I haven’t attended a normal high school in over two years, but yet I find myself still hooking up with the star quarterback in the passenger seat of his SUV.
He is bad at sex. Magnificent on the football field.
If only I liked football and hated sex.
Anthony shoves inside of me and I make the porn star face for him because I know he likes it.
I pretend to orgasm with him.
I am not a porn star, but I am the daughter of a prostitute so I think that’s close enough.
“Oh fuck yeah, Winnie. Fuck. Oh baby.” His grip on me is loose and clammy. He’s trembling like the boy he is.
We’re the same age, but decades apart.
“Fuck,” he says and breathes hot air against my naked chest. “That was so good. Was that good?”
The lack of confidence is insufferable. I don’t know that I’ve ever slept with a confident man.
Or maybe that’s wrong.
Maybe they’re only confident in the taking.
“So good, baby. You’re so good at sex.”
And I am so good at lying.
He smiles up at me as I continue to straddle him and then he stretches up and plants a kiss on my mouth.
I feel nothing other than a dull ache in my body and a throbbing headache behind my eyes.
I am dead inside.
And so fucking bored.
And the only thing I have to look forward to is being kidnapped by a myth.
Happy fucking birthday to me.
Anthony zips himself into his jeans and then drives me home.
I stare out the passenger side window as the SUV winds through my neighborhood.
When he pulls up to the curb, I start to open the door but he grabs my arm and leans over for a kiss.
I begrudgingly give it to him.
“You coming to the party this weekend?” he asks, more hopeful than I’d like.
When you’re extremely giving with sex, you are always invited to the parties. So many parties. All of them the same. But I like familiar things. I’ve always been short on familiar.
“Text me,” I tell him, because I’m not sure where I’ll be this weekend.
Today is my 18th birthday and every Darling woman that has come before me has disappeared on this day.
Some are gone a day, others a week or a month.
But they always return broken, with varying degrees of sanity intact.
I don’t want to go mad. I like who I am, for the most part.
When I come in the side door, Mom is suddenly in front of me. “Where have you been, Winnie? I thought he’d already taken you and—” Her attention wanders and then she races to the nearest window and tests its latch.
She’s muttering to herself as she works.
Pirates and Lost Boys and fairies.
And him.
She won’t speak his name when she’s awake, but at night, when she dreams, sometimes she’ll wake up screaming it.
Peter Pan.
Mom has been hospitalized seven times. They say she’s schizophrenic just like grandma and great-grandma and all of the Darling women before her.
A legacy of madness that I stand to inherit.
“Winnie!” Mom rushes up to me, her bone-thin hands wrapping around my wrists. Her eyes are wide. “Winnie, what are you doing? Get in the room!” She shoves me down the hall.
“It’s still daytime. And I’m hungry.”
“I’ll get you—when he—okay, listen.” Her gaze goes faraway and she frowns at herself, her grip loosening and my stomach drops.
Please, for the love of all the gods, I don’t want to end up like my mother.
“He’s coming!” she screams at me.
“I know.” I use my soothing voice on her. “I know he is, but you have the house battened down better than a bomb shelter. I don’t think anyone could get in.”
“Oh, Winnie.” Her voice catches. “He can get in anywhere.”
“If he can get in anywhere, then why lock the windows? Why stay in the room?”
She pushes me over the threshold, ignoring my logic.
The “special room” is a work of art fueled by terror. You can read the frenzy in the rough brush strokes that adorn the wall. Runic symbols, painted like graffiti with more etched into the casing around the door.
There has been a parade of so-called witches and shamans and voodoo priests that have come into our lives and through our houses selling my mom the secrets of protection from him.
We don’t have the money for it, but we spent it just the same.
“I’ll get you something to eat,” Mom says. “What do you want?”
“It’s okay. I can—”
“No! I’ll get it. You stay in the room. Stay in the room, Winnie!”
She races back down the hall, her gauzy white dress billowing behind her, making her look like a specter. A few seconds later, pots and pans bang around our kitchen even though I’m absolutely positive we have nothing that can go in a pot.
