide line and almost under the trees. One dark brown boy had his arm in a sling. That finally broke the spell Brian had been under since he first saw that Brooklyn was gone. It reminded him of Alvin and he wondered if everyone here was running from really bad trouble.
"What happened to him?' he asked Peter. "Did he just barely make it, too?"
"No," Peter laughed. "That's Tariq and he's been here for a long time. He just fell out of a tree and forgot he could fly."
Peter turned to one of the taller Boys.
"Fowler, go get the Bottle. It's time to welcome the New Boy."
Fowler was gone for less than a minute. They kept their Beach Stuff in the Sea Cave. Mostly Stuff for starting fires or catching fish but enough New Boys washed up on the beach that they kept the Bottle there, too. The Bottle was leather and had dragons carved on it. Its stopper was a big round opal the size of a jawbreaker. Peter took the Bottle and turned to face the sea. The moon was full and its reflection made a path on the surface of the water that led right to the beach. Peter held up the Bottle and lined up the opal with the moon.
"To the road that led us here," he whispered loud enough for everyone to hear.
"To the road that led us here," all the Boys answered.
One of the Boys ran up with half a coconut shell. Peter filled it to the brim with a milky liquid from the Bottle.
"You're the New Boy," he said to Brian as he handed him the cup. "Drink as much as you want."
Brian sniffed the coconut suspiciously. The liquid was milky and slightly blue-ish but his first sip tasted o.k. - sweet and sour and a bit like cinnamon.
"What the hell," he thought and drank the whole cup.
The Boys were cheering. Drinking the whole cup was a Good Sign. Then something strange happened. Brian could feel his feet in the sand and running out through his feet he could feel all the fear and worry he'd ever felt in his life draining away down through the dry sand and into the wet sand and into the sea where it just dissolved.
Several of the Boys started drumming and two of them started unbuttoning his shirt. They slipped if off his shoulders and another was stroking his back.
"New Boy, New Boy," they were all chanting softly under their breath.
One of the smallest boys fell to his knees in front of Brian. He unbuckled Brian's belt and slipped his pants and shorts right off. Brian stepped out of his pants and the Boys grabbed his pants and his shorts and his shirt and danced them up to the fire and threw them in! Brian leaned back against Peter and Peter began stroking his chest. Then Peter's hands went down to Brian's thighs and finally, at last, at last, Peter cupped Brian's balls in one hand and used the other to slip the skin back and forth over the head of his dick.
"This is where you were always meant to be," Peter whispered into Brian's ear, nibbling his earlobe and running the tip of his tongue around the rim.
One of Peter's hands moved `round to Brian's bottom and he slipped one of his fingers right into the hole.
"Ah, you've done this before," Peter whispered. "Tell me how you want it."
Brian was panting. Peter's other hand had never stopped stroking his dick and it was making slippery sounds as the skin covered and uncovered the head.
"Face down," Brian whispered, "with you on top."