Stars and Satellites

STARS AND SATELLITES

A thesis submitted to the Kent State University Honors College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for University Honors

Amy Rohozen

May, 2016

Thesis written by

Amy Rohozen

Approved by

______, Advisor

______, Chair, Department of English

Accepted by

______, Dean, Honors College

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS..……...... ………………………………………………..vi

CHAPTERS

AFTERMATH…………….………………………………………………………1

BALLERINA……………………………………………………………….……..7

THE PARACOSM…………………………………………………………….…16

FOREST………………………………………………………………………….29

BLACKBEARD…………………………………………………………………38

TREETOPS………………………………………………………………………54

BOUNDARIES…………………………………………………………………..64

DROWN…………………………………………………………………………80

LEAVES…………………………………………………………………………97

IZZY…………...……………………………………………………………….106

TIGER LILY……………………….…….…………………..…………………114

SHADOWS……………………………………………………………………..126

FLIGHT………………………………………………………………………...135

STARS………………………………………………………………………….145

LULLABIES……………………………………………………………………165

POLITICS………………………………………………………………………179

SHATTER………………………………………………………………………188

CONDUIT……………………………………………………..………………..203

SATELLITES………………………………………………….….……………211

FAIRY STORY………………………………………………..…….…………220

NEVERLAND………………………………………………….………………239

STORIES……………………………………………………………………….247

AFTERWORD

I. INTRODUCTION: ANALYZING STARS AND SATELLITES…..260

II. YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE……………………………..….262

III. WOMEN IN YOUNG ADULT DYSTOPIA…………………..…269

IV. PETER PAN AS YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE……..………..274

V. REIMAGINING PETER PAN…………………………………….277

VI. THEMATIC CHOICES……………….…………………………..291

VII. CONCLUSION……………………………………………………298

WORKS CITED…………………………………………………………………….….300

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

It is hard to know how to begin acknowledging those who helped and guided me in the creation of this work. Novel writing is often thought of as a solitary activity, but no story is ever truly written by one person alone. I truly never thought this novel would be written. It was just a fledgling idea, a year old but with no real development. I had all but given up on it. I am so grateful that the Honors Thesis forced me to return to this story, which developed into something I could never have imagined, something more valuable than I ever dreamed.

I must offer my thanks to Dr. Matthew Shank, my advisor, who gave me a greater gift than he knows. Since I was a child, I believed in the value of young adult literature.

He was the first person to teach me the genre in an academic setting. He gave me hope.

Thank you for reading so many versions of this story and its analysis. And thank you for valuing the words I had to share and believing in me.

Thank you to Dr. Don-Jon Dugas, Dr. Elizabeth Howard, and Professor Ryan

Conlon for serving on my defense committee. You challenged me to think about my writing in new ways, and I will never truly be able to articulate how much that means to me.

Thank you to my friends and family, who had to hear about this thesis on a near- daily basis, who offered me suggestions when I could not get through a scene. There are far too many people for me to name them all here. But let me at least thank my wonderful

parents; my fabulous roommate Julia; and all my friends over at the University Parish

Newman Center at Kent State University. Their interest in my story and in me got me through many a bad writing day. They have no idea how much I valued it when they said,

“I want to read your story.” There’s nothing quite as inspirational.

Especially thank you to my beta readers, who read my story when I no longer could. Not only did you read my draft but you wanted to read my draft. And more than that, after reading that draft, you believed in my work. Thank you for reading my words and believing that I had something worth saying.

Finally, thank You, God, for the wonderful gift You have given me. I so desperately want to write for young adults so they might always know they’re valuable and never alone. And You gave me such a beautiful ability to do just that through my writing.

vii 1

Aftermath

My head spins in circles so fast I’m tempted to jump to my feet just to prove that my body can spin faster. I can pirouette with perfection, not a muscle shaking beneath my skin. But instead I sit still now with the same steadiness, though it’s not because of the discipline I’ve put my body through over the years. My body has forgotten how to move…or my mind’s forgotten how to control my body because it’s too busy spinning my thoughts in circles. I sit stiff, stark straight, like I’ve been trained to, but keep my eyes on my hands. I cannot hold it together well enough to stare straight ahead.

Singing people surround me on all sides, but the song is so familiar that it’s lost all meaning in my present. I bet I could fake singing along with it, moving my lips in time with everyone else. But my body weighs too much for it to even feel worth trying.

My parents sit beside me, but my mother has long since stopped trying to nudge me back to life. She has another daughter to deal with today.

How much time has passed? It could be seconds or years. Everyone could leave this service, and they could close this chapel, and I wouldn’t notice. Fire could build and burn wild through the city-state of Caesura, and I would just breathe in all the smoke without noticing the acidic bite on my tongue. Let the world end while I sit here. Then I wouldn’t have to realize it mocks me by continuing to turn.

When the music stops, I tilt my head upward so I look aware and like I feel something other than numb. Sunlight through stained glass fills the room with a rainbow

of dim light, making the chapel look more alive than it is. The sun strikes a bright yellow glass, which then pours its cheery hue on the closed metal coffin standing before the entire congregation. My heart aches, and I want to drag my eyes away. But the numbness of my skin makes it too exhausting to react with anything more than an empty stare.

I sit and stand with everyone else, feigning normality that feels like…nothing, feels empty and fake. I refuse to pull my eyes away from the coffin once they’ve landed there, and the service comes to a close without me hearing a word.

My mother takes my forearm and pulls me along behind her as she slips out of her seat. She knows better than to wait to see if I decide to move on my own. I know I wouldn’t take the chance if she offered it. We follow my father over to the side of the chapel opposite the coffin, so that people may separately pay their respects to the dead and offer condolences to the grieving.

However, I’m not convinced I’m grieving. I think you have to feel something for it to be grief. I stare blankly at near-strangers as they attempt kindness in the midst of our tragedy. My parents talk to those who come to speak with us, but I nod at words I don’t listen to and let people wrap me in hugs I can’t bring myself to return. My parents either don’t notice or allow my vagueness. But after a while, my mother nudges me again. She leans in to my ear and whispers, “Councilman Datton is coming over.”

For the first time that day, I find a reason to straighten that doesn’t only have to do with my dance training. My eyes comb the crowd, struggling to see around people, considering my short height, until they land on the Councilman on his way over to us.

Despite his history with my family, it unsettles me to see him here; there’s no way he has

the time for a funeral service.

As he steps up to offer my father a handshake, I catch a glimpse of his son Peter behind him. Unlike his father, Peter’s eyes are already on me. When his green eyes meet my blue ones, I look away quickly just as the Councilman steps up to me. He offers me his hand, and I clasp it in return. “I am so sorry for your loss,” he says, deep voice rumbling through me.

And with that, he walks away from our family without a backward glance, already pulling an earpiece from the side of his watch to make a call. Peter steps in front of me before I have time to recover. I forgot how tall he is. Even in the two-inch black heels I wear now, he towers above me a good four inches. His curly blonde hair stands in stark contrast to his black suit. He offers a half smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Hey.”

“Hey,” I mutter. I’m shocked I have any voice to back the words at all. I look away quickly, wrapping the fingers of my right hand around my left wrist just so I have something to do with my hands.

After a second, he follows up with, “This sucks.”

I nod, glancing up at him from beneath my eyelashes, just glad that for once, someone didn’t ask me if I’m doing okay.

“You doing okay?”

Scratch that.

“Just think about that question for a second,” I whisper. I want to snap at him, throw my words at his face with the force of a grenade. But my parents still stand right beside me, not to mention how many other people still make their way out of the chapel.

“I didn’t really think so,” he admits. “It’s just…what else can I really say?”

I shake my head. “Nothing. You were more Jayne’s friend than mine; you don’t owe me anything.”

Peter shrugs. “So? Either way, you’re her little sister.”

“Was,” I correct sharply.

My hands start to shake, and I realize there’s no way I can stay calm. I quickly step away from my parents, just to put a little distance between us, and Peter follows. My dress brushes against my thighs. It feels so much heavier than anything I’ve worn before.

I’m used to the light gauze of dance costumes. When I spin back to face him again, it takes all the power I have to hush my voice when I say, “I’m an only child now.”

Peter’s shoulders fall. “I know.”

Even with Peter standing before me now, the loneliness weighs on me. It’s familiar but different now that Jayne’s gone…dead. I can’t wake myself up by telling myself that the loneliness I feel is a lie; it’s more real than ever.

I can’t do this, whatever this is, not with him, not with Jayne’s best friend. I can’t talk to him like this about Jayne. It makes my chest ache, my breaths short, my temper threaten to break. Only so much of the darkness in me can be chalked up to mourning, and I don’t dare reveal myself here.

So I spin away from him. When I spin, I am so used to perfect form, to spotting so

I don’t get dizzy, to looking fluid. Now, I stomp. I fume. I don’t care. My skirt twirls around me, but I’ve never felt less like a dancer. And with it, I’ve never felt less like myself. Jayne stole what was left of me. I normally float across the floors, completely in

control of my body by making it a little less than physical. But anger grounds you. The heaviness weighs you down until you think you’ll tear through the floor because it’s paper-thin. The anger makes you more than physical.

I hate it, but I don’t dare feel anything else.

No one tries to stop me on my way out of the chapel. Not even my parents, who I expect want me to act graceful or at least normal in the face of tragedy. But the anger fuels me with something better than numbness and I ride that emotion right out the doors.

I run down the stone stairs, careful to avoid the weeds that grow between the stones, straining to trip anyone that doesn’t give them the attention they deserve.

Weeds are among the few green things that survive in our city. Anything else is trampled by the crowds that continuously flow down our sidewalks or gets paved over and replaced with yet another skyscraper that blocks the sun from reaching the ground.

The only other noticeable greenery is a spindly tree every few blocks with just enough leaves for the tree to be considered “alive.” Caesura may be the center of scientific advancement, but biology does not seem to be our field of study.

From there, I move without thinking, turning down the sidewalk at the bottom of the chapel’s stairs and letting my body take control to lead me through the crowd.

Crowds have never bothered me, which is good because Caesura is full of them. It’s a city that we built up rather than out to take full advantage of space. If permits to drive didn’t cost enough to pay the rent on my family’s apartment for a couple years, the streets of the city would be gridlocked with cars in constant traffic jams. So most people take advantage of our wide sidewalks. And now, I’m thankful for the cover of the crowd. It

makes it harder to be followed or for anyone to see my face, in case the tears burning in my eyes decide to spill over.

Somewhere in the back of my mind I wonder why I’m running. Going from numbness to anger leaves me scrambling to make sense of the jumbled mess in my head.

So I stop trying to make sense of it, letting the crowd envelop me, and I move without thinking. My heart races in my chest, and I don’t know why. Somehow, I know the panic has nothing to do with Peter. I let the dizziness overwhelm me, own it, so maybe it won’t think I’m so scared. I run my fingers through my pixie cut, and I can picture my hair standing on end like I’ve stuck my finger in a light socket. I focus on breathing deep, even breaths and slip into the tiniest gaps between people to move more quickly.

I should know that not thinking could only lead me to one place. The Studio is the only hope I have of grounding. Because the only way I can be grounded is by taking flight.

Ballerina

As long as you belong to the Studio, it’s never closed to you. It’s the premier training facility for minors looking to get into a professional dance program, namely the

Caesura Ballet Academy, or CBA. As such, those who train there need near-constant access.

I pull the chain that hangs around my neck off over my head as I get inside the building’s elevator and press the button for the twelfth floor. In my palm, the two charms that hang from the chain rest against my skin. But it’s not the key that I stare at. Instead, my eyes focus on the tiny silver star, a gift from a lifetime ago. A lifetime where my sister still breathed, still loved me enough to give me a gift.

I wrap my fingers around the key and the charm just as the elevator chimes when it stops on my floor. I step off, ending up in a tiny lobby with only the elevator behind me and the locked door in front of me for company. A couple fake plants stand off to the side, but the weight of dust on their leaves makes it look like even fake plants can die.

I push the key from my chain into the lock and turn the knob that at one point I think used to be gold colored but now is so worn that it looks more like very abused silver. Dull bells jingle above my head as the door opens. They sound too light for the heaviness settling in my chest as my anger dissipates. Instead of feeling the sadness only in my head, it spreads across my skin and through my bloodstream, dragging down my entire body. I pull the door closed behind me, careful to re-lock it before I walk away. I

follow the tackily carpeted hallway until the carpet ends at the girls’ changing room.

Only to walk in on Lena and Nate making out against the lockers.

It’s not like this is the first time I’ve walked in on them in that position, but the last thing I need right now is people. The dim blue-white light of the changing room illuminates the pair as Lena’s kiss pushes Nate’s head back against the lockers. But when the door creaks closed behind me, they jump apart. Even after they see it’s me, they stay apart, which unsettles me. Unless it’s one of our instructors walking in, they always go back to making out. And the only reason they separate at all is because they could be in danger of a bad review for getting into the CBA because of “unprofessional conduct.”

“Gale!’ Lena exclaims. She throws open her arms. I stay frozen in place, not bridging the gap. My brain refuses to keep up with what sort of emotion I’m supposed to be faking at this point. When I don’t make a move toward her, she steps toward me instead and wraps me in a hug. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I mutter, way too conscious of the fact that Lena, literally sticky with sweat, refuses to let me go. Even the familiar scent of her apple shampoo doesn’t wrap me in comfort. My lungs constrict until I’m suffocating.

I see Nate take a step toward us over her shoulder. “Why are you here?” he asks softly. “Isn’t the funeral today?”

“Dancing’s easier than hanging around there longer than I have to,” I say only because I have to say something. What I really want to offer them—silence—won’t be accepted.

Lena finally lets me go just when her thin sweater starts making me feel scratchy.

Why she wears even a thin sweater in the summer is beyond me, but the pink looks decent against her caramel skin. “Do you want us to hang around a little longer? We could run through the final showcase routine.”

I wince at the sound of that, the sound of the future. Anything beyond today sounds like an impossibility. There had been a time when making the CBA was what I dreamt about when I fell asleep. As I grew up, it became the thread of hope for my future to which I clung. I never expected that thread to fray. It seems to me that the future no longer exists. The final showcase, the final chance for my class of dancers to perform together before moving into elite training programs as adults, sounds like something from a fairy tale.

“That’s all right,” I say quickly. “I was just planning on running through my CBA routine.”

Lena frowns. “I thought your audition was last week or something.”

I shrug. “Something like that.”

Try the day Jayne died, but I’m not about to remind Lena of that. I do not want to be wrapped in another hug. I turn away to my locker, mostly as an excuse to hide my face, which I am having trouble keeping arranged just right. “How’ve you two been?” I ask, pulling my dress off over my head to switch into a leotard and tights. I assume Nate has the decency to look away, as this isn’t the first time I’ve changed with him in the room. You get used to the lack of boundaries in dance. “When were your auditions? Or did they not happen yet?”

“Two weeks ago,” Nate says, which does not come as a surprise. Guys tend to get

first priority for auditions because there are fewer of them in the program.

“Mine was yesterday,” Lena says.

“How’d that go?” I ask. I sit down on the bench to lace up my pointe shoes.

They’re newer, as far as pointe shoes go. Not so new that they kill my toes because I still have to break them in but still pale pink rather that gray at the edges and fraying. They were bought months ago so I would look perfect at my audition.

“As well as it can go,” Lena says. “I was shaking so hard it had to be noticeable.

But I didn’t, like, fall flat on my face, so that’s okay.”

“Same,” Nate agrees. “I walked out there and practically forgot my entire audition. I mean, I still had to improvise parts since my mind kept going blank, but it went okay.”

“That’s good,” I say to the floor rather than to their faces. I turn around and pay way more attention to getting my things into my locker than necessary before slamming the locker door closed. “I’ll talk to you guys later, okay?”

I don’t wait for their responses. I just push open the door and walk through before they can stop me. I hope that they go back to making out. That way, they won’t be able to talk about me.

The Studio is made up of twelve practice rooms across three floors of the Arts

Training building, and I slip into the oldest, smallest room. None of the other dancers use it and certainly no classes are taught in here, which is why I like it. It’s my place to hide.

There are bubbles beneath the floorboard so that if you get lost in your dance, you can trip. The pseudo wood of the barre is more than just smooth from years of hands, but

actually uneven from being worn away. The mirrors are beginning to warp so you cannot see your form as perfectly as necessary. They completely cover one wall of the room and echo my image back to me. My reflection in that mirror is nothing new to me; my eyes stared back at me while in ballet dress from the time I was three. But now as I stare at myself….

I look empty.

My stomach hollows out, and my heart carves itself from my chest. My arms hang at my sides rather than drifting out in front of my torso. Only my back remains straight because the instinct is so ingrained. My skin’s so pale that it’s hard to tell where my too- blonde hair begins. My lips are cracked beneath rose lipstick. I look like a ghost, but all I am is a shadow. Sixteen and I look less than alive.

I force myself to turn away from the mirror and cling to the barre like it’s a life preserver. I stare down at the floor rather than straight ahead like I should as a dancer.

My chest aches too much at the thought of lifting my chin. My fingers tighten around the barre until they go numb and my arms shake. I have been trained to command every muscle, but now they melt to putty within the confines of my skin. It takes everything in me to stiffen my knees and not let them buckle.

If another dancer walks in and sees me anything less than perfect…no, I can’t let that happen. I might be able to explain away their worry with an explanation of mourning, but any amount of despair shown in Caesura is suspect as depression. And depression gets you taken away. I must be careful.

I can only hide my depression behind mourning Jayne’s death for so long.

“You’re not all that great at hiding, are you?” says a sudden voice at the door.

I jump at the noise and spin around to see Peter standing there. “How did you get in here?” I say, rather than answering his rhetorical question.

He gestures behind him with his thumb. “A guy named Nate let me in.”

I roll my eyes as I turn away, hoping to hide my expression. “Of course he did,” I mutter.

The floor creaks as Peter enters the room, but I keep my eyes on the floor, only one hand of mine still on the barre in front of me. “Jayne used to talk about how much your family had to spend to support your dancing,” he says as he walks. “You’d think that this Studio would spend some to fix this room. It looks like it’s falling apart.”

“There are better rooms,” I retort lamely. My chest burns at the mention of Jayne.

I wish I could bring myself to move, to dance in any way whatsoever, just so that I stand a chance at looking…okay. But my muscles are stretched too tight.

“Still, though,” he says. He steps over to me and leans back against the barre beside me. When I look to the other side of me to avoid looking at him, I find myself face to face with my reflection again. I still don’t recognize the image, though the warped mirror certainly doesn’t help things. I expect Jayne to be standing behind me but the mirror reflects Peter’s image instead and leaves me scrambling to make sense of the change. Peter releases a slow breath, raising his head to meet my eyes in our reflections.

“Can I ask you something?”

I frown, closing my eyes so I don’t have to meet his anymore. “If you’re not going to go away until you say it,” I say eventually.

“I…uh…have kind of ended up with an extra ticket for an appointment at the

Paracosm.”

My eyes flash open, and I turn my head so fast to look at Peter that I hear my neck click. His eyes widen at my expression. I say, “How do you just ‘end up’ with an extra ticket to the Paracosm?”

My previously nearly dead heart races with new life in my chest. It’s an anxious life, fluttering and skipping around in anything but an even pattern, but I prefer it to my heart’s earlier shallow march. Peter looks down at the floor for a long moment, before he lifts his eyes to my face again. “It was supposed to be for your sister,” he admits.

I choke, and I have to look down to try to hide my face. Peter stays silent, I guess waiting for my reply. I grip the barre with both hands again just to stabilize myself. But the barre isn’t secured to the wall as well as it once was, and the weight I push on it makes it twitch like it’s about to tear away from the drywall.

I ease off the barre and attempt to look at Peter like that did not just happen.

“Why are you asking me? You have other friends whereas I’m just the little sister of your dead friend. One trip to the Paracosm costs enough to keep me in dance clothes at the

CBA for a couple years. You should spend that money on someone who actually matters to you.”

Peter shrugs. “You matter to me. And I just thought it might…I don’t know, distract you from all this. It’s really the only way to get away from here for a while.”

He’s right on that point; the borders to Caesura have been locked up tight for decades, ever since Caesura declared independence from Lacuna, the country in which

Caesura used to be nothing more than a city, for reasons my history classes always seem to skate around. The Paracosm’s literally the only option for anyone to get out of

Caesura, even if it’s not “physically” out. The Paracosm functions—as I understand it— as a sort of virtual reality resort. You travel anywhere you want, but none of it’s real, even if it feels real. I don’t know the details. What I do know is that a family like mine could spend their whole lives saving for a trip there and not make enough. Being offered a ticket like this unsettles me for that very reason.

He tilts the face of his watch in my direction. The screen lights up with an image of a golden ticket. “It’s yours if you want it,” he says.

I stare at the thing for longer than I’m proud to admit. But then I pull away, physically stepping back to put distance between us. “I can’t just take that ticket, Peter.

We’re not friends, not really. I don’t deserve it.”

His eyebrows draw together as he lets his arm fall to his side again. “Don’t deserve it? Your sister just—”

“I get it,” I say quickly, cutting him off. I take another step back between us. I don’t want to end up tangled in the lifeline he pitches my way. When I think of tomorrow, all I see is rolling over in bed and pulling my covers over my head so that maybe I can block out the sun and only be awake at night but only when the moon’s not in the sky.

Peter steps sideways as I do and stops me from stepping around him. “Jayne would want you to do this,” he insists.

“All Jayne wanted to do was die!” I shout but then stumble back, startled by my

own words.

Heat burns across my cheeks and the back of my neck, and I feel too hot in nothing but a leotard. I clutch the barre beside me and focus on steadying my breathing, but I keep looking at Peter. His mouth falls open slightly for a second, but he regains his composure and narrows his eyes. “She wanted way more than that. Did you even know her?”

My fingers tighten around the barre, and I feel myself shaking. That would be the question, wouldn’t it? The incredible Jayne, volunteering every spare moment of time to others, smiling at every person who crossed her path, pretty much friendly to a fault, perfect in every sense of the word.

And she killed herself.

“I don’t know,” I whisper in response to his question.

The tightness in his brow lessens, and his eyes widen. “Well, I know that she’d want you to take this ticket and do something other than mourn her.”

My eyes drop down to the golden ticket flashing across Peter’s watch face. Little does Peter know that I already am doing something more than mourning her. And every time the thought crosses my mind, a knife stabs into my heart. “Okay,” I say, still staring at the watch. That way I don’t have to see his face brighten. I don’t have to see the hope.

All the while, I think about Jayne, and a small part of me wonders if I should follow her.

The Paracosm

People don’t just go to the Paracosm. They spend their whole lives saving for one day in the Paracosm and still fall short. Peter paying for not only himself, but for Jayne— me now—as well is unheard of. And, quite frankly, he could probably afford to pay for the both of us to live there for the rest of our lives. Benefit of being the son of a councilman. I never imagined for a second to find myself here. Every penny my family can spare goes toward my career in dance. So, naturally, when I stop outside the

Paracosm a couple days after Jayne’s memorial service, I just stare.

Although most of our city is built stretching toward the sky, the Paracosm is the single exception. It sits on its own lawn right on the river that serves as an unofficial boundary for Caesura. Though the fence that truly borders the city is still a few miles off, few people go beyond the river.

If not for the Paracosm, I’m not certain I would have otherwise seen grass that grew in a way other than weeds shoving their way through cracks in the pavement.

Sidewalks crisscross through the grass with benches every few yards. Windows build the walls and roof of the building, and that roof is curved and bulges up. What isn’t window is some sort of incredibly reflective silver metal. The sun glints against the surface making the building glow like a beacon. It sits wider than it rises tall, which is enough to stop you short, not even considering how the building looks like it’s alight with a fire only the clear river running alongside it can drown.

A quick glance around confirms that most people, like me, stand a distance from

the building, just staring. Few people actually approach. The security there is such that you can’t even pass through the doors unless you intend on participating in the

Paracosm’s activities, I think designated by the ticket. Guards stand watch at all hours of the day to make sure of that. Since the ticket isn’t in my name and still loaded on Peter’s watch, I doubt I can enter. Though only now do I realize that Peter and I never determined where we’d meet up.

As I walk toward the building, my back and arms twitch. A knot tightens in my throat, and my knees threaten to lock up. After years of dancing on stage, I surprise myself being nervous. But it’s as though I violate some unspoken rule.

You do not approach the Paracosm. You look. You do not touch.

I lower myself onto a bench still a decent distance from the building. I flex my feet so only my toes touch the ground, though my legs are long enough for my feet to sit flat. It enables me to ignore the urge to tap my foot in time with my racing heartbeat. I want to glance at my watch, but I force my hand to stay where it is, clutching the seat of the bench.

“Hey, there.”

My head whips around as I feel breath on my ear. In my haste to jerk away, I nearly slide from the edge of the bench and scramble to get a grip. Whatever Peter’s original expression was, I miss it as it morphs into a frown. “You okay?”

“Fine,” I say quickly, getting to my feet. I make a point of brushing off my jeans so I have a second to collect myself. When I look up again, I see Peter watching me with slightly narrowed eyes. I change the subject, “Am I late?”

He shrugs, expression returning to something more neutral and therefore more comforting. “No, but I almost am; our appointment’s in ten,” he admits. He gestures with an open hand toward the building. “Shall we?”

He doesn’t move and after a second of just staring at him, I realize he’s actually waiting for my answer. I shake my head. “Sure,” I mutter, and finally he moves so I can follow.

Despite the fact that the Paracosm is pretty much the shortest building I know, it looms over me with more power than any other building I’ve seen. I tilt my head up to take in the full effect of its curved surface. But I quickly snap my eyes back down so I make sure to halt before I run into Peter stopped at the entrance.

A guard stands in front of the doors to prevent our entry. His silver suit reflects nearly as much light as the metal walls around him. Once again my heart constricts at the sensation that we shouldn’t be here. People don’t come here. “We have a nine o’clock appointment,” Peter says, his voice far more steady than I imagine mine would be.

“Name?”

“Peter Datton.”

If there would be one person among us to remain unshakable, I would have imagined it to be the guard. But no. At the sound of Peter’s name, the guy’s eyes widen, and he straightens more, if that’s possible. “Son of—“

“Councilman Giovanni Datton, yeah. Do you need ID or my confirmation of appointment or anything?” Peter says, his calm tone unchanged by the guard’s surprise. I get the feeling he’s dealt with this scene far too many times.

The guard clears his throat and smooths his expression. “Just the ticket, and I will confirm your appointment.”

Peter first holds out his hand to me and nods at my watch. I raise my own hand, and he taps the surface of his watch against mine. When he pulls away, I see the golden ticket twirling on my screen. The guard pulls a scanner from his pocket that looks like a small metal tablet. It fits in the palm of his hand. He holds it up to each of our watches in turn. After a moment, he says, “Your appointment cleared for Peter Datton and Abigale

Winder. Is that correct?”

“It is.”

The guard steps aside. “Enjoy your time at the Paracosm.”

The doors slide open to allow us entry. As we step inside, Peter leans over and whispers, “There’ll be two more security checks.”

We head down a long narrow hallway with a door only in the wall at the end. A long red rug runs across the floor, and we let it lead us to the door. As much as the hall confuses me, since we are in what I thought was a fairly round building, there isn’t much to see.

I frown, glancing sideways at him. “Have you been here before?” And if you have, did you bring Jayne? I think without saying it out loud.

But Peter shakes his head. “No, but my mom spends a lot of time here. She likes the beach simulations here to work on her tan or something.” He wrinkles his nose, and I get the gist. “She was pretty excited when I told her I was going, though.”

“Excited? Why?”

“My dad talks it down a lot, and it gets them fighting. So the fact that I’m going must make my mom think I’m siding with her, and therefore she wins.” He rolls his eyes at that.

I keep my eyes firmly ahead, trying not to squirm. “Why does he talk it down?” I ask.

Peter shrugs. “He says we should live in the real world, thinks it’s just a suck on government funds. But considering how much they charge for people to come here, I seriously doubt the government has to spend a dime on this place. It’s not exactly like my father shares the finances with me, but you can assume.”

Can you assume? Datton is one of the eight councilors that make up the oligarchy that runs Caesura. Though Datton isn’t the council member for my district—that would be Ella Patel—his reputation certainly precedes him. His son is a decent mini-me: firm, unchangeable opinions, but a good person, if Peter’s friendship with Jayne is to mean anything. Then again, maybe I read Peter wrong. He was always more Jayne’s friend than mine.

The door slides open at the end of the hall, and we step into an open atrium.

Unlike the hallway, this room makes sense. And it takes my breath away. Sunlight streams through the glass ceiling above our heads and splashes on the porcelain floor beneath our feet. Though there are no windows in the actual walls in this central room, the sunlight from the window in the ceiling is more than enough to illuminate the room.

Only a few people mill around the room and all of them are dressed in the same silver uniform as the guard outside.

At the center of the room sits a sleek white desk, and a young man waits behind it.

He clasps his hands in front of him and smiles brightly at us. I glance sideways at Peter, and he leads us over to the receptionist. The man grins more widely, and his teeth gleam as whitely as the porcelain floor. “Welcome to the Paracosm, Mr. Peter Datton and Miss

Abigale Winder. We are thrilled to send you on an adventure today.”

I raise my eyebrows at him, not sure how to take that level of enthusiasm. I fold my arms against my chest to keep my heart from spilling out because, for some reason, the wider the man grins, the more my heart falls. How is it a thing that my seeing someone’s happiness only reminds me how much I lack it?

“Sounds good,” Peter says when I don’t reply. “We could really use one.”

The man unclasps his hand just to clap them back together. “Excellent! If I could just see both of your identifications so I can confirm that you are who you say you are, then I will get you on your way. No sense wasting any more time in the Paracosm when you could be in the Paracosm.”

I smile weakly, though mostly because I have absolutely no idea what the right way to react is. I hold out the watch on my wrist as Peter does the same. The receptionist plugs a thin cord into the side of each one before turning away to type at the computer before him. It takes several minutes for the receptionist to review our identification that way, though I don’t know what could possibly take so long to check. The arm I hold out begins to ache, and I cross my free arm against my chest to keep from shivering as much as possible. It’s not cold here, but standing still is killing me.