This is the nineteenth house we’ve lived in.
I know the number of houses, but I can’t remember most of them. And when your walls blur together, it’s hard to ever feel like you’re home.
Mom said she thought maybe she could lose him—Peter Pan—if she kept us moving. We travel light. I have two bags and one trunk that I inherited from my great-great grandmother Wendy. It’s smaller than it looks from the outside and about twice as heavy as it should be.
I can’t seem to get rid of it.
It’s about the only thing we own that holds any value, the only thing that feels real.
Our current house is an exhausted Victorian with crumbling plaster walls, worn and nicked hardwood floors, and lots of empty rooms. We don’t even own a couch. Furniture is too hard to move.
I collapse on the inflatable bed shoved into the corner of my special room and stare up at the ceiling where the curling graffiti has been done in blood. That was the witch from Edinburgh, said only blood would do.
And it had to be mine.
Maybe we’re all mad, in our own way.
Mom makes me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and brings a glass of tap water.
She watches me eat it, jerking every time the house creaks.
“Tell me about him,” I ask her as I peel the crust from the top of the sandwich and eat it like a length of spaghetti.
Mom winces. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
She taps her index finger at her temple.
From what I’ve gathered, she thinks some kind of magic keeps her from talking about him in detail so I only get bits and pieces. She tells me the magic wanes on new moons, but we’re halfway to a full moon.
It’s the tide and the full moon that brings all of the monsters out. The wolves and the fairies and the lost boys. That’s what she said.
“What can you tell me?” I ask her.
Huddled in the corner of the room on her cot, knees drawn to her chest, she considers this for a few seconds. I imagine she was beautiful once, but I don’t know her as anything other than crazy. Her hair is dark and coarse like mine, but it’s started to thin because of all the medication she’s on. Her skin is ruddy, her cheeks hollow.
There are layers of cracks in her fingernails and circles beneath her eyes. She doesn’t work anymore. She’s on disability, but it barely pays the bills. And the more isolated she is, I think the worse she gets.
“I remember the sand,” she says and smiles.
“The sand?”
“It’s an island.”
“What is?”
“Where he’ll take you.”
“And you were there?”
She nods. “Neverland is beautiful in its own way.” She wraps her arms around her legs and folds into herself. “All of it is magic, so much of it you can feel it on your skin, taste it on the tip of your tongue. Like honeysuckle and cloudberries.” She lifts her head, eyes wide. “I do miss the cloudberries. He misses the magic.”
“Who? Peter Pan?”
She nods. “He’s losing his grip on the heart of the island and he thinks we can fix him.”
“Why?” I tear off a corner of the sandwich and mush the bread between my fingers, flattening it into a pancake. Jelly squirts out the edge. I’m trying to prolong it, trick my belly into thinking it’s getting a five-course meal.
Mom lays her cheek to her knees. “They broke their promise,” she mutters. “They broke their promise to me.”
“What promise?”
“I don’t know how to stop him,” Mom whispers, ignoring me. “I don’t know if it’s enough.”
“It’ll be okay,” I assure her. “I’m not worried.”
None of this is real.
Except for the madness.
That I am worried about.
Will it be like a light switch? One minute I’m sane, the next I’m not?
The thought of losing my mind terrifies me more than some boogeyman.
When Mom falls asleep, I slowly slip out of the room.
A storm has rolled in and lightning flashes through the window, lengthening the shadows of the old Victorian.
I go to the bathroom in the hall and stare at myself in the mirror.
I don’t recognize myself. It’s like looking at a stranger. Some days I worry that if I reach out for my reflection, there will be nothing there.
I’m starting to look like her.
Carved clean. Exhausted.
I don’t want to be mad.
And I’m just so fucking tired.
My cardigan slips off the bone of my shoulder and I catch a glimpse of a puckered scar. One to match the runes drawn on the ceiling.
I pull the collar back up.
The medicine cabinet is missing half a door, so the left side is open revealing several rows of pill bottles.
Take your pick.
I don’t want to be mad.
