Sophie Taylor adjusted her thick glasses as she followed the nurse up the stairs to her grandmother's deathbed with her left hand. He right hand held her oversized purse so tightly that if it were a balloon it would have popped by now. Her left hand went back to her purse when her glasses were straight again and held on even tighter. The nurse opened a door and revealed, laying on a king-sized bed four times her size, a shriveled-up gray body that looked already dead. But when Sophie's grandmother opened her eyes and looked at her, she realized that she wasn't dead just yet. "Is that you, Sophie?"

"I'll be right outside," the nurse whispered before exiting.

Sophie sat in a chair by the bed and said, "Yeah, Grandma, it's me."

Her grandmother managed a smile. Although she had more wrinkles than a raisin, Daphne Taylor was elegant. Even when she was at death's door, she was still lovely. She croaked, "You've graduated college now, haven't you?"

"I have a doctorate, Grandma," she said. "In literature. Remember?"

She shrugged. "Just my memory."

"It's okay," she said. "I just got it a week ago."

As if she forgot what they were talking about so soon, she said, faded blue eyes gleaming, "You look like your father."

The identity and whereabouts about Sophie's father were unknown because her mother, whom she hadn't seen since she was thirteen years old, wouldn't talk about it and neither would her grandmother. Sophie returned to London at her grandmother's request, also hoping to find out who he was. "Who is my father, Grandma?" she asked. "Who?"

Her grandmother squinted. "The hair's a bit different, though. It's the eyes. You have your father's eyes."

She had been told that her eyes were her best feature. They were different shades of hazel and, according to everyone else, would look just as pretty without the rectangular black glasses and perhaps with just a little liner. But Sophie was against makeup and didn't "feel right" in contacts. The shape and color of the eyes were unlike anything of her mother's side of the family. The silky straight brown copper hair apparently skipped a generation because her grandmother had it, but there were no color pictures to prove it. "Grandma, I need to know who he is."

"You're old enough to know now, I suppose," she said.

At the age of twenty-five, she probably was. "Tell me."

"Well, you know that we are descendants of J.M. Barrie, correct?"

James Matthew Barrie was her grandmother's great uncle or something, and her favorite author by far. "Yeah, of course," she said.

"He had quite an imagination, didn't he? Well, do you ever wonder where he got it?"

"Sure."

She scooted a smidge closer with a quiet grunt. "Neverland is real."

Sophie's eyebrows raised. She had practically memorized the books and knew a lot of random facts about Barrie, but him being real…crazy. "Grandma, you're on medicine, you don't know what you're talking about."

"Yes," she said firmly. "I do. Peter Pan returned to the window of one of his homes to visit him, but found me instead. He took me to Neverland once or twice, but eventually stopped coming. For a very long time, until your mother was thirteen years old, he had returned and spent so long with her that they both grew up a lot. He wasn't much of a boy anymore. You were conceived when she was seventeen and he appeared the same age. Sophie, Peter Pan is your father."

Sophie saw Peter Pan as a necessary character, but certainly not her favorite. From the first time she heard the stories, she was more interested in the pirates—so much that she minored in marine biology. If Peter Pan really was real, Sophie wanted to find him and kick his ass for abandoning her. But although she was a hardcore fantasy freak, she couldn't believe it. "Grandma…you're acting crazy."

"No, Sophie, no," she said. "I'm not crazy. Don't you remember all those stories I told you inserting myself in them?"

Her grandmother had told her stories about Neverland from her own perspective. Her favorite was when she got lost in the forest and wound up in the harbor and found Captain Hook. Peter Pan saved her, but Sophie was always curious about Captain Hook and what he was actually like. This was when she was very young, young enough to really believe it rather than just enjoying it. "I just thought they were, like, self-insert fan fiction," she muttered.

Her grandmother shook her head as much as she could, which wasn't much. "No. Everything happened. Peter visited your mother and me in this very house, but the windows, your grandfather changed when he sent your mother to New York, so he can't let himself in anymore. But there's a way you can get to Neverland yourself."

"Is it guaranteed?" Sophie asked, not wanting to waste her time doing something silly to find a fictional place. As much as she loved her grandmother and wished she could believe it, Peter Pan could not possibly be her father.

"Of course it is," she said. "This one, at least." She sighed. "Sophie, you have all the time in the world and I don't even have one hour." Her grandmother only breathed, heavier and heavier. Sophie hurriedly took her hand and fought tears from coming out of her eyes. With her free shaky hand, Sophie's grandmother pointed to the dusty vanity across the room. "In the drawer in the middle, you will find a bottle that contains glitter. It's pixie dust." She looked into Sophie's eyes and said with a hopeful smile, "I know you'll make a right choice."

Daphne Taylor died on a Wednesday afternoon.

One tear escaped from Sophie's left eye as her grandmother's eyes fluttered closed and her smile faded. That tear, that ran down in a hurry and landed on her knee, was the first that had shed since she was fourteen years old and she hoped it would be the last.