By the time he pulls the cords from our watches, it’s hard to hide the shaking in

my arm as I pull it back. I interlock it with my other arm against my chest. Again, the receptionist offers us a grin wide enough to make my face hurt. “Thank you so much for waiting. Your Guide is on her way now, and she will lead you to your fabulous adventure. Thank you for choosing the Paracosm!”

I turn away to hide my mouth and, before I over-think it, mutter, “Yeah, because there were so many other options.”

Peter snorts and attempts to cover it with a cough. But, despite the fact that I’m the one who made the joke, Peter’s light-heartedness does nothing to lift my own heart.

As we step away, the tiniest smile that I did wear fades, which of course he notices.

“This’ll be fun,” he says in a low voice, nudging my arm. The gesture makes me recoil a few inches.

I nod, looking just over his shoulder so he thinks I meet his eyes. I doubt every word out of his mouth, but I’m desperate enough to hold out for hope just a little longer.

As I stare past him, I see a young woman walking toward us. Her brown hair is cropped short enough almost to rival mine. She grins as wide as the cheerful receptionist, even before she comes to a stop in front of us. “Welcome to the Paracosm! My name is

Monique, and I will be your Guide today,” she says, somehow managing to remain grinning with all her teeth as she speaks. She offers us each her hand in turn. I feel awkward as I shake it, not entirely sure where all my fingers go, and I pull away as quickly as possible. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Peter and Abigale. If you would just follow me, I will take you to Deployment.”

Monique leads us down a stairwell so that we actually go below ground. I lose

count of how many flights of stairs we walk down—ten maybe?—before she taps the screen of her watch against a sensor to let us into yet another hallway. The Paracosm seems to be built to be a maze. Maybe another security measure. Unlike the wide-open atrium or beautifully carpeted hallway upstairs, this hallway’s more sterile. White walls and floor make it feel more lab than resort, and I don’t understand why. Why would there be any difference between here and upstairs? We stop in front of another door and rather than her wristwatch, it requires Monique’s fingerprint to allow us inside. As the door slides away, she steps aside and gestures for us to enter in front of her so I follow Peter through the doorway.

I don’t know what I expected. I always assumed the Paracosm to be some sort of virtual reality, so maybe I expected an empty room with weird sensors in the walls. Or a room full of a bunch of computers. But this isn’t that.

If the hall was white, this room is a deep navy blue. The navy walls slope up to a ceiling that is smaller than the floor beneath it, though just slightly. But on a platform in the center of the room sits what captures my attention. What looks a little like two tanning beds sit empty before us. The padding of the beds is the same deep blue of the walls and some kind of clear shielding surrounds each one.

I knew little for certain about the Paracosm going in, but this only confuses me further.

Monique enters behind us. “Is this your first time in the Paracosm?”

“It is,” Peter tells her.

Monique steps around us, her perfect smile now starting to make my cheeks hurt.

“Well, there’s certainly no need to look so nervous.”

I glance at Peter but his face looks serene. His bright eyes search to take everything in, but he certainly doesn’t look nervous. Guess it’s me then.

“The Paracosm is very easy to enjoy.” Monique takes a step up on to the pedestal and stands between the two beds, placing a hand on each one. “After all, all you really need to do is lay there.” She giggles at what I guess is a joke for her.

She continues, “The Paracosm allows you to go on any sort of adventure you can dream of because the adventure literally happens in your heads. Your dreams are merged together into a reality much like this one, with the same level of active decision-making you may make in life. Unlike in reality, truly anything is possible. Dragons and flying without wings and eating anything you want without gaining a pound are all possible with the Paracosm.”

“It’s a dream?” I say, not sure I’m speaking until after the words have left my mouth.

Monique nods. “Of course.”

Peter glances at me. “What’d you expect?”

My cheeks burn. “I don’t know,” I mutter. “Virtual reality?”

“Virtual reality has limits,” Monique explains. “You can only go as far as the field allows, and the laws of physics would rule you as much as they do in reality. Dreams allow for a far wider variety of experiences and a much more interesting adventure. The environment will be maintained for as long as you choose to remain in the adventure.

You will exit the adventure when you enter your exit code on the wristbands I will give

you momentarily.

“That being said,” Monique continues, “this dream reality, though limitless, will act very much like the reality you know. Your actions can have real consequences; there is the possibility that dying in a dream could cause your life to end in reality. But what’s fun without a little risk?”

My heart races inside my throat, and I can barely get a full breath around it. My brain scrambles to make sense of Monique’s words. I thought the Paracosm was supposed to be a resort or a vacation. But I suppose some people are risk-takers who want to spend their vacation rock climbing. I just never considered that doing this could kill me.

“But I wouldn’t worry about it,” Monique adds cheerfully. “As long as you dream something relatively safe, you’ll be fine. It’s just something I’m required to advise.”

Peter turns to face me, and I quiet the painful breaths so he won’t read the panic on my face. “Don’t worry; we don’t have to do anything risky. For all I care, we can hang out on some eventless beach, as long as you want it.”

I shrug and say nothing. I don’t trust myself to speak since I can barely breathe.

Monique gestures to tiny screens standing in front of the capsule-beds. “I just need you to each press a thumb to these screens to register your profiles. The capsules will be registered to you and will only be able to be used by you once aligned with your

DNA. It will also serve as your acknowledgment of receiving the warnings of possible side effects of the Paracosm.”

Peter steps up to the screen on one side, and I mirror him. At least then I don’t

have to think how a normal person moves; I can just imitate. Just below a block of text that I guess warns me of all the rights I’m waiving in legalese I don’t understand, I press my thumb to the screen and the blue screen glows bright white. I wince and turn away.

Monique slides my watch off my wrist and snaps something in its place, and I look back to see the wristband she was talking about secured around my left wrist. She steps up and secures an identical one around Peter’s wrist. “Entering your exit code on this wristband is necessary to get out of the dream, so set it to something you’ll remember. But you won’t be able to get out right away because the wristbands require a cool-down time before they can be used again. The cool-down usually takes about four hours, but you will want to check your wristbands for the time. It’s best for your own safety to exit then, because not everyone responds well to being under for so long. Either way, you will be ejected after six hours in order to avoid the potential for permanent damage. It’s very uncommon, but we want to make this experience as safe as possible.”

The more Monique speaks, the harder it is for me to get a full breath. Was Peter’s goal to distract me by terrifying me out of my mind? “How do we create the…world?” I ask, twisting the wristband so I have a reason not to meet anyone’s eyes.

“It will develop naturally from your imaginations,” Monique explains. “It is more of a subconscious act. Naturally, one of you will tend to gain more control and become the leader of the adventure, but both of you will influence the path you take.”

I nod as I type in the code that will be my only chance of getting out of the so- called “adventure.”

“Any tips?” Peter asks.

Monique just smiles. “It all depends on the sort of adventure. There’s no real advice I can give you other than to have fun!”

Have fun. My stomach squirms uncomfortably. Didn’t she say not five minutes ago that we could get killed doing this? If Peter has any grip over his imagination, since I may have lost my control over mine, I hope he puts us on that beach his mother likes so much. I wonder how anyone does this, much less thinks it’s worth it to pay endless amounts of money to do it. I guess other people are just as desperate to get away as I am right now.

“Once you’re ready,” Monique says, “I’ll get you set up in the capsules, and we’ll get you set on your adventure.”

I climb into the capsule before Peter has his exit code set, before I over-think what

I’m doing. The padding on the bed feels unlike anything I expected, and honestly unlike anything I’ve felt before. Years of costumes mean I’ve felt all sorts of fabrics against my skin, from tulle to silk, but this padding I barely feel at all. I push myself up on the bed.

Monique steps up to my side and presses a really thin cord to the side of my head with an adhesive that sticks it to my temple. She pushes me down so I lay down flat and closes the capsule.

“Is this fabric meant for sensory deprivation?” Peter asks beside me, sounding far too cheerful about the concept.

I turn my head to see him warped ever so slightly by the shielding surrounding me. Though I can’t see Monique’s face, I can imagine her smile. “To some extent, yes.”

She sets up Peter in the capsule in the same way she set me up. I turn to stare

straight up at the ceiling and focus on taking deep breaths. For all I know, I could die today. Though if I do, at least I might see Jayne again.

“All right, Peter and Abigale, are the two of you ready to deploy?” Monique calls to us.

No. “Sure.”

“Ready to go,” Peter replies, voice steady with confidence I cannot mirror.

“Deployment in three…two…”

I close my eyes tight.

“…One.”

Forest

Closing my eyes turns out to have not been a good choice because once they close, they refuse to open. I feel nothing around me for some time, but with my eyes stuck closed, I struggle to understand how much time passes. My heart races faster and faster until I think my skin pulses along with it. I begin to wonder what “sensory deprivation” means, since it’s the only thing I know about this capsule, but then I remember that Peter and I are supposed to imagine where we want to go.

And then a breeze trails across the surface of my skin. It’s the first thing I’m aware of after feeling so much nothing. Though it’s warm as summer, I shiver. My feet press against uneven ground and strands of grass tickle my ankles. I open my eyes slowly, peeking out through a slit before fully opening them. Slanting light pierces the surface of my eyes, but if I lean forward or back, the shadows above me protect them.

And when I do open my eyes, what I see takes my breath away.

Trees.

I live in a city of tall buildings that reach above the sky. I’m used to being surrounded by a world much taller than me. But it’s just buildings. We have weak decorative trees that look more like twigs. But these trees that surround me may have lived for centuries. Their branches are covered in rich green leaves and the leaves on one tree look different than the leaves on another, which I didn’t even know was possible.

Some look like teardrops in yellow-green. Some look more like stars in a deeper green.

They must weigh more than the others because they hang down just a little from their branches.

I step hesitantly forward to reach out to touch the bark of one of the trees’ trunks.

My fingers trace the uneven surface where cracks create canyons that break away at my touch. It smells rich in a way I don’t know how to describe. A dozen scents—sweet and crisp and smoky—clash together to make an orchestra, and it feels like they actually fill my lungs. I want to wrap up in them. I lean my head back to see how far the tree stretches toward the sky, but the leaf-covered branches block my view and I can’t see the top. I look around and see the trees stretching as far as I can see in every direction. I find myself wishing I’d chosen to wear something other than flats today. This forest needs sturdier shoes. “What is this place?” I whisper.

A dream. Part of Peter’s and my imagination. But how can this place not be real?

Wait…Peter?

I spin around, but all I see surrounding me are the trees. No people and certainly no Peter. “Peter!” I call.

My voice echoes emptily in the sky, but beyond that, I hear nothing in return. I bite my lip, spinning in a circle to look in every direction. I contemplate entering my exit code right now before I remember that won’t work until the cool-down time runs out.

I take a deep breath and release it slowly. No need to panic just yet, I assure myself. For all I know, Peter’s just down the hill, or maybe he’s still in-between here and

Deployment. Another breeze passes over me, unsettling the leaves. It sounds like rain just as it starts falling from heavy clouds.

I pick a random direction and start moving. I don’t know if it’s better to move or stand still until Peter shows up, but I need to see more of the trees. I never imagined I would ever see a forest. Now that I’m in the middle of one, I can’t miss the opportunity to see more. I tread carefully over the uneven ground, not used to how it feels underneath my feet. I watch my feet more than what lies ahead so I don’t trip over roots and weeds.

But when I do glance up, I only see more trees. Monique said this place had the potential to be limitless. Now I think it is.

There’s no way I’m going to find Peter here.

“You look lost!”

At the voice, I freeze with one foot in the air. I jerk my head upward when I remember that I can move. I see the shadow of a figure in the tree, though since the figure sits in front of the sun, the person’s features are indistinct.

“Hello?” I call, my voice cracking, though I’m shocked it comes at all.

“You’re definitely lost!” she shouts down at me.

“Who are you?” I ask.

“My woods, my rules,” she snaps. And then she jumps from the tree branch more than twenty feet off the ground. I gasp involuntarily, but just as I do, the girl lands solidly on the ground in front of me. She straightens up, placing a hand on each hip. She’s short but still just taller than me. She wears her brown hair straight and long down past her shoulders, but she doesn’t hide behind it. Her dark eyes—so dark I can’t tell the color—

glow bright with life. Her gray V-neck, jean shorts, and practical boots would ordinarily make her look generic, but they instead manage to only draw more attention to her excited eyes. She’s stick thin, rather than curvy, and I get the feeling she might be younger than me. But right now, she has ten times my confidence as she says, “So I should be asking who you are.”

“I—your woods?” I stare at this stranger, trying to place her in my memories.

Monique said the place we adventured through was invented by the dreams of Peter and me. But since I don’t recognize her, I guess that means Peter knows her.

“Yeah, my woods,” she says, rolling her eyes. “Now who are you?”

“Um…Gale,” I say awkwardly, actually forgetting my name for a moment so when I say it, I barely hear myself. I clear my throat and try again. “My name’s Gale.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Gale? Like…like a wind.” She grins widely before reaching out and grabbing my shoulders. My eyes widen, and I try to take a step back, but she holds me too tightly. She almost shakes me in what I guess is excitement. “Can I call you Windy?”

“Uh…no?”

She sighs, her arms falling from my shoulders. I take the chance to put just a little more distance between us. “You’re no fun. Fine, Gale it is. My name’s Izzy.”

If only knowing her name cleared up my confusion. “And these are your woods?”

Izzy’s eyes widen, and she nods slowly. “Yeah, I covered that already.”

I shake my head. “Yeah, I know that. I meant…why are they your woods?”

“Because they belong to me?” she says slowly. “Do you not get how ownership works?”

My shoulders fall. “Okay,” I whisper, tired of trying. “Fine, they’re your woods.”

“And why are you in my woods?”

“I—I don’t know.”

Izzy shrugs. “‘Kay.”

She turns away, bracing her hands on tree branches and lifting herself off the ground again. “Wait!”

Izzy turns her head, one foot still not braced on a tree branch. “What do you want now?”

I open and close my mouth a couple times before any sound comes out. “I actually am lost,” I admit lamely.

Izzy laughs as she jumps from the tree once more, but this time she does it backward and lands just as solidly as the first time. “Of course you’re lost,” she says.

“You didn’t even know these were my woods!”

“I’m looking for my friend,” I explain, ignoring the way my face heats up.

Izzy’s eyes widen. “There are two of you in my forest?”

“If you help me find him, we’ll get out of your forest, okay?” I say. It takes tightening all the muscles in my face to stop from rolling my eyes.

That makes Izzy smile. “Okay,” she agrees. Without hesitation, she spins on her heel, long hair twirling around her, and starts down the hill.

Her sudden movement startles me into stillness for a moment, and after a beat, I scramble to follow her. “Wait! Do you even know where we’re going? He could be anywhere!”

Izzy shrugs. “Got to start somewhere,” she calls back over her shoulder.

I fall silent behind her. If this forest really does belong to Izzy, she must know the best way. Unlike me, she actually looks like she belongs out here. She wears appropriate boots. Her jean shorts certainly look more comfortable than my jeans in the heat. I end up watching where she places her feet so I know where’s best for me to climb. Despite wearing heavy boots, she almost glides across the uneven ground, light as a feather. I wonder from where Peter knows her.

“So where do these woods end?” I ask.

Izzy halts immediately and spins around to look at me. She narrows her eyes.

“The woods don’t end,” she says in a low voice. “How are you in my woods if you don’t know that they don’t end?”

My words catch in my throat as I struggle to put them in a coherent sentence. But then, out of nowhere, Izzy laughs again. “I’m just joking. But you should have seen your face!”

“So they do end,” I say, my voice squeaking.

“Nope,” Izzy says nonchalantly. “I’m just not surprised you don’t know that. And then I thought it might be fun to freak you out a little.”

I clear my throat and try to speak in a more normal tone of voice. “Why doesn’t it surprise you?”

“Because no one knows that,” she says, throwing the line out before turning away and starting to hike off. Like it should be obvious. Like everything out of her mouth is obvious and I’m a fool for not understanding.

I jog back up to her side so I don’t lose her in this forest. Despite all the different kinds of trees surrounding me, every direction looks the same. “What do you mean ‘no one’? Are there other people here?” I ask.

“Sometimes,” she says in singsong.

I open my mouth to protest, when something explodes in the distance. I jump at the sound. My heart hesitates in its beating. It feels like I momentarily shatter, and I hesitate to glue the pieces of myself back together. But Izzy just squeals. “Finally!

Something fun to do!” she exclaims. And then she sprints off down the hill in pursuit of the explosion, leaving me in the dust behind her.

“Fun?” I yell after her.

After only another moment, I sprint after her. Years of ballet and jazz, and any other kind of dance I could get in, has taught me how to move quickly in…anything.

Frankly, if I can stand on my toes in pointe shoes during a performance, I doubt any sort of shoes could be any real problem. Slightly loose slip-on flats are nothing. I curl my toes inside my shoes and just keep going.

I watch my feet as I run, rather than looking in front of me. My feet are unsure how to land on the uneven dirt. Caesura’s even pavement is the only thing I have to compare it. So I end up feeling like I’m constantly bouncing over obstacles.

I try to sort of sense the trees with intuition rather than looking up to see them, and that strategy is not something with a one-hundred percent success rate. My shoulders bounce off the bark. It gets rougher the more I hit, but if I look up instead of down, I know it’ll be only seconds until I misstep.

Rocks I step on roll beneath my feet, and I use their momentum to push me forward, rather than allowing them to trip me. Even so, I feel more like I’m falling than running. And Izzy still puts distance between us.

And then we burst from the tree line.

I stumble, my arms wheeling back to correct my balance as much as I can, and fail to do enough to keep upright. I crash to the ground face first. Shrubbery tears at my arms and face. I barely feel any of it.

Izzy said the woods were endless. But here they are. Ended.

Izzy whoops in front of me. “Awesome!” she yells. I push myself up on my elbows and stare at what lies ahead of me.

And come face to face with the ocean for the first time.

The blue expanse starts as bright white foam, transitioning into teal, and deepening to indigo by the time it reaches the horizon. The sun reflects off the water so it looks like a second sun lives beneath the sea. Never in my life have I seen something so wide and open. And above the vast ocean is the widest sky I’ve ever seen. I grew up in a city of skyscrapers. Even if you get the chance to go stargazing on the roof of one of the buildings, there are always taller buildings around you. They’ve broken up every glimpse of sky I’ve seen. But above me now is only blue sky. No trees, no buildings, just sky. But

once I get past the wonder of all of it, I remember that even in this dream, this ocean shouldn’t be here. I’ve never seen an ocean, and I doubt Peter has, if he’s lived in

Caesura all his life like I have. Could we even imagine an ocean if we’d never seen one?

“How is this possible?” I ask, pushing myself back to my feet.

“Keep up, slowpoke!” Izzy shouts.

She jumps up and down on the sand—sand—of the beach, as if she can’t just sit still. It shocks me that she waits at all. I dash after her. “I thought you said all of this world was woods?” I call.

“I did,” she agrees, turning around to run again. “And now it’s not.”

I know dreams don’t make sense, and start in the middle of things, and ramble in random directions, but this is the weirdest dream I’ve ever had.

I thought running down the hill over rocks and roots in inappropriate shoes was hard. It’s nothing compared to sand. The sand pulls me back so that I feel more like I’m standing in place. I kick up the sand more than I push off it. And just when I think that nothing more bizarre could possibly appear, Izzy screams, “Pirate ship!”

Blackbeard

When we were children, Jayne would read anything. And though I did not read nearly as much as she did, she told me all kinds of stories. She liked anything terrifying or adventurous, and while she tended more toward horror, pirates still stood toward the top of her list. It was the sort of subject I hadn’t thought about in years. But now that a pirate ship sits on a beach in a world built by my imagination, I wonder if maybe I had. I wonder if maybe I knew even less about my mind than I thought.

The water beneath the ship ripples insistently as the ship bobs up and down on the ocean’s surface. Bright white sails billow out despite the honestly small breeze, looking like clouds with how they stand out against a sky nearly as blue as the water the pirate ship floats in. Pirate ship. How could there be a pirate ship? It looks like something straight from a storybook, rather than the historical horror they supposedly were.

Murderers and thieves rather than adventurers, run down rather than regal, violent rather than exciting.

A cannon emerges from the side of the ship, reminding me that there is always the possibility of both.

“The explosion,” I whisper, feeling distant from my body, distant from the whole situation as I say so. I don’t believe this is real. And then a cannonball bursts from the cannon in an explosion that shakes the sand.

I dive down to the ground, hitting it face-first for the second time that day. Sand fills my mouth and somehow finds a way into my lungs. I choke for a second before lifting my head ever so slightly. Izzy’s still on her feet, though I get to enjoy her staring down at me with raised eyebrows. “Really?” she asks.

The smoking cannon reassures me that I didn’t just imagine the explosion, but I realize only now that it was pointed a different direction. I push myself back up, brushing sand off my jeans as I go. “Well, don’t look at me like that,” I mutter. “There’s a cannon trying to kill us. Just because they missed—”

“They didn’t miss,” Izzy interrupts, shaking her head. “It’s not aimed at us. It’s aimed at him.”

She jerks her head in the direction we were headed before I dove to the ground.

My eyes follow her gesture to land on a massive bolder sitting where the sand of the beach meets the grass at the edge of the forest. And hiding behind it is Peter.

“Peter!” I scream without thinking.

He looks up as I slap my hand over my mouth. Even from this distance, I see him narrow his eyes. “Gale!” he shouts. “Get down!”

My knees bend, ready to collapse to the ground again at Peter’s command, when

Izzy snatches my hand. “Stop hiding; let’s have some fun!”

She yanks me along behind her just as the cannon fires again. I choke in horror, almost stumbling and falling again, but I have no actual sense of where the cannonball goes this time. I’m far too aware of Izzy dragging me along and Peter just ahead of me and me staying upright long enough to bridge the distance between them. With every

step, I sink further into the sand. It drags us back as if it serves the cannon and the pirates.

Though, since apparently both the ocean and the pirate ship are new to this place, I would not be surprised if the sand and the water actually belonged to the pirates. In a world made out of dreams, nothing would surprise me.

Izzy releases my hand just as we dive behind the boulder. I aim poorly and drop basically on top of Peter. He catches me awkwardly, grabbing my shoulder just before I smash my head into the rock. I roll off of him and flop to the ground beside him, hitting my spine against a particularly sharp ridge in the rock as I do.

“Hi!” Izzy says, offering her hand to Peter. Somehow, she remains unscathed despite diving to the ground. “I’m Izzy. You must be Peter.”

He raises his eyebrows at her and stares at Izzy’s hand a second without moving.

Only when she waves her hand in front of his face does he take it. “Uh…nice to meet you,” he says slowly, glancing sideways at me. I just shrug.

“What’s up with the pirates?” Izzy asks cheerfully.

Peter looks at me again, his jaw dropping slightly. I resist the urge to scoff. Like I have the answers? She bewilders me all the same. Peter clears his throat, turning back to

Izzy. “Shouldn’t…shouldn’t I be asking you that question?”

Izzy laughs. “Are you kidding? I can’t do this. Before you got here, all there was were trees. Now there’s an ocean and pirates and excitement. You’re the ones who changed this place!”

Peter turns his head slowly to me, but I keep my eyes steadily forward. I still don’t have the first clue what to say to him. I know what Izzy said about there only being

trees here before. I know I witnessed the same at first. But I don’t know how to explain any of what changed since then.

I’m saved from giving a response. Another cannonball explodes, crashing into the sand and bouncing off into the distance within sight of where we hide, and I hear the chortle of laughter. Someone on the ship behind us screams, “Come on out and play!”

I lean my head back against the rock and groan. “What are we supposed to do?” I glance down at my wrist and see the wristband flashing in red that we are still stuck here for four hours. “It’s not like we can get out of here.”

Peter shakes his head. “We need a plan.”

“Well, if you’ve got any ideas, feel free to share them,” I snap.

Another pirate cries out, interrupting us, “Do you know what we do to cowards?”

“Make them walk the plank!” one replies enthusiastically.

“No!” the first pirate snaps. I hear a scream of pain from I-can-only-guess-what that makes me wince. I pull my knees in closer to my chest. “We cut off their hands!”

Even Izzy pales beside me. I don’t move an inch, unable to respond with anything more than paralysis. “I don’t think I like pirates anymore,” Izzy whispers.

Peter reaches out and grabs my hand. It makes my heart jump enough to wake me up. I pull my hand away from him and into my chest. “What do we do?” I scream- whisper. “If we come out, they’ll shoot us. If we don’t, they’ll just come here and apparently cut off our hands.”

The sound of the words coming out of my own mouth makes me squirm. That would be one bizarre way to end my dance career. Peter grits his teeth, releasing a slow hiss. After a second, he says, “We might just have to run for it.”

Beside me, Izzy suddenly pushes herself up to her knees. Though she stays behind cover, the top of her head is almost level with the top of the rock. “You’re the cowards!” she calls. “If you’re so brave, come and get us!”

I grab Izzy’s arm and yank her down before she can say anything else. “Are you kidding?” I cry.

“Nah-uh,” she retorts like a six-year-old, pulling her arm from my grip.

“Cannonball puts a hole through you and you’re dead just like that. But if the pirates chase us down with swords, we might actually be able to go with Peter’s whole ‘running’ plan without the dying part. Easy.”

“Easy?” I say, my eyes widening.

“For all we know, they have guns, which, by the way, will make us just as dead as a cannonball!” Peter shouts.

Izzy shrugs, a smile brightening her face. Only seconds ago, she looked pale enough to blend into the sand. Now, red flushes her cheeks. “Well, we don’t have other options now,” she says.

I glance back at Peter and his expression of panic mirrors mine. Izzy crawls over to peek around the side of the boulder just as I start to hear clanging and heavy footfalls on the sand. “They took the bait,” she announces, glancing back at us. “We might want to start running.”

I scramble to my feet as Izzy bolts off. Peter gets upright just as the sand slides beneath my feet, and I fall back to my knees. “Gale!” Peter shouts, slowing down.

“Go!” I scream, waving him off. I push off with my arms to get up once more.

Thankfully, Peter obeys and is several yards ahead of me by the time I start running. Izzy, who apparently launched herself in a different direction, is nowhere to be found. Not that it matters. After a few seconds, I lose track of Peter in the trees and expect that he’s branched away from me as well.

The pirates roar behind us, but I ignore them best as I can. I have practice with that. Not with pirates, screaming in readiness to end my life. But I know what it’s like to dance on stage under searing bright lights with muttering in the audience. People think they’re quiet but when you’re on stage, their whispers are the loudest thing in the world.

So I quiet their voices inside my head, pretending I can’t hear them until I truly believe I can’t.

Pirates screaming behind you that they are going to kill you make it harder to numb the sound. But I try. I force myself to pretend the words are indistinct. I soften the edges of consonants until their force becomes as gentle as vowels and ease out the vowels until the noise means nothing. And I sprint as hard as I can through the previously endless woods.

Endurance is something I’ve got in almost endless supply, even if running tears my muscles in unusual ways compared to the way they burn when I dance. The lack of arch support in my shoes does not help matters. But it’s nothing compared to the way my heart races until it aches.

I look down at my feet more than straight ahead. Falling now means death. But dodging the trees that unexpectedly pop up in my face because I look down rather than out slows me down too much. I steer around them at the last possible moment, scrambling to slow down in time to avoid collision.

Even with numbing out the voices, I hear the footfalls of the pirates behind me.

Whatever they carry hits against them with every step and they clang like they carry pots and pans. I should be lighter than them, faster than them, but the sounds don’t fade out the further I run. They must be keeping pace. If I look back to confirm what I think, they will almost definitely make up the distance separating us. I don’t even have the time to kick off my shoes, though it would almost definitely add speed. The one blessing granted me is that I have yet to hear a gunshot. They may only have swords.

But just as I accept that tiny blessing, someone tackles me from behind and we crash to the ground. Air explodes from my lungs on impact, but when whoever attacks me lands on me, my lungs flatten and I forget what it means to even have air. I can’t even choke. I just wince in pain, though I can’t feel much of that either.

After a few seconds, my mind catches up. I start choking on what air I manage to breathe, maybe as much as would fill a straw. Whoever is on top of me—I can only assume a pirate—makes no move to get up. And with the weight on top of me, my lungs fail to regain their original shape. The edges of my vision darken. My thoughts slow down. I am all but certain I’m going to pass out when finally the weight begins to recede.

I choke until I feel like I’m going to gag.

A thick hand roughly grabs my arm and yanks it up, though the rest of my body does not follow. My legs shake like jelly and my bloodstream begs for a few more seconds of nothing but pure oxygen. Even when the sharp blade presses against the back of my neck, ice against my hot skin. “Get up,” he snaps.

“Can’t,” I gasp. Tears burn in my eyes. My chest aches. But all I can think about is the fear that I’m about to lose my hand.

“Now,” he growls.

He presses the flat of the blade against my skin, and I feel its cold trace all the way down my spine and reaching out like fingers through every limb of my body. I force the one shaking hand I still have control over to push me up enough that there’s room to draw my knees beneath me. I stay in that ball for a second, trying to steady my breathing.

When that fails, I straighten up and slowly get to my feet, careful not to press my neck any more against the blade. However, even standing, I can’t turn around to face my attackers, not with the knife there. I stare at the thick trunk of the tree before me, more gray than brown for some reason, rather than being able to turn around and see how many pirates chased me here. Disadvantage is an understatement.

“Who are ye?” the same man asks in a low voice.

I hesitate for a second, caught off guard by the stereotypical pirate accent. But then, I gasp, “Gale; Abigale Winder.”

The grip on the arm pulled behind my back tightens until my hand goes numb.

“No,” he snarls, leaning in closer to my ear. I feel his beard scratch the side of my neck, and I try to recoil despite the knife. “Who are ye to be at the edge of our sea?”

I swallow, breathing far too shallow for someone who was just sprinting. My brain is absolutely not getting the little bit of oxygen I’m breathing right now, and I struggle to make sense of his words. But all I can think is that Izzy owns the forest and the pirates own the ocean; I cannot exist without trespassing. “I didn’t mean to be here,” I say in a smaller voice than I’d like. “I just sort of ended up here.”

“What kind of answer is that?” a female voice cries suddenly, and I jump at the sound. At least now I know there are at least two pirates behind me.

“I’m just lost, okay?” I insist.

“Aw…poor little lost boy,” the female voice bites sarcastically. “That doesn’t give ye permission to be in our sea!”

