by Shari Arnold
“It’s okay if you want to go back, Livy. I would go if I could.” Jane snaps me back from my brewing anger.
“I’m so sorry, Jane,” I say, not knowing what else to say or do. I want to hug her, desperately. I want to tell her that never should have happened to her and how it’s not how a childhood should end. But mostly I just wish she’d made it back to her nana’s house.
“Not everything is great where we came from,” she tells me. “I’m sure you know that already.” She’s still staring out over the tall grass, and in this heavy afternoon light, with that lost look upon her face, she looks more like a child than I’ve ever seen her look. “I just miss everything else, you know.”
We are silent for a moment. I have so much to say, but nothing feels right. I miss everything else too. I miss my parents. I miss Sheila. It feels wrong that I’ve been brought to this place, that I’ve been given a glimpse into where my sister is and what it feels like to be near her again when I know that I don’t belong here. I get it. I’m too old. I’m not a child anymore. There must be a different place for people like me. Not this place of wonder, perhaps a more grownup Neverland, but just as safe.
What I hate is that I have to choose. It would be so much easier if I were like Jane, and I didn’t have to make a decision. To know there’s no going back and to make the best of it. But then again easy isn’t what Jane’s feeling now. If what she’s telling me is right and my family is calling me back, I have a choice, and Jane never did. I can’t even imagine how it must have been for Jane to feel her nana so close, and yet never be able to reach back to her.
“It might go away if you decide to stay,” she tells me. “You might stop feeling that pull, or you might not. It’s hard to know for sure. I’ve heard it goes away completely once you move on and accept it. But since I’m still here I can’t actually tell you if that’s true.”
“Move on? What do you mean, move on?”
“This is only meant to be a temporary stop.” Jane glances over at Jenna. “We get to decide how long we stay, but we’re all supposed to move on eventually.”
“I don’t understand,” I say, feeling a bit panicky all at once. “Where do you go from here?”
“I don’t know,” Jane says. “Someplace else, someplace different. No one talks about it, really. Not James. Not Meyer. I don’t know how much Meyer actually knows about it, since he’s really only in charge of Neverland. I get the feeling James knows, but he won’t tell us. He says it’s not something we should worry about until we’re ready.”
“Ready? Ready for what?”
“To move on,” Jane says, even though those words still mean nothing to me.
“But what does that mean?” I say with frustration. “What does move on actually mean?” This is all too much. Here I was just beginning to wrap my head around Neverland, knowing it was a safe place. That Jenna would be here, even if I weren’t. But now I come to find out that she could disappear from here too?
“Where else is there to go?” I ask Jane, desperate for any insight.
“I don’t know! How would I know? I haven’t done it before.”
“Well, what do you think it means then?”
Jane’s expression tightens as though she has an idea but she’s not sure she wants to share it with me. But then she does. And it hurts my heart to hear.
“I think it means to grow up.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Grow up.
Those two little words add to my heaviness. They settle on my chest and nearly choke me. I remember the night I said them to Meyer, how angry I was, but mostly afraid I’d lost my best friend.
Grow up. The way Jane says it makes it seem like such a horrible thing but maybe the horrible part of it is that they’d be doing the growing here and not with the ones who deserve to see it happen. Like their family. Like me. Maybe that’s why her words make me feel like this, like all the hope I had is gone. Neverland may seem like a beautiful place with its unlimited supply of wishes, but are wishes enough when you can’t share them with the ones you love?
I stare across the field at Jenna, watching as she laughs at something Jeremy is telling her. And then it hits me. Jenna’s going to move on from here. She’s going to leave. Again.
That pull I felt before nearly knocks me back a few steps and Jane grabs hold of my arm, steadying me.
“Are you alright?” she asks me. But it’s not Jane’s face that swims before me, it’s my mother’s.
“I promise,” she tells me. “I promise if you wake up, Livy, I’ll be a better mom. I’ll be fun again and I won’t leave you alone as much. I promise, Livy. I promise you. We can go to that store you like and we’ll take a trip. Just you and me.”
“Livy?” Jane says to me.
“Livy. Please wake up!”
“Livy, are you alright?” Jane has hold of my shoulders. She shakes me a bit and I take a breath, just now realizing I’ve been holding it.
“No. I don’t think so.” The second the words leave my mouth Meyer looks up and the smile on his face drops off completely.
My feet begin to move, slowly at first until my momentum increases and I’m nearly charging toward Meyer. I can feel the anger rising to the surface. I am my own little black cloud. I stop directly in front of Meyer and he takes a deep breath, but he doesn’t say anything.
“I have a wish,” I tell him.
Jenna and Jeremy look up, drawn by my voice. Jenna smiles at me, climbing to her feet, but then something in my expression must worry her because she freezes and doesn’t come any closer.
“I can wish for anything, right? That’s what you do here?”
Meyer’s mouth tightens and he nods his head. The look in his eyes is as dark as my mood.
“Well then,” I cross my arms against my chest. “I want Jenna to come with me. That’s my wish. I want to hold her hand when James comes for me tomorrow and I want her to go with me.”
