"But the squirrel was working for the Belgian government, so I trapped it. That way, I thought I might be able to get a nice chunk of ransom money when they came looking for him."
Jack Baker stared at the wild-eyed man sitting across the table. Do I sound that crazy? He thought. I must sound that crazy, otherwise they wouldn't have put me in this mental institution. He smiled weakly as his new friend continued his account of squirrel espionage.
The past few weeks had been interesting, to say the least. Discovering and exploring Neverland had been life changing. But something didn't sit right with how everything had turned out. He realized now that he was stupid to have thought that James Hook would just come happily back to jail without a fight. He didn't know how everything had played out, but he had awoken in the hospital to reports of Hook's escape and Detective Dugglesworth's retirement. His superior had been so obsessive about capturing James Hook that it didn't seem congruent with his character to give up when he had been so close.
So after a couple weeks in the hospital, Jack had decided to try to escape and get back to Neverland for answers. Unfortunately, he was caught, and he had thrown a bit of a tantrum, and so he had been admitted to this mental asylum.
Jack drummed his fingers on the table next to his half eaten breakfast. Had he imagined it all? That blonde boy from the hospital hadn't seemed to know what he was talking about, but then, he had looked rather out of sorts himself. Yes, Neverland and its inhabitants were definitely real, but as long as he asserted that it was, the longer he'd have to stay in the mental institution. He could lie and say that he had dreamed it up, but he felt he owed it to his sense of adventure to tell the truth about Neverland. He owed it to the fascinating people who lived there and to that wonderful mermaid who had saved his life and then knocked him out cold with her tail. The place had made him feel as if he were eight again even though he was nearly twenty.
The man across the table was looking suspiciously at Jack's drumming fingers so he stopped.
"So, do you think the squirrel was working alone, or did he have a partner?" Jack asked the man. "A badger, perhaps?"
The man's eyes widened. "There was that pigeon that kept hanging about..." he mused.
Jack nodded. He was required to spend at least a week here, so he thought he might as well make the most of it. He enjoyed learning things from everyone, regardless of their mental state.