Forever Neverland

Grace disliked Tinkerbell. She disliked her because she had wings and she could fly whereas Grace stayed on the ground, catching fireflies. The fireflies, in turn, made it easy because they knew she would let them go. She would stare at their radiant light in awe and try to understand how something so little could shine so very bright.

She tried to pretend the bread she had in the mornings was ice cream flavoured, and even imagined her little brother had never been taken from them but had been enthralled and forever lost in Neverland. When she tried to explain this to her mother, her mother would look away quietly, and sometimes, rise with a quiet shudder...and leave the room.

For a little girl who had the hope of the world resting quite easily on her head as a crown, she knew. She knew that one day, he would come for her and maybe, maybe they could be together again like they were in her dreams.

As she grew older, she slept on a bed of green, with a desk of wood and a massive window that made her love rooftops and the sky. She didn’t want to meet Peter Pan. She wanted to be him, and lead a group of boys who were more lost that she could ever be. So lost that they were found.

Grace's mind was made up when she saw the missing boy posters all over milk cartons. She knew what she would be when she grew up. She would be Peter Pan.

(The irony of this never quite occurred to her until her twenty second birthday, when the boy she loved and knew to be less than perfect, became perfect by losing himself to her forever.)