My shoulders fall, tension easing from them for the moment at the all too familiar conversation, certainly too normal a conversation to have at knifepoint with pirates. I’m far too used to the jokes about having my pixie haircut, though relatively recent. I’d had long hair before I had a principal role in a dance performance and my character needed to have short hair. In the last couple months, I’d heard the “you’re a boy” joke a few times a week. To hear it from a pirate at this point doesn’t even faze me. “I’m a girl,” I mutter.

Not that it needs said at the moment, but it gives me the chance I need to take a breath.

“It doesn’t matter what ye are if ye are on our land,” the pirate holding the knife growls.

“This isn’t your land!” I protest without thinking. “It belongs to Izzy!”

The words escape my mouth before I really have the chance to think about the implications. The pirate behind me spins me around and slams me back against the tree

trunk I previously stared at. The force sends the leaves shivering, and I think the tree might just collapse on top of us. I squeeze my eyes shut until it quiets. When I open them again, I realize that this is the first chance I’ve had to see my attackers.

I don’t know what I expected.

While I recognize three pirates stand there, two male and one female, my eyes focus on my attacker. The pirate’s dark eyes are ringed with lines, though I’m unsure if they’re from lack of sleep or from age. An unkempt black beard hangs from his face almost down to his chest. Three gold earrings pierce one ear but none pierce the other.

His breath on my face hangs there, tasting like stale fish against my tongue.

But then…wait…this man…he can’t be a pirate. I recognize him. After a second,

I see past the lines and earrings and beard. The pirate that holds me captive is the one thing in this world that I recognize as being part of my own. I guess it confirms that Peter and I really created this world, but I wonder if this particular story is from my head or

Peter’s.

Because this pirate is Councilman Giovanni Datton. Peter’s father.

I don’t know which shocks me more: the fact that Councilman Datton is a pirate or the fact that he’s here in our dream world at all. “Who are you?” I breathe, all other concerns evaporating in the midst of my confusion.

He ignores my question, grabbing the collar of my shirt and placing the blade against my neck once more. “Who did ye say claimed this land?”

“Izzy…?” I reply slowly. My heart accelerates, as if alerting me I made a mistake.

“And ye are not…this ‘Izzy’?” he says, wrinkling his nose at her name.

I open and close my mouth, not sure how to reply for a second. Did I not just tell him my name? “I’m Gale,” I say. “There’s another girl here named Izzy, but I’m not her.”

“So who is Izzy?”

“It’s not like I can point her out!” I exclaim, my voice cracking. “She’s not here.

You chased us, and we split up.”

“I think she’s lyin’ cap’n,” the other male pirate says. “I think she’s this ‘Izzy’, and she makin’ up a silly little story.”

My eyes widen. Captain? The pirate holding me against a tree—Councilman

Datton—is the pirate captain. “I’m not lying!” I insist. “When I ran off, there was a girl with me. A brunette, ridiculously agile…” I try to think of another way to describe her, but all I come up with is “overly enthusiastic.” That’s not about to help my case “That’s

Izzy, okay?”

“And she lets ye on her land?” Captain Datton asks.

I frown, the skin beneath my eyes tightening. “I don’t know that I’d go that far.”

Captain Datton narrows his eyes at me and says nothing for a while. The knife still presses against my skin, and I hold back from taking too deep a breath. My brain struggles to reach much further beyond the immediate danger, even though meeting

Captain Datton’s eyes is not a possibility, between him holding me captive and the extreme familiarity of his face. I’m not really sure which it is that makes my heart uncomfortably skip beats. I look just above his curly black hair and see the blue sky peaking through the ceiling of leaves interlocking above our heads.

A tree branch moves ever so slightly, independent from any of the others. No breeze glides by to shake the others, and I don’t feel wind graze my skin either.

And that’s when I see her. Izzy, the amazing climbing monkey. Somehow, she managed to loop back around to me while avoiding the notice of pirates. She stops when she feels my eyes on her and waves.

I snap my eyes back to Captain Datton’s face so he won’t follow my gaze right up to her. My heart races, and I pray he can’t hear it. The third pirate speaks up again, “I think we ought to cut off ’er ’and, cap’n.” I turn my eyes to him and see the way his eyes sparkle. I press my back up closer against the tree until I feel every groove of the trunk through my shirt.

“Don’t get overeager,” Captain Datton barks back at him, glancing over his shoulder. After a second, his eyes slowly shift back to my face, narrowed like he can see through my skin and into a deep part of me even I don’t know. “This…Gale may be able to lead us to the one who calls this land hers.”

“I’m right here!” Izzy calls in singsong, apparently bored with her waiting game.

The two pirates here with their captain snap around in an instant, but Captain

Datton moves more slowly. He keeps his blade firmly against my throat as only his head turns to look at Izzy high up in the tree.

Izzy grins and even from down here I can see her teeth reflecting light so that they shine bright white. “Welcome to my forest!” she announces.

“Ye are Izzy?” Pirate Datton calls. “But ye are a child!”

Izzy cocks her hip to one side, bracing one hand against the tree trunk. Other than that, only her boots on the tree branch keep her from falling to her death. “You jealous?” she sneers.

My eyes widen in shock. Here I am, standing at knifepoint, and all Izzy does is mock my captor? It catches me off guard enough that I forget where I stand for a moment, instead feeling distant rather than an actual participant in this.

The female pirate takes a step forward toward Izzy, stomping her foot as she sets it down. “How dare ye mock the Captain!” she yells.

Izzy shrugs one shoulder. “’Cuz it’s fun.”

That crosses a line for the Captain. He pulls me forward by the collar of my shirt.

I stumble, and when I try to correct my balance, he grabs my arm and yanks it behind my back again. I slam into his chest, and he pushes the knife against my throat, the tip biting my skin. My breath catches, and I hold it to stop myself from moving. “Ye might want to rethink yer plan before I slice this one’s neck!” he roars.

A lump forms in my throat, and I feel the urge to swallow, but I can’t. The smallest movement will sink the blade into my skin. And Izzy, up high in her tree, just shrugs. “So? I just met her today.”

A chill fills my chest and stomach. All I can think is, What? No other coherent thought crosses my mind.

For once, Captain Datton and I are on the same page. He hesitates before threatening, “She will die!”

“‘Kay, I got that,” Izzy says slowly, nodding. “Young, yeah. Dumb…not so much.”

My thoughts soften in my horror, and it feels like cotton lines my skull. My head feels muffled and with it, I feel less. Less here. No blade skims my neck; no hand holds my arm back. I feel breath on my ear, but little else, and after a second, I realize it’s on the wrong side of my head to be the breath of the pirate.

But before I make sense of it, Izzy speaks again and it wakes me up. “Even so, I’d probably say you shouldn’t kill her.”

“And why would that be?” Captain Datton asks.

“Because she and her friend are the ones who merged my woods with your sea.”

My jaw drops in shock, and I struggle to close it again. Not like Izzy’s words are news to me, but her way of putting it makes my stomach twist. It gives me too much power. Captain Datton leans on my shoulder. “Ye brought my sea here?” he says in a low voice.

My head spins. What’s the right answer? What does the pirate created by Peter’s and my imagination want to hear? Am I powerful? Am I weak?

“I don’t know how,” I insist, sounding more like a coward than I intend, and I wince.

“But ye did!” he cries. “Quite a powerful hostage we have here!”

I pale, feeling the color drain from my face down my legs as the Captain’s pirate companions laugh along with him.

“Hostage?” Izzy laughs. “How do you think that’s going to help you? Don’t you understand? You can have her. I was perfectly happy when this place was just a forest.”

I think she lies. I remember the way she cried out in excitement at the sight of the ocean, and the way she grabbed my hand when the ship started firing so that I would run and not automatically hide. From what I could tell, the sea was a welcome excitement.

Maybe she really doesn’t care. Or maybe she has a plan. I can’t tell; I don’t know. She grins too brightly, mocks the pirate, says she doesn’t care if I die. But all I can do is stand there until my heart’s racing causes it to explode from exertion.

Then suddenly, I hear the crack of…I don’t know what, immediately behind my head, and feel something brush against the back of my neck. The grip on my arm slackens and the knife falls from Captain Datton’s hand. I spin around, not sure what I’m going to do, to see Peter standing there holding a thick tree branch. Captain Datton lies on the ground, I’m pretty sure unconscious. “You just knocked out the pirate version of your dad,” I whisper. It’s the only comprehensible thought I can come up with.

“Let’s talk about the psychological implications later,” Peter replies quickly, raising the branch again.

I twirl around and see the other two pirates rushing toward us. The male pirate’s closer, only a few feet away. I drop down, out of the way of Peter. He swings his branch and hits the guy straight across the face with such force that his branch splinters. I squeeze my eyes shut as the pieces rain down over my head. But it does its job against the pirate. His head jerks to one side so fast that I can even hear his neck click before he goes down.

The woman still rushes toward us. I look up and see Peter just staring at the broken remains of his weapon. She knows he’s distracted, and her eyes focus on him rather than me. Without thinking, I swing my leg out to trip her. As I expect, she doesn’t see it and ends up sprawling out in the dirt.

“GO!” I scream, jumping to my feet and launching myself forward. We have seconds before that woman gets to her feet again. I see the branches of Izzy’s tree bouncing as she descends, but I don’t even wait for her. As long as I hear Peter’s footsteps behind me, I keep running.

Treetops

The directions spin around me, and I have no idea which I came from so I just keep running. I may be going straight or I may have completely reversed directions.

Everything looks the same at this point. All I can do is hope I don’t end up at the pirate ship again. Who knows how many pirates await us there?

However, who knows where we’re going? There’s not really anywhere for us to go. Just woods and sea and a pirate ship. We run for a while longer before I slow to a stop at the sound of Peter wheezing behind me. Beads of sweat roll down my forehead, but when Peter stops beside me, he doubles over and braces his hands on his knees, actually gasping for breath. “So much…for a vacation,” he says between breaths. “Should I even ask why my dad’s a pirate?”

“Why would you imagine us here?” I ask instead of answering Peter’s question; it’s not like I have an answer anyway.

Peter tilts his head up to me, eyebrows drawn together. “I didn’t imagine this,” he says. “I thought you wanted a beach so that’s what I thought about while we were going under. This is your dream.”

I take a step away from him, shaking my head. This is not from my imagination; I don’t want it to be. What would it say about me if it were my mind that made Peter’s father a pirate? “No, it’s not,” I protest. “I didn’t imagine anything.”

Even if I were to have dreamed a place, this wouldn’t be it. I liked the idea of a vacation, after everything that had happened. The dangers this place presented were not something I dreamed up because I did not want them.

“Wow, you guys must be so slow if I caught up to you this fast!”

I spin around to see Izzy skipping toward us with a wide grin spread across her face. My stomach burns at the sight of her acting so cheerful after all that. I nearly died, but she acts like this is an ordinary day. She hops to a stop a few feet away, but before she stops completely, I stomp over to her. Though she’s technically taller than me, I stare her down. “You told them to kill me!” I shout.

Izzy shrugs. “So?”

“So? So? You told them to kill me!” I shove her back, but Izzy barely budges an inch. “You don’t think anything’s wrong with that?”

My anger wipes the grin off her face, but she does not replace her smile with anger to match mine. She keeps her expression carefully even. “I didn’t leave you for dead,” she says patiently. “I just thought it was an awesome chance to see how the pirates would react. And they hesitated, so that’s good. They called us cowards, but they’re the cowards!” I open my mouth to shout again, but Izzy adds, “I didn’t want you to die, if that helps.”

I groan and turn away. I feel the anger still sparking in my chest like fireworks, but Izzy’s deflated enough of the tension in my body that I give up arguing. Peter looks between us for a few seconds before speaking up, “So you don’t know the pirates then?”

I glance back at Izzy to see her shaking her head. “Nope, they’re new. I think they’re here because of you two. You changed things.”

“There was nothing but woods before,” I mutter as explanation, crossing my arms against my chest. Maybe that’ll be enough to hold my unsteadily beating heart together.

Peter nods slowly, thoughtfully. “Okay. So what’re we going to do about the pirates?” he says eventually.

“I think I’m going to start by naming them,” Izzy offers.

I stare at her, raising my eyebrows. “Seriously?”

“They’re in my woods so I get to name them,” Izzy snaps. Then she smirks. “I think I’m going to name their captain ‘Blackbeard.’”

I’ll give her this much: Blackbeard is a much better name than Captain Datton.

When Izzy doesn’t get any sort of immediate reaction from us, her shoulders fall for a second. Then she starts jumping up and down on the balls of her feet. “So what’re we going to do now?”

I can dance for hours on end, ignoring pain and my body’s normal need for water, but now all I want to do is collapse in the grass until our time here is up. Watching Izzy’s boundless energy exhausts me. I glance down at my wristband and see we still have about three hours left. When I look up again, I see Izzy watching me. “How much time do you have left?” she asks softly.

I stare at her. I freeze where I stand, not sure if I still breathe or blink. Does…Izzy understand what we’re doing here? That this is a dream? Does she know what we are?

Should she? After…I don’t know how long—I lose track of time—I say, “What?”

She nods at my wristband on my arm that now hangs at my side. “People leave when the time runs out. So how much time do you have left?”

I hesitate again. People? What other people? Other people from the Paracosm?

But this is our dream. Too many questions spin through my mind but all that comes out is the answer. “Three hours.”

“And we’d like to survive that if we can,” Peter adds, though he glances sideways at me.

How does she know how the wristbands work? Our imaginations have invented a world where at least one of the inhabitants knows that we’re from Caesura.

But Izzy doesn’t focus on that. She dashes over to a tree with low-hanging branches. “I have an idea on how we can hide from the pirates for three hours,” she announces.

Then, without any hesitation, she pulls herself up into the tree, scrambling across the branches with ease. Peter looks back at me with widened eyes. “We’re going to hide in a tree? I don’t think we can climb a tree,” he says.

“I don’t think we have much of a choice if we want to stay away from the pirates,” I reply.

I move toward the tree without waiting for Peter’s reply. I grip the lowest branch, adjusting my hands a half-dozen times, trying to find a grip where the wood digging into my hand hurts the least. Then I lift myself off the ground. I swing my leg over the branch and pull myself on to it. I do the same on the next two nearest branches, climbing higher

off the ground. And from there, I’m able to walk up a few of the closer branches rather than climb. I look down and see Peter just pulling himself up onto the lowest branch.

I turn my head up to see Izzy climbed twice the height I did in the same time. Not that it surprises me. “C’mon, slowpokes!” she calls. “Even the pirates can climb that high! You’ve got to climb up to the thinner branches that won’t hold a pirate’s weight even if they do find us.”

Peter mutters something unintelligible beneath me, but I just climb up higher. I revel in the grit and the fissures in the wood. The skin of my hand tightens at the touch. It pulls and aches and I just keep climbing. I’m used to the feel of treated wood, worn down from years of touch. The barres and floors in the Studio use a glossy fake wood so you can’t feel the imperfections. Though the real wood cuts into my skin, I wish I could climb forever.

Then, as Izzy warned, the branches get thinner. I let one take my weight, and it bends beneath me. I clutch the trunk for more support. The branches above my head are only thinner, and I fear the one I’m already on won’t be strong enough to hold my weight for long. I turn my head up to see Izzy sitting a couple branches above me. She nods.

“Not bad,” she admits. “I didn’t think you’d get up this high.”

The corner of my mouth turns up almost against my will. I adjust myself on the branch so I sit where the branch meets the trunk, where it’s more stable. “So is this what you do all day?” I ask suddenly. “I mean when all of this was woods, did you just climb trees all the time?”

“Pretty much,” Izzy replies.

“Why?

Izzy falls silent, and I look up at her after her silence lasts more than thirty seconds. It surprises me, her taking so much time. Izzy stares out across the treetops. Just when I’m about to ask her again, she says, “Because I never thought I would.”

I frown, my heart jittering strangely in my chest. “What does that mean?”

Izzy looks down, but she looks straight past me and down to Peter. “Having trouble down there?” she asks with a laugh.

“I’m fine,” Peter calls up to us.

But I don’t look down at him. My eyes remain fixed on Izzy, who stares resolutely past me, just laughing at Peter’s struggle. Her solemnness lasted less than a minute, but it throws me off more than if her ridiculous humor had continued without end. It makes me wonder if she means any of the words that leave her mouth.

So I ignore it for now to look out from where I sit. Green foliage makes up my world instead of air. The leaves glow brighter when the sunlight strikes them, like each is a tiny stained glass window. I shut my eyes and try to close out the sound of Izzy’s laughter. A quiet breeze drifts by, and I let the fresh air fill my lungs.

“Of course you can still breathe.”

I jerk forward with a gasp. I forget where I am. My entire body shakes at the sound of her voice, and I spin around to see only a tree trunk behind me. And though I know it’s stupid, I breathe, “Jayne?”

All I hear is the wind and maybe my breathing. I think Izzy still laughs at Peter, but it sounds too far away to be anything more than a memory.

“Follow me.”

Her voice comes from behind me again though I face the other way. I jump, spinning to look. But I lose my balance on the tree branch and slide sideways. My stomach drops out, and I know I’m falling, but I’m too shocked to react.

A hand swipes out and grabs my arm and only then do I wake up enough to reach out myself to stabilize against another tree branch. Above my head, Izzy leans down on her own branch, just barely reaching me. She grits her teeth beneath narrowed eyes, the intensity of her expression catching me off guard. “For the girl who complained about me almost getting her killed, you’d think you’d put more effort into not falling out of a tree,” she growls.

She pulls me back as much as she can, and I push myself back the rest of the way so I lean against the trunk of the tree once again. “Sorry,” I whisper. My whole body shakes, and I wrap my fingers around another tree branch just for further stability.

“You all right, Gale?” Peter calls up to me.

I look down. Peter seems to have settled on a branch just a few feet below me. His head’s tilted to the side in confusion but he isn’t pale and his eyes aren’t wide. I think he missed what just happened. “Fine,” I mutter, turning away quickly before my expression reveals me.

I barely dare to breathe, waiting to hear Jayne’s voice again. But she stays silent now. I hang on so tightly to the tree branch that I lose feeling in my arms. Really, I see two options here, the second becoming more likely the longer Jayne’s voice remains

silent. Option one is Peter and I imagined her here. We imagined his father to be a pirate so I suppose that would be possible, but we still don’t know how this place works.

Option two, of course, is that I’ve snapped.

The thought makes me shake, I think, though I see my hands shaking rather than feel the sensation because of how numb I’ve gone. I take steadying breaths, but my lungs are not filling as lungs should, so I focus on just not gasping so I don’t attract the attention of Peter and Izzy. Without thinking, I reach out and touch the star charm around my neck.

——

Sitting precariously in a tree for three hours is not nearly as fun as it sounds. It only takes so much time before the novelty wears off. Izzy starts climbing higher in the tree, and then down again, I think just to keep herself amused. Peter tries conversation for a while, but with the shock of hearing Jayne’s voice, I struggle to give him more than one-word answers. Once I stop shaking enough to keep steady in the tree without holding on to a branch, I keep my eyes on the timer around my wrist so when the cool-down time runs out, I see it the second it happens. “Time’s up,” I whisper.

After hearing the shaking of leaves for the last hour as Izzy bounced from tree branch to tree branch, I turn around the moment I hear the noise stop. Izzy stares at me, bracing her hands on the trunk of the tree and the branch right above her head. She draws her eyebrows together. “Don’t go,” she says.

The desperate expression on her face, the soft vulnerability of her voice, all of it makes me stop short. She sounds years younger than the confident girl ready to give my

life up to pirates as a sacrifice. I glance down at Peter and see the expression on my face mirrored on his. “Why’s that?” he asks.

Izzy drops down on the branch she stood on so her legs hang over one side. She kicks them back and forth, her eyes focused on her boots rather than either of our faces.

“You guys changed things and made it fun here. I like seeing the ocean. And fighting pirates is the best adventure I’ve ever had. I just want to keep having fun! If you guys come back, then we all can.”

My shoulders fall. I deflate. It surprises me how much I want to please this dangerous girl. I don’t want to be the reason the life dies from her sparkling eyes.

When I glance down at Peter, hoping he has more of an answer than I do, I see him struggling to his feet on his branch, clutching onto the trunk of the tree for dear life once he gets there. “I don’t see why we can’t come back,” he says with a shrug.

I stare at him until he looks up at me. “Money,” I mouth at him. My chest squeezes at the thought of how much this must cost Peter. I cannot bear the thought of being any more in his debt. I think Peter pities me for losing my sister. I cannot be that fragile girl to him. It’s not that far to jump to the next level of him seeing me as I really am, as my sister was.

But Peter just smiles and shifts his gaze to Izzy. “I guess we’ll see what happens.”

I open my mouth to speak up, to point out that Izzy isn’t real and he doesn’t have to be such a people-pleaser to a figment of our imagination, but Peter’s already typing in the exit code on his wristband. Seeing as the alternative is being left in this place alone

with the unpredictable Izzy, I type mine in as well. And abruptly, without transition, my world goes black.

Boundaries

The darkness presses around me like a physical thing, and I choke on it. Every time I try to take a breath, I just choke harder. I drown in the dark. It squeezes me tighter and tighter. It’s like I was swept into the dream on a breeze, but I’m pulled back into reality in a body bag.

I’m shot from the vacuum in an explosion of oxygen. My eyes flash open, and I shoot up in shock. My face smashes into the shielding of the capsule, and I collapse back onto the bed I barely feel against my skin. I clutch my nose and forehead with my hand as they throb with pain. I hear a hiss. From between my fingers, I see the shielding rising up.

“Are you all right, Abigale?” Monique asks.

I pull my hand away and thankfully see no blood staining my skin. “Yeah,” I groan.

Now that the shield is raised, I attempt to sit up again. I rub my head as it continues to throb. There’s no way I’m not going to have a bruise smack between my eyes tomorrow. “And Peter?” Monique says.

“I’m good,” he replies. I look at him out of the corner of my eye. Seeing as he isn’t rubbing his forehead, he apparently had the sense not to smash his head.

Monique detaches the wire from my temple. “So how was everything?” she asks.

My eyes widen. How do I even respond to that? When we went under, I expected a beach, a vacation, anything that took me away from my reality. I guess I got the beach.

But I also got violent pirates, a knife to my throat, a psychopathic teenager, and my dead sister’s voice in my head.

And enough trees to fill Caesura. A sky wider than the whole world must be. An ocean filled with more water than I had seen in my life.

I open and close my mouth a couple times, struggling to come up with just the right words. “Nothing like I could have imagined,” I say eventually.

Monique giggles, and I turn to her, raising an eyebrow with confusion. “Except that’s exactly what you did! You imagined all of that,” she explains.

I’m not sure how to respond to that so I don’t. I push myself forward and slide out of the capsule. The moment my feet hit the ground, my legs almost give out beneath me. I clutch at the capsule for support, my hand clapping emptily against the glass shielding.

“Be careful; it might take you a minute to get your footing,” Monique warns.

I release an unsteady breath as I take more time stabilizing. My whole body aches from climbing imaginary trees. I already notice the lack of scent in the Paracosm. After the richness of the smell of trees in the dream, the cold room leaves me feeling empty. It makes this world feel almost less real than the one I know to be imaginary. Beside me,

Peter takes more time to brace himself before he sets his feet on the ground. “So if we want to come back, how does that work?” he asks.

My fingers curl around the bed behind me that I still brace myself against. I still haven’t agreed to going back and already Peter’s asking about it. Is he so busy trying to take care of me that he completely ignores me?

Monique smiles at Peter. “When you bought your tickets, they were registered under your name, Peter. As long as you bring the wristbands that you’re wearing now with you, you can return to the Paracosm at any time, with or without an official appointment, and those trips will be charged to the account of Peter Datton. Only you or

Abigale will be able to enter with the tickets and your wristband will only work for you.”

“And are we able to go to the same place if we want? Or is it always somewhere new?” he asks.

“Either or,” she replies cheerfully.

I look back and forth between them, feeling far too invisible during this conversation. My chest aches, and I feel the urge to scream. But I stay silent anyway. It makes me feel less present, more numb, a far too familiar feeling. I don’t know how much time has passed when I feel a hand on my shoulder. I jerk away just as Peter says my name. “Is it time to go?” I ask quickly before Peter can comment.

His widened eyes now narrow as he nods once. Monique hurries in front of me to lead us out. Peter falls into step beside me, but I refuse to look at him, though I feel him glancing at me out of the corner of his eye. I wish I had long enough hair that I could shift it to my left shoulder to use at a curtain to separate us.

When we exit the Paracosm, I almost want to sprint to get away in order to avoid the conversation I’m going to get sucked into having. But there’s no way to do that without catching too much attention from other people nearby. So I’m still at Peter’s side when he asks, “What’s wrong?”

“Think about it, Peter,” I sigh in a low voice. I don’t know that I have the energy for an explanation.

He furrows his brow in confusion but I just keep walking. He practically jogs to keep up with me, despite the fact that he has longer legs. “I know things didn’t really go according to plan in there,” he says quickly. “I know we wanted something more relaxing, less ‘having your life threatened,’ but we can always do that next time.”

I halt so suddenly that Peter continues on a few more paces before he realizes.

Before he even has the chance to turn around, I exclaim, “That’s not even close to the problem I have with you!”

He frowns, no longer trying to stand by my side. “And what problem do you have with me then?” he snaps.

“The you-answering-for-me bit,” I say, lowering my head. “The part where you think you know what’s best for me. The part where what I owe you keeps stacking up.”

Peter’s eyes widen, and he crosses the distance separating us. “You owe me nothing,” he says softly. “You act like I’m spending my life savings on this, but it’s nothing. I just thought you might want to go back. I mean, maybe not to that place, since it’s obviously dangerous, but somewhere else.”

I scowl. “So you just lied to Izzy then?” It shouldn’t matter; I know it shouldn’t matter. But it bothers me to remember the brightness in her eyes when Peter lied to her.

Peter laughs. “Gale, she’s not real; she doesn’t care. She’s a figment of our imaginations. Even if she’s someone you recognize, she’s not that person. My dad’s not a pirate, and neither are Neil and Allison.”

“I don’t understand your point,” I say slowly.

Peter shrugs. “Well, our brains aren’t able to just invent the faces of people.

That’s why we see people we recognize when we dream. So my dad and my friends Neil and Allison were pirates.”

“Then who’s Izzy?” I ask.

“You tell me.”

My stomach shifts uncomfortably. “I didn’t recognize her,” I say.

But Peter just shrugs again. “That’s not really a big deal. She’s probably just someone you saw on the street somewhere in passing. Either way, she’s not a real person so it’s not a big deal if we don’t go back there.”

I look over his shoulder at nothing in particular in order to avoid meeting his eyes.

That world could have killed me, almost did. If I had shifted wrong under Captain

Datton’s knife, it would have slit my throat, and all I would have been able to do was bleed out on the forest floor. But then there was the fact that there was such thing as a forest floor. And a beach with a wide sky. But the smell of salt water stinging my nostrils meant less to me than the way dozens of types of trees poured a dozen different scents into the air and filled me up in what felt like a physical way.

“Conflicted” doesn’t begin to sum up my feelings on the matter.

So I shrug and try to step around Peter, but he mirrors me and then places his hand on my shoulder. “I am sorry that I put you in danger back there,” he says softly. “I know I wanted the dream to be a distraction from all that’s been going on in the real world, but that’s not what I meant.”

“It’s fine,” I mumble, though I would have rather he had said nothing at all. Now all I hear is Jayne whispering, “Follow me” in my ear, and all I think is that if I had let the pirate kill me, I would have done as she asked.

——

I spend most of the rest of my day at the Studio, staying so late that I leave long after the sun is able to strike the streets of Caesura. Now it hangs low enough in the sky that light darts between buildings, catching just small strips of the sidewalk in its glow.

Skyscrapers slice up the rest. I slow as I pass through the strips of sunlight. Though it’s the beginning of summer, I feel no warmth from the sun. Even the jeans I’ve switched back into fail to absorb any of the warmth. Streetlights begin to spark on above my head, and I glance up, startled at the lighting of the first one. But I quickly return my eyes to the street ahead of me so I don’t end up swept in the wrong direction by the fairly steady crowd surrounding me.

When I start up the stairwell in the skyscraper that houses my family’s apartment,

I consider taking the stairs two at a time, thinking my parents must be freaking out by now. But the weight of the day holds down my shoulders, and all I can manage is a sluggish march. We live on the sixth floor, but I’ve long since gotten used to taking the stairs here. The building we live in is older and cheaply made. The walls are thin enough you sometimes hear conversations on the other side. And after the elevator decides to stop between floors with you still on it, you give it up for a lifetime of climbing up however many stairs it takes to reach the sixth floor. But just outside the stairwell, I stop dead.

Because down the hall, the front door of my family’s apartment stands open.

It doesn’t matter who you are or where you live, coming home to your front door standing open is never a good sign. I consider, just for a second, turning around and heading back down the stairs and going anywhere else. But where do I have to go?

I step as slowly as reasonable toward my door. I hesitate with every step I take to see if I can make out any words coming from my home. I hear movement that gets louder the closer I get, but no voices give me any clue what’s going on. I peek inside rather than crossing the threshold. Right inside the door is our living space, with our kitchen off to one side, separated from the living room by a wall that only comes up to my stomach and can be seen over. From there, it’s a sharp left turn to the short hallway that branches off into a small bathroom, my parents’ bedroom, and the room I once shared with Jayne. So from here, all I really see is the kitchen and living room. I hear the banging and scratching and clanking of things down the hall.

But it looks to me that there was damage done before that. The threadbare couch sits on an angle rather than parallel to the wall behind it. Baskets on tables that we use for organizing are poured out onto the couch, the floor, the table, mixing paperwork and tools and hair ties all together. My dad’s paintings hang askew on the walls. My voice catches in my throat, and I grab at the wall for support. I slowly turn my head from the living room to the kitchen to see my parents sitting at the tiny table there, turned away from me. “I’m home,” I say in a small voice, more to break the spell that keeps my parents distracted than because the words actually need said.

My mom turns around in her chair immediately at my voice. She pushes it back and gets to her feet. “Where have you been?” she asks, her eyes narrowing. But the dark circles that ring around the bottom of her eyes tell me that she feels something more complicated than anger.

“The Studio,” I say. “What’s going on?”

