Another Pan by Daniel Nayeri Page A

face. Peter barely knew her, but just staring at her seemed to calm him. Maybe it was that she had lost her mother, too.
    Peter closed his eyes. The nightmare was still there, waiting behind his eyelids: He is young, very young, and his mother sits at her mirror. He holds on to her knees. She leans forward and examines her gaunt cheeks, her sunken eyes. The sickness will take her soon. Peter stares at the sparrow on her jewelry box in order to save himself from crying. His mother looks down and attempts a smile. She says, “Don’t worry. I will be old, very old, before I go.” But only one week later, Peter is standing at a fresh grave.
    Peter opened his eyes. Wendy was gone. He turned and walked back down the avenue, thinking of Wendy’s disheveled hair, the freckles on the back of her neck, and repeating his mother’s happy mantra that death is not for the young.

If there’s one thing John understood about being
street,
it was that you give people their props when they help you out. And even though Wendy was too busy being this super-cool junior, hanging with her boyfriend and basically rubbing it all in John’s face, he knew why she had taken the job at the exhibit. There was a wad of ones and fives in his pocket that said he owed her
something
. So he’d agreed to go and meet the British guy who was supposed to watch over the exhibit items. Besides, his dad had been hounding him about giving this guy a chance. Anyway, John didn’t mind helping — the exhibit was pretty cool. He caught himself thinking that and shook his head sadly. If his classmates could read minds, they’d give him the gold medal for the dweeb Olympics. He wished he could be one of the LBs — just change his image completely and be a badass.
    Then he remembered his misfire with the lacrosse boys and pulled out his phone to update his Facebook status:
    John Darling says screw this.
John Darling doesn’t give a damn.
John Darling is
    John tried to imagine what the new exhibit assistant could be like. Most people who worked for John’s dad were suck-ups — jumping over one another to assist the kindly professor, with his whimsical beliefs in myths and his amusing stories about dig sites. Then again, his dad could be a slave driver when it came to his work. It reminded John of Thutmose III’s ironfisted rule in the Eighteenth Dynasty, culminating in his campaign against the Nubian tribes in the Upper Nile.
Oh, no
. John glanced around to make sure no one saw him thinking about the fifteenth century BC.
    As he rounded a corner toward his dad’s office, John saw Connor slamming shut his locker. “Hey, little buddy,” said Connor, a big smile spreading across his face.
    “Hey, man,” said John, trying to think of something cool to say. He wished Connor hadn’t called him
little buddy
.
    “I was just looking for you,” said Connor, hoisting his gym bag over his shoulder. “Sorry about the guys the other day. Tim’s just a jerk. Anyway, my parents have a box at MSG and a bunch of us are going to watch the Knicks. Wanna come?”
    “To watch the Knicks?” said John excitedly. “At Madison Square Garden?” This definitely sounded like something for
real
friends only. Connor nodded. “In your parents’ box?” John knew what that meant. A private box meant
free of charge
. And that meant he wouldn’t have to make up some excuse to avoid spending money he didn’t have.
    “Yep,” said Connor, throwing an arm around John’s shoulder as they walked down the hall. John pulled himself to his full height. He was still several inches shorter than Connor. “And afterward, we’re all going for steaks and imported beers at a new place near there. I know a waiter, so European party rules apply. No IDs.”
    John was practically salivating. He’d never even tasted beer before, much less beer from Holland or wherever it was they imported it from. He fingered the small stack of bills in his pocket. Would thirty-seven dollars be enough for a