All her life Ashlynn has believed in Peter Pan.

When she was five she would jump off everything trying to fly and ask the tooth fairy for pixie dust instead of money. Aside from Disney Princess movies, The Aristocats and 101 Dalmatians, she would only watch Peter Pan and Tinkerbell movies. No one could shake her belief.

When her parents divorced it destroyed her, and as she slammed and locked her bedroom door and sunk down slowly onto the cool pine floor, she curled herself up in a ball and wished, wished on all the stars in the sky to let her fly away to Neverland. She was alone, no brothers, no sisters, an only child. But she hid all her anguish from her friends and braved it alone, her mum wouldn't let her tell anyone about what was going on with her family and was sure to find out if she told anyone, seeing as she picked her friends or approved them for her. Sometimes Ashlynn wondered if her mum was secretly a spy, she had her eyes and ears everywhere.

By the time she went to high school, she had concealed all her feelings, mainly the pain and hurt she kept inside away from all her existing friends and the new people she began to meet, she put a smile on her face and tried her best to be friendly to everyone, but alas, her uptight mother's upbringing was the foil of her ruin within the first few weeks and again, she was alone. Nobody wanted to be friends with a girl who had only really watched cartoons, 80's sitcoms and listened to country music all her life.

Nobody really knew much about all of that stuff, and she was branded a goody two shoes, just like in her old school.

She still had a few friends, Thalia; a girl from her past whom she eventually made friends with, Carolyn, another girl from her childhood and a mutual friend of hers and Thalia's.

On her first day of school, Carolyn introduced her to her school friends, and she became part of their little group; Ashlynn, Carolyn, Arletta, Madelyn, Emma, Zoe and Isabella. And that helped, they were great friends, all of them, and it made her feel better to know she had someone, anyone in the whole world. And eventually that group became bigger and she had more friends.

She also made three more friends by herself, quite frankly it surprised her, Elena, Camilla and Arianna.

So she knew she wasn't completely alone.

But that didn't stop her from feeling isolated in her class, everyone talked behind her back and made jokes with her that they knew she didn't understand. She was a laughing stock. Worst of all, even though she knew that her class were talking about her, she could never prove it. Not that that would help anyway. She had no one with her in her classes, and her new friend Thalia of course, had her own group of friends. Ashlynn only saw her friends at break and lunch.

Sometimes when it got too much, she just wanted to get up and scream at them all to just leave her alone. But like always, she kept her mouth shut and didn't let anyone see the fact that her heart was breaking ever so slowly in two.

By this time, her home life wasn't any better either. Her mum didn't really care that much about her anymore. Whenever she would get a good grade for an assessment and tell her overly obsessed about perfection and learning mother; not that she had a choice anyway, her mum would make her tell her anyway, her mum would just say

"Good"

or:

"That could be better, you don't revise enough"

and then skip sharply onto the 101 reasons she was the worst daughter in the world and how she should have adopted a child, and how Ashlynn had to do 500 different jobs in the house like she didn't have a mound of homework and revision.

So Ashlynn ignored this most of the time, shutting herself up in her bedroom like the Beast from Beauty and the Beast locks himself away inside his castle, and tried her best to keep her room tidy and her academic grades up.

Even though she began to read and watch modern things that interested her and half her class, she began to fulfil her passion for books and writing and began to read and write fanfictions and watch supernatural type shows like The Vampire Diaries on Netflix, it didn't change what her class thought of her. Take it from Ashlynn, it's true what they say that first impressions always count. They do. And they stick like honey on a spoon, absolutely unshakeable.

Piece by piece, all the good things in Ashlynn's life slowly unravelled, her friends split up, her mother further isolated herself from her daughter after discovering, in horror, that her daughter had bought The Awakening: The Vampire Diaries Book 1 and was watching Riverdale and Teen Wolf on Netflix that she had bought from the allowance her dad was giving her. Her mum thought it was evil and a load of rubbish, taking the book and throwing it away and blocking Ashlynn's internet swiftly.

There was nothing really left for her, and she, again, feeling like she was five again, gazed out of her window and wished with all her heart for Peter Pan to appear at her open window and take her to Neverland. There was only one other wish in her heart, but she knew it was absolute lunacy to dream about and that Mila was gone.

Lonely and constantly saddened by her daily struggles, Ashlynn stayed strong to her dreams and wished every night upon the shining moon and glittering stars to be taken away to Neverland just like Wendy.

But she knew in her heart that if she was taken to Neverland, she was never coming back.

Ever.