Time loses meaning when I sleep. It's been that way my whole life--I can sleep for ten minutes or ten hours, and dream a thousand dreams or none, but it always feels like I haven't slept at all when I wake up.

Which is why, when I blink open bleary eyes to see a dark room however-long after Mila left me, I'm a bit disoriented. I don't know what time it is, and it takes me a second to even register where I am.

This space is unfamiliar, foreign. The bed I'm on is hard, and the pillow under my head is even lumpier than the mattress. The blanket is scratchy and smells like old... something.

And the world feels tiny.

Am I in a coffin? Did I die? Or they thought I died, and I'm in a morgue, and I'll be one of those creepy cadavers who isn't actually dead--or I am dead, and this an out of body experience.

Though if it was that, Peter would be here.

Right. Peter.

Neverland.

Mushrooms... Nightmares... oh stars. I sit up fast, breaths quickening. I'm in the City of Quiet, with a cursed faerie named Mila, in her inn.

Beautiful.

I rub my face, yawning. This room is blacker than pitch--no windows, I remember. Well, if it's dark, it's nighttime.

Nighttime means I can go back to sleep and avoid dealing with all of King Peter's junk. Fantastic.

I flop back onto the hard, lumpy mattress and sigh contentedly.

Is it a little harder and lumpier than I remember...?

"Get off me."

I scream, and try to move across the room, but my foot gets tangled in the blanket and I end up face planting on the floor.

"You're loud. Be quiet."

I clamber to my feet, unable to see a thing and clutching my nose, which is throbbing and might even be bleeding.

"Peter?" I question, my voice thick.

"I told you to be quiet."

I blink into the darkness, stunned for a moment. He's using that neutral tone again, the one I hate.

"What... on... Earth..." I tip my head back, feeling around my face to see if my nose is actually bleeding. "Peter, what?"

He sighs heavily. "Are you incapable of following simple instructions? Be. Quiet. Some of us are trying to sleep."

My mouth falls open even as I notice that there isn't any blood--excellent.

"Are you high?" Or a ghost... a dream... maybe I'm hallucinating. Maybe the Nightmare killed him.

Peter sighs again, and a soft green glow starts to... glow. Softly. "I'm not dead," Peter says, "nor am I currently flying." He sits up, and I only know because it's now light enough for me to make out his shadow--and it's getting progressively lighter.

"What...?" I let my hand fall away from my face, blinking at Peter. I don't even know what to say. The last time I saw him, he was being dragged into the Faerie Forest by a Nightmare--and I wasn't entirely sure that I believed Mila when she said he'd be fine. I'm... 'happy' isn't the right word, but I'm not upset that he's here and okay.

Or I wouldn't be, if he wasn't in my bed and being rude.

"What is going on?" I demand, hands on my hips. Hey, have I lost weight? I squeeze my love handles, and sure enough, they feel smaller than I remember. Maybe all this walking isn't such a bad thing!

Peter sighs yet again. "I told you," he mutters, and lays down again. I can now make out the shadows casted by his features and the coppery color of his hair. "I'm trying to sleep. I'm very tired, and I would appreciate silence."

"Then you shouldn't just barge into a girl's room," I snap, even as I try to find the source of the greenish light. It seems to be coming from... under Peter's shirt?

"The inn is full," he says, tossing an arm across his eyes. "Mila couldn't give me my own room."

My brows draw together and I cross my arms. "You can't just, I don't know, order her to give you one? You're rude enough to do it." I don't see it being a problem for Peter to kick someone else out of their room just so he can have his own space.

Peter sighs, moving his arm to look at me with exasperation. "Will you please shut up?"

I release a small scream of frustration. "That is it. I have had enough of you not answering my questions and avoiding actual conversations! If you don't want me around, Peter, all you have to do is not come back."

Not that I want him to leave, really. Though, Mila seems nice. I could stay here, and work in the inn or something.

Peter snorts, dropping his arm back over his eyes. The glow seems to have reached its brightest point, and I think it's coming from something on a chain around Peter's neck. He remains silent, not answering me, as the moments pass by and my frustration only grows.