“It’s just an investigation,” my dad says, staring at the mug in front of him rather than at me. No steam rises from the surface of the liquid inside, and I wonder how long he’s spent staring at the full cup. “It’s protocol.”

“Protocol for what?” I ask. I share some of my weight with the wall I grip, unable to hold it all on my own.

My dad stays silent, and my mom just shakes her head. “Protocol for what?” I repeat, almost snapping at them.

My mom sighs. “It’s protocol for suicide,” she says heavily. I wince at the word.

“Jayne overdosed so now there’s an investigation to find any more drugs she might have been hiding.”

“Jayne didn’t do drugs,” I say instinctively. Too quickly.

“The one time she did was enough,” my mom grunts. She looks away, using the wall beside her to support her.

Without another word, I push off the wall, accepting all the weight I carry once more. I storm down the short hall and into the room I once shared with my late sister before I can think through what I’m doing.

Although the rest of our apartment is just shifted around, our bedroom is torn apart. I stand in the doorway, gripping it on both sides to keep from falling flat on my face. My ability to carry my own weight evaporates just like that.

It barely fazes me that the covers are torn from my bed and my old dance gear is scattered around the room, with tights on lamps and leotards on my bare mattress and tutus on the floor. At the end of the day, it’s just stuff to me. But seeing Jayne’s stuff tossed around…I dig what little fingernails I have into the wall to avoid digging them into the palms of my hands.

A man with blonde hair hanging over the tips of his ears and a woman with dark hair tear through our things, our memories. For a second, I think the woman is Jayne. The woman’s hair hangs down to her chest in dark brown waves. Dark, wide eyes cut off at sharp points at either side. Eyebrows curve only slightly up then down at the outside edge. It’s only after a moment that I can make out differences. Her lips are thinner. Her eyes are a very dark olive rather than brown. Her hair’s more under control rather than frizzy. But I still struggle to separate them in my mind.

Both invaders wear uniforms I’ve never seen—gray pants and navy collared shirts—but their shirts bear the familiar emblem of the government of Caesura: small solid circle with a straight line drawn vertically across the center, cutting off at the edge of another circle surrounding the solid one.

Wherever I don’t see my stuff, I see Jayne’s. Old stuffed animals—I now realize she lied about getting rid of—sit by my tutus. Old paperbacks she read with desperate hunger for story but I never saw the point of sit in uneven piles beneath our small

window. Her pink comforter twists around my white one with our matching pillows sitting on top. Notebooks of old school notes lay open where they were tossed. She always told me she never knew when she would need to know something in there, so she kept the notes. I wonder how the girl who always prepared for the future ended it before it began.

“Are you Abigale?”

I yank my eyes away from the notebooks, as my mind circles trying to understand why Jayne wanted to keep notes on photosynthesis, to look up at the woman who spoke to me. “Yeah, I’m Abigale,” I croak, not sure where my voice went in fifteen seconds.

“Did you share this room with your sister?” she asks. No “Sorry for your loss.”

No “This must be very difficult.” None of it.

My eyes slide away from her to the man still digging through our drawers, pulling out clothes that belonged to Jayne and me. I don’t remember what belonged to whom anymore, considering how much we shared. “I did,” I reply, processing the question after a few seconds of silence.

“Do you know of any of her hiding places?”

“She didn’t do drugs,” I say firmly. I think that’s important to say. Jayne wasn’t the kind of person they warned us to watch for back in second grade. She didn’t withdraw from society, she didn’t stop working hard at school, she just decided to…quit.

“Regardless,” the woman says, unabated, “do you know of any places where

Jayne hid anything?”

I shake my head, not sure whether or not I tell the truth. Probably somewhere deep in my memories I recall hiding places of mine and Jayne’s from when we were children. But we hadn’t played those kinds of games in years, and those memories, if they exist at all, recess to the back of my mind. So at least for the time being, I guess I’m not lying.

“Did she take any sort of medication?”

I shake my head again. I took more than she did, though it was just for aches and pains. And based on the autopsy, I remember she took some sort of prescription, overdosed on medication for an illness she didn’t even have, something my parents and I didn’t know we had in the house. “Do you know any way she could have obtained medication?” the woman asks. “Anyone at your school distributing it?” Her eyes fall half-closed, like she’s bored as can be, despite her insistence that I answer her questions.

“I don’t know,” I mumble. My eyes slide to the floor, and I get the sense that my body’s about to slide down to join them there. A spark shudders through my heart, reminding me I need to pull it together. Only so much of this will be accepted as normal mourning.

“Anything else?” I ask suddenly. The weight in my heart pushes down against my chest. It feels like something claws me there, and I know I can’t keep composed for much longer.

“We will let you know before we leave,” she says. And then she turns right back to her work, completely oblivious or ignoring the fact that my world is shattering. I stand in the doorway for a little longer, staring without seeing, and I’m not sure I can feel

anything. I know I need to walk away to anywhere else, but I physically can’t. My skin has lost all sensation of touch. My mind struggles to process our entire lives, our entire childhoods, spilled out on the floor.

My legs drag when I ultimately gather enough strength to walk away. For the girl with a perfect plié into sauté, walking not even in a straight line feels like an awkward, unnatural movement. My arms feel too long hanging at my sides. My shoulder bumps into the one hallway wall like I’ve forgotten it’s there, though I’ve lived in this apartment my whole life. I disintegrate where I stand.

Before I completely fall apart, I slip silently into my parents’ room, closing the door as softly as I can behind me. The room’s pitch black, with no windows to speak of, though that is certainly not a complaint from me right now. My knees just sort of buckle, and I end up down on one knee. And then even that’s too hard to do. I collapse on my hip and my head bangs against the wall where it hits. I feel nothing. I see nothing. I think I look at carpet, since it starts to look textured as my eyes adjust to the darkness. My eyes are dry. My heart’s not racing. Everything inside my body runs at a normal speed. But it doesn’t feel like my body anymore. I feel like someone else, someone separate from the physical body I inhabit. My head spins and races, and I can’t keep up, but I’m not overly concerned because I’m not certain the thoughts are mine anyway. I don’t…understand.

It’s just a room. They’re just things. I’m not a materialistic person.

But…then again....

I reach up and touch the necklace around my neck. Jayne bought it for me when she was seven and I was five. I danced in my very first stage recital, and Jayne begged

our parents to be able to give me a present. My mom gave her a few bills, a lot of money, considering how little money we had, and she went to the cheapest kids’ jewelry store with me at her side. She sent me to the other side of the store and I tried on all these silly hats, which I modeled in front of the tiny little mirror. Jayne insisted on keeping my gift a secret until after the recital. When I got back to my family, while most little girls and boys got beautiful bouquets that my family could never dream of affording, Jayne hung a cheap little star necklace around my neck.

I remember taking it in my sweaty fingers and smiling brighter than the lights that had shined on me when I danced on stage. And then I shared that smile with Jayne. For a few seconds. Then I jumped on her, swinging my arms around her neck. She hadn’t been expecting it, and I knocked her flat on her back. Our parents told us to settle down, but once they realized Jayne was laughing, not crying, they joined our laughter.

I choke at the memory. I guess this body must still be mine, then. My eyes are not nearly as dry as I thought, and I have no choice but to let the tears stream, all the while praying no one finds me here like this.

——

When the invaders leave, they leave a mess. And I mean more than just me and our—my bedroom floor. Before they go, I slip out of my parents’ room, praying that my eyes aren’t as puffy as they feel, and just make a point of sitting on the off-aligned couch in the living room. I look the other way until the government officials leave. When they do,

I hear my mom throwing open cabinets in the kitchen, I assume to look for food to start dinner, and then slamming them closed again. I hear a crack and spin around to see one

cabinet door break away. My mom catches it just before it hits her in the head. She looks at me, holding the door up. “Whenever you get the chance,” she says, trying to feign nonchalance.

That’s me, the fixer. The one who repairs everything in the house that breaks in order to save my family money to spend on my time in the Studio. The door’s no problem. But the tornado that is my mother is another story completely.

When my mom slams another cabinet door closed, my dad speaks up, “Please don’t.”

His small voice makes my mom hesitate. It makes me hesitate, though I’m not the one destroying the kitchen. We both turn to look at him and see thin tear-streaks staining his cheeks. The tears are long gone, but he isn’t as successful at hiding their once existence as he thinks he is. My mom crosses the kitchen in two quick strides and wraps her arms around his shoulders. “Okay,” she whispers. “I won’t.”

I feel like I’m invading their moment, even if it’s just a hug, even if I’m in the living room. It makes me twitch beneath my skin. They make it look so easy. My mom pulls away from my dad, their eyes lingering on each other for an extra moment as my mom squeezes his shoulder. It looks so easy to make things better. So why isn’t it that way for me?

I wander back over to my room almost in a haze. I don’t really know I’m walking there until I stand in the doorway looking at the mess left behind. Of course they tore the room apart and left it for me—the girl mourning the sister who committed suicide—to clean up. That’s our government: looking out for our mental health.

I lower myself to sit on the old carpet, staring at the mess because the idea of starting to clean makes my palms itch and my arms ache. It’s not like when I collapsed to my knees. Then, I was weighed down until I collapsed under the weight. Now I just feel like I shouldn’t cross the threshold. Like I have to wait for permission because this room is no longer mine but the property of those who invaded it. Our stuff is strewn around like it never belonged to us but instead it was part of some elaborate pantomime where we played out someone else’s story. Even the leotards that I wear more often than I wear pants seem unfamiliar now. It sounds silly to the logical part of my brain. But the way they hang off the side of Jayne’s bed and the edge of the dressers make them look like different things than they are because they don’t belong there.

They never found anything. I don’t know if I would have been surprised if they had. I never thought Jayne did drugs. But then again, I thought she was the happiest person I knew. If she was hiding that from me, who knows what secrets she hid just beneath the surface? I have no idea how thorough the…autopsy was. I think there are signs drugs leave in your body. So if they suspected she had done drugs more than just the once, maybe she did. Just not here. Except for the last time.

I swallow hard and stare at the memories thrown around like trash. I search for the good among them but nothing lightens my heart. It’s like when Jayne left, she took all of the good memories with her. And if the good memories were hers and she took her life, what does that leave me with?

It’s been long enough since Jayne died that the government of Caesura—and therefore its people—may not recognize my sadness as mourning any longer. My shield’s

gone, and now I must return to my lies, the lies that make my heart ache as I tell them.

After tonight, I fear I’ll shatter in the face of confrontation. I need to pull myself together.

But time alone with my thoughts is not what I need. I need something to take me away from myself. I need…Izzy. And pirates. A forest as big as Caesura to explore with an impossible sky spreading out above my head.

Even if my dream in the Paracosm is filled with violent pirates and a somewhat unstable teenager, it seems like a better option than reality. Because what I need is not a vacation. It’s an escape.

Drown

I slip out of my family’s apartment just as the sun comes up in the morning, leaving behind a note about going out with Peter. Here’s hoping that if my parents contact him, either he will not respond or he will lie for me. As it is, I don’t actually reach out to him about getting him to come to the Paracosm with me. He may ask just as many questions as my parents would. So I walk to the Paracosm alone.

The sun’s low enough in the sky that the tall buildings rising up on either side of me make it hard for the light to even touch the sidewalk. The streetlights still cast pools of light on my path, not yet triggered to shut off by the rising sun. A few people wander the sidewalk beside me, but it’s a crowd I’m familiar with, having made my way to the

Studio at this time of morning dozens of times before. It’s a mix of those who have been out all night, young and worn, stumbling down the sidewalk like they are just barely awake, and the elderly getting a start on their day before bedtime comes early in the evening.

Normally at this time of day, I wear a leotard underneath jeans—or sweatpants, if it’s a particularly exhausting morning—carrying my dance bag over one shoulder. That feels normal to me, even though I know I stand out. Today, though, I feel I stand out more than that. I learned my lesson last time to dress for the occasion. Most importantly,

I’ve traded my flats for durable boots. I keep glancing down at them as I walk down the

sidewalk. They fit, though they’re not mine. They were Jayne’s. Wearing them makes my heart race.

I expect to be stopped at the door to the Paracosm despite knowing the ticket on my watch is enough to let me in. I expect someone to know my secret reason for coming.

But the guard at the Paracosm just checks my identification, warning me that not having an appointment means I may have to wait a while, before letting me through. I only have to wait about ten minutes before a Guide by the name of Kaleb comes to bring me to

Deployment. He gives me the same bright grin as Monique, but he leads me down in silence. I imagine he’s still half asleep at this early hour. He asks no questions about where Peter is, only whether I want a new adventure or to return to the previous dream created. I lay down in the capsule, breathing calmly for the first time in hours as Kaleb lowers the shielding. As I lay there, I reach up and grasp the pendant around my neck. I close my eyes and pray, Jayne, please let me go.

When I try to open my eyes again, I can’t and continue to be unable to do so for nearly a minute. I hear wind rushing past my ears, but I don’t feel anything. It’s the lightest my chest has felt in days.

I open my eyes when I smell the trees. The trees look different here and they smell lighter, more fragrant, more like flowers. The leaf shapes are not altogether unfamiliar, but the ones that are teardrop-shaped are smaller so there are more on each tree branch. What’s far more bizarre is that some of the tree trunks are white rather than brown. They look like they must be dead, but there are small buds and green leaves bursting from some of those buds, proving that life still flows through the tree. Just

beyond the trees, I see a rocky shore dropping off into the ocean. I must be in a very different place from last time. I look down at my wrist and check the cool-down time.

Once again, I have at least four hours here before I can leave, though I don’t know if I’ll rush out as quickly as last time.

“You’re here.”

I jump at the sound and spin around to see Izzy standing among the trees rather than up in one. Her arms are crossed, and her gaze is steadier than I’ve ever seen it. I can’t read her expression, which worries me. I’m so used to her being at one extreme or the other that her being unreadable unsettles me.

“I am,” I reply, wondering if this is the same Izzy I know from last time I was here or if my head has changed her into someone new.

“You left your shadow here.”

I narrow my eyes as I shift my shoulders uncomfortably. I can’t help but glance down at my feet. In this world, I guess even my shadow abandoning me is a possibility, but it still stretches out on the ground behind me. “Um…no I didn’t.”

“Not your actual shadow,” Izzy snaps, rolling her eyes. She falls back on the tree trunk next to her, and somehow her leaning makes her look indignant. “But a shadow.

And you left it in my woods!”

My voice catches in my throat for a moment. I feel like this conversation’s leaving me behind. “What does that even mean? How is it mine?”

She wrinkles her nose. “It smells like you. Like raspberry perfume or something.

And it’s been following me around for days. Not coming toward me or saying anything, but just following me around like a stalker.”

“I…don’t understand,” I admit eventually. I spin around on the spot, but all I see is light, no shadow. “What does it look like? Does it look like…like a normal shadow?”

“It’s a shadow!” Izzy shouts, pushing off the tree and stomping toward me. “What more explanation do you need? It looks like a person-shaped shadow in my woods following me. And it won’t stop!”

Izzy stops only a couple feet away from me, and I make a point of standing my ground. I try to straighten up to meet her eyes. “Then where is it now?” I ask slowly.

Izzy’s face slackens. Her head swipes back and forth, then she spins in a circle like I did before. Then she just turns back to me and shrugs, her familiar smile returning to her face. “It must not like you.”

I grimace, not sure if that makes me feel better or worse. But before I can get another word out on the subject, Izzy suddenly asks, “Where’s Peter? Did you two get separated again?”

I shake my head. “I came here alone.” The words should be harmless, but they feel like they carry more weight when I say them out loud. They sound like they must imply something more.

“Cool! He can’t slow us down then,” she exclaims, oblivious to the way my words unsettle me. “I’ve got something really cool to show you.”

Without waiting for a response from me, she skips away, down toward the water.

I stand still in shock for almost a full minute before I follow. Izzy literally has to call for me before I get myself moving. Forget physically keeping up with her; Izzy’s mind jumps from topic to topic like she lives on a series of trampolines, and sometimes you need that minute just to mentally catch up. Of course, by that point she has run off and then you have to work on the physically catching up part.

I jog after her. The wind bites at my bare skin, and I can’t help but shiver. I regret wearing shorts, though a few days ago, my jeans were almost too much. “Is it just me, or is it, like, a lot colder than it was a few days ago?”

“It’s just this part of the forest!” Izzy calls back. “It’s spring here!”

Different seasons in different places make about as much sense as anything else here, and I ignore the oddity. I watch as Izzy dances across a variety of flat rocks to reach the edge of the ocean. As I follow, I cast a wary eye about for pirates, half-expecting them to burst from the trees when they see us on their shore. But the trees remain still. I tread across the slippery rocks with caution. I can’t fathom how Izzy didn’t fall. Even at my slow speed, I feel my shoes sliding. “What’s out here that you’re so excited about?” I ask as I finally reach her side.

“Can you swim?”

I hesitate. “I don’t think I want to answer your question until you tell me why you’re asking it.”

“What? Do you think I’m going to push you in?” she says with a laugh.

I narrow my eyes at her, taking a wary step away from the edge and from her.

“Kind of.”

She smirks at me, tapping her temple. “You’re smarter than you look.” She turns back out to the water, leaving me to wonder whether or not that was a compliment. She continues, “I ask because I can’t swim, and I think there might be something down there.

I saw it down there when I was exploring.” She pouts at me, her bottom lip jutting out.

“Do you want to try to find out what’s down there so I don’t have to push you in?”

I roll my eyes. “Great options there,” I mutter. “What do you mean by

‘something’?”

Izzy shrugs. “Honestly, it looked like a person.” Then she frowns at the ground.

“Or maybe a person-shaped shadow. I don’t know. But I can’t swim, and I want to know what it is!”

Izzy takes an impatient step toward me, and I throw my hands up in a gesture of surrender. “Hold on a second. Yeah, I can swim, but I’ve never swum in the ocean before. I will try, as long as you don’t rush me!”

Izzy snaps to attention, drawing her thumb and forefinger across her lips like she pulls a zipper. I take a step closer to the edge of the water and look down. The water down there isn’t really all that cloudy so I’m able to see the bottom, but I know that can be deceiving. It might be a foot deep or twenty. I have no way of knowing without jumping in. I slide down to sit on the edge of the rock so I can remove my boots. But even from there, my toes are too far away to skim the surface of the water. “Izzy, why do you need to know what’s down here so bad?” I ask suddenly.

“Because it’s fun!” she explains in her all-so-thorough way.

And then she pushes me off the edge.

A shock shoots up my spine as I hit the cold water. My muscles ache like I’ve just slammed into the ground, but instead I’m underwater. My eyes flash open and water stings as it pours in. The sun slips beneath the surface of the ocean to light my way like a lantern, though the sun’s rays are warped. I push my arms down and after a couple seconds, I break the surface, gasping. My entire body shakes and urges me to swim for shore. But the rocks above my head are too high up to reach and the sandy shore off some way to my right is far enough away that I question whether it’s worth it to swim there before my automatic reaction gets me moving. “Really?” I splutter at Izzy, pushing my flopping soaked hair from my eyes. I taste the salt on my lips, and it only makes me want to gag more.

Izzy lays flat on her stomach on the rocks above me, resting her head in her hands. “See anything?”

“Not really!” I snap, even though it’s not like I’ve gotten a good look yet. I’ve been a bit too busy drowning.

I tread water as best I can, but my head keeps dipping below the surface just often enough that I’m sputtering more than I’m breathing. I push myself up with as much force as I can muster, take one deep breath not tainted with salt water, and dive underwater one more time. My head flits back and forth, but I see nothing. It’s shallow enough here that I can see the ocean floor, though still deep enough that I don’t touch it. If there were something there, I’d see it.

I break the surface, gasping once more. “There’s nothing there, Izzy. I’m coming out.”

I expect Izzy to complain, but I don’t get the chance to hear her response. Because at that moment, something reaches out, wraps its fingers around my ankle, and pulls me back underwater. Instinctually I gasp, but I’m already underwater so water pours into my lungs. I kick as hard as I can, choking. I know my strength won’t last long without oxygen. When I kick, the fingers loosen, then tighten once more. I force my chin down, though my face wants desperately to tilt toward the surface and toward oxygen, and see a person dragging me down.

No, not a person. A mermaid.

I see the bright green tail, despite the upper half being a clearly feminine human body, but I have no time to focus or to be bewildered. I smash my free foot against the mermaid’s fingers. She releases me with a cry, and I kick toward the surface. My arms feel too weak, between the cold water and the lack of oxygen. It takes me too long to reach the surface, and as the edges of my vision darken, I think I won’t.

But my face hits open air. I drink in the oxygen. Each breath tears down my throat and into my lungs, raking like a knife. My arms flail, unable to calmly tread water any longer. I think Izzy screams my name.

I turn myself in the direction of shore, I think, and swim toward it despite sore muscles and aching lungs. Fingers reach for my ankle once more and drag me back with more force than I thought possible in water. What little air still in my lungs is left behind in the struggle.

I kick one more time, and my foot hits something other than her hand—her face maybe? I can’t tell. But her fingers slacken in shock, and I take the little opening it gives me. I push myself forward, not sure whether I get closer to shore or further, not sure whether I care as long as it’s away.

My arm slaps the shore before I realize I’m there. I crawl to my feet and sprint up the thick wet sand, away from the sea. I run until I reach dry sand. It’s warm and itchy against my feet, and that’s when I know it’s safe to collapse. I drop on my back, listening to the whine of my lungs as they prevent me from gathering a full breath. I stare up at the blue sky, but I’m not fully aware of what I see. Tears in my eyes blur the sky. I hear footsteps, but they sound so far away that I can’t bring myself to react to them.

“Gale! Gale, Gale!”

Izzy yells my name several times before I turn my eyes to her. She stands right above me, her eyes wider than I’ve seen them. For someone who pushed me into the water, she looks awfully concerned.

“You saw…a mermaid,” I gasp.

The corners of Izzy’s eyes crinkle as the fear fades away. “Really? A mermaid?”

“No, I was drowning myself for the fun of it,” I mutter, pushing myself up into a sitting position. I think maybe it’s better for coughing up half the ocean clogging my lungs. I place one hand against my collarbone to put pressure against my chest, and my hand touches bare skin.

I choke and when I stop choking, I stop breathing as well. It no longer matters if my lungs are full of water or full of air because everything just stops.

My necklace is gone.

My fingers start shaking, but I’m just barely aware of it. This is just a dream, I think. My necklace is still safe around my neck. But I don’t trust my own words. The

Studio key on the chain is nothing; I can get that replaced. If that was all there was, I’d hand it off to the murderous mermaid with my blessing. But not the star charm. It’s all I have left of Jayne.

I get to my feet, though it feels like the salty ocean water has stripped out the inside of my lungs and left them raw. “What are you doing?” Izzy says slowly.

I don’t answer. I just step closer to the edge of the water. “Gale?” Izzy tries one more time, but I don’t stop moving.

Too late to stop me now. I sprint straight into the water and dive beneath the surface. Izzy’s shout follows me, but the water muffles her voice, and I focus too much on the matter at hand to bother deciphering what she does say.

My eyes comb the floor of the ocean. I have no idea at what point underwater I lost the necklace, and for all I know, the mermaid stole it and scrammed. And if that’s the case…I don’t know what I do.

My eyes land on the mermaid near the rocks where she first pulled me down.

She’s close to the ocean floor, looking at what I see as a glint as a ray of sun reflects off metal. My chest aches.

That’s it.

I break the surface of the ocean long enough to take the fullest breath I can, then dive back down. I practically throw myself forward through the water. My body resists

my struggle to go deeper, like it’s lighter than the water, but I drag myself down. Just as the mermaid reaches for my necklace, her head snaps around and her eyes meet mine.

“Mine,” she snarls, bubbles bursting from her mouth. She slides between me and the necklace, but doesn’t pick up the charm itself.

I just narrow my eyes and push forward. Unlike the mermaid, I still need oxygen, but I pretend that’s a myth. I convince my lungs that they don’t ache for air, that the air already in my lungs is plenty. I convince my arms to keep reaching because swimming’s what I do naturally, not walking. I convince my brain that the necklace is the most vital piece of me, that I must have it in order to keep on living.

I try to swim around the mermaid, like I think for a second that’s going to work.

Apparently I have done too good a job convincing myself that I can survive in the water as well as a mermaid. I swipe out at the necklace, and the mermaid grabs my wrist. She pulls me down so that I’m eye level with her. “Mine,” she says again, hissing the word into my face.

Does she mean me or the necklace? I don’t know now. But one is not going up without the other. I reach out with my free hand, an act I guess the mermaid didn’t expect. I ball my fist around the necklace, picking up a good deal of sand along with it. I try to pull away from the mermaid. But she has a firm hold and even without that, all my strength is gone.

My shoulders shake and ache, and I think my lungs are about to explode. I have seconds but slowed down underwater, it feels like hours.

And then I hear a voice unmuffled by the water. “I miss you, Gale. Follow me.”

My eyes close ever so slightly. Following Jayne sounds so much easier than this fight for what little spark of her remains in this world. But as my eyes close, my hand tightens around my necklace until the edges pierce my skin. It wakes me up just enough.

I twist away enough from the mermaid that I manage to get into a position to kick the side of her head. Whether it actually hurts her or just catches her off guard, her grip slackens. I pull away, kicking furiously for the surface. My lungs can’t bear it anymore, and I gasp though still beneath water. The salt water burns as it flows into my lungs instead of the air they need. I choke and gag, only succeeding in drinking up more water.

I see the sun reflecting off the ocean surface not far above my head, but the edges of my eyes darken. “You are mine,” the mermaid hisses after me.

And I think I will be. I have no idea what direction I’m headed other than up, and

I’m not certain I’ll make it that far. The shrinking and screaming of my lungs overwhelms me. I don’t know that I’m still moving.

I burst to the surface and right on the beach, apparently having gone more sideways than up. I collapse on my side in the sand, still half submerged. I gag and cough up water. I choke on each breath. I know I’m near enough to the water that the mermaid could still come and drag me back beneath the waves, but my body refuses to obey my command to move.

Someone grabs my shoulders, and I can’t gather enough strength to resist as I’m pulled away from the water. When they release me, I sprawl out on my back in the sand.

My grip on the necklace does not loosen. The edges stab my hand and for all I know breaks skin, but I let it.

“Are you crazy?” Izzy shrieks. “So there’s a killer mermaid, and you think it’ll be fun to jump back in the water so she can drown you? You know, slow deaths are not fun!”

I roll over to my side and curl up in a little ball. Salt water continues to spill from the side of the mouth. I can’t even imagine how much water I must have swallowed.

When every breath stops making me choke—and when Izzy stops yelling at me long enough to take a breath—I push myself up into a sitting position. I uncurl my fingers long enough to see that I really do have the necklace. “You went back in the water for a necklace?” Izzy deadpans.

“Yes,” I breathe.

I feel Izzy’s stare on me, though I refuse to meet her eyes. And when she still says nothing for another moment, I look up at her face. She just shakes her head at me.

“Why?” she asks in disbelief.

How do I even begin to sum that up? I try to read Izzy’s face before I respond.

Her cheeks are pink with worry, and she’s not quickly returning to her usual smirk. The wideness in her eyes doesn’t fade away. I feel like I owe her something. “It was a gift,” I say lamely.

Izzy raises her eyebrows. “It’s a cheap piece of junk. Whoever gave it to you would understand if you lost it.”

I avert my eyes from Izzy’s face and stare down at the necklace in my hand.

Where the edges of the tiny star pendant dug into my hand I see tiny indents in my skin.

At the points, little dots of blood slide out and stain my skin. “My sister, the person who

gave this to me, she died last week,” I say dully. I feel distant from the words. It feels like they can’t possibly be true. But they rattle around inside me to make themselves known.

Izzy hesitates, but I don’t look up at her. After a moment, she asks in a soft voice,

“How?”

Count on Izzy to ask the worst questions. I tighten my fingers around the necklace again, and the metal bites my skin sharper than before. At this point, there’s a good chance this necklace will be bloodstained by the time this conversation’s over. I swallow a couple more times before I’m even able to breathe. I feel the necklace, but my arms are numb. I whisper, “She killed herself.”

Izzy says nothing. She drops to the sand in front of me, and I feel her eyes urging me to look up at her, but I refuse. So she reaches out and pulls me into a hug. I’m too caught off guard to do anything but leave my arms hanging limply at my sides.

“That’s…awful,” she murmurs into my ear. “That’s not okay. That’s not fair.”

The words make my chest squeeze in a way that has nothing to do with oxygen deprivation. No, it’s not fair. It’s not fair because it means I have to watch myself because everyone else is watching me, waiting for me to break in the same way Jayne did. It’s not fair because my sister’s gone, and the only one I can be mad at for taking her from me is her. I don’t know for sure what Izzy means when she says it, but it doesn’t matter. At least she doesn’t ask me if I’m okay; she knows I’m not.

After a moment, Izzy pulls away from me and pushes herself to her feet. “Let’s go do something else that’s a little less wet,” she says, offering me her hand.

I accept the gesture, and Izzy pulls me to my feet. I shiver inside my soaked shirt.

I think it actually makes me colder, but the alternative is walking around the forest is nothing but my bra, so I deal. Izzy hands me my boots, which thankfully are not nearly as wet as my shirt, and I slip them on. Izzy leads me into the woods. I follow her without thinking, locking my arms against my chest in an effort to keep myself warm. I tread over rocks and roots. A few days ago, I watched my feet at all times in order to stay upright.

Now I feel like all my emotions have spilled out and left me empty. So my body understands it needs to move without my input. I climb without hesitation or thought.

Ahead of me, Izzy shakes her head. “I can’t believe my mind is so messed up to have created that kind of backstory for you,” she says suddenly.

My heart and chest and body moments ago felt washed out, but with those words,

I overfill again. My hands shake, and I have to stop moving because it feels like my legs are going to give up on me. “What are you talking about?”

Izzy stops short and glances back at me over her shoulder. “Am I not supposed to tell the dream that I’m in a dream? Is that, like, a no-no?”

“N—no,” I stutter. I gesture at myself. “I’m not the dream,” I say in a low voice.

Then I point at Izzy. “You’re the dream.”

Her eyes widen. “No,” she says slowly, drawing out the sound. “I’m real. You’re the dream.”

