"Don't you want to say goodbye?"

"To who?" I ask, glad that the tears have finally stopped. "There's no one who'll miss me." It's sad, but true. Stacy doesn't care, and I don't have anyone else. We never stayed in any one foster home long enough to form lasting relationships, and I'm always so busy with school and work that I don't have time to make friends. And even if I did... my friendships never end well. Stacy says I push people away, but it always feels the other way around to me.

Peter looks at me, still in his true form, but it seems to be getting easier to see him, to look at him and still hold onto my mind and thoughts. "You can't come back," he says.

"I know," I tell him, even though everything in me is rebelling at the thought. I don't want to go. I don't want to live in a world where happy endings don't exist. I don't want to give up on Happily Ever After and fairytales and prince charmings.

I don't want to give up on the recurring dream I've had ever since I was a kid--the dream that Peter Pan will come and take me to a better place. A place where everything is happy and I don't have to worry or be afraid anymore. A place where I'm free to be who I want to be. I used to have that dream so much that I'd wake up and expect to see a pair of sparkling green eyes hovering over mine. I used to sit at the window every night and wait for Peter to come, even after my parents died and we were passed from foster home to foster home until Stacy was old enough to raise me herself.

I still have that dream at least once or twice a week. I know every line of it, every moment.

It doesn't match the image in front of me.

I don't want to give up on stories. I want to believe that there's always hope. I'm afraid that if I go to Neverland, I'll lose that belief.

Peter reaches out and takes my hand, the gesture surprising, the feel of him shocking--so warm and firm, his fingers calloused but smooth at the same time. Strong. I blink at him.

"I'll keep you safe, Gwendolyn."

I believe him. There's something so haunted in his eyes, something so determined, that ever present sadness even sharper than before. I wonder who he lost, and if it was because he failed to keep them safe. Something flickers in his eyes and I know that I'm right.

He lets go of my hand, opens his mouth like he wants to say something, but doesn't. "You don't have to do this," he tells me, his tone neutral and empty.

But I do. It's the only way to stop what I set in motion--to stop what I did. To stop the Nightmares. To save the light.

To give them hope, all the people down there who will never remember my name. That's good. I don't want them to remember me--not when all of this is my fault. When they're hurting because of me and I didn't even notice.

"Let's go," I say again.

He looks at me for a moment, brilliant green eyes that are so much more than green--he's not even trying to hide his true form anymore--between strands of bright red hair. He is so beautiful and so haunted, so sad that it makes my heart ache and twist. Someone so beautiful should never look so sad. 

Peter nods once and holds out a hand. I feel a ripple over my skin and suddenly he's holding a book in his hand--a familiar book. The Book of Unhappy Endings. It's instant, the fog that raises around my mind, clouding me--but it's like I'm watching it from a distance and I can see it now, what I couldn't before. What the Book was doing to me, saying to me.

Whispering in an ancient, seductive tone, "Come to me. Come home. Open my heart and return to my soul, little lost one. Come to me."

Everything starts to fade, swirling in circles, a flame dancing around those words, spinning and spinning and spinning--and then it stops. Peter's hand on my shoulder, his eyes looking into mine, his voice saying my name.

"Focus, Gwen. It can't control you if you know what it's doing, if you don't let it. Focus. Control."

I breathe, deeply, trying to make sense of his words. Trying to make sense of anything, of everything, of life and time and space. and an ancient voice telling me to come home. 

Why would the Book tell me to go home? Why is it calling me someone who is 'lost'? I'm not lost. Nothing makes sense.

Peter shakes me, and I whip my head back and forth, trying to get rid of the thoughts and the voice. Slowly, they fade, and I can see more than just Peter's eyes. His breathtaking face is mere inches from my own. I struggle to breathe for an entirely different reason.

He steps back, releasing me, his face impossible to read. The Book of unhappy Endings is gone--at least, he's no longer holding it in his hand. I glance around, confused, only to see it lying on the rooftop a few feet away. A pillar of black--darkness and shadow and mist--rises from it, opening into a triangle of nothing. A void, floating in the air, coming from the open Book.

That must be the portal he was talking about. I swallow, wipe the sweat from my palms onto my jeans. Clothes. I don't have any clothes... I need to pack.

"The Book will take care of that," Peter says, right behind me now. I nod, because I don't think I'm capable of forming words. I'm terrified.