I tap my fingers on my arm and open my mouth, but I can't think of anything to say. I don't understand him at all. And he can hear everything I'm thinking, so why does he keep ignoring me? He knows how confused I am and how weird all of this is.

I feel so... so...

My hands ball into fists. I feel lonely. And I'm scared. And I don't know what to do, because I'm trapped in this world now, and the only person I trust--if it can be called that--is Peter, but he doesn't seem to trust me. He doesn't even seem to want me around--in fact, I don't think Peter likes me as a person.

And I don't know what I'm supposed to do about any of it.

Tears threaten the backs of my eyes, making them ache, and my nose feels runny. I drag my fist beneath it to forestall any snot, and I wonder if Peter is going to bother responding to what I'm thinking and feeling--the things I can't seem to shut off no matter how hard I try.

I keep telling myself that it's going to be okay, but the truth is I have no idea what's going to happen next or even where we're going. I just... I just want to go home.

But I can't. I don't have a home anymore, because I destroyed it with that stupid book.

This is all my fault, and I brought it on myself, but knowing that doesn't make me feel any less... lost. I'm anxious, and scared, and I can't get a handle on my heartbeat.

And now I'm crying.

And Peter is asleep.

I kick the bed frame, but he doesn't wake or even move. I've never had much of a family, and I've never been very good at making friends, but this...

In all my life, I've never felt so alone.

And I don't like it. I don't like it, and I don't know what to do about it, or if there's anything I can do. I have to get out of here.

I need... some air.

Air would be good.

I move to the door, only to find it locked, and no apparent way to get it unlocked. There's a keyhole on this side, but Mila didn't give me the key.

I lean my head against the wooden door and try to stifle the sob rising in my chest like a tidal wave. I don't know what I'm supposed to do.

Is my life just... a waste? Why was I even born? Everyone would have been so much better off without me--my parents, my brother, Stacy... all those foster families that had to take us in, all the teachers who looked at me with worried glances because I never had any friends. All the kids in various schools who snickered behind my back for reasons I couldn't figure out. All the coworkers who never seemed to feel comfortable around me. Looking back, it feels like I was just an interloper, someone passing through--but not someone who stayed.

Someone no one wanted to stay.

Stacy always said I had my head in the clouds, but I never felt disconnected or oblivious or alone. I felt fine, I even felt happy. I never realized until now... how alone I was. There's no one back there who is missing me. Even if Stacy wonders where I've gone, she probably won't even go to the cops. She probably doesn't care enough. And even if she does, I'll just end up another cold case, unsolved, one of those girls whose pictures you see at Walmart, the ones nobody ever finds.

I am alone in the universe.

I have nothing, and I did nothing with my life. My landlady will just sell off my things when I don't come back after a month, and then there will be someone else living in my cute little apartment. Someone else sleeping using my Ariel lamp, someone else drinking from my favorite Belle coffee cup. My professors probably won't even notice that I'm not in class.

It will be like I never existed at all.

But I do exist. I'm right here, right now, and I'm... I'm alive.

Even if I screamed those words as loudly as I could, no one would hear me or care. Not even Peter.

I waited all my life for Peter Pan to come and take me away, because I always knew there had to be something better out there, and who doesn't love the story of the boy who loved being a kid so much that he never grew up?

There's nothing better, though.

Peter Pan isn't some romantic story. Neverland isn't a fun-filled adventurous place.

And I'm never going to be anything more than an unfinished story, a book with no ending, a movie with a cliffhanger that never gets resolved.

What happened to Gwendolyn McKinnith? Where did she go?

Worse, my story's plot was so bad that no one will even care that it doesn't have an ending.

Suddenly, I feel trapped. Like if I don't get out of here, I'm going to explode. I try the door handle again and again, shoving with everything I've got, but it won't budge. It could be made of stone for all the good I'm doing, and it's only making me more anxious, like there's something inside me clawing at my ribcage, trying to get out, pushing its way through the fibers of muscle, through the cells of my skin.

I can't breathe.

And then the door opens, and I'm through it before I've even hauled in a breath. I only notice Mila standing there because I nearly run into her, but I swerve at the last second and miss.

And then I'm running, ignoring the sound of her voice calling after me. I don't care where I'm going or if it's dangerous or if it's stupid. I have to get out.

I have to get away.