Neither of us speaks for a long time. I feel our shock shaking the very air around us. My lungs vacate their home in my chest. I don’t gasp for air; I don’t need to breathe. I just forget that I ever had lungs as I stare at Izzy, just trying to make sense of this. One of

us has to be wrong…or lying…or something. Izzy must be. I question whether maybe

I’m wrong, maybe I’m not real, for a heartbeat, but I shove the thought away before it has the chance to settle. “Are you at the Paracosm too right now?” I ask slowly.

Izzy furrows her brow. “That virtual reality thing? No. I’m in a medically induced coma. Do you think you are at the Paracosm right now?”

“I am,” I insist. It unsettles me that she thinks the Paracosm is virtual reality, just like I originally thought. “The Paracosm is a dream…world…thing. I’m dreaming right now. The Guide said that Peter and I made this world.”

Izzy scoffs, crossing her arms against her chest. “Well, we both know that’s not true. I made the forest long before you came here. You just added some features.” Then she frowns down at the ground, kicking the dirt with her boot. “I mean, it’s not like you’re the first visitors I’ve had here. Other people have come here with wristbands like yours, but they were all grownups and they were boring and none of them came back.

None of them changed the world like you did.”

She hesitates, biting her lip, before she says, “So maybe…this is the Paracosm.

Maybe I’m inside it too? Like…I was put in a coma using the same technology or something?”

And then she straightens suddenly, her skin suddenly ghostly pale, and takes a step toward me. The change in her expression’s so sudden that I want to step away, but I feel frozen in place. She reaches out and touches my face, barely allowing her skin to brush mine, like she’s scared it will burn her. “So…you’re really real?”

I barely dare to breathe. My chest rises and falls in silence. I feel far away. Maybe up in the clear blue sky above our heads. Maybe back in the Paracosm in Caesura. I wonder if I really am real. Or maybe I am nothing but a dream of Izzy’s. The way she stares at me makes me believe that it’s definitely a possibility. “I’m real,” I breathe, only half believing it.

Izzy pulls her hand back, as if she’s only just realized what she’s doing. “I don’t understand. Even if this a dream for both of us, how are we both here? Why would I be in the Paracosm with you?”

I shake my head. My thoughts slow down and the edges grow fuzzy and indistinct. I just…can’t process. What in reality is seconds drags out to hours in my mind.

My hands shake at my sides, and I ball them into fists to try to keep them steady. I fail at my goal. I don’t think my legs are stable beneath me. I’m not certain my legs are beneath me period. Neither of us try to say a word or move at all.

That is, until we hear the erupting laughter of pirates.

We hear the laughter coming from the water where we just met the mermaid. Izzy remains silent as she turns away and gestures for me to follow her. And so we run deeper into the woods.

Leaves

When I glance down at my wrist a few hours later and see my cool-down time’s up, I hesitate. I glance sideways at Izzy. The leaves around us brighten the world in shades of yellow and orange and red because, for some reason, this part of the island is in fall. Izzy gathers armfuls of the leaves into a pile. She ignores the mermaid that nearly drowned me, though my hair is still wet, forgets about the pirates we ran from to end up here, says not a word about our earlier conversation. She just builds her pile higher. A grin spreads across her face. She blows stray strands of hair out of her eyes, then smacks her hair back over her shoulder when it falls in her line of sight again.

I sit on the ground among the leaves with my back against a tree. I absentmindedly pick leaf after leaf off the ground and shred them in my fingers. They glow with bright colors like the sun, and I don’t know why I shred them. At home, leaves that fall from the trees don’t cover the ground. They scatter like forgotten trash and are quickly swept away. I’ve never known a floor to be made of them. I’ve never seen so many natural colors at once that weren’t perfectly manicured. I’ve never seen wild beauty. And yet, I shred the leaves because my hands need something to do.

I watch Izzy sprint toward the pile she’s built. She leaps off the ground and dives face first into the leaves, screaming as if someone pushed her. She lies among them for a few seconds, doing nothing but giggling, before getting back to her feet and pushing the pile together once more.

It’s as though now she doesn’t care whether or not she is a dream. The leaves distract her fully. Meanwhile, it’s the constant thought swirling through my head. It could just be another one of her stories, the fact that she says I’m her dream. Things in her head don’t take a logical progression from A to Z. She runs from pirates only to get distracted by fallen leaves. The pirates could practically be on top of her, and I’m willing to bet she would stop because a bird got her attention. But even though I shouldn’t listen to her, her words make me second-guess myself. Am I real? Is Izzy real? Or is Izzy saying she’s real just another part of the story that I’ve written?

It makes no reasonable sense, but not a lot of things in my world do. Not since

Jayne killed herself. My world spins off-kilter, and things keep happening that don’t…fit.

Maybe this is just one more thing. I can no longer reject ideas because they fail to fit the version of the world that I have in my head. I did that once. Jayne’s dead because of it.

I play with the device around my wrist rather than making a decision. Though my cool-down time’s up, I’m uncertain whether or not I should go. If I do, I must return to my façade. I don’t know how much longer I can keep up the lies that shield me now that

Jayne’s left my reality shattered.

I watch Izzy roll over in the leaves so that she stares up at the sky. I doubt she can see much blue between the bright leaves hanging over her head. I think maybe she sees something other than leaves and sky, like an animal or something since she remains still for so long, but either way, she says nothing for a while. She doesn’t even pull herself from the leaves to jump in again. After the near constant sound of leaves crunching beneath Izzy, the silence feels too silent. Like something ought to fill it but doesn’t. I hear

the crunch again when Izzy rolls over on her side to look at me. “You want to try?” she asks.

I shake my head. The leaves are too thin to really cushion your fall, I think, and I can’t even understand why Izzy isn’t groaning in pain every time she struggles to her feet. “Oh, come on!” Izzy begs. “It’s just about the most fun thing in the world!”

She pushes herself to her feet and comes over to where I sit under the tree. She grabs my hand and yanks me as hard as she can. My arm almost pops from my shoulder and considering I kind of want to remain in one piece, I exclaim, “Okay, okay! Just give me a second.”

Izzy releases my hand and lets my arm fall back to my side. I actually roll my shoulder back a few times to make sure she didn’t actually do me any damage. When I finally get to my feet, Izzy just grabs my hand again and pulls me along beside her. We stop several yards away from the pile of leaves. “And go!” she exclaims, pushing me forward.

I stumble forward a few steps but catch and stop myself before I go too far.

“Wait! I don’t even know what I’m doing,” I say.

When I glance back at Izzy, she rolls her eyes. “It’s not that hard. You just run and jump into the leaves. Just do it, scaredy cat!”

I turn back to the pile of leaves before me. I try to imagine what it’ll be like to jump into them, but all I picture is them flattening beneath my body weight so I crash to the uneven forest floor. The only way I can see this ending is pain.

100

But this time, I don’t need Izzy to push me from the edge. I don’t know why, but I sprint toward the leaves. I jump up from a few feet away and dive face first into the pile.

The leaves crunch around me. They fall against the back of my head and cover up my airways. They tickle my skin. And somehow, they are enough of a cushion that I do not smash against the ground.

I giggle a little, my face in the leaves so I doubt Izzy hears me. I think it might be the sensation of panic escaping my body now that it’s over. I push myself back up to my knees. Some of the leaves tickle my skin and others scratch, but I can’t keep my chest from shaking while I laugh and I don’t know if it’s because that was fun or because I am so happy it’s over.

My emotions are a mess. I’m used to them normally being all over the place, but I am also so used to all those feelings being nothing but sadness. I am not used to the mess of emotions I feel now that leave my heart shaking, my arms shaking, and laughter spilling from my lungs. “I told you!” Izzy calls to me.

I glance back at Izzy over my shoulder. My breathing evens out again and my laughter quiets, but the grin remains glued to my face. “Yeah, you did,” I agree.

I push myself to my feet. As I do, my eyes lock on the device around my wrist once more. I hesitate for a half-second, such a brief moment that I doubt Izzy notices. I feel the urge to rip the thing off my wrist and chuck it off into the trees so I never have to go back. What is there to go back to? Layers of depression? Being the person Jayne decided it wasn’t worth sticking around for? A world of people asking if I’m okay, and then not accepting the lie they want to hear?

101

But there are pirates here and killer mermaids and this girl who doesn’t think before she leaps. I wonder which reality is better and if either is reality at all.

My breath catches in my throat at the thought. And just like that, I know it’s time to go back. I hate my reality, but it’s more real than this, regardless of what exists here. “I have to go,” I whisper. But I whisper so softly I might as well just be mouthing the words.

Izzy’s eyebrows draw together, and she cocks her head to one side. If I say any more, I’m certain I will lose my strength. So I just punch in my code and allow this world—Izzy’s world—to flash away.

——

When I walk out of the Paracosm, I spot Peter sitting on the bench closest to the entrance.

I stop short, still a few feet away from him. He doesn’t look up, and I don’t think he notices me yet. It surprises me that as little as he knows about me, he somehow knew I’d be here. I know I could probably walk away so that he wouldn’t see me go, but I don’t. It sounds too exhausting. Even if I avoid him now, Peter will corner me into this conversation later. I might as well not expend energy trying to hide.

Peter’s head shoots up when I step in front of him. He pushes himself to his feet, and when he stands, there ends up only being about a foot of space separating us. “I had to lie for you this morning,” he says in a low voice.

My heart sinks at the words, not that they’re unexpected. It means my parents really did call Peter. I nod, looking at the ground rather than his eyes. “I kind of suspected when I saw you,” I say. “What’d you say?”

102

I see Peter’s arms move when he shrugs rather than his shoulders because I’m still not looking at his face. “I just said we were hanging out, that you needed some time away and that you’d call them later. Now this is where you tell me why you lied to your parents in order to go to the Paracosm.”

“I needed a break,” I say shortly. I push past Peter and start walking down the sidewalk. I move slowly enough that Peter can catch up without issue. I just can’t bear to stand still anymore; it makes it too easy for Peter to read my face.

“Okay,” Peter says slowly once he falls into step beside me. “But…are you okay?”

We melt into the crowd on the sidewalk as we walk away from the Paracosm’s green space. I’m thankful for a reason not to look at Peter. “Sure,” I mutter quickly, so quickly the sound almost gets swallowed in the surrounding noise.

The sun’s risen in the sky, though not as much as I expected. I guess I lost track of time between dream and reality. Shadows slant sideways across the street casting most of the road into darkness. With the way the buildings tower above us, it feels more like night than morning. I should be used to the way the streets look at this time of day, but after the sunlight brightening up the lawn of the Paracosm and the warm sun on the dream island, my expectations are skewed in a way I never could have anticipated.

“Really? Because you kind of look like the opposite of okay,” Peter says. I weave through the small spaces in the crowd better than he does, and he’s tripping over people in his effort to not be left behind. He reaches out and grabs my wrist to not lose me as I

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try to slip into another pocket. “Wait!” he exclaims. “Did you go back to the forest? Is that why you’re acting so weird? Did something happen there?”

My breath catches in my lungs. I forget how to make them expand and contract and the air already inside stays where it is. Before my eyes, I see Izzy’s shocked face, skin pale as ice, as she questions whether or not I’m real. I think I must freeze in the middle of the sidewalk because someone runs into me from behind and grumbles as they shift around me. Peter walks on several steps more before he realizes he’s pulling on my arm without me following. He looks back at me, then narrows his eyes at the expression on my face. “Something did happen,” he says in a low voice. “What’s going on, Gale?”

With a half-second to make the decision, I yank Peter down a tiny alley between two buildings. The alley ends in another building so that we’re closed in on three sides with nothing but a dead end to greet us. The crowd outside muffles our voices while the alley sort of gives us some privacy. Or as much privacy as you can get in Caesura. Peter opens his mouth, but I cut him off before he can say anything. “It’s Izzy,” I say quickly.

“She said something really weird.”

Peter leans against the building behind him. He shakes his head as he releases a slow breath. “I’m not sure we can take anything that girl says as true,” he says.

“She said we were her dream,” I say quickly before Peter can protest anymore.

When his eyes widen, I say it again, just to make sure he understands. “She said that we were her dream, not the other way around.”

And Peter just shrugs. “Well, she’s not exactly stable, if you haven’t noticed. It’s just another weird detail in a dream, so what?”

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My chest burns, and the heat rises to my cheeks. I can’t believe Peter just writes off Izzy’s words. So I explain them to him. I explain that she knows what the Paracosm is, but she doesn’t think she’s in it. She says she’s in a medically induced coma. But

Peter’s expression doesn’t change. Eventually, I just say, “I think our Guide might have lied to us. I don’t think we were the ones who created that world!”

Peter’s eyes narrow in an instant. “The Guide didn’t lie,” he says in a low voice, in a dangerous voice. It makes me press my back against the wall behind me. “The

Paracosm is a well-established and government-run program.”

My breathing quickens. I wrap my arms around myself rather than responding right away. I know Peter is the son of a governmental representative and will probably become one himself eventually. But his response still unnerves me. “Sorry,” I mutter quickly. “I’m just trying to make sense of this. I just want to figure out which idea makes the most sense.”

“So you think the one that makes the most sense is the one that accuses the government?” Peter snaps. “Especially when the person you choose to trust is unpredictable and nearly got you killed, or did you forget that?”

“Of course not,” I say, wrinkling my nose.

“So why trust her?”

“I don’t know!” I cry.

I want to sprint out into the crowd. I’ve seen this side of Peter before, in his conversations with Jayne. It made me want to shrink away until I was so small I couldn’t be seen. It confuses me, his whirlwind. One moment, he just wants to talk and the next,

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all my words are wrong. I squeeze my hands into fists, releasing a slow breath to try to stabilize my thoughts in something other than panic. I remind myself that Peter is the

Councilman’s son and will someday become a councilman himself; it’s only natural he defends the government. He’s been raised and trained for a position.

And that’s when an idea sparks in my head.

“I need you to humor me for an hour, okay?” I say quickly. “You don’t have to believe me, I just need your help. Do you have access to some sort of database on the people of Caesura?”

Peter leans back, the darkness in his expression lightening in his confusion.

“Yeah…?” he says slowly. “Why?”

I nod once. “Then we can settle whether or not Izzy is real. Once and for all.”

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Izzy

Giovanni Datton is not the most influential member of Caesura’s government— that would be Lilla Patel. Her sharp, penetrating gaze alone makes you want to look away and stay out of her sight. But Councilman Datton is still highly ranked on that list. He commands your attention and will argue any point that he disagrees with until you concede. Jayne told me about meeting him once and how he shut down almost anything she had to say, even on small issues. She stayed for dinner one night and couldn’t even talk about the seasoning of the vegetables without being challenged. I doubt she spent much time at Peter’s after that.

When you command that level of authority, you earn some perks. Even with Peter at my side, I feel like I’m trespassing when I cross the threshold into the lobby of one the nicest buildings on Hite Street. Men and women in uniform staff the lobby in navy blue blazers trimmed in red with hats to match. It catches me off guard; this place is much nicer than where I live. I think sometimes my building has a doorman if he’s not off smoking in the break room—which is just a nice way to refer to a tiny closet with a chair inside.

I half expect someone to stop me for trespassing. Eyes fall on me, but I remind myself the attention may be directed at Peter rather than me. So I just keep my chin high and walk straight toward the elevators, stepping on in front of Peter. As I turn around, I catch a glance of his face. Even though we walked forty-five minutes to get here, I see in

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Peter’s tightened jaw that the anger I sparked in him has yet to burn away. My shoulders collapse, and the wall of the elevator behind me keeps me upright.

The operator (yes, operator) stands at attention at the sight of Peter and kicks off the most cheerful small talk I’ve heard since meeting Monique at the Paracosm. I push myself up tighter against the wall, trying to avoid getting pulled into the conversation.

My chest aches in a way that has nothing to do with the near-drowning earlier today, and

I doubt I can get enough air to put together a full sentence. The pain weighs me down. I resist the impulse to wrap my arms around my shoulders. Instead, I urge myself to pull it together, to throw up the façade that hides this sort of pain. I start running through my

CBA audition routine to keep me distracted.

A bell dings as we hit the top floor of the building, and the elevator doors open to reveal the Datton penthouse. I step off the elevator behind Peter in silence. I hesitate stepping on the carpet, so plush and white, in my boots, but Peter doesn’t wait for me so I follow him.

Right in front of the elevator doors stands a flight of stairs that succeed at only throwing me off further. I cannot recall a time I’ve seen stairs in a person’s apartment.

Peter acts like it’s nothing. He just makes his way up them, taking them two at a time. I turn to follow him when my eyes land on something that makes me stop in my tracks.

One wall—the whole wall—of the Datton apartment is a window.

Now, where I live has windows. Not a wall of them, but plenty. But they let in air and glimpses of the street below and that’s it. These let in light. Living in a city of skyscrapers, light gets blocked out. There’s always a taller building, always someone on a

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higher floor. But the Datton family is the top. They soar above Caesura as though they live in the clouds rather than a building. Light pools on the floor so that the sun looks like it wants to burst through the carpet from below. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen anything like it. I can’t imagine how I would forget.

“You all right down there?”

I tilt my head up to see Peter hanging over the railing at the top of the stairs.

Despite the argument we’re currently in, I see the ghost of a smile on his face. “Sorry,” I mumble, turning toward the stairs again.

My hand trails along the wood railing as I step up the stairs and I stop short again.

“Is this real?” I ask. The barres at the Studio are worn down after years of hands and oils in the skin. But this, it feels drier. More like the natural grooves of the trunks of the trees in the dream world. “You have real wood here?”

Peter laughs despite himself. “I guess the forest is your dream then.”

I shake my head. “No, it’s Izzy’s forest, remember?”

Peter’s smile fades. “I guess we’re going to find out,” he deadpans.

Peter turns around and heads off toward his room. I swallow hard, suddenly a little shakier on my feet. I hurry up the stairs after him, holding onto the railing now not because it’s wood but to make sure I don’t fall.

I follow him into his room, which is twice as large as mine and I used to share.

Though he does not have the wall of windows, he does have a huge one that takes up at least a quarter of one wall’s space with one big pane, no bars against it to obstruct the light that spills through. Off to one side of the room is a bed that’s large enough for at

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least three people. I cannot imagine how someone would need that much room just to sleep. But what Peter heads for is a dark desk larger than my family’s dining table beneath his window. He slides a computer thinner than a notebook from his desk drawer.

“We’re going to need a name to search for,” he says, flipping up the screen and loading the database.

“We have a name,” I say, frowning. “Izzy.”

Peter shakes his head, turning away from the computer. He leans against his desk so he looks like he sits on its edge. “Izzy’s probably a nickname. Your name isn’t ‘Gale,’ right? I’d have to look you up as ‘Abigale.’ How many people do you know who have the first name ‘Izzy’?”

“Just try it,” I reply just so that I don’t have to admit he’s probably right.

Meanwhile, I start coming up with a list of names Izzy could be short for.

He types in the name, and it comes up blank. Peter stares at me evenly, and I ignore the way his eyes bore into me. “Try Elizabeth,” I say, making a point of looking at the screen rather than at Peter’s face. “When I was six, there was a fifteen-year-old dancer named Elizabeth that went by Izzy.”

“Could you come up with a more common name?” he says. His search returns several thousand entries, as if to punctuate his point, and he gestures at the screen, raising his eyebrows. “Is this really worth it?”

I step around Peter to sit down in the desk chair in front of the laptop. “I have time,” I say evenly.

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When I look up, I can just see Peter’s reflection in the window. He frowns at me.

“Fine,” he says after a moment, throwing his hands up. “If you want to spend your time going through thousands of pictures because it’ll make you feel better, then by all means, don’t let me stop you. Just realize you’re probably going to be disappointed.”

“That’s fine,” I mutter, turning my eyes back to the computer. “Wouldn’t be for the first time.”

——

It takes almost two hours to scan pictures of people named “Elizabeth.” I adjust the filters to limit the list as much as I can, but I still stare at the screen for so long that faces start to blur together. So then I switch to “Isabelle.” Still thousands of entries return, but fewer than with Elizabeth and with my filters, I manage to knock the number down into the hundreds. I put my arm down on the table and lay my head on the crook of my elbow as I scroll through.

“Hey, Gale?” Peter says. I jump at the sound of his voice. He’s been drifting in and out of the room, and I hadn’t heard him enter again. “Do you need anything?”

“I’m fine,” I say even though I’m at the point that my eyes are so tired that pictures blur into color as if my eyes are coated with a thin film of tears.

“Do you want me to look for a while?”

That catches me off guard. I stop scrolling though I don’t turn away from the screen. “You want to help?” I ask in disbelief.

“Well…yeah. I mean, I think it’s pointless. But it’s also pointless trying to stop you so I might as well make this easier, right?” he says.

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I lift my head from my arm and turn to look at him over my shoulder. It takes my eyes a moment to adjust after hours of staring at illumination. “That’d actually be really great,” I admit.

Peter offers me a small, slanted smile. It makes my chest ache all over again. I hate that I can never tell whether he actually cares to help because he’s kind or because I look broken because of Jayne. But I remove myself from the chair anyway, and Peter slides into the seat. My eyes have seen so many faces that they’re numb to recognition. If

I found Izzy, my eyes would probably just slide right over her picture.

I still lean over Peter’s shoulder as he scrolls through. Because he hasn’t been staring at a computer screen for two hours, he scans the pictures and moves on before

I’ve really begun to register the features on someone’s face. But then he stops. He mutters something under his breath I can’t make out, but I assume it’s a swear word.

Because I see what he does.

Izzy. Or rather, Isabelle Pan.

“I don’t…get it,” Peter says haltingly. “This doesn’t make sense.”

I see the picture myself and for some reason, even I agree that this seems beyond reason. It’s like a character from a storybook burst to life right in front of me. Like when you see the actor that plays your favorite character out acting like the normal person they are in public.

Since Peter’s frozen in his seat, I reach over his shoulder and click on the record.

Her picture flashes up larger on the screen, and it’s only more undeniably her. Dark hair, bright but narrowed eyes that make her look like she’s constantly up to something. My

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eyes shift over to the right side of the page to read through her bio. Her birthdate lands her a couple years older than me, which surprises me. I thought for sure she was younger.

And right under that is her date of death.

“She’s dead?” I breathe. I can’t get any voice behind the words, but they still claw at my throat.

I stare at the date, but that only makes it more surreal. Isabelle Pan died four years ago at the age of fourteen. I was twelve at the time. In her picture, she looks exactly the same as she did wandering through our dream. “I guess you were right,” I say robotically.

She can’t be real if she’s dead.

I pull away from Peter, walking to the other side of the room. Not so much to get away from him. My head just needs physical room to think. “It’s still odd though,” Peter says suddenly, and I turn around to see him still staring at the screen. “I’ve recognized everyone we met in the dream so far except for Izzy, but none of them were themselves.

They were pirates with different personalities. But Izzy…introduced herself as herself.”

He glances back at me over his shoulder now, eyebrows drawn together. “If one of us knew her that might mean nothing. Our dream could know her name if we did. But the only way we could’ve seen her outside of the dream would have been in passing. We shouldn’t know her name then.”

I stare at Peter until I stop seeing him. My hands shake at my sides, and I cross my arms to hide it. “Are you saying you believe me?” I say after a while.

Peter shakes his head, looking back at the screen. “I’m saying I don’t know what I believe.”

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To be honest, neither do I. Seeing Izzy’s face on that screen does not make her real. It means she once was, but all I might be seeing is a dream of her. But her insistence of her existence seems too genuine to ignore. And now that even Peter’s questioning things, it makes me hope that I’m right. But I haven’t decided what I’m right about. At least the fact that there’s something more going on here. I guess that maybe I believe that

Izzy is in a dream as we are there, but the date of death in the database makes me question that.

I spin away as my eyes widen in realization; I don’t want Peter to see my sudden shocked expression. Because I think, what if we’re not dreaming at all? What if we’re in the Afterlife?

I could see Jayne again.

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Tiger Lily

I hide my thoughts on the Paracosm actually sending people to the Afterlife from

Peter, who’s shaken as it is. Disturbing his reality anymore I assume will result in another argument, one where he pulls my ticket to the Paracosm. Besides, I already know he’s going to tell me no. How can his father or his friends exist there then? They aren’t dead.

But I refuse to shake the feeling I have about Jayne and Izzy.

Even so, he begs that if I go to the Paracosm in the future, he come with me. If I had an alternative, I would reject Peter’s request without hesitation. Unfortunately, even if I sold everything my family owned, I couldn’t afford access to the Paracosm, so I’m stuck accepting Peter’s rules. I must go back. If there is even a fraction of a chance to see

Jayne again, I must go back. That’s why I call Peter less than twenty-four hours later to get him to meet me outside the Paracosm.

As I stop in front of where he sits on a bench, he tilts his head up to me, shading his eyes from the sun with his hand. “What’s with the urgency?” he asks.

My heart shakes at the thought of seeing Jayne again, but I don’t say that. Peter will question my sanity and my well-being. So I say, “It’s not like we’re going to get any answers outside of the Paracosm.”

Peter shrugs, pushing himself to his feet. I guess that counts as agreement. After we walk inside and check in with the receptionist, we take a seat in the atrium and wait for a Guide since, again, we don’t have appointment. When Peter asks, I catch him up on

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what the dream was like last time I went under, about how the forest apparently has several seasons going on at once and giving only brief details on the mermaid attack.

What I don’t tell him about is the shadow Izzy claims I left behind. If luck’s with us, the thing will be gone now and Izzy will have forgotten all about it. The notion of it frightens me in a way I don’t understand, and a part of me hopes it’s just a story Izzy made up.

When the Guide comes by to get us, I see it’s the grinning-so-wide-it-must-hurt

Monique. “Another visit so soon?” she says cheerfully when she reaches us.

“My mother comes here far more often than this,” Peter replies with a smile. I attempt to coax one onto my face as well so as to piggy-back on the small talk, but it feels too shallow to mean anything. I pretend the fake smile’s good enough, and no one comments to say otherwise.

We follow Monique to Deployment, me blocking out her and Peter’s polite conversation that I’m not quite so good at faking. I instead pay attention to the security of the facility. Not that it’s any different from any other time, but this time I watch it with suspicion instead of blind acceptance.

I lay down in the capsule as Monique instructs without a word. I hear Peter and

Monique still talking, but it sounds far away. Like I’m already in a dream, and I’ve left them behind in the real world.

“What if you have?” Jayne whispers in my ear.

I wince and jerk ever so slightly. Thankfully, Monique misses it, too distracted laughing at something Peter’s said. Jayne’s voice leaves me dazed and shaking. After a moment, I realize it’s the first time I’ve heard her voice outside of the dream world since

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she died. I clutch at the necklace sitting icily on my chest and begin wondering if maybe I should have left it at the bottom of that possibly imaginary sea. I haven’t, I think to myself, or maybe to Jayne. I’m alive. I’m real.

“But you don’t want to be,” she says.

Before I can respond, blackness presses down on me like a blanket. I suffocate and try thrashing out against the darkness before I realize I’m just going under, entering a dream in the Paracosm. I force my body to relax, though I’ve left air behind, and wait for a new world to materialize around me.

Never before has entering the dream made me feel like I was being crushed.

Leaving the dream has always felt like a vacuum, while entering felt like flying. I don’t understand the change, and I hear my heart racing in my ears as I lose my fight against panic.

The dream world snaps into place before my eyes, and the pressure around me vanishes in an instant. Dense trees grow around me on all sides, and while I don’t recognize the part of the forest I’m in, that’s the least of my worries.

I gasp in air as soon as I’m able to breathe again. I struggled against the heaviness for so long that the sudden lightness has me crashing to my knees on the forest floor. I fall forward on my hands when even my knees can’t support me alone. I choke on oxygen until I remember how to breathe again, balling my hands into fists and tearing stands of grass from the ground. I want to curl up in the dirt in order to hold my chest together. The not-understanding has me shaking. Why did it feel so terrible to go under

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this time? The only answer I have is Jayne’s words echoing in my head: “You don’t want to be.” Be what? Real? Alive?

A hand settles on my back, and I jerk. “You okay?” Peter asks, just as my eyes land on his face and I realize it’s him.

“Not exactly,” I gasp. No point in lying. It takes me a few more heavy breaths before I gather the strength I need to push myself back to my feet and even then I’m still shaking. “Did going under feel different this time to you?”

Peter shakes his head slowly, his eyes narrowed in suspicion. “No. Did it feel different to you?”

I take a deep breath as slowly as I can just to give myself the extra time to gather my thoughts. “It’s fine,” I lie after a moment. “I’m probably just exaggerating.” To avoid meeting Peter’s eyes, I make myself busy glancing around at the dense-growing trees surrounding us. “Do you see Izzy around?”

“She’d make herself known if she was, I’d expect,” Peter says.

I consider calling out to her, just to be sure, but the trees grow so closely together that I cannot tell how far we are from the seashore. I don’t want to risk being heard by the pirates. “I guess we should probably just start moving,” I say. “Excitement tends to end up where we go, and Izzy shows up where there’s excitement.”

Peter smirks in response, and I take that as acceptance of my plan. I choose a direction to start walking more-or-less without reason. But just as I take a step, a shriek pierces the air. It reverberates off the trees like we exist in a game of pinball. I freeze

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mid-step, and for more than a moment, I’m too shocked to move. My blood freezes it runs so cold. And I know, I know, without a doubt, the scream belongs to Izzy.

I spin and bolt off in the direction of Izzy’s scream. I hear Peter call after me, but his footsteps follow his voice, and I see no reason to stop for his sake. I weave through the trees as best I can. I glance down at the ground so I don’t trip over roots, then up again to make sure I don’t run into a tree trunk. It slows me down. I hear my heart accelerating, giving me all the adrenaline to run faster and faster, but I can’t. My shoulders hit the uneven trunks where I misjudge angles. I stumble over roots hidden beneath dirt and brush. My arms wheel in circles more than once just to keep me upright.

But I keep going. She screams again, and this time, I can’t help shouting, “Izzy!”

Anger and panic burn more brightly than the desolation that is my normal. I want to shriek until my desperation has her sprinting to me. But whatever danger she’s in could make that impossible. That thought only lodges my racing heart in my throat. I no longer hear Peter’s footsteps behind me, but I don’t know if that’s because I can’t hear it with my blood rushing in my ears or because he’s no longer behind me. I don’t take the second it requires to check back behind me. I just burst through brush and into a clearing.

And I skid to a stop at the sight of the people who fill the clearing.

