Disclaimer: I do not own Peter Pan. Peter Pan is property of J.M. Barrie and Great Ormond Street Hospital.

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Everything But The Girl - Chapter One

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Fly away with me... We'll never have to grow old or tired and we can always have fun together... Always.

Beep Beep Beep Beep

I slapped my hand over the clock, sighing. Every night it was the same thing. Well, not exactly the same. Sometimes he would have different coloured hair. Sometimes I wouldn't even be in the dream, just he and his adventures. A charming boy for one with little experience with girls. Shimmering green eyes; curly, short hair. Sometimes blonde, sometimes brunette. Rough, dirty skin and an outfit crafted by faeries out of leaves, sap, twigs, and acorns. But what really got me was his smile. Beautiful. Darling, really. (And trust me, I know about "darling.") But boyishly awkward. A smile that I never managed to capture on paper, as hard as I tried.

By the way, my name is Gwendolynn Darling. It is a pleasure to meet you. My friends and family call me "Gwen," but for all intensive purposes, I prefer you call me "Wendy." You see, for the past year or so, I've had continuous dreams of a boy, a very mysterious, courageous, mischievous boy. I don't know his name, but he is simply fascinating. He can fly, he as a knife on his person, always, he even has his own faerie! (And a lovely one at that.) But more than that, he has all sorts of amazing adventures!

And he will never grow up.

Last night's dream was of him speaking to me. Telling me to come away with him to have adventures. The dreams were always exciting. So exciting, in fact, that I almost didn't want to wake up. But I did, I always did. I began to tell the stories to my brothers as a way to get them off my chest, but never revealed their origin and replaced my name with "Wendy." Oh, the cleverness of me.

I pulled on my pleated skirt and stockings, buttoned up my blouse, and did up my tie. All the wile, thinking of my adventures with the boy and humming his theme that played in the dreams' background faintly each evening. At one time I thought of giving it words but found that it was perfectly good without any.

At school, I coloured the pictures of his face I'd drawn and had been perfecting for the past week. During lunch, my friends crowded around me. Each girl shouting or cooing something more embarrassing and false than the last. "Isn't he perfectly lovely?" I asked no one in particular, raising my voice above the mess hall ruckus.

"Beautiful," Emily, my best friend, agreed readily.

"My thoughts exactly," I continued to shade in his lips. There was no part of the body I thought was more beautiful (or as much fun to draw) as the mouth.

Aimee shook my chair, "Who is he?!"

"The boy of her dreams," Cassie said dramatically, then proceeded to swoon and pretend to faint on the girl next to her. "I feel weak!" She cried.

The girls laughed at her playful antics but I was not amused. "It's not my fault," I hissed defensively, "If the boy wants to show up in my dreams every night for a year straight, looking totally gorgeous and taking me on wild adventures, he's going to. And really, girls, who am I to stop him?" I laughed lightly, cupping a hand over my mouth. When I'd finished giggling, I lowered my hand hurriedly to traced the eyelashes once more in black coloured pencil.

Out of the silence, Diana called out, "You love him!"

"Gwen and 'gorgeous' sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G!" They started to chant.

"You're all so childish!" I screamed at the top of my lungs. That was when the teacher came over an broke up the party, leaving Emily and I to our quiet admiration. Emily was the only girl at school who I told the details of my dreams to, but even she did not know I was "Wendy."

All the girls thought I was crazy, of that I was sure. "Fairytales are for kids, Gwen," they told me, but that is not true. It is during adolescence, I believe, that one needs fairytales the most. Something, anything, to hold onto when things start to look bleak, as they tend to do when one starts to "grow up." I, personally, wasn't having any of this "growing up" business. Hormones and the like, blech, I'll pass. I was steadfast in that I was always going to be a kid, be it at heart or otherwise.

Little did I know, my aspirations were closer to my grasp than I had anticipated.

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