Peter steps past me, toward the Book and the darkness. He keeps going, into the darkness. I can see him there, a shadowy outline, holding a hand out to me.

I wipe a stray tear from my face, draw in another sniveling breath, and take his hand. This is it. The end and a beginning too, I suppose. I have no idea what to expect, everything stretching out in front of me is uncertain and dark and scary.

I want to crawl under my bed and pretend that none of this ever happened.

Instead I step over the Book, into the void.

Peter leads me forward and I can't see anything, can't hear anything, can't feel anything except the warmth of his hand in mine. He's a lifeline, the only thing that's real, and I hold on too tightly because I have nothing else to hold onto. In this moment, Peter is everything--the whole world. My existence continues only because of him and his firm, calloused hand.

Then suddenly, there's light again. It's a different kind of light than I'm used to, not like sunlight at all. This light is brighter, but not in a good way. It's like winter brightness, too bright, and cold though the air is warm and pleasantly humid.  It smells of earth, wet soil, the taste of rain at the back of my throat.

But there's something else beneath it, something sickly sweet, rotting.

I blink, trying to bring everything into focus, and we're standing on a cliff, looking down the slope. All around there is water, crystal blue and gorgeous. Flowers and vines grow over the rocks and the dirt, covering the slope all the way down to a sandy beach. A place this beautiful can't be too bad, surely.

I blink again and the scene changes. The landscape is the same, but there are people now--small people. Kids. They're kids, wandering around over the slope, at least a hundred of them. But there's something else about them. Their eyes are vacant, their expressions empty.

When they move it's disjointed, stiff, as if they're made of wood instead of flesh and bone and blood.

"What are they?" I ask, my voice hushed. Peter is standing beside me, his hand still in mine. We are shrouded in shadow and they don't seem to have noticed us.

"The hollow children," he says.

"The what?"

"The children born of this world." He looks sad again, so very, very sad. "They're just shells."

I look back at them, at the hollow children, and an aching sadness fills my own heart. How awful. It's awful, and sad, and I don't know whether to cry or gather the children into my arms. There's something about them that calls to me, begs me to help them, to do something. 

"There's nothing you can do," Peter says.

I sniffle, wiping my nose on the collar of my shirt. I nod.

Peter pulls me from the shadows and we stand on the cliffs, the Book appearing in his hand again only to vanish into nothing. Its call is gone, its voice nothing but a distant echo of a memory that I'm already forgetting.

"Tell me, Gwen," Peter says, looking at me with his impossible green eyes. I look back, my fingers tight around his. "Are you afraid of the dark?"

He sounds almost casual, and the sadness is gone again, replaced by something unreadable. I like this look even less than I like the sadness.

"No," I say, and I'm lying. But he pretends that I'm not, and I pretend not to notice, and the portal zips shut behind us, disappearing.  No going back now.

"Welcome," the hollow children say, noticing me as I follow Peter through the crowd, heading down the slope toward the beach. "Welcome to Neverland, Gwendolyn." I don't want to know how they know my name. I don't want to understand why their voices are all the same, why the speak in unison, why I feel so sad that I could sit down and sob if Peter gave me half the change. "Welcome to the World of Unhappy Endings."

Such a fitting name. Neverland--a place where the nevers go. Children who never grow up. Stories that never end--because it's not an ending if it isn't happy.

It's beautiful, probably the most beautiful place I've ever been. But it's sad, too, sad and broken and dark despite the bright light coming from the glittering crystal sky--a sky that has no sun or clouds. I hate it at once.

I want to go home.

"You are home now," Peter says, as we step onto the beach. He looks at me and there is nothing kind in his face, nothing human. Only emptiness. "Get used to it."

I swallow back more tears and look around at the small island, at the hollow children and the flowers and the ocean. I look over the sea and see a larger landmass in the distance, a black arch leading toward it. I follow the arch and see that it's a bridge, one end of it landing on the beach far to my left. Peter leads me toward it and I follow in silence.

I don't know what to say.

There's nothing to say.

I think again of the look on Peter's face when he said, 'fairytales are lies, Gwen'. I look at the hollow children and their vacant eyes, the way they move in jerks and stops--as if they're being controlled by some crazed puppeteer. Neverland.

I'm in Neverland, and I'll never be able to leave.

I'm not a girl anymore, not a college student, not a sister, not the owner of apartment number 23 on Banks Street. I'm just another never.

Another story that will never end.

An unhappily never after.