The people who are very clearly not pirates stare at me and I stare at them for a beat. The group is the largest I’ve seen in this place, about fifteen in all, and they span all ages, from a couple young children not tall enough to reach my waist to men and women with graying hair, and the bizarreness of the diverse group freezes me in place.

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Their clothes look more like a costume I would wear at a dance recital. They wear vibrant aqua garments in all styles against their tan skin. Some wear enough clothing to cover most of the skin on their bodies, while some wear barely enough to cover anything at all. All I can think is why would such a thin, bright fabric be of any use in the woods?

But then they start moving, and any chance I might have had against them vanishes.

A group of them descend on me before I even have the chance to react. One of them yanks my hands behind my back as a couple force me to my knees. I cannot process the bodies surrounding me enough to know how many there are, much less fight back.

I start to scream, but I’m gagged with a piece of black cloth before I can get more than the smallest noise out. I still struggle for oxygen after sprinting here, and with the cloth over my mouth, my adrenaline crashes, and I try to gather oxygen into my starving lungs. I want to shove these people off with my shoulders, move as much as possible to make myself harder to deal with, anything that could give more time for Peter to catch up.

But my head spins and though in the back of my mind I know the right reaction, I can’t quite get my body to obey. I stay still as the edges of my eyes darken. I struggle to remember why I’m here. My brain sluggishly catches up, and I remember Izzy’s shriek.

My eyes widen, and I glance around the clearing as much as I can with so many people surrounding me. And sure enough, just a little to my left, a couple of people hold Izzy back. She strains against them, and her wide eyes meet mine. Only then do I realize she’s not just trying to get away; she’s trying to reach me.

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Beyond our struggle, there is no noise. No one speaks at all as they hold Izzy and me apart. They pull me to my feet, and I can just barely hold my own weight. Endurance only does so much for you when your adrenaline hits a wall like that. But I hold my head even and focus not on struggling but on trying to understand.

A man steps forward from the crowd. Well…not quite a man. He can’t be older than Peter, and I’m almost certain he’s younger than me as well. His skin is a deep rich tan that I’m not sure is natural. I imagine he lives in the sunlight, unlike the people of

Caesura. Buildings block too much of the sunlight for us to get anywhere near that tan.

He wears blue shorts cropped just above the knee and a sheer gray t-shirt. He stares me down, meeting my eyes without fear. I meet them unblinking. After a moment of just staring, the frown on his face deepens. “You’re not of this world,” he growls.

A retort sparks on my tongue but dies there with the gag preventing speech. The man doesn’t look away from me as he says, “We must take both to my mother.”

My eyes widen and flash to Izzy. She makes a point of meeting mine, and I realize she understands this about as much as I do. And though she’s not filled with terror as a rule, her furrowed brow shows more concern than she held facing the pirates.

I know Peter is slow, but we need him now. How lost can he be?

——

They force us forward, and I think we walk in circles. Though the trees all look different, there are too many for me to make them individual landmarks in case I escape. When I glance Izzy’s way, however, I notice the way she calmly observes the path we take. If these are her woods, I guess I should trust she knows them. After all, these strangers

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seem to know them well, and they probably popped into existence minutes ago when

Peter and I dropped into the dream.

Peter doesn’t burst from the trees like I hoped he would, and I give up hoping.

Even if he did appear, he’d end up just as captive as Izzy and I and that would help nothing.

Those holding me captive keep a tight grip on my arms and I can feel them bruising beneath my captors’ touch. Being a female dancer, I’m used to being thought of as “weak,” even though being a dancer means I’m anything but. But these people act like

I could escape their hold and cause mass destruction if I wanted to. I wonder why I’m a threat, why they say I’m not of this world. While it’s true, I wonder what these people mean by the sentiment. And whether that’s the reason Izzy’s captive as well. If that’s the case, I guess it confirms that she’s as much a dreamer in this world as I am.

My mind tells my body to panic, but it doesn’t obey. The rushing heart that’s become my normal beats steadily with a rhythm I forgot was supposed to be normal. It feels too slow. I can’t understand why I don’t feel afraid. Waking up to the memory I no longer share a room with Jayne sends the room spinning. Meeting my own eyes in the mirror slants the room. Speaking to anyone makes me all too aware of every word out of my mouth. But now, as a captive of strangers in a world that doesn’t exist but could kill me as easily as anything, my breathing’s even. The world holds steady. And Jayne keeps her whispers from my ear. Everything about this should worry me more and more and more until the world spins sideways and I can’t keep upright. But it doesn’t.

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They lead us down a hill to where the forest meets the shore. Structures have sprung up there, structures more stable than tents. The strong gray buildings built from steel could not have just sprung up if this wasn’t a dream. They’re small, like tents, but far sturdier and look out of place on the unstable sand.

More of their people mill around their camp, though most stay close to the small fire burning at its center, even though it’s only late afternoon. They look up as we approach. Most glare at us, and one older man spits at the sand at our feet. I recoil instinctually, but the captors force us forward and to our knees in front of the fire.

I glance sideways at Izzy, but she stares steadily ahead across the flames. I turn back to the fire, too distracted by the dancing flames to see who sits across from us for a moment. Heat rolls off of the fire and toward us, and I want to pull away. If the warmth is so strong only this close to the fire, I can only imagine the heat of its touch. I’ve never seen fire like this. Never open, wild, free, or even real. But this is real. The flames flicker and pounce and dance around each other, and I struggle to understand how it’s gas and liquid and solid all at once.

However, my attention snaps away when I hear the young man who captured us say, “Mother, we’ve discovered two of the Other-worlders in this Neverland.”

When I look past the fire to see what sits just beyond, I meet a pair of eyes staring hard at me. I wince, too caught off guard to meet their challenge. The woman across from me sits on a gray box, legs stretched out in front of her, as if she could jump to her feet in a second. Dark hair cut to a blunt edge just brushing her chin frames her face. She’s all sharp edges and anger, and I know at once this is a woman not to cross. I make a point

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not to move at all. Instead, I watch her as she watches me. “Do either of them wear the wristband?” she asks, her voice ringing higher in pitch than I expect.

“The one,” her son replies.

Someone comes up behind me and grabs my exit wristband. It’s only then I realize her meaning. My eyes widen, but I can’t react quick enough to stop them from yanking it off. Now my heart accelerates up to the more panicked pace I’d expect. The young man crosses over and hands my wristband to his mother. My shoulders shake as she twirls it around her fingers. When her eyes pull away from it, she looks back at me.

“Then I wonder if the other is her creation,” she says slowly. She nods at us. “Un-gag them; I want an explanation.”

I wonder if I should scream, wonder whether that might get Peter to come save us, or just result in our deaths. But right now, this woman has my only chance of waking up;

I have to play nice if I don’t want to die here. So when I’m un-gagged, I say nothing. I just continue to meet the woman’s eyes.

On the other hand, Izzy still doesn’t have an “off” switch. “I’m no one’s creation!” she snaps as soon as her gag’s removed. “I’m not some stupid imaginary friend like you. I existed here before Gale.”

The woman’s eyes slide to Izzy, and I see the corners of her mouth edge upward in something just short of a smirk. “Then where’s your wristband?” she asks.

Izzy’s eyes narrow. “I don’t need one. I like this dream too much to return to reality.”

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The woman actually smirks now. “Because this…’Gale’ made you to be? Like you assume she made me?”

“But I didn’t,” I say so softly that I doubt I’m heard, and I’m surprised when the woman’s eyes return to me.

“How do you know that?” she asks.

I open my mouth to speak, but no words come out. I clear my throat and try again.

“You can’t imagine people who don’t exist in a dream; you can’t just make up faces. But

I don’t recognize you, which means I didn’t create you.”

I suppose there’s the possibility that Peter knows her, like he knew the pirates before, but I don’t mention it. I don’t want to mention him at all. He might be our one chance of getting out of this.

Either way, my words make the woman nod slowly. I can’t read her face. With the momentary silence, Izzy cuts in, “Gale didn’t make me anything. I was here before she ever was. These woods belong to me.”

Her son steps forward, his face darkening despite the fire setting it alight. “You created these woods?” he demands.

“Well, yeah,” Izzy says, rolling her eyes. “I thought this was my dream until Gale showed up and said she thought it was hers. Now you guys are all here, and I’m getting a little bit annoyed with all the crowding since the stupid ocean Gale created made my endless forest not so endless. So how are you in my woods if Gale didn’t bring you here?”

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“Because these are not your woods,” the woman says, her tone suddenly colder than before. I shiver. “These woods belong to me and my people. This world is not your dream. It is reality.”

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Shadows

I must be dead. Izzy’s not talking and flames dance before my eyes and I can feel the sun and Jayne killed herself. None of the world makes sense enough for me to still be alive. A woman I don’t know stares at me and waits for my response. I don’t know what world I talk about when I say, “This can’t be real.”

“You have a very narrow view of the world,” the woman snaps, and I wince.

“Reality is more than you understand it to be. And regardless of your understanding, you do believe in this world. Otherwise you would not have been able to change it so drastically. The Neverlands allow so few to affect them.”

“So…this isn’t the only Neverland?” Izzy asks. “There’s more than one?”

“Few things are unique in the universe,” she says. “My people—the Dimension

Jumpers—we travel to these Neverlands through dimensional walls. These worlds, these pocket dimensions, are our homes. We migrate through these magical worlds to be their protectors. This is not the first one we’ve found disrupted by Other-worlders.”

“Is that why you captured us?” I ask, the evenness in my voice surprising me. I thought for sure I was a shattered mess, nothing but sand to be thrown into the ocean.

“Because we disturbed the Neverland?”

The woman doesn’t answer my question. She opens her mouth like she’s about to, but no sound comes out. She stares at me for a long time, tilting her head to one side as if

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overwhelmed with curiosity. Her eyes flash to Izzy and search her face the same way.

After a moment, the young man says, “Mother?”

“I can’t tell which of them created this world,” she whispers. “I’ve always been able to know. I thought it must be the one with the wristband, her power is so obvious, but the other’s just as powerful.”

“What part of ‘I made the woods’ do you not understand?” Izzy exclaims. I shoot a glance her way when I realize I’m not close enough to nudge her with my shoulder, but she ignores the look. “Gale changed everything, but I made the woods first.”

The boy places a reassuring hand on his mother’s shoulder. “It doesn’t matter.

Either way, they both need to die.”

“What?” Izzy shouts.

Numbness hits me with as much force as a punch, and I’m left without words. I feel trapped inside my own head, like this couldn’t possibly be happening. Yesterday, I thought the Paracosm might be sending us to the Afterlife…or whatever it was that existed after life ended. It made more sense to me than this place being real. It seems more logical than…interdimensional travel. A giggle rises in my chest at how ridiculous that sounds, which only goes to show how far gone I’m getting.

“We are not killing them, Liam,” the woman says firmly.

She pushes herself to her feet, and Liam’s hand falls from her shoulder. She doesn’t look at him as she stands, preferring to keep her eyes on us. Her gaze has me melting and sends the world further askew. My lungs frantically try to gather air, but

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nothing satisfies them and my breathing turns into hyperventilating. Walking here, my heart kept a normal rhythm, so I don’t know why I panic now.

“Why do you want to kill us?” I gasp. “Because we disturbed this world?”

“There will be no killing; it will help nothing,” the woman says as she steps around the fire to stand right beside me. She leans down until her eyes are level with mine, no more than a few inches away. “You don’t bind this world, but it obeys you as much as it obeys the one who binds it. Why?”

I meet her gaze, even though I think I’m shaking. I don’t feel it anymore. “I don’t have answers to simple questions,” I reply. I don’t know why Jayne killed herself. I don’t know why Peter’s trying to make me feel better. I don’t know how to hide how terribly my heart’s breaking. I don’t even know that Caesura’s the real world anymore. And I certainly don’t know what she means when she says that I don’t bind this world. “Trust me when I say I don’t have the answers to the complicated ones.”

She narrows her eyes and pulls away. After a second of analyzing me, as if the answers are written on my skin, she turns to look at Izzy. “And you, the one who binds this world, how are you ill?”

I look at Izzy out of the corner of my eye, and my heart skips a beat when I see how she pales. “What?” she asks. I think she’s trying to pretend she doesn’t understand, but for the first time since I met her, her voice comes out thin and unconvincing.

“All those who bind the Neverlands to themselves are sick in some way,” the woman explains, unrelenting. “So how are you?”

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Izzy furrows her brow and glances down at the ground rather than meeting anyone’s eyes. But then her head shoots back up and she snaps, “You want to know how

I’m sick? Are you kidding? I have a brain tumor. There’s a brain tumor in my head, slowly infecting the rest of my body but first my brain, changing my personality and literally affecting the way I process the world. I was put in a medically induced coma to allow me to live just a little bit longer. So yeah, I’m sick. Thanks for bringing it up.”

What? I struggle to understand what Izzy means, though it’s clearly right there in front of me. I don’t fully understand why it’s of any significance now. But it feels significant. All I can do is stare at Izzy. For some reason, I feel like I’m trying to look for the tumor hiding in her head. But she’s too coordinated. Her hair’s still on her head and long, not like it’s fallen out at any point from chemotherapy. She looks altogether normal.

I wonder if her words are a lie for a moment, but I see the intensity with which Izzy stares out at everyone and know she’s just daring someone to protest. She looks ready for a fight, even with both hands tied behind her back.

“None of this matters!” Liam shouts, stepping forward. The firelight illuminates his face in a way that casts shadows over his eyes even though the sun has yet to set. It makes him look angrier and more frightening than he sounds. “If they die, it’ll unbind the Neverland!”

“You can follow me,” Jayne whispers in my ear at Liam’s comment. For the first time, it sounds less than frightening. The sound of her voice slows my heartbeat.

I crumble. I want to, I want to follow her. It sounds so easy. The weight that falls on my back waking up in the morning would no longer keep me from straightening when

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I dance and that lightness would push me up to my toes in my pointe shoes as if I were light as air.

The muscles in my arms tighten. No, I tell myself. I cannot die here. I have been fighting to hold on for too long to die here just because it’s easier.

“We don’t know that it will unbind the Neverland!” the woman protests, turning to her son. “The child can just sever the bond.”

“What bond?” Izzy blurts suddenly.

The woman looks back at Izzy, eyebrows drawn together in concern. “The bond that ties you to this Neverland, of course,” she says, as though it should be obvious to us.

“That won’t unbind her from the Neverland, and you know it!” Liam snaps, carrying on with his conversation despite the interruption. “She’ll still be bound to this world, just not the one she came from. As long as they can dream, they’re dangerous!”

It dawns on me that even if this world is real, my dreams still manipulate it. These people fear that in me; my imagination. And as much as it sounds like a child’s fantasy, it sounds like my ability to dream could be our only way out of this. But what can I dream here? I don’t understand how Peter and I created the sea and the pirates and the mermaids. What can I do with this? Can I even do this alone?

I look at Izzy out of the corner of my eye. She grits her teeth, twitching as she stares Liam down. But when she feels my eyes on her, she glances my way. “Dream,” I breathe.

Izzy’s frown deepens. “This is real,” she replies. “I really think they could kill us.”

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I grit my teeth behind closed lips. She doesn’t understand, and if she doesn’t, we’ll die here. I can’t die here. “Yeah,” I breathe. “But we have to dream right now.”

Izzy presses her lips together and nods once. I pray they didn’t hear me, though

Izzy’s voice was certainly loud enough for them to hear. We have to dream of something better or we die. And if they can manage to stop us from dreaming…we’re dead. But all I can think about is Jayne. I hear her voice echoing in my head. I pull my mind from the thought and try to imagine the pirates sailing to this beach, jumping from their boat and into shallower parts of the sea in an effort to reach their battle as quickly as possible.

“If you don’t follow me, I can always come to you,” I hear Jayne say.

Then just do it and help me! I think. If you’re really here then save my life. Even though I couldn’t save yours.

I turn my eyes up as I realize I’m once again distracted. I try to wake myself up from those thoughts, but then I meet the eyes of Liam’s mother. Or rather, I see her widened eyes looking beyond us at something in the distance. “Liam, what have you done?” she says in a low voice.

I twist around, and when I’m not stopped by a hand on my shoulder, I know something’s wrong. Standing just inside the tree line is a gray figure. The camp’s not far from the tree line, but even from where we are, I can’t make out any facial features. Or any features. It looks like…a color in the shape of a person. A shadow.

My shadow?

I assume this is the thing Izzy meant when she said I left a shadow here. It doesn’t look like anything more than a figure. I don’t understand what it is, or how Izzy knows

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it’s mine. But when it steps forward, someone shrieks. Its head turns, not to look at whoever screamed somewhere behind me, but to stare, as far as I can tell, at me. “I’m really here,” Jayne breathes into my ear.

My eyes widen. Jayne?

I stare at the figure, unable to move an inch. How…how could this thing be my sister? “Gale…?” Izzy says, her voice increasing in volume.

A rough hand on my shoulder turns me so I face Liam’s mother. “You must send that creature away,” she says in a low, shaking voice. The shaking throws me off. For the woman that’s all sharp angles, the vulnerability strikes me.

“I…” I look back at the shadow. I shake my head. “I don’t think she’ll listen to me. She kind of does what she wants.” Though she did come here when I asked, I remind myself.

The shadow—possibly Jayne—walks steadily closer. The screaming increases. I see the people near us backing away, and Izzy glances at me every few seconds. “Gale,” she whines, “I don’t like this.”

“It’s okay,” I whisper. Jayne couldn’t hurt me.

But she did. When she killed herself, she hurt me.

I glance back at the shadow getting closer and closer with each step. As people scream and some start scattering, it moves with the same even steps without a hint of hesitation, like it’s above the world or outside it. And I think the shadow’s still staring at me. I chew on my lip as my heart presses against my chest. I don’t know if it pushes me toward the figure or urges me to run from it.

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“On second thought,” I say slowly, “we should probably get out of here.” I don’t know what unsettles me more: the focus the shadow has on me or everyone around us running away. But either way, I’m shivering. “Stand up slowly, back to back, and we can untie each other.”

With everyone backing away from the shadow, no one stops Izzy and me from getting to our feet and doing as I said. It’s a challenge to loosen the knots without being able to see them. My fingers brush against the knot binding Izzy, unable to loosen them even slightly. The rope just burns my fingers. I glance up again at the shadow, and the fear that overwhelms me staring at its featureless face braces me somehow. I manage to get a grip on the knot and pull the rope, and our bindings fall at just about the same time.

Izzy takes a few quick steps away but stops when she realizes I’m not following. I still stare at the shadow that’s now reaching the edge of the camp. At the edges of my vision, I see people scattering in every direction. “Gale!” Izzy shouts.

In all honesty, I’m shocked she hesitates. But I can’t pull my eyes away from the shadow. What if it is Jayne? What if the Dimension Jumpers are wrong and this place really is the Afterlife and this is what’s left of my sister? “Jayne,” I bark before I can second-guess myself.

The shadow freezes in mid-stride. My breath catches in my throat. “Is that you?” I ask, my voice cracking.

“Gale!” Izzy cries again, and I glance at her. Her dark eyes are wide. Her long hair sticks out in weird directions. And she slowly shakes her head ‘no.’

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I glance back at the shadow, which has started moving forward once again. If this really is Jayne, she must have come to protect me. Right? But I look back at Izzy who’s shaking her head more fervently now. She’s seen the shadow before and it scares her.

And she knows this Neverland; she’s lived here much longer. Meanwhile…Jayne abandoned me.

When it comes down to it, I really do trust Izzy more.

I sprint after Izzy, and she turns and sprints again as well. We dash into the trees, and I glance back only once. The shadow’s stopped moving, and though it doesn’t have eyes, I feel it watching me go. For once, I don’t hear Jayne’s voice in my head. Yet, I can’t stop myself from thinking, I’m so sorry I keep abandoning you.

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Flight

We sprint until I can’t see straight. For once, Izzy’s not laughing. She glances back every so often, but I’m not sure whether it’s because she’s making sure I’m still following or making sure the shadow isn’t. But the wideness in her eyes doesn’t fade away no matter how far we run.

My eyes burn and tears I can’t hold back spill down my cheeks. My emotions are too muddled to make out one from another. It’s easier to just run until it hurts, to become nothing but that pain.

I only stop when Izzy trips over a root and collapses in the leaves. I slow up and throw my arms out in front of me to stop myself against a tree. “Are you okay?” I gasp. I want to drop down beside her and help her back to her feet, but I’m afraid I won’t be able to get back up again if I do that. So I just keep upright, bracing myself with one hand against the tree trunk.

“Your imagination sucks,” she groans into the dirt. It takes her a moment to push herself upright, and even then she stays on the ground. “Why’d you bring the Shadow there?”

I shake my head. “Didn’t mean to,” I say. I gasp for more air so I can explain. “I just kept thinking about Jayne and the Shadow showed up.”

“Your sister?” Izzy pushes her hair back from her face. “Your dead sister’s the

Shadow?”

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I realize I’m scanning the area between the trees for the figure. I close my eyes tight to stop myself and reopen them directed at Izzy. “I don’t know,” I whisper. I’m not sure how to finish the thought for a moment, so I just stand there shaking my head. “It just seems like…like I know it.”

With the adrenaline dying down, everything inside of me melts and all I want to do is collapse on the ground beside Izzy. But I can’t. Because Jayne broke under the pressure, it’s my job to be the sister that stays standing, even if she’s not here. I offer my hand to Izzy. “C’mon, let’s find Peter.”

Izzy accepts my hand, and I pull her to her feet. But she doesn’t let go right away.

In fact, her fingers tighten around mine. When I look up at her face, I see her eyes fixed on my wrist. I furrow my brow. “What’s wrong?”

“Your wristband,” she says, her voice cracking, “they still have it.”

My stomach drops. I look down at my wrists like I don’t already feel the wristband’s not there. I pull my hand away from Izzy, balling my fingers into a fist.

“Okay,” I breathe, no voice behind it. I clear my throat. “Okay, well…I’ll just have to get it back.”

“Gale, she says, tilting her head to the side, somehow making her sympathy worse, “those people can jump dimensions; they might not be here anymore.”

“It’s fine,” I say quickly. “There’s probably some sort of fail-safe I don’t know about. But Peter knows the Paracosm; if anyone knows what can be done, it’s him.”

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I step back and sort of gesture with my hand for Izzy to lead. If she leads, she can’t see my eyes glistening with tears I can barely hold back. Her anger fuels her enough to keep me moving despite the panic that threatens to knock me to the dirt.

I feel like I’m holding all but a few pieces of a puzzle, and yet all of the ones I hold don’t fit together. I think this world’s real, but it can’t be. I think Izzy’s as alive as me, but the records claim her dead. I think the Paracosm’s lying, but the implications of that are too heavy to be real. And I trust none of my own thoughts. Because there’s a voice in my head that does not belong to me both within this Neverland and out in

Caesura that’s connected to a Shadow that might also be my sister.

After a solid twenty minutes of walking, Izzy suddenly asks, “Since you’re so good at getting the things you imagine to come true, do you think you can imagine Peter right in front of us?”

“Since these are your woods, do you think you could navigate them?” I retort.

Izzy glances back over her shoulder and sticks her tongue out at me. When she looks forward again, she says, “I don’t need your bad attitude.”

“You don’t get a choice,” I mutter.

Izzy laughs just under her breath, like she doesn’t really want to laugh, but her body’s naturally reacting without her control. “You are way more interesting when you’re angry,” she says.

“Thanks,” I say dully, not actually sure how I feel about that.

“Are you angry because of your sister, or is she responsible for making you boring?” Izzy asks.

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“What?” I exclaim. I stop walking to actually stumble back a step in shock. “What kind of question is that?”

Izzy turns around to face me. She raises her eyebrows, taking in the distance now separating us. “It was supposed to be a compliment,” she says, tilting her head to one side.

“How?”

She frowns. “It’s just…okay, I get it. I get what it’s like to feel hopeless. I’ve never been anything but terminal. And when I met you, that’s what you looked like.

Quiet…broken…”. She shrugs. “…terminal. So now you’re angry and moving and that’s way better than being a zombie, right? It’s always been that way for me. And I was just thinking that I didn’t know whether seeing the Shadow that you think is your sister made you angry because you’re mad at her or because you’re scared of the Shadow.”

I blink. When I still can’t come up the words, I just keep blinking. If this is a dream, I hope I wake up. My head aches. Izzy tilts her head to one side. “Am I making sense? Cuz I get it.”

I clear my throat and shake my head, trying to wake up. “I don’t know. I’m just…angry. I don’t know why. It just feels better than empty.”

Izzy nods. “Angry’s all right. I miss happy, but angry’s better than nothing.”

And with that, she turns around and just continues on. I don’t know if she’s prepared to leave me behind or she expects me to follow, but I stand there frozen in place. I try to understand what she means, but it feels like reaching out and grasping at the air an idea leaves behind. There’s nothing solid there. Relating her brain tumor to me

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losing my sister? There shouldn’t be any sort of connection, and I can’t make the one

Izzy’s twisted mind came up with. I shouldn’t be surprised, but it feels like my fault.

Heaviness falls over me, making my arms too heavy to move. My skin heats up all over.

“Couldn’t you imagine something?” Izzy calls back over her shoulder suddenly, like I’ve been silent so long that she’s bored again. “Like, something fun that makes this easier?”

I jog to catch up to her, trying to shake off my confusion so that I can at least pretend to be normal. “Couldn’t you?”

Izzy sticks her tongue out at me as I fall into step beside her again. “Your imagination’s apparently the best one here,” she says. “I created the woods, but the world hasn’t obeyed a command of mine since. But you brought your Shadow to our rescue in minutes and made the ocean and pirates and a mermaid.”

“Peter might have done some of that,” I point out.

I vaguely remember Monique saying back in the Paracosm that one of us would take control of the adventure though both of us would contribute to it. Even assuming that

I’m the one who’s controlling things, Peter does have some say. But Izzy just shakes her head. “You remember what that woman said. She couldn’t tell the difference between us, whose imagination was more powerful. And if I created an entire forest, I’m pretty sure you did everything else. So come on! Imagine something amazing!”

I want to believe her. Not that it matters because I have no idea what to imagine. I guess what I dream doesn’t have to be literal, because thinking about Jayne brought that

Shadow, but…I have no idea what would help us find the Jumpers or Peter.

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I wish it could come as easily as dance. I sweat all over the floors and bleed through my shoes, and yet it feels like the easiest thing in the world. It feels like breathing. My body moves into each spin and I jump like the movement is an extension of my body. So I try to dream that way. I try to let my thoughts spin away, but it’s hard to do that when you have nothing solid to hold onto.

Dancing sends you into the air, like a dream should. You spin until you don’t feel gravity, and you slip away from the world. But you know the moves. You know the next step and that keeps you stable. I have nothing to stabilize against in my thoughts. No physical thing to imagine about and without a solid idea, I’m left drifting. A dream so vague will get us nowhere.

I squeeze my eyes shut and slow to a stop like that’ll make it easier. But all I see is black. Just the inside of my eyelids. All I do is feel. My arms drift away from my sides a little as if I’m about to float away. The wind tickles against my skin. I feel more…present with my eyes closed. I feel the way my body wants to move, the memory of my audition dance so ingrained in the way my body moves and feels that it’s a natural state of being. Then Izzy gasps and my eyes fly open. “What?” I say.

She looks down at my feet, then up at my face, raising her eyebrows but not actually saying anything. So I look down at my feet as well.

And…well…they float above the ground.

“Um…what?” I say. My heart beats steadily, rather than racing, and I don’t think

I’m really processing what’s happening because I’m not panicking and I should be.

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“Are you seriously flying right now?” Izzy says, her eyes widening by the second like they’re about to burst from her head.

“I think I’m technically floating,” I say slowly.

“But you’re floating!” she replies, bouncing all over again. “How are you doing that?”

“I…don’t know,” I say, looking back down at my feet. I still can’t process that they aren’t on the ground. “I was…just thinking about dance.”

“If you float higher, maybe you can find the Jumpers!” Izzy exclaims.

I frown and descend back down to the ground. The idea of trying that makes my stomach churn. I know I need to fly, but I’m afraid to wish it. This world might twist my thought beyond recognition. I cross my arms against my chest. “We need to find Peter first,” I mutter to try to hide my fear.

Suddenly, I hear the crunching of leaves off to my left. It takes me a moment to process that it’s not Izzy, since she’s still standing still in front of me, that I should be concerned. It’s only when her eyes widen and then she stares off to the left that my head actually processes the sound. My heart races as I scan the trees for the source. A rush of adrenaline floods through me, but my feet are cemented to the ground. It could be pirates or Dimension Jumpers or the Shadow or whatever new source of danger our twisted minds have come up with, and yet I wait. And then the figure emerges from around a tree, and I release a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. Blonde hair, broad shoulders, and a complete inability to keep up a steady pace when running, apparently.

Peter.

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His eyes catch mine, and he speeds up, though he quickly returns his eyes to his feet, probably to make sure he doesn’t trip. “Where’ve you been, slowpoke?” Izzy shouts, cupping her hands around her mouth like a megaphone. “You missed all the fun! Gale just learned how to float!”

Peter jogs into the clearing and slows to a stop. Sweat rolls down the sides of his face and the lower layers of his hair are soaked with it so the hair hangs heavily against his forehead. I doubt he could have been running the whole time, but he certainly looks like he has been. “I got lost,” he gasps. He doubles over, bracing his hands on his knees.

“What was that about floating?”

But what little smirk was starting to light up his face disappears when he actually meets my eyes. “Gale?” he says, his voice dropping.

I decide to give him the quickest answer. I hold up both my arms, scarily empty.

His eyes widen. “Where’s your wristband?”

“Stolen,” I reply, letting my arms fall back to my sides. “And no, we have no idea how we’re going to get it back.”

“Did the pirates take it?” he asks. He straightens even though his shoulders still heave, like he’s ready to run or at least pretending to be ready.

I shake my head just as Izzy exclaims, “The Dimension Jumpers took it.” And then of course, she giggles. I decide not to shoot her a glare, not fully sure whether it’s her messed up brain or a naturally rude personality that drives her to laugh.

Peter stares at her blankly. He opens his mouth to speak, but he doesn’t get the chance. A shout erupts from the darkness, and I freeze. I hold my breath not because I

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mean to be quiet but because I’ve forgotten about oxygen. Izzy’s bouncing beside me lessens, but she doesn’t stand completely still. Peter spins around so he stands with Izzy and me. I lose track of time standing there in silence, unable to do so much as count my breaths since I’m not breathing. The shouts get no louder, but they do continue.

