I want so bad to be able to say I own Peter Pan, but I can't. It's the greatest piece of literature in the world.
The night was an endless abyss of stars. They would twinkle and shine brightly for a brief moment, then fade away, and before you knew it they were back. It was as if they were alive, small children who teased you by seizing one of your possessions, then forcing you to chase him around to get it back. Girls, of course, were much too clever for that sort of thing.
As Lily sat on her windowsill, she laughed to herself, thinking of the stories her mother told her about how the stars were friends of Peter Pan, the boy who never grew up. He would sneak up behind them and try to blow them out when they weren't watching, or fly in front of them so no one could see their light.
Lily had always loved those stories. She was a striking image of her mother, Margaret, in both appearance and personality. Short for her age, with long brown hair and a heart-shaped, defiant face, she also possessed the spitfire temper and tomboyishness of her mother.
She was quite stubborn, not at all believing Margaret when not only her, but her grandmother Jane and great-grandmother Wendy had claimed that Peter Pan really did exist and they had traveled to his home, the Neverland, been the mother of Peter's band of Lost Boys, and met fairies, fought pirates, dueled with Indians, and played with mermaids. That, Margaret claimed, is where she became such a tomboy: she had no one but boys to interact with in the Neverland.
Lily rolled her eyes as she remembered these claims. She had observed the stars since she was a small girl, being taught the constellations by her father Eric, and still had no idea what "second to the right, and straight on until morning" meant. There was just no way. Plus, great-grandmother Wendy had lived back in late Victorian times. Perhaps Peter Pan had been a school game or something back then. Now, in 2009, just a week after Lily's fourteenth birthday, the whole world had been explored and no Neverland had been found.
Lily shivered in her white nightdress as a gust of wind blew in through her window. It was late September: autumn would be here soon. Autumn was always her favorite time of year, with the red, orange, and yellow leaves blanketing the streets of London. It was what she thought the Neverland would look like.
Lily smiled as she pictured Peter Pan, with his fairy friend Tinker Bell, soaring past her window, fairy dust trailing from behind him. Still grinning, she closed and locked her window, crawled into bed, and was asleep moments before a dark shadow whooshed past the stars.