I reach out for a bottle of ibuprofen. I’ve taken so many over the years, I barely know relief from them anymore.
The floor creaks beyond the hall.
I snatch my hand back.
Lightning flashes through the house again and thunder chases it.
When the rumbling ends, I hear a door shut.
Mom.
I race down the hall and hurry into the room, but she’s still on the cot sleeping soundly.
My heart rams into my throat.
Another board creaks.
Maybe someone broke in, thinking the house was abandoned? We can barely afford the rent, let alone the utilities for a house this size. We hardly use the lights.
Slowly, I shut the bedroom door behind me, and slide the lock closed. We don’t have any weapons, nothing practical. We spent all of our money on useless magic.
Breath held, I grit my teeth together.
The doorknob turns.
I slowly back away from it.
Has it started already? Have I already lost my mind?
Thunder cracks through the sky.
The lock thunks open as if by magic and a boot pushes the door in.
The hinges squeak.
I look at Mom again. Was there more to her stories than I was willing to believe?
That can’t be true.
Can it?
Mom lurches awake. “Baby, what’s the time—”
“Shhhh.” I hurry to her side and give her a shake.
But it’s too late. The door is open and he fills up its void.
I can’t fucking breathe.
There is the distinct sound of a lighter being clicked open, then the rough spin of the metal wheel. The flame catches, sending light over his face as he burns the end of a cigarette.
Silver rings on his fingers reflect the flame. Dark tattoos cover his hands. There are several strips of string and leather tied around his wrists. He’s tall, broad shouldered, and wearing a long coat with a stiff collar that stands up around his sharp jaw. Even though his body is hidden beneath the coat, I can tell he’s corded with muscle by the mere suggestion of it in his biceps.
When he pulls the cigarette away from his mouth, I can’t help but trace the veins that snake over his knuckles with a quick sweep of my eyes.
He expels the smoke with a purposeful breath.
“Meredith,” he says, “it’s been too long.”
Mom’s breath catches beside me.
Is this really happening?
“You can’t have her!” she yells.
“As if you could stop me.”
My heart leaps to my throat.
“Please,” Mom says.
He takes a long hit from the cigarette, the embers burning brightly. I hear the tobacco crackle as smoke curls around his face.
There’s a fluttery feeling in my chest that instantly makes me feel guilty.
I suddenly feel more awake than I’ve felt in years.
I should not be feeling anything other than dread in this moment.
This is real. Mom was telling the truth.
“Please,” Mom says again.
“There is no time for begging, Merry.”
He takes his first step over the threshold. So much for that magic.
I gulp down a breath, trying to quell the rapid beat of my heart.
Somehow, in the blink of my eyes, he’s crossed the last of the distance between us. He takes a fistful of my t-shirt dress and yanks me to my feet. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way, Darling. Which will it be?”
I gulp, trying to dislodge the lump suddenly growing in my throat.
He watches me do it, watches my tongue dart out and lick my lips.
The fluttery feeling sinks lower and the guilt festers and turns cold.
He is my mother’s urban legend come to life and I don’t know what to do with him now that he’s here.
“You have three seconds to decide,” he tells me.
There’s no hint of exasperation on his face, but I sense it, nonetheless. Like he’s had this conversation a million times before and is always disappointed with its destination.
Mom rises next to us and starts pummeling his grip on me, but he’s quick, almost too quick to follow when he drops the cigarette and lashes out, grabbing her by the throat.
“No,” he says easily. “Don’t make this more difficult than it needs to be.” He turns back to me. “Go on, Darling.” He gets in close to my face, white teeth gleaming in the moonlight. He’s almost too beautiful, too dream-like.
Maybe I’m already mad.
And if I’m mad, none of it matters anyway.
“I’m waiting,” he says.
“The easy way, obviously.”
His brow lifts in amusement. “Obviously?”
“Why would I choose the hard way?”
Mom loses her fight and goes quiet.
“First lesson,” he says. “There is no easy way.” He turns to Mom. “I’ll bring her back, Merry. You know they always come back.”
Then he drops her, snaps his fingers, and everything goes dark.