“Livy—”
“No. Don’t say it.” I look to Jane to help me out but she’s back to gazing off over the meadow as though we aren’t having one of the most intense conversations of my life. “I can wish for anything here, right? And it’s your job to get it for me. Well, that’s what I want, Meyer. I want my sister. And I want the two of us to leave together.”
“There are rules—”
“Rules for wishing?” I cut him off. “Now that doesn’t seem fair, and everything is fair in Neverland, right?”
Meyer nods his head, and looks down. His hair has fallen across his forehead, blocking his eyes — and his true feelings — from sight.
“I don’t want anything else,” I say, holding back my tears. “Nothing at all. I never have.”
“You have to know, Livy. I would do it, I would give you anything, if I could.” He’s still staring down at the ground, doing everything he can to avoid looking at me.
“Well, that’s what I want.” That panicky feeling rises up, making it difficult to speak. “I want her,” I choke out. “She’s mine, Meyer. She doesn’t belong here.”
Meyer’s eyes snap up at this, piercing through me with a vibrant mix of anger and sorrow. “And why not?” He grips my arm, pulling me up close so that our faces are mere inches apart. “At least she’s happy here. These children, they have everything they need. Everything they can imagine.”
“Not everything,” I whisper. “She doesn’t have me.”
Meyer stares at me for a minute, his eyes searching mine. “Well that’s your choice, now isn’t it?” His hand drops from my arm, nearly pushing me away.
“You could make a memory.” Jenna stands apart from us, but nevertheless she’s still following the conversation. “Something you could leave here, you know that would remind me of you when—”
“No, Jenna,” I choke out, running to her. “No more wishes! Why can’t you just come with me?” I turn to Meyer, pleading to him with everything I have. “He could make it happen, I know it! He just has to try!”
�
�No he can’t,” Jenna says, staring up at me with wide eyes. “That’s not how it works!”
“But how do you know? Maybe he’s never tried it before! Maybe if he talks to James, I could get a little more time or maybe Jenna could…?” I can hear the desperation in my voice. I can see it reflected in the other children’s eyes around me. But I can’t stop it. I can’t stop wishing.
“Livy,” Jenna says, shaking her head. “Don’t.” Her little chin starts to tremble and then just like that she lifts it defiantly. I am in awe of her strength. I am humbled by it.
“So, you’ve made your decision then, have you?” Meyer’s arms are crossed, his expression drawn and angry. “You’ll be leaving in the morning?”
“I didn’t say that!” I wrap my arms around my waist, nearly folding in on myself. “I just…” I shake my head, feeling my last ounce of hope slip away.
“Never forever,” Meyer says with a touch of sorrow. “Everybody leaves sooner or later.”
I lift my head at this, sensing there’s more to his statement than what he’s willing to share.
“It’s the way of Neverland,” he tells me, his words so quick, so flippant. “Everybody eventually moves on.”
I stare at him, strangely drawn to this vulnerable side of Meyer.
“See, Livy,” he says, lifting an eyebrow at my reaction. “We’re really not that different. Shocking, isn’t it?” He rubs the back of his neck and stares off over the meadow. “The thing is, they choose to leave me.” He gestures around us, “With all of this, they choose to move on.”
Meyer takes to the sky leaving us all staring after him.
“You can’t take me with you,” Jenna says, clutching my hand. “You need to understand that.”
“I do,” I tell her, wrapping her in a tight hug, even though I don’t really. After all that I’ve experienced in the last few weeks it shouldn’t seem that far-fetched, should it?
“Well that was interesting,” Jane says, startling me. I’d forgotten she was still here.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper to Jenna. “I didn’t mean for that to upset you.”
“It didn’t upset me, Livy,” she says, but I know that’s not true. I can see it in her eyes.
“If anyone’s upset, it’s Meyer,” she explains.
“He’s just mad at me,” I tell her, gesturing at the empty sky.
“I wouldn’t say mad exactly,” Jenna says. “He didn’t seem mad, just…”
“Afraid,” Jane pipes up. “He seemed afraid.”
I turn to Jane. “Why would he be afraid?”
She is staring off at the place where Meyer was a moment before. For a moment I wonder if she even heard me.
“Jane?”
“He’s not like us,” she says, gesturing to herself and Jenna. “He has a choice.”
“What choice?”
“Whether or not to live.”
When we realize Meyer isn’t coming back for us, Jenna and I decide to move on to her island. She shows me her room with more closets than any young girl could need, each filled to the brim with dancing clothes. And each dress a different shade of pink or purple. I smile at her and touch her hair, reminding myself that she’s real, but I find it’s difficult to concentrate. I keep wondering where Meyer is, and why he ran away so quickly. There’s a strange feeling in my stomach, as though the emptiness I usually carry around has expanded. Being with Jenna should ease that emptiness, but for some reason I feel worse. I keep biting my nails — which I never do — and I feel like I’m crawling out of my skin.
Jenna takes my hand as she leads me to Alice’s island and then points out the differences between Alice’s version of The Twelve Dancing Princesses and hers.
“Alice thought the trees should be covered in gemstones,” she explains, whereas Jenna held true to the original story version.
