Wendy and the Lost Girls Part One

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Wendy & the Lost Girls

Part 1

By

Tom Doganoglu

Copyright © 2021 Tom Doganoglu All rights reserved

To all the Lost Girls and Boys in the world, for daring to believe.

To read profiles of the characters, see their pictures, watch the trailer, and for all other things Neverlandish, please visit the web site at:

www.wendyandthelostgirls.com

Chapter 1: The magical portal

The Darling School for girls was always immaculate. The hedges were trimmed perfectly, the windows cleaned regularly, and anything that could be maintained was thoroughly maintained. Even though it was fall, there wasn’t a single leaf to be found lying on the property grounds or even in the nearby pond that nestled beside and wrapped around the large brick building that was the school.

The Darling School for girls was always immaculate because Headmistress Darling insisted it would always be immaculate. She watched over every element of the school’s upkeep, including the education of the girls that enrolled in it and made it their home. Everything was always at the highest possible standard. It was said that even the birds that made their nests in the trees had to seek out a permit from the Headmistress before they were allowed to lay down a single twig. Of course, no permits were ever found on any of the birds, but the rumor was still repeated by the young girls that attended the school.

Headmistress Darling was a stern educator. The girls had to be awake at seven sharp, dressed and at the mess hall by seven thirty. Classes always started at eight, and if any of the girls were a minute late they got detention and extra homework. There were a lot of young girls that had to get a lot of extra homework before they learned just how unbending the Headmistress truly was.

But it had to be that way. The Headmistress took great pride in her school, believing that shaping and preparing the future for the young girls at her school was the single most important thing she could do. That was why the grounds were immaculate, that was why the school’s curriculum was so difficult, that was why the Headmistress held all her teachers, girls, and even the birds, to the highest of high standards. Not a single element of their education was not thought out, planned, reworked, and then executed with grueling precision to the dismay of the overworked girls at the school.

Their entire day was planned, down to the last minute, to be filled with learning and preparation. Even their sick days were planned, with the headmistress possessing an uncanny ability to predict when each girl was going to get sick, and then allotting her the appropriate amount of days, or in some cases, hours, to get better.

If the young girl was still sick after the Headmistress deemed that she wasn’t supposed to be sick anymore, then she got detention and extra homework. It wasn’t long before the girls found ways to strengthen their immune systems and avoid being sick for longer than absolutely necessary. It was either that or learn to fake feeling better while sick, another skill that the girls learned very quickly.

It wasn’t so much the extra work that was so terrifying, it was the detention that really made the girls work so hard. No one wanted to have detention, because detention meant being alone with the Headmistress for a great length of time. And no one wanted to be alone with Headmistress Darling for any amount of time, let alone a great deal.

During a typical detention the Headmistress would place a chair in the middle of her office, then she would place her own chair right across from it, not even an arm’s length away. The unfortunate girl would have to sit in her seat and face the Headmistress, who would sit in the other chair, and talk to her.

Normally, talking wasn’t such a bad thing. In fact, the girls at the school found talking quite enjoyable, only slightly more enjoyable than listening, which was harder to do. But talking to Headmistress Darling was quite another matter altogether. Talking to Headmistress Darling could be quite close to terrifying on a good day, and horrifying on another. Unfortunately, it ended up being difficult to figure out which day was which, so most girls ended up leaving detention both terrified and horrified. They then went and quickly talked about it to all their friends, who did their best to console the uncontrollably sobbing girl. Incredibly enough, the girl would manage to quickly recover the next day and avoid any further detention.

No one quite understood how it was possible to be both terrified and horrified at the same time until it was their turn to have detention. It was an experience that couldn’t quite be explained, it had to be experienced, and then quickly buried in the deepest corners of memory, to be truly appreciated.

No girl had ever had detention more than once. No girl, that is, except for Wendy Darling. Wendy was in no way related to the Headmistress, and would probably have disliked it immensely if she was, but every girl at the school was an orphan. After the school took them in and became their legal guardian, they were all fortunate, or unfortunate, enough to have the Darling surname added to their more preferable first name.

Wendy was no different, except when it came to detention. Unbelievably enough, even though the other girls did whatever they could to avoid having detention, Wendy had detention on an almost regular basis. She had detention so many times that the girls at the school lost count. There were some rumors that Wendy had been to detention over a hundred times. Other rumors put it closer to a thousand. The truth was impossible to know because, unlike other girls, Wendy never spoke about her detention.

Also, unlike other girls, Wendy never left Headmistress Darling’s office crying.

Some girls had even said that it was the Headmistress who cried when Wendy left the office, but the girls who had experienced detention would quickly end those rumors with a very frightened and powerful response.

No one was sure what it was about Wendy