“Pirates?” Peter says slowly.

Neither Izzy nor I respond. Both of us scan the trees but see nothing. And after another second. Izzy announces, “Let’s go see!”

She wastes no time grabbing my hand and dragging me behind her. She’s faster than me and her legs are longer than mine so I just barely keep up with her. I take more than one step for each of hers. We climb up a hill and at the crest slow to a stop to gaze down at what waits for us on the other side.

Somehow, our running has ended us up near another beach. Whether we’re on the other side of the island or on the same side as before but a different stretch of beach, I have no idea. My directions are all turned-around. However, that means less to me than the standoff going on down below. On one side stand pirates. On the other, the

Dimension Jumpers.

“Well,” I say slowly, “that’s a development.”

The situation before my eyes is too bizarre for me to process. The raggedy pirates, some with swords, stand off against the blue-garbed Dimension Jumpers holding nothing but air in their hands. And yet, I can’t decide which side frightens me more. Izzy says suddenly, “I forget; which side do we want to win?”

“Well, both of them want us dead,” I mutter.

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“Maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll kill each other.” Izzy shoots a grin my way that suddenly flashes away in an instant. My heart stutters as her eyes fall on my collarbone. “Gale, where’s your necklace?”

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Stars

My stomach drops. For a half-second, I reassure myself that this might just be one of Izzy’s jokes because there’s no way this can be happening again. But then my hand flies up so that my fingertips glide across my bare collarbone. I feel my fingers shaking there. The emptiness of my skin doesn’t feel real. I should have felt it the moment the necklace fell off. As it is, I can’t even be sure at what point I lost it. How could this have happened again?

When did I end up the ground? My knees crush the grass beneath them, but I cannot remember when I fell. I stare at the trees around us, I think, but I don’t see them.

Peter says my name, asks Izzy what’s going on, I think, but it comes through warped and echo-y, like I’m underwater. I feel…nothing. Except for the twisting in my chest.

Suddenly, I’m okay with not waking up. It sounds easier. At this point, if I could only save one thing, the necklace or the wristband, I would grab the necklace and run off without a second thought. That necklace is the real Jayne, not the haunted Jayne that stalks me through these woods as a Shadow, or the memory of Jayne that speaks to me out in the real world though the real Jayne is long gone. That necklace is her smile, her love for me, whispering under her comforter after one in the morning because that was the only time our schedules matched. That necklace is every dance recital with her in the audience. Without the necklace, no world is real.

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“Gale, it’s only a necklace,” I hear Peter say. “Not even; we’re not really here. It’s just a dream.” I realize he’s kneeling down in front of me, hands on my shoulders. I shift away so his hands fall but don’t give him any sort of response. His comment isn’t worth acknowledging. I see Peter’s wristband lighting up with the number two. Two hours until cool-down time is up. Four hours until automatic ejection. But I’d happily die here if I could just have that necklace.

“Hey, Gale,” Izzy whispers. She lowers herself so that she sits beside me. “We’re going to get the necklace back. You’re not going to leave here without it, I promise.”

“How?” I ask, my voice not sounding like my voice or my ears not hearing like my ears.

“The same way we’re going to get your wristband,” she replies. “We’re not getting one without the other.”

“Gale, it’s not worth it,” Peter adds.

I ignore him again. My eyes fix on my knees rather than anyone’s face. Izzy leans into my ear and says, “But the only way we can save it is if we get moving now.

Otherwise you’ll die before you see it again.”

I close my eyes, knowing that when I open them I won’t wake up, whether or not this is really a dream. “Okay,” I say as evenly as I can. And my voice is even. This is the sort of pain that hits so deeply that you can’t even cry.

“Step one,” Izzy says, “is just stand up, okay?”

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I nod slowly. Without even opening my eyes, I push myself to my feet. My knees shake, but they hold my weight. I focus on nothing but standing and that makes it easier to breathe. “Step two,” Izzy says, “is open your eyes.”

I obey. Letting Izzy think for me is easier. Autonomy sounds impossible since I feel less than real. Izzy smiles at me. She may be younger than me—or maybe not, according to her database file—but she stands just a little taller than me, and I have to tilt my head up to see her face. I feel Peter watching me closely, but I keep my eyes on Izzy.

Her way is different than his. Peter wants to make things better, but Izzy just wants to keep things moving. I can do one, but not the other.

I think Izzy gets it, the need to survive and the inability to make things “better.”

Doing things one step at a time because the big picture overwhelms you. We’re just two sick kids, hanging on by a thread.

“Okay,” Izzy continues. “Now, we have two options. Either you dropped the necklace on your way here or the Dimension Jumpers got it somehow. Which do you want to try first?”

My eyes widen, and the idea of having a choice immediately overwhelms me. I want to process the information, but it’s like my brain throws up walls that my thoughts collide into. I open my mouth to answer Izzy, though I don’t know what I’m going to say, and no sound comes out.

Izzy takes my hand after my silence goes on too long. “That’s okay; I’ve got an idea anyway,” she tells me.

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She turns back to the pirates and Dimension Jumpers standing off below us. “If they already have your wristband, we might as well find out if they have your necklace too.”

Izzy steps forward, still holding my hand, when Peter jumps in front of us. He swings out his arms to make it harder for us to get around him. “We’re not about to jump in the middle of that fight,” he snaps.

“It’s that or I don’t get home,” I say dully, holding up my bare wrist as a reminder.

Peter grits his teeth, lowering his arms slightly. “If we don’t think this through, we’ll just end up getting ourselves killed. What if we wait until it’s getting darker before we move in? It’s not like we have any weapons, so there’s no way we’re going to win a fight.”

The sun just skims the horizon so that the world glows in tones of sepia. It won’t be long before nightfall, but my hands twitch at my sides at the notion of waiting even that long. Right now, I can’t bear the way my emotions burn beneath my skin.

I can’t bear to look; I just want to leap.

I push roughly past Peter with more force than probably necessary. I underestimate the way gravity feels on such a steep incline, which sends my stumbling so that I crash into Izzy. She cries out, and despite my small size, the weight of my body is enough to send her crashing down with me on top of her.

We roll down the hill and after a second, I start to think the grass is sky and the clouds are ground. I crash to a stop on my back with the grass crushed against my head

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and the sky above my eyes. Izzy giggles beside me, already pushing herself to her feet.

“Way to make an entrance!” she says, turning to look down at me. I can barely see her face in the shadows. The sun glows as nothing more than a line on the horizon by now.

I push myself to my feet before Izzy thinks to offer me her hand. Peter shouts after us, but when I look up at him, he looks like little more than a dusky blob. From here, he looks like the Shadow. I twist away from him as quickly as I can to avoid the thoughts that might summon that thing here.

And my eyes land on the pirates and Dimension Jumpers staring at us.

No one moves, except for Izzy, who bounces on her toes like a boxer raring to jump into the ring. The awkward attention seems to energize her, whereas I freeze.

Despite our lack of weapons, no one wants to be the first one to face us. No one lurches toward us, even though both groups have attacked us before. Apparently, they recognize us as a threat now. Our imaginations are dangerous, unpredictable, and Izzy is more so.

She looks about ready to launch herself at the first person who looks her way.

“What’s going on?” she asks cheerfully.

If anything, that only stiffens me more. My thoughts grind to a halt. I dimly think maybe I should imagine something, whether a change in this situation or a weapon, but I don’t know how that works. And, quite frankly, I don’t know if giving either Izzy or me a weapon would make us more or less dangerous.

For the brief moment of silence following Izzy’s comment, almost all eyes on her, with one exception. Liam stares directly at me.

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He stands among the other Dimension Jumpers. There are fewer of them here than were in the camp before, I guess because they were scattered by the Shadow. He looks uninjured, but he watches me with narrowed eyes. Does he know I’m responsible for the

Shadow? Is that why he looks at me like I’m the greatest threat in a clearing filled with pirates? “It seems we have reached an impasse,” he says in a low voice.

“Pirates do not compromise!” Captain Datton—Blackbeard yells from the other side where he stands in the sand among his pirates.

“Neither do we!” Izzy says, raising her hand like a student in class and making me wish maybe I wasn’t on her side in this standoff.

Metal scrapes against metal as more of the pirates draw their swords. I wince at the sound, my shoulders rolling up to block my ears. In response to the pirates,

Dimension Jumpers pull daggers from their belts. The size difference between the two types of weapons is almost comical, but I get the feeling the Dimension Jumpers know how to use their daggers better than the pirates swing their swords.

“Aw, come one,” Izzy whines. She glances back at me. “I want a weapon.”

I shrug, gesturing wildly. My tongue won’t behave enough for me to say, “What do you want me to do?” The only things I seem to be able to dream into this world are extensions of myself, whether thinking about my sister or my dancing. I wouldn’t even know how it feels to hold a weapon. Izzy turns away, pouting at my gesture.

“Who created these pirates?” Liam shouts suddenly.

“Gale did!” Izzy responds, and my face heats up in response.

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“We don’t know that,” I say quickly, but my voice is so small that I think only

Izzy hears it. “It might have been Peter.”

I think of Peter, standing at the top of the hill behind us, hopefully hidden from sight of the situation I landed Izzy and myself in. When I do, I struggle to think of him imagining anything here. He clings to logic, not imagination. So while Peter might have created the pirates, I doubt it.

“I should have known,” Liam growls. “That girl is dangerous. Now it’s time you clean up the mess you’ve made.”

My eyes widen, and I stumble back a step. Is Liam asking that I un-imagine the pirates? Or is he demanding that I kill them? And that’s all besides the fact that Liam’s decided that I am the dangerous one, rather than Izzy.

But I don’t have time to consider the thought anymore because that’s when the pirates get bored with waiting for bloodshed. They start screaming, and I startle, wondering what provoked them. But nothing did. They just launch themselves at us and the Dimension Jumpers. One pirate in particular darts toward Izzy and me. The suddenness of the movement makes me hesitate and seeing the pirate’s face freezes me in place.

Nate. The pirate is Nate.

In baggy stained clothes and brandishing a knife, the pirate looks so much unlike the dancer I know. On stage, Nate flows through each movement, extending himself through the motions like the gestures exist beyond his own body. But this pirate moves

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without finesse or flow, instead plowing forward like a bull. And after that second, he no longer looks like Nate.

I gather myself enough to bolt forward and wrap my arms around Izzy. She stiffens in shock at my movement, but I move too quickly for her to react. I squeeze my eyes shut despite my instinct and imagine how it felt to float before. I push myself up in sauté so that my feet leave the ground with Izzy in my arms.

And we don’t come back down.

Izzy gasps just before I open my eyes. We rise several feet above the ground, stopping just out of reach of the pirates and their weapons. Izzy scrambles to twist around so she can wrap her arms around my neck, but she doesn’t need to. It feels like she weighs nothing now. Pirate Nate skids to a stop on the ground beneath us, staring up at us in shock. After a second, Izzy just starts to giggle.

I hold my breath, not sure what’ll break the spell and send us crashing back down.

I have no gauge for how long this floating thing lasts. Beneath us, Dimension Jumpers’ daggers parry the swords of pirates, and the tiny slit of sun left in the sky glints off the metal, making the weapons look sharper and more dangerous.

The idea of any of the weapons striking my skin makes my arms tighten around

Izzy. I search for Liam among the Dimension Jumpers and my eyes land on him just as he dodges a strike of Blackbeard’s sword. I wince at the near-miss, but then my eyes catch sight of a black band encircling his wrist.

“Liam has my wristband,” I mutter to Izzy.

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She turns her head to follow my gaze. After a second, she laughs, “And that’s not all he has of yours,” she tells me.

I squirm at her words as a tremor runs through me, though we thankfully don’t lower in the sky. I look closer at Liam. He launches himself at Blackbeard as the pirate readjusts the weight of the sword in his hand. But he overestimates the time the pirate’ll be distracted and has to dive out of the way to dodge the next blow.

My necklace bounces against Liam’s chest.

My heart drops down into my stomach. My necklace must have been hidden beneath his shirt before but now, in the midst of action, in comes loose and mocks me as the two people who most want to kill me in this Neverland try to kill each other.

I release a slow breath to calm my heart, which doesn’t work at all. My fingers shake so much that Izzy turns to look up at me. “This makes things simple, Gale; don’t be so scared,” she tells me with a wide grin. “You don’t even have to make me a weapon.

All you have to do is fly over there, grab your stuff, and get out. Easy.”

All I have to do? Yeah, because flying comes so natural to me.

Then again, maybe it does.

I snap my eyes closed. Every muscle in my body tenses and the back of my neck aches. Unlike last time, it’s a strain to dream of dance. Earlier, I thought naturally of how light I feel dancing, but now I feel like I’m reaching out to those thoughts, pulling at a rubber band to get there, just waiting for the moment it snaps. I imagine my audition song, how hard and long I worked on perfecting my grand jeté, slicing through the air, hanging above the ground for what seemed like more than a breath before landing again.

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That was more than sauté, which felt like floating, if only for a brief second. Grand jeté is the closest thing to flying in ballet. The whole goal of it is to look like you’re gliding.

My eyes flash open when I start moving. Izzy scrambles to tighten her grip on me, letting out the smallest squeak of shock. It feels anything but unnatural, which surprises me, though I have no time for that sort of feeling. The flying feels like an extension of myself. More natural than all the running I’ve done in Neverland. Gravity pulls at me. I thought flying would feel more like weightlessness.

In the darkness as the last blip of sunlight disappears, I barely see the pirates or

Dimension Jumpers beneath me. I focus straight ahead like I would if I were dancing. I swing my legs out into grand écart, which I now realize probably looks bizarre to Izzy.

But it reminds my body of the motion, and it moves me through the air faster.

I mimic the movements of landing from grand jeté, and it slows us to a stop just above Liam and Blackbeard. My eyes can just barely make them out in the darkness.

Neither of them glance up our way. Each brandishes a weapon, refusing to give an inch, no one clearly taking an advantage in the fight. “I flew,” I grunt. “You figure out how to actually get my stuff without getting killed.”

“‘Kay,” Izzy replies without hesitation. If anything, that worries me more. She looks down at the ground, thinking about it for only a second before saying, “When I tell you to, drop me.”

She watches the scene down below, already looking ready to fall, but my arms tighten at her words. Dropping her goes against my wish to keep her alive and safe. After only about a second, she yells, “Now!”

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I wrench my arms away, going against every instinct screaming through my brain.

The moment I stop touching her, she drops, gravity reasserting its hold. And she crashes right on top of Liam.

He stumbles but does not fall at her sudden weight. Before he straightens again,

Izzy wraps her arms around his neck so she won’t fall off him. And once she seems to get a steady grip, she launches herself forward so her torso lies against the back of his head.

Blackbeard swipes out at the both of them, and I choke, but Liam quick-steps back out of the way. And while he’s distracted, Izzy yanks the dagger from Liam’s hand and rolls off his shoulders so she stands beside him.

But rather than turning to Liam, she faces the pirate, and Blackbeard’s actually shocked enough to stop moving for a moment. She points her tiny dagger at him with a wide grin on her face. “Now it’s you and me, pirate! For the land and the sea!”

Blackbeard roars and thrusts his sword. Izzy doesn’t so much as bat an eye, parrying the sword away with ease, though I sincerely doubt she has any sword training.

She jumps into the space she makes and swipes out wildly with her weapon once more.

And as she pulls back, the captain’s sword falls to the ground.

With the pirate’s hand still wrapped around it.

Blackbeard’s screams pierce the air and cut through me. My focus slips. I forget to keep myself in the air and crash to the ground. When my legs are unable to handle the impact, I end up collapsing in the sand. But I barely pay attention to the blast of pain in my legs. I watch as Izzy watches Blackbeard silently, then looks down at the hand at her

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feet like she can’t believe it’s there. Blood that looks too red to be real drips from the tip of her dagger. Even Liam stands frozen in place.

Blackbeard wraps the hand he still has around the bleeding stump of his arm. He stays upright, which shows just how much strength he must have, but his screams refuse to end. I think those around us must stop fighting, but I can’t be sure because all that exists is the horror before me.

I force myself to my feet. Every part of my body feels stiff, and I can’t be sure if it’s because of the impact of hitting the ground or out of sheer shock. I reach out and wrap my fingers around Izzy’s forearm, just above where she holds the dagger, so she can’t spin around and stab me. “We need to get out of here,” I say in an even voice I barely recognize as my own.

Izzy slowly—robotically, even—turns her head to me. Her face looks calm, and I can’t read her expression. It makes me wonder if she feels anything at all. “Don’t you need your necklace?” she asks, but her voice doesn’t change in pitch or volume as she speaks. It sounds like it comes from a machine.

I turn to look at Liam, who seems to be moving about as fast as we are. “Liam?” I say in a small voice. As much as I would rather not say a word to him in the midst of this scene, it’s not like I have much of a choice if I want my necklace or wristband back.

“We need to go before the pirates gather themselves,” he says quickly. He meets my eyes as he turns and jerks his head in a gesture that I should follow him.

I nod once, though I’m not sure why. I do need to follow him, of course, but the fact that he wants me to do so makes my muscles tighten. He spins and dashes off, and I

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force myself to follow, dragging Izzy along behind me until she remembers how to run again.

I hope Peter follows us, but I have no way of knowing. I release Izzy’s hand once we’re sprinting and focus on following Liam. He outpaces me more than I’d like. As the distance spreads out between us, my heart races faster. Losing him means losing…everything. So I don’t look down at all. I focus on the light of the moon gliding over the trunks of trees. I let my feet find their way over roots on their own. Izzy doesn’t pass me, which is surprising. I know she’s faster than me. But I don’t glance back at her.

I can’t face the non-expression she’s wearing.

My lungs ache, despite the cool air tearing across my face. It numbs my skin, which helps the whole situation. Every time my mind returns to the scene of Blackbeard clutching at his arm, a wave of heat crashes across my skin. So I try to pay more attention than necessary to the way the wind feels. When Liam slows to a stop, it takes an actual effort to stop myself. I want to keep running until I don’t feel anything anymore.

Liam holds out his hand as Izzy skids to a stop beside me. “I’m going to want my dagger back,” he says in a low voice.

Izzy stares at him for a long moment, expression unchanging. She holds the dagger at her side in an unshaking grip. Then, she slowly slips it through her belt. “It’s mine now,” she says. Then she smiles cheerfully.

Liam takes a step forward, and I throw myself between them, not hesitating for even a second. “She doesn’t understand,” I say quickly. “She doesn’t know that what she did…” I release a shuddering breath. “…was anything.”

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“And that makes me feel better?” he asks. The moonlight illuminates his face just enough that I can see him raise his eyebrows. “She just sliced off a man’s hand, and she’s smiling.”

“He was a bad guy,” Izzy insists. “Good guys win, bad guys lose. That’s just how it goes.”

“She saved your life,” I bark just as Liam opens his mouth again. “Yeah, this is messed up, but he was going to kill you.”

“She’s dangerous!” he says, gesturing toward her as he steps closer to me. It’s an intimidation tactic, I know. Less than a few inches separate us, and he stands half a foot taller than me at least.

“You owe her; she saved your life,” I say softly, my voice little more than a breath. I meet his eyes and search them for some sign that he gets what I’m saying but see nothing.

“And you’re dangerous,” he adds, his forehead creasing. The moon refuses to light his face so most of his expression is cast in shadow.

But not being able to read his eyes only makes me braver. I tilt my head to one side and before I lose my nerve, I say, “So you’re going to kill two dangerous people?

What does that make you?” The confidence and words make me shake but not until I’ve already spoken.

Liam’s jaw tightens. “What do you want?” he says grudgingly after a moment. I think that’s the closest to a “thank you” that we’re going to get.

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“To live,” I say quickly. Then, after a second, I add, “And my wristband and necklace.”

Liam says nothing as he removes my necklace and wristband and shoves them into my own hands. I almost drop my wristband in my haste to clasp the necklace around my neck. “We do have a lot more to discuss,” he says as I secure my wristband.

“I agree,” I say, though I really hope we don’t.

“But not now,” he says.

I get the feeling he looks over my shoulder at Izzy, the smiling girl with a bloodied dagger tucked into her belt. I nod once, twitching involuntarily at the thought.

To be honest, I’m beginning to wonder how I’m going to deal with her. To negotiate now would be a bad idea. At least one of us would end up dead.

——

After Liam leaves, Izzy begins to wander away. I follow her in silence only a few lengths back. We emerge from the tree line onto a beach. The water of the ocean is the color of the night sky, but the moon burns against the ocean’s surface so the water glows and then

I can tell where the water ends and the sky begins. It seems quieter now, though I wouldn’t say that the waves are fewer. It must be an illusion. “You probably want to wait for Peter, right?” Izzy says, plopping herself down in the sand.

It surprises me she’s willing to wait at all. She always seems to be ready to sprint to the next adventure. I walk over to her, but I remain standing, staring out at the ocean. I wonder if the mermaid’s out there, ready to snatch my necklace once more. I stroke the

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star charm with my fingertips. How do I keep losing it? The clasp’s secure. It’s like this world’s doing anything it takes to put me in danger.

“Why was Liam mad at me?” Izzy asks suddenly.

I look down at her. She stares at the sand, trailing her fingers through it to build swirling patterns. The gesture makes her look so much younger than I think she is. “He’s just scared,” I tell her. “I mean, what you did freaked everyone out.”

“Not you,” she replies. I raise my eyebrows, disagreeing wholeheartedly, but Izzy doesn’t look up and so doesn’t see the expression. “You wouldn’t let Liam get near me.”

I frown, looking back out at the water. “I guess not,” I say when the silence gets to be too much.

“Do you think they’re right?” Izzy asks. “Do you think this world is really real?”

My shoulders fall as the weight crashes over me again. I lower myself into the sand beside Izzy, not so sure I can hold myself up any longer. When I don’t answer for maybe a minute, she continues, “I’m not so sure either. If this world’s real, I should be dead.”

“I’m not sure it’s not real though,” I whisper finally. I barely hear the words myself. Real can mean a lot of things. It could mean this is the Afterlife or something, even though that idea makes less and less sense as time goes on. Either way, this place feels more real than Caesura. A world without Jayne seems impossible, and she exists more in this Neverland than she does back home.

I look at Izzy out of the corner of my eye. She tilts her head back and stares up at the night sky above our heads. I follow her gaze upward. The sight catches me off guard

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and sweeps my breath away. I was too distracted by the dark water before, but now I see the specks of light scattered against the blackness. The darkness isn’t just a matte, singular shade, but filled with dimensions of color deepened by the stars.

“I used to wonder if the stars here were right,” Izzy says. “Seriously, all the time.

I mean, before you came, I thought all of this was my dream. So I thought maybe it was my memory of the stars. I wondered if they were in the right places and if they had the right brightness, wondered if my brain remembered them right, or if it got them mixed up with satellites.”

“It’s not like you can see much of them in Caesura,” I say. The buildings that soar up into the clouds and the lights that never turn off make it impossible for the tiny pinpricks of light to penetrate the darkness.

Back when we were children, our classes brought us to one of the tallest building in Caesura, which was also our city’s observatory. They taught us about space. I remember crying out, tiny finger pointing at an object in the sky, telling everyone that I had seen a shooting star. My teacher followed my gaze but just shook her head. “That’s a satellite,” she explained. “See how it doesn’t sparkle? Stars wink at you.”

And that was all I’ve had of a clear view of the night sky. So I can’t imagine how

Izzy could recreate their positions in her dream. She cannot have had much more of a chance to see them than I did. “What does it matter now, Izzy?” I ask. “They might not be your imagination. If this world’s real, then so are they, right?”

“I just want to know,” she says softly. “Whether or not they’re real, I don’t care if they’re stars or satellites; I just want to know.”

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My chest starts to hurt from barely daring to breathe. The wideness of the sky has my head spinning. And moments after my chest starts hurting, so does my head. I press one hand across my forehead as if pressure will help relieve the pain. After a second, even that’s not enough, and I press my head into my knees.

“Gale?” Izzy whispers.

“Headache,” I murmur. But even that small sound shoots a sharp pain through my brain.

I wrap my arms around my legs, trying to hold myself together. Instead, I just start shaking. The suddenness of it scares me. “Gale?” Izzy whispers again, laying her hand on my shoulder, but I don’t acknowledge her this time.

Suddenly, I hear someone shout, “What happened back there?”

I guess Peter’s finally shown up. I pull myself in tighter until my muscles ache.

His voice rattles around inside me, bouncing off my skull until it hurts me in every way possible. I don’t understand. Peter steps on twigs and makes as much noise as I think he is humanly able in the process of crashing over to us. Then, his sound ceases for a brief second before he sprints over to me. “Gale, are you okay?” he says, dropping down beside me.

I lift my head up, wincing at the light of the moon hitting my eyes. “I just have a headache,” I explain, but when I cringe at the sound of my own voice, I wonder if there’s any “just” about it.

He shakes his head. “You’re shivering,” he says.

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I narrow my eyes, not actually aware of the fact that I’m still shivering. But after a second, I feel it. “I think we’ve been in here too long,” he whispers.

“No,” I protest, but I mumble since my voice makes my head throb more.

“Otherwise you’d be like this too.” Though I’m sitting, I waver. But Peter remains perfectly still. It makes no sense to me.

I twist my wristband around my wrist absentmindedly. It leaves a small red dot in my skin behind. A clear liquid spills from the spot, but just a tiny stream almost unable to be seen, like I pinched my skin when I closed the clasp. “Gale?” Peter snaps suddenly, breaking me out of my thoughts. “What’s your code? I’ll type it in for you.”

“I can do it,” I mumble. But then I just stare at it. I can’t get my fingers to move, and then I forget why I’m staring at my wristband in the first place.

After a moment, Peter whispers, “Gale?”

“I’ve got it,” I murmur. I lift a hand to type it and the letters blur so it’s hard to make any of them out from one another. I’ve felt like this before. Dancing too much leads to dehydration like that and sometimes a little oxygen deprivation. If my flying is an extreme form of dancing, then I must be that kind of sick.

Suddenly, I slouch sideways, and Peter catches me as I fall against him. “Never mind; you type it,” I say into his shoulder.

“What is it, Gale?” he asks, his voice a little sharper than before. I think I must be scaring him. He’s never seen me like this before.

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“Her name,” I breathe. My brain’s cutting me short, and it hurts to even think what her name is. But I know Peter knows. I hear the beep as he presses the buttons. And suddenly, I can’t breathe at all.

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Lullabies

When I can breathe again in Caesura, each breath is shallow. My lungs feel too full of something else so that I start to hyperventilate. I open my eyes a slit, but I don’t even try to sit up. The world feels like some distant thing, like I’m watching it through static on a movie screen.

I hear Peter’s voice, but it echoes off the shielding that protects where I lay and I struggle to understand the words. I tilt my head to the left and even lying down it feels too heavy. The shielding lifts above me, and I wince at the sudden barrage of noise.

“Gale, can you hear me?” Peter asks.

“I can hear you,” I whisper, but it comes out so quiet that I can barely hear myself. “Could you not yell?”

“Abigale, I need you to talk to me,” Monique says. I feel her hand on my forehead as she removes the cord from my temple. “We think you were in the Paracosm too long, and your body started rejecting the dream.”

“It’s not a dream,” I mumble without thinking through the words before I say them.

“Of course it is, Abigale; it’s okay,” she replies, apparently not taking my words seriously. “Help is on the way.”

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That gets my heart racing. Despite my heavy head and how shaky the world wavers, I shoot up into a sitting position. “No, I’m fine,” I say quickly. Though the fact that I press my face into my hands a second later must say otherwise.

“Can you tell me what’s going on?” Monique asks. She stands so close to me that

I feel her breath on my ear. I want to push her away, but I fear if I remove my hands, my skull will split in two.

“Dizzy,” I say, almost gasping. “Headache.”

“Were you hit in the head at any point?”

That takes me a moment to consider. We were in the Neverland so long; I can’t keep track of all that happened. From the Dimension Jumpers to the Shadow to the

Dimension Jumpers and pirates, all I remember is way too much running, way too much fear. But being able to breathe without head-splitting pain the whole time gives it a one- up on my present. “No,” I say eventually.

“It’s probably just dehydration then,” Monique says. “But we’ll do a full check just to be sure.”

“You can lay back down, Gale,” Peter says.

But I can’t. I can’t appear helpless, even if the world spins and I can’t get a full breath and my head feels like it’s about to shatter. I have to hold it together. I know there’s nothing I can do to stop the health check. But it could turn into a psychological screening if I’m not careful, and I can’t risk that.

I hear the hiss of doors opening and force myself to look up, even though the bright lights sear my eyes, and I lurch forward, feeling as though I’m about to vomit. I

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keep my eyes open despite that. At the sight of two women wheeling in a gurney, my heart skips a beat it cannot spare. Not because of the gurney but because of the women.

They wear gray pants. Navy, collared shirts. It’s the same uniform as that of the people who ransacked my room investigating Jayne’s suicide.

What?

But I am offered no time to think between all the people and the fact that my brain pulses with pain. The woman with tousled brown hair cut as short as mine crosses over to me. “Tell me what’s going on, sweetheart,” she says.

Her kindness catches me off guard, considering the coldness of the man and woman searching my family’s apartment. So I stare at her a beat before I can even process her words, and that hesitation has her small smile fade into a frown. Before I can respond, she says. “That’s okay. We’re going to take you to the medical bay and check it out.”

She nods at Peter. “Can you help us get her on the gurney?”

Never mind asking me to walk, which I’m pretty sure I’m capable of. Just like that, I don’t feel as though I exist in the room. So I cut off Peter’s response and say, “I’ve got it.”

I push myself off the bed, careful to place weight on my feet slowly so I don’t crumple to the ground. I hold on to the bed for support as my legs shake. For a second, I question my need for independence, thinking it will look far worse if I collapse to the floor after I said I was fine. I lift my head up to look at the gurney and see Peter holding out his hand to me. As much as I hate to, I accept his hand and brace myself on him so I

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can pull myself up. But that little effort presses more air from my lungs, which further deprives my brain of oxygen, which only worsens my headache. I double over, pressing my forehead into my knees, as if by making myself smaller, the pain won’t be able to find me.