I sit on the sand near the shore, pulling her down next to me. Staring into Jenna’s bright blue eyes is the only time I feel peace. She is my own little form of meditation.
“Jilly still asks me to read her that story,” I say, and once I speak Jilly’s name I instantly feel a pang of guilt. She must be so frightened not knowing what’s happened to me, especially with so much else to worry about.
“It’s not her favorite, you know,” Jenna tells me as we sit with our feet in the water. She keeps lining up rocks, watching as her little wall gets knocked down each time the water laps the shore. “She only picks it because she thinks it’s your favorite. Her favorite is Rapunzel.”
“She has me read it because it’s your favorite,” I say, knocking shoulders, and she knocks right back, nearly pushing me to the sand.
“It’s really not, though,” Jenna says, turning back to her rocks. “It really just reminds me of you.”
When I fall silent, she looks up at me and the wisdom in her eyes is startling. She’s no longer my little sister, she’s moved beyond that.
“It’s okay if you want to go back, Livy. Believe me when I say, I think you should.”
There are no words for me in this moment. Jenna has always been wise beyond her years, I guess childhood leukemia will do that to you. But this is too much for me now. To have my sister encourage me to choose life, when she was never given the choice.
“I haven’t decided,” I tell her drawing my finger in the sand. “I really wish I had more time.”
“I don’t know how long I’ll be here, you know,” she says when I don’t continue. “They talk about moving on and I think that I might like that.”
“Moving on?” These words continue to generate panic. “What do you know of moving on, Jenna? What have they told you?”
“Not a lot. Mostly they don’t talk about it. But there was this girl when I first got here. You would have liked her, Livy. She was a lot of fun, used to dance with us, and come to our tea parties.” Jenna watches as the tide washes away her rock wall. This time when the tide moves out she doesn’t attempt to rebuild it.
“She told me she was ready and then the next day she was gone.”
I look off toward the water, avoiding Jenna’s eyes. I don’t want her to see how upsetting this is to me. I don’t know how to explain that if I leave Neverland it would be incredibly helpful knowing she was here. Forever. How knowing she was here — visualizing her here — would make it easier for me to go back. It’s the not knowing that’s terrifying to me.
“I miss her,” she tells me. “And I think I’m ready.”
“You’re ready?” I glance around quickly, wondering if this is the moment I will lose my sister again. Convinced that I can’t do it.
“Soon,” she tells me, as she gets back to stacking her rocks. “Not yet, but soon.”
We stay like this a little bit longer, neither of us talking while our silence holds meaning. I’m not ready to leave my sister yet. I don’t think I’ll ever be. But it’s pretty clear she’s trying to get me to let go.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The sun has turned a softer shade of pink. The sky is a grayish-blue when Jenna sits up and asks me if I’d like to speak with the mermaids.
“I write them letters, sometimes. They always respond, especially when I invite them to our parties.”
“How do you write them letters?” I ask, completely intrigued. “How do they read them without getting the paper soaking wet?”
Jenna bursts out with laughter. “They aren’t on paper, silly!” Her eyes are bright as she giggles. For a second she’s my little sister again.
“I write them messages in the foam, see?” She leans over, dragging her finger in the sea foam.
“Dear Mermaids,” she spells out. “If you could help me…”
“What are you asking them?” I’m completely caught up in this method of communication, but mostly I want to keep our conversation light. “How about if we ask them to come for a visit?”
“We could do that,” Jenna says, turning her back to me so that I can no longer see her words. “There’s actually something importa
nt I need them to do for me.”
“What is it?” I say, wanting to peek over her shoulder but holding back.
“You’ll see.”
A couple minutes later it isn’t the mermaids who arrive, but Meyer. His aura isn’t nearly as fierce as the last time I saw him, but there’s a wariness still present behind his eyes. I hate that seeing him gives me this heady thrill, that the emptiness I felt before doesn’t seem as suffocating. I tell myself I was simply worried about him, nervous that I’d hurt his feelings. But the truth is I like being near him.
“You rang,” he drawls, his smile resting upon Jenna, while his eyes avoid me.
“Yes, thank you,” she says, giving him a low curtsy.
Meyer lets out a laugh and that wariness slowly fades. He is so relaxed around the children. And so restless with me.
“I have a request,” she tells him, reaching for his hand. And he gives it to her, pulling her in to his side as though it’s the most natural thing in the world. All at once I feel a spark of jealousy watching them, a flash of pain that he can do this whenever he wants. That he can float back and forth between the real world and Neverland. That he can see Jenna, touch Jenna, whenever he wants. Why can’t that be me? If given a choice that is what I’d wish for. I’d want to be Meyer. I want his freedom, his connection to both places. But I’m pretty sure that’s not an option for me.
“Whatever my lady wishes,” he says, ruffling her hair. “Your wish is mine to give.”
I glance up, catching his eyes and he quickly looks away.
“Alright.” Jenna shifts her feet in the sand, hesitating a moment and then she pushes her words out with a rush of air. “I want Livy to tell the bedtime story tonight.” Her smile is a bit wobbly as though she’s afraid she wont get this wish, that something more will be taken from her.