Chapter Twenty-One
Vera
The heart of Neverland is a desolate and dead area where nothing grows. Just an empty circle in the middle of the island where the starlight is unobstructed and the sand is black like Peter Pan’s heart.
James blows out a breath that is half sigh and half gasp. “Please tell me that this is the heart of the island.”
I nod in response.
“Oh, thank goodness,” he whispers under his breath. He drops to his knees, rather roughly, mind you and quickly sets me on the sand. I sit there, blinking at the abrupt dropping while James rests his arms on his knees and pants. He reaches up, wiping at his brow before hethrows a nervous glance at me out of the corner of his eye. “That was a lot of walking.”
I feel my eyebrow hike up. “Well, I’m sorry I couldn’t walk. I didn’t mean to inconvenience you.” I fold my arms, twisting away. I knew I should have gone on a diet. I ate too many writing snacks and now James thinks I’m fat.
He shakes his head emphatically. “No, no, it wasn’t like that at all. In fact, you were so light that I barely noticed you were there at all. It’s just, it’s hot in this jungle.” He pulls his coat away from his neck.
I shudder in the cool breeze. Neverland is a place where the sun never shines, I don’t know how he could consider it hot. He reaches up and dabs at his forehead before pushing to his feet. He wobbles slightly. “Okay, so what do we do now?”
“I suppose now we make a wish,” I say, glancing up at the sky.
James sits down cross legged next to me. “You know, I think I’m going to miss this a little bit.”
I startle and turn to him, wondering if I should take his temperature. Maybe he has a fever. That would explain his babbling about the heat.
He sighs wistfully. “To think, tomorrow I’m going to have to go back to work like nothing has happened. Sameold routine, always waiting for the weekend and then being too tired to do anything but sleep and eat.”
I press my lips together. James might have been describing his life, but it also happens to be mine. I hate the sound of my alarm in the morning. I hate getting up and exercising, I’m tired of eating healthy, I’m so sick of doing the same thing day in and day out and still being poor and tired. The only thing I look forward to is whatever I find to watch while I eat my dinner. I have no social life, I have no friends. Just work and solitude, my constant companions.
That mundaneness and hopelessness seeped into my story, it made me decide that there was no point in keeping Moira and Hook alive, even though they had been characters I had dreamed of giving a happy ending to since I was a child.
I exhale softly. Now that I’ve lived life in Moira’s shoes—er... fins—I’ve come to realize that her situation wasn’t hopeless like I’d started to believe. Because if it’s hopeless for her, then that means that it’s too late for me as well. And I’m not willing to give up on myselforhappiness just yet.
“Maybe we just need to figure out how to find a purpose for our lives,” I say after a moment.
James reaches over and picks up a handful of sand and lets it filter through his fingers. He glances at me out of thecorner of his eye. Finally he shakes out the sand and braces his hand against the ground, turning to me obviously having given up on waiting for me to speak first. “Like what?”
I slide my hand across the sand until I find his. I stretch my fingers over his so our pinkies interlock. “Well, I like coffee a lot.”
He snorts a laugh. “You have a point. I can’t exist in this world since it doesn’t have coffee. It’s my reason for living.”
“It’s settled then. You and me, we’ll get coffee when we get back.”
James’s breath stalls a bit as he turns to look at me. “Together?” he asks softly.
I find myself shrugging. “We have done a lot of things together lately, why not that?”
“You have a point… I mean, yeah, I’d like that,” James says. I glance at him out of the corner of my eye to see that he’s grinning. When he catches me looking, he quickly ducks his head to hide his smile, but it’s already too late. I saw.
“Look at you two, you’re a sad lot.” I startle and glance up at Peter’s shadow that has materialized overhead. “You know, I really ought to thank you. You make the perfect case in my argument that children should never grow up. Like a candle that has burned for too long, you’re nothing but a wick, a burnt-out whisp of what you used to be.”
I flinch at Peter Pan’s words. They hit me straight at the core. So many days I’ve wished I never had to grow up. That’s the beauty of Neverland, isn’t it? To embrace childhood forever and never have to experience the cares of adulthood.
But that’s also the horror of Neverland, because the only way to do that is to die young.
James bristles. He pushes to his feet, balling his hand into a fist as his coat fans around him with black sand raining off it. “Maybe being a grownup isn’t the funnest thing ever. I have to deal with bills and taxes and literally every appliance in my apartment breaking, and they suck the life out of you. But you know what? Anything is better than being stuck eternally as a twelve-year-old.”
Peter laughs at this. “Well, I’d rather exist eternally than die in the next few minutes, but to each their own I guess.”
I ignore Peter, as I lunge to the side so that I can see the second star over his shoulder.
I wish we can go home,I think. I even scrunch my nose as I make my wish, like I used to do when I wished on a star as a kid.
However, as I glance around, I find that I’m still sitting in the dark and desolate heart of Neverland with a fin for legs. Absolutely nothing has changed. Well, apart fromthe massive shadowy form that steps out of the tree line, ticking steadily and glaring at us with blood red eyes.