I feel hands on my shoulders, and one of the nurses pushes me to lie down. My heart accelerates, though I don’t necessarily know for sure why. It must show on my face because Peter says, “It’s going to be okay. I’ll come with you.”

“We need you to go back to the lobby, sir,” the other woman says. “Your friend will be fine, and she will likely be back with you soon.”

I reach out and grab Peter’s wrist before they can push him out of my reach. “He comes with me,” I growl, though every word makes the pain in my head shudder.

Through the small slit I have my eyes open, I see Peter’s eyes widen as they meet mine. I remember the way he punched in the code on my wristband when I couldn’t. I remember that when I pulled at the wristband, it left a tiny mark on my skin.

And I realize that the Paracosm did this to me.

“Sweetheart, you need to let go,” the one woman says. She actually takes my hand and tries to pry my fingers away from Peter.

“I’m fine,” I say, gritting my teeth.

I try sitting up again, ignoring how nauseous I feel. But I get halfway up before

I’m pushed back down. This time, the hands stay on my shoulders. And a few seconds later, I feel a needle slide into my arm. “You need to calm down,” she says one more time.

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My eyelids fall, and I can’t resist it anymore. And I realize it has nothing to do with the pain in my head. That pain and all pain slides away. And everything melts away with it.

——

The world returns to me slowly. For a second, I think I’m waking up from the Neverland, returning to the Paracosm, but the mattress beneath me and the thin sheet covering me say otherwise. That immediately makes me want to open my eyes and shoot up in bed.

But then I shift my arm and feel the needle in the crook under my elbow, and it makes me stop short. I focus on taking deep even breaths to slow my heart rate down so no one realizes I’m awake. Because the moment I feel the needle, I remember where I must be.

They sedated me? What I did back there was nothing. I wouldn’t even count it as resisting. And I’m pretty sure I’m allowed to refuse medical treatment like that. Peter would have fought for that right. So no, I don’t open my eyes. Maybe if they think I’m asleep, I can learn something.

But it’s silent. I hear nothing in the room except for my own breathing. I feel pressure on my finger from a clip for a heart rate monitor, but I don’t actually hear the monitor beeping. Otherwise, it’s just the IV and me. It surprises me that the people who were supposedly so concerned about my well-being left me alone. I open my eyes a slit and glance around the room. Like I thought, it’s empty. I lie in the only bed in here. The walls surrounding me are gray and bare. All I see is a door off to my right and a light above my head. I push myself up into a sitting position, amazed that my headache’s faded away. I suppose the IV was enough. So then it was probably just dehydration.

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Then why was I sedated?

I push off the sheet and climb to the end of the bed. I grab the board hanging off the end. It’s mostly blank, which I would have expected. Something like the Paracosm would keep their records digitally. But I see one small word next to my name:

“Potential.”

I mouth the word as if I don’t recognize it. Potential? Potential for what?

I hear a banging outside my door, and my head jerks up. I stare through the tiny window hanging there, but all I see is the white wall outside the door. I hesitate for only a second before pulling the thing off my finger and sliding the needle out of my arm. I pad across the room and stand on my toes to peek out the window that’s just barely above my head. The hallway’s empty now, even though that crash happened only seconds ago.

Before I can over-think it, I slip out into the hall, closing the door softly behind me.

Something must be going on. This is the Paracosm. The security is ridiculous here, and yet there’s no one stopping me. Though I wonder where my boots ended up, right now I’m grateful to be padding through the halls in nothing but my socks. I slide down the hall, the back of my brain trying to piece together some sort of scenario I can lie about in case I get caught somewhere I shouldn’t be.

I hear the banging again and stop short. I turn my head over to the door on my left in the long empty hallway. I slide toward there, muffled discussion getting louder the closer I get. When I stop in front of the door and peek through the tiny window there, I can hear the voices well enough.

Particularly because my breathing no longer makes any noise.

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The room is filled with people in the same uniform as the women who took me down here and the officials searching my bedroom. Now they surround one of the launch capsules for the Paracosm in a room very different than the one that Peter and I get launched from. It’s more sterile, more like a hospital room. The walls and floors practically glow they’re so white. The antiseptic smell leaches into the hallway where I stand, and I struggle not to gag. In the capsule lies a small, seemingly unconscious boy.

“If we don’t do it now, we will lose our Conduit,” someone snaps.

Conduit? My brain scrambles to try to understand. I look at the boy again. He looks so small, younger than me. And though he lies in a Paracosm bed, his wrists are bare.

I may have been sedated, but even now I wear my wristband for the Paracosm.

Even my personal watch circles my arm above it. Why wouldn’t he be wearing either in a pod like that? Everyone inside the room scrambles around, too busy with equipment I couldn’t dream of understanding to notice I stand there. “His heart rate is weakening,” a man says. “If we don’t do this right now, he’s going to die.”

My eyes widen. The logical thing to do would be to back away, hide before I’m caught. But I scoot forward, going so far as to place my hands on the door, though I don’t push against it. “Deployment in one minute!” someone calls out.

My open hands squeeze into fists. I barely dare to breathe. Deployment? This can’t be a Deployment. Without a wristband, how would he get back? And if he’s dying….

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I stumble back in shock, as if I’ve been hit in the head. I collide with the wall behind me and then hold on to it for the support I need to stay upright. I realize what this must mean. This can’t be happening.

Whatever is happening to this boy is the same thing, I think, that happened to

Izzy.

But the moment I feel any sense of control for my legs beneath me, I step back toward the window. “Ten seconds!” someone calls.

I watch that little boy. I want to burst through the door and stop this. Like I chased after Izzy when I heard her scream back in the Neverland. But if I do that…then…I don’t know. I don’t know what the consequence of that action would be. I hear someone counting down, but I don’t really process it. I stand cemented to the spot, just barely hearing the countdown hit one and then…

The kid vanishes.

My heart jumps to my throat, and I clap my hand over my mouth just to keep myself from gasping. The boy, he doesn’t slip into a dream, like we’ve been told. He literally disappears. No theatrics, no big flash. I don’t even blink, as far as I can tell. He just snaps away from there without a sound. The room breathes a collective sigh of relief.

A wave of dizziness passes over me just hearing it. And then I hear someone say,

“Teleportation successful.”

I spin away as the people in room starts moving, their stress vanishing along with the little boy. I scramble back down the hallway and slip into my tiny room, though I can neither breathe nor walk in a straight line. So much for feeling better. The world is

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spinning, but it’s not carrying me with it. I clutch onto the side of the hospital bed for support. My knees shake beneath me, and it takes all the strength I have to keep from crumbling to the floor.

“I don’t understand,” I breathe. I bite my knuckles to choke the sob threatening to break through. The Paracosm lied. I knew that, but this goes beyond what I expected.

Everyone has been giving me their own version of the truth but nothing quite adds up to this. That when we enter Izzy’s Neverland, we’re not dreaming.

The Paracosm is teleporting us to real physical places.

I still can’t make sense of the almost hospital room or the panic or the “Conduit” or the “potential,” but I can begin to process it. Somewhere in the back of my mind screams the urgency not to reveal what I know. But how do I hide it when I can’t breathe? I pull the sheet back over me and stare at the needle and clip hanging from their respective stands. “Oh no,” I whisper. How do I explain that? I glance back at the heart rate monitor, which has been flat-lining since I left the room. And now that whatever issue they were having with the “Conduit” is over….

Oh, this isn’t going to be ignored.

On the bright side, considering all the years I’ve hidden the same darkness in me that killed Jayne, I’m an expert at lies.

I throw the blanket off the bed and settle myself in the center of the mattress, glaring at the door. I consider faking dizziness, but I don’t want to be kept here longer than I must be. It’s no longer safe here. I wrap my fingers around the edge of the mattress so tight my knuckles whiten. Just when I settle myself in, a young man throws open the

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door, dashing in the room with wide eyes. He stops short when he sees me sitting in the middle of the bed, just glaring at him. One hand clutches at his chest as he shakes his head at me. “What do you think you’re doing?” he gasps.

“Why was I sedated?” I snap. “I was just dehydrated.”

His arms fall back to his sides, and he crosses the room back over to me. “You need to lie back down, Abigale.”

“I don’t,” I reply. “I want to go home.”

“I can’t let you do that,” he tells me. He takes one shoulder of mine in his hand and rather than pushing me down, he squeezes it. “We want to make sure you’re okay before we do that. And we can’t be sure if you rip out your IV. If you’re going to be difficult like that, we’ll have to sedate you again.”

I grit my teeth behind closed lips, careful not to actually show the expression.

Nonetheless, I scoot back on the bed. I don’t doubt that the staff of the Paracosm wouldn’t hesitate to sedate me again.

After all, I think they’re probably the ones who drugged me the first time.

The spot’s hidden with my wristband now, and I don’t dare push it away to check that I didn’t imagine it. “I don’t understand,” I say instead. “Why was I sedated?”

The man seems to be setting the IV back up, though this time he wipes the antiseptic against the back of my hand. “The Paracosm can cause some varied side effects to those who enter. Sometimes, your body just can’t handle being deceived about reality for so long. So we must take every illness that occurs in the Paracosm very seriously.”

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I wince as the needle slides into the vein under my skin. He tapes it down to secure it, and puts the clip back over my fingertip so I don’t still look like I’m flat-lining.

“You resisted our treatment, but we needed to confirm your health, as spelled out in the agreement you signed before entering the Paracosm for the first time. If that required sedating you, then so be it.” He winks at me. “Though it would be better if we didn’t have to do it again.”

I watch him with an even expression. “Any idea when you’ll be done so that I can go home? My parents are probably freaking out.”

“Your parents are fine as they were not called, Abigale. We take our security very seriously. And no, I don’t know when the tests will be finished.”

A chill crawls up my spine. A whole new wave of dizziness overwhelms me, and

I wish I knew where the bathroom was so I could vomit. I’m still a minor; they should have been required to contact my parents.

I trust none of what is going on. My hands shake, but I try to hide it by pushing myself forward a little. The nurse watches me carefully, like he’s debating whether or not to push me back. “Please, can we just move this along? I’m tired, and I really want to go home. My friend is probably so worried about me.”

That earns me a smile, which eases my heart’s frantic breathing ever so slightly.

“I know it’s hard. But we are just trying to make sure you are healthy, and it’s important you stay that way. So a few more tests, and you’ll probably be deemed good to go.”

The nurse leaves then, and this time, now that they know I’m conscious, I hear the click of a lock as he closes the door behind him. I stare at the IV in my hand, and

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seriously consider ripping it out again. Never mind that doing so would stain my skin blue with the bruise I’d cause. But I need to look normal and that would do the opposite.

I hate hospitals. Unlike most of the population, it has nothing to do with needles or the idea that every disease and germ wait within their doors. It’s that it might be noticed that I’m just “off” enough. I doubt I could lie my way through all the psych tests well enough to convince someone trained to perform them.

I pull my knees in toward my chest and wrap my arms around them. I want to run from here. Sprint to the Studio and spin in circles until sweat rolls down my skin and I create a new pull of gravity. I want to work until it hurts, until a knife slides through my lungs and I don’t breathe but cough instead. It makes sense to me now why Jayne kept herself so busy. She volunteered any time she could, sometimes working one job in the morning and another in the evening just to come home and be out before her head hit the pillow. You move and move and move until all you think about is your body. Handling the physical is easy. You wrap yourself up in something else, anything else, just to avoid being alone for any length of time with your thoughts. Because it’s when you are quiet and alone that the whispering starts.

Your own voice crawls through your head. Sometimes, you can’t even hear the words. It’s a feeling. The feeling you get when you wake up in the morning and the entire world is overcast sky. No rain or cold, but the gray’s enough to send you plummeting.

I wish I understood what “Conduit” meant. I’ve heard it before, and I feel like

I’ve made sense of it in another context. But here, relating it to the Paracosm, it makes no sense to me. I wonder if maybe they were talking about the little boy. But I’ve heard the

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term before in terms of…sewage or something, so it makes no sense how it could apply to a person.

The boy wore no wristband, which is the one way to get back to Caesura. Izzy said she never had one. And if this is teleportation, not a dream, then Izzy’s alive. They sent her there without a wristband, and she never left.

What in the world is the Paracosm doing with sick kids?

It sounds to me like they are shipping sick kids into these Neverlands and declaring them dead. Does that make them Conduits, whatever that means? But even that doesn’t make sense. That would make Izzy older than me by a couple years, and she looks the same age as her picture in the database. The age she was when they claimed she died. Not to mention, if she’s always been terminal, she actually should be dead.

My stomach turns at the thought, and I have to push my forehead into my knees to keep myself from vomiting. “You’re safe,” I whisper. “You’re not sick; they can’t do anything to you.”

But I am sick. I have been for so long. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be so good at lying.

Now, if I fail at even a single lie…I swallow hard. I take slow breaths, in through my nose and out through my mouth. It matters more than ever that I look like I’m okay.

I reach up to my collarbone and touch the small star and key that rest there. I half- expected to find it bare once more, necklace lost somewhere between sleep and waking.

It feels like I must have.

I struggle to separate events in my head. Did I reach out for Peter in reality? Did I really cling to him like a life preserver, begging that he not leave me behind? It fills me

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with a warmth in my gut I’ve never associated with Peter before. Usually, my gut is twisted and my heart’s racing with frustration around him. So I let that warmth fill me like a fire from my gut to my chest out to my fingertips. Anything but overcast. It needs to keep me alive.

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Politics

I’m led up to the lobby by a nurse I don’t recognize. I am so busy trying to keep my hands from shaking that I pay no attention as we walk through confusing hallways and at least three security checkpoints. I feel so far away from this world now that I think

I must barely exist in it.

When we pass through the final door in the lobby, Peter’s head shoots up where he sits on a couch across the room. A grin bursts to life on his face, and he literally sprints across the room to meet me, wrapping me into a hug that crushes the little amount of air in my lungs. “I’m so glad you’re okay,” he says, almost laughing. “You took forever down there.”

“Peter,” I say carefully, speaking only into his ear, “we need to leave. Right now.”

He pulls away from me, holding me out at arms-length to read my eyes. After a second, he nods curtly. “Okay.”

He refuses to let go of my hand as he leads the way out of the building. He stops at a bench just outside the building, but I don’t stop and end up pulling him along.

“Where are we going?” he asks in a low voice.

“I don’t know,” I say. “Not here.”

I end up leading the way through the crowds, heading for a more central place in the city. We walk for a good twenty minutes, I think, until we end up on the sixth floor of the Hahor building in a cheap coffee shop. Cheap means there’s a steady stream of people

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coming through, many of which talk at a decent volume. As usual, all the window seats are taken. We drop into seats at a tiny table at the center of the restaurant with our mugs of coffee. Never mind that I hate coffee, but I’m distracted enough that Peter ordered for me. “What’s going on?” he asks the moment we sit. I don’t even have my mug set down on the table yet.

I wrap my hands around the cup to embrace its warmth, and for a second, I say nothing. I need to tell him; he’s the only one left in this world that I trust. But what if he doesn’t believe me? I think that might shatter me more than anything.

“Before I say anything,” I say, staring down at my cup rather than at Peter, “you have to promise me…you won’t get defensive or whatever. Because I’m really scared right now.”

“Why would I get defensive?” he asks.

I keep my eyes down while I explain, and thankfully Peter doesn’t interrupt. If he did, I think my words would dry up. I tell him what was written on my chart, about the boy who may be some sort of “Conduit” that disappeared, about the weirdness of the nurse and the hole in my skin, about how I think Neverland is real and Izzy is the same as this boy, all of it. I expect I’ll never run out of words because once they start coming, I feel like I’m rambling. I try to cut off, saying, “I just don’t understand any of it, and I am honestly scared for my life right now.”

Only then do I look up at him, tears skimming the bottom lids of my eyes threatening to spill over. Peter narrows his eyes at me. Not like he’s angry. Just like he’s confused. His eyebrows draw together. “This is all…really messed up.”

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“No kidding,” I say. I laugh, which only makes me sound hysterical.

Peter’s fingers tighten around his mug, and I think it might shatter in his hands.

He stays silent so long that I start shaking. I withdraw my hands from my cup so I can hide them in my lap. “What does ‘Conduit’ mean anyway?” I ask, mostly so the silence will stop.

“It’s a pipe, usually,” Peter explains, “but when it relates to people, I think they might mean that it’s their way of moving things. A way of communicating. Something like that.”

I chew on my lip, considering that. But it makes no sense to me. “I just don’t understand what that would mean for a kid. Or for the Paracosm. Unless…” I hesitate, remembering something Liam’s mother said. “…so the leader of the Dimension Jumpers said something about how Izzy bound that Neverland somehow. Maybe that’s what a

Conduit does? Though…bind to what? The Paracosm?”

Peter shakes his head at the table rather than looking at me. “That’s not possible.

What you saw, it can’t be real. Teleportation is illegal. It’s been illegal since before

Caesura separated from Lacuna. Lacuna scientists ran successful trials with animals almost thirty years ago. Human trials were less successful, and it was banned to protect lives. To do what you’re saying they did, the government would be breaking their own laws and lying about it.”

I shrug. “So they’re lying. It makes more sense than any other option we’ve come up with.”

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Peter looks back up at me. He may only be seventeen, but his face looks lined as though he’s three times that. “It could all still be a dream, Gale. That makes just as much sense. Maybe more.”

I slap my hand down on the table and the table rattles more than I expect. Even I jump at the sound. I hesitate, waiting for it to settle before I speak again. “You said yourself that it was weird, since neither of us knew Izzy, that she introduced herself by her real name. Are you literally sitting there, lying to yourself, lying to me, just so that your view of the world and the government stays intact?”

“No!” Peter snaps. After a second, he falls back, slumping in his chair. “I’m just trying to think of Occam’s Razor to figure this out.”

“What does that even mean?” I say, my fingers tightening into fists.

“Basically that the simpler thing is the true thing,” he explains quickly. “That the thing that requires less coincidences is the true thing. So I guess what I’m trying to figure out is which of two theories make sense, because one of them’s got to be true.”

“So you don’t believe me,” I say flatly. Not like a question, but a fact.

“No, that’s not it at all,” he says quickly, leaning forward again. “But honestly?

I’m considering the option that…” He shrugs, and his eyebrows draw together in what looks to me like pity. “…I don’t know. That while you were sedated, you imagined all that.”

I stare at him, almost nodding, but I think my head’s just shaking. “So you don’t believe me then,” I say, my voice little more than a whisper now.

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“Gale, no,” he says. He reaches out across the table to take my hands, but I rip them away and hide them in my lap, looking at my now lukewarm coffee rather than at his face. “I don’t think you’re crazy or lying, I’m just saying that we have to consider the alternative.”

“No,” I say, my voice breaking. “You just trust the government so much that anyone who says anything about it has to be wrong. Even when it endangers my well- being. Good to know.”

I start to stand up, but Peter reaches out one more time to snatch my hand as I rest it on the table. “Gale, wait. That’s not it, okay?”

I hesitate, glaring at him. My body tightens every muscle until they’re nothing but rubber bands ready to snap. “Then what?” I snap, my voice shaking.

Peter’s eyes widen as they search my face. “I don’t want to lose you,” he says quickly. “I’m trying to find a way that I won’t.”

My anger fades, leaving my cheeks colder. My muscles loosen, but I feel the ache that the tension leaves behind. “Why do you think you’re going to lose me?” I ask, my voice cracking.

His hand tightens around mine, and I wince. His eyes glisten, but I convince myself there’s no way he’s about to cry. It doesn’t make sense in how I view Peter. He whispers, “Because if it’s true, then it sounds like they want to make you a Conduit too.”

My mouth opens and closes each time I go to protest but no sound comes out. I forget how to make a sound, forget we’re in a busy coffee shop, forget my own name,

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forget everything but staring at Peter now. “That’s impossible,” I whisper. “Liam’s mother said that the people who bind the Neverlands are all sick kids. I’m not sick.”

He tilts his head to one side. “Aren’t you?”

That stops me short as my heart jerks up into my throat. I lose the ability and apparently the need to breathe. I just stare up at Peter. My whole brain screams warnings.

My heart shudders rather than beats. He has to mean something else, anything else. He can’t see me. My own parents can’t see this. I don’t know that Jayne knew. Peter cannot know. Peter must not know. No one can know how very much like Jayne I am.

“I’m not,” I whisper. I try to get sound behind my words, but I fail.

Back when I was thirteen, and the edges of my world darkened, and things once bright with color felt gray even in the sunlight, I wondered if that was how adults felt all the time. If it was a symptom of growing up and working hard. I try to convince myself of that now.

But then I saw the way my friends hooked up in the locker room. The way Peter ran for student council positions with his posters up all over the school. The look on my dad’s face when he showed me his art studio, which was quite literally our storage locker.

No one seemed to be fading the way I was. I always thought Jayne was part of that equation too. She came home covered in paint, old jeans ruined once again but this time with a cream color instead of mud, just smiling.

I always think I’ve aged too much. And maybe I have. But I’m only beginning to grow up and see that the pieces don’t always fit. That the smiles that are fake on me might be as fake on the faces of everyone else.

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Peter frowns. He looks deflated; I’ve never seen him look so sad. “Gale, I know you’re like Jayne,” he says softly. And still, his voice cracks.

For the girl who hours ago had been floating above the ground, I feel too heavy.

Thinking about Jayne, considering what she did and how I couldn’t see the darkness behind the paint and the dirt and the pendant and the smile, it makes me want to curl up beneath the table and stop hiding the darkness inside me. Spill my secrets out to Peter, even if he knows them all already. Tell him the world’s gotten too twisted, and I’ve gotten too tired. Tell him the worst truth that makes me feel like villain of the story.

Instead, I shake my head, “I’m really not.”

Because I can’t admit I’m angry with Jayne because she took her life when I thought I was alone in wishing I could disappear.

I can never say that. Peter’s not like me; he wouldn’t get that feeling. He would think I want to do what Jayne did. He wouldn’t understand how different that wish is from Jayne’s act. How it only means I’m tired and I want to exist in a different place or just not exist for a little while. How I want to take a break, but I chose the life that would not allow me that luxury. That I don’t actually want to…I don’t want to die. I just want to escape. I want to be brave enough to run away and be someone else.

But Peter sees the world in absolutes. He cannot understand my lukewarm feelings.

Just as Peter opens his mouth to say something else, my watch starts to buzz against my skin. My eyes snap to it in an instant, grateful for any distraction. The screen

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lights up blue to indicate I have a message waiting, and I swipe upward with my finger to reveal it.

Caesura Ballet Academy is the return address.

For a second, I just stare at the name. My fingers shake as I swipe against the screen to scroll through the message, panic from before with Peter intermingling with anxiety in a confusing concoction. For a moment, I can’t even understand the words I read, like I have literally forgotten how to read, and I have to skim the first few words several times before I understand them.

And then I read it again. Just the first couple sentences. I can’t get past them. I think I might be shaking, but I don’t know. I don’t feel anything. My fingertips buzz like they’re trying to remind me how to feel. I feel a weight on my heart that pushes it down so it doesn’t stay in my chest.

“Gale, what’s going on?”

My head jerks up. I’d completely forgotten where I was, that Peter was right in front of me. And the shock of it is the last pebble thrown at my fragile glass house. “I didn’t make it,” I say slowly. My eyes start to burn, and I cannot even try to banish the tears. “The CBA rejected me.”

My throat catches on the word and closes around it so I can’t breathe. I think

Peter says something, but I don’t hear him. My head’s stuffed with cotton so that the entire world around me sounds muffled.

I wonder if this is what Jayne felt like. Like everything’s ending. Like everything is frozen and imploding all at once, collapsing upon itself into a black hole that eats away

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at you until there’s nobody left. I don’t know why she killed herself. Is it because she felt like this?

I think I should curl up, wrap myself in a ball to hold myself together, but no part of my body obeys my head. All I can do is watch as the black hole swallows up the last foothold I have left.

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Shatter

It must be winter outside because my fingers are too stiff and numb to lace my pointe shoes as I sit in the locker room of the Studio. Other girls move around me, but their voices sound like nothing more than tin, echoing my emptiness. I hear none of the words, not even catches of conversation. My watch buzzes against my skin, and I don’t even have to glance at the screen to know it’s Peter calling again. The vibration’s enough to wake my hands up to finish lacing my pointe shoes. I pull off my watch and Paracosm wristband and dump the both of them in my bag on top of my t-shirt.

Peter can’t fix this, can’t fix me. I think I must be scaring him since I haven’t answered his calls for the last week. But I can’t bear to do so. My brain’s too stuck to know what happens next. He said at the coffee shop that it was all going to be okay, that we’d figure it out. But what is there to figure out? Dancing is the only thing I know.

I pull my necklace off over my head. The chain pulls against my hair before coming lose, and my bangs fall in my eyes. I need to get my hair cut soon, but right now,

I take the little bit it obscures my face as a blessing.

I stare at the star charm and the Studio key where they sit in my hand. In those two items rest my whole life as well as everything I’ve lost. It makes my chest ache.

Tears burn against the surface of my eyes, and I blink as fast as I can to banish them. It surprises me that I still have tears left to cry. I should throw my necklace to the bottom of my bag along with everything else, but I thread it back around my neck.

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“Gale?”

I tilt my head upward to see Lena standing in front of me. She smiles at me, her eyebrows drawn together. “Time to go,” she tells me.

Without waiting for my response, Lena takes my hands and pulls me to my feet.

Between her warm skin and my rose leotard, I look too pale. I think she must feel the way

I shake. I don’t notice it myself until I feel the way she stands still. I think maybe I should tell her that it’s because I didn’t make it into the CBA. But that’s a lie, and I am too tired to lie.

Truth is, Jayne and the potential for a future in dance, kept me holding on to a reality already slipping through my fingers. Now, I simply have nothing left to hold onto.

This is not despair from my failure. This is despair from existing.

I follow Lena to the locker room door. She pulls it back and holds it open for me, glancing at me as she does it. I just look past her because faking the smile she expects sounds exhausting. As I look, I see a couple adults milling around just outside the room.

They wear gray pants and navy-collared shirts displaying the symbol of Caesura.

Paracosm staff.

I freeze with one hand against the door. I forget Lena beside me and the room behind me. Neither of the staff members looks my way. They’re too deep in conversation with one another to notice anything else.

The woman is the same one from my family’s apartment, the woman that looks like Jayne but isn’t. Seeing her here, under these circumstances, is worse than seeing her in my home. “Are you okay, Gale?” Lena asks suddenly.

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I drag my eyes over to her and see her frowning at me. She glances over my shoulder for a second and then back to me, apparently not noticing what has me alarmed.

Rather than answering her, I duck back in the locker room. My stomach churns, and it’s the most real thing I’ve felt in days. I press my back against the wall next to the door. It’s only slightly in an effort to hide. I mostly just need something stable because my legs barely hold me up. “What’s wrong?” Lena asks.

“Go, I’ll be out in a minute,” I mumble.

Lena’s shoulders fall. “Are you okay?” she asks again.

“I’m fine,” I say quickly. “I just think I forgot something.”

After a beat, she shrugs and leaves me be. I’m alone in the locker room now that all the other dancers have left, and that’s all the permission I need to break. Pressure against my chest makes me feel like I’m suffocating. The edges of my vision darken. I tighten my fingers into fists at my sides, but it only makes my hands shake more. I hear

Jayne in my ear whispering to me, but I can’t make out the words she says. I expect it’s another plea for me to follow her.

No.

I stride over to my locker, yanking it open with such force that the door bangs against the locker next to it before bouncing back, and tear my bag out so that it drops onto the bench. I push on my Paracosm wristband and slip my watch on next to it.

Without so much as another thought or even the semblance of a question, I pull the earpiece from the side of the watch and dial Peter’s number. I send up a prayer—though

I’m not sure what I believe in anymore—that Peter will please please just answer my call.

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The first ring is broken by Peter picking up. Before I can speak, he says quickly,

“Thank you, thank you for calling me. Are you doing okay?”

“Peter,” I say sharply, “did you report me?”

“I…what?” he says, sounding flustered.

“Did you report me for depression?” I say in a hushed voice. Even so, my cheeks burn as I say the words.

“No, of course not!” he exclaims. “What’s going on?”

“A couple members of Paracosm staff are at the Studio right now,” I explain quickly. “I’m almost sure they’re here for me and that they’re going to claim me because of my depression and make me a Conduit!”

Peter swears under his breath so I can just barely hear him. Then he does it again and again. “What do we do?” he says eventually. His voice breaks.

What do we do? What choice do I have? Even if I wanted to remain trapped in my frozen, stationary life, it’s no longer an option. But the Paracosm dictating my future, my fate, claiming me sick and using it for their gain, that’s not what I want either. I need a third option.

And then I know what that third option is.

“They’re going to take me to the Paracosm, right?” I say quickly. “So meet me there, and we’ll figure out how to get the both of us to Izzy’s Neverland.”

“Gale—” he starts.

“Just do it!” I snap and drop the call, yanking my earbud from my ear.

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I don’t know what time I have left. I yank my Paracosm wristband off and slide it down inside my leotard so it sits against my skin next to my hip. I adjust my sheer blue skirt so it sits on top, hoping that’ll disguise the bulge there. And just as my hands fall back to my sides, the locker room door opens and not-Jayne peeks inside, her eyes landing on me almost immediately.

It doesn’t matter that I know she isn’t Jayne. It still startles me enough that I stumble back a step and fall down when the backs of my knees hit the bench behind me.

She opens the door a little wider and slips inside. “Abigale Winder?” she says, her voice coming out much higher than Jayne’s ever was. Jayne never had much of a singing voice, but she was certainly an alto whereas this woman would sing a high soprano.

“Yeah?” I say, grateful that the sound comes out hard and angry rather than as shaky as I feel inside.

“We have some questions regarding your sister’s recent suicide.” Not-Jayne says it in such a way that I wince. It sounds so distant, politically correct. It makes it sound like I never had a sister at all. Like she’s another victim in a police report rather than me hero, my confidant, my best friend. “In particular, your unusual response to it.”

“How so?” I ask slowly. I need as much time as I can get. The Studio’s closer to the Paracosm than Peter’s home is, and I need him to get there before I become a

Conduit.

Not-Jayne replies calmly, “Jayne Winder passed away nearly a month ago.

Symptoms of mourning that surpass the length of one week and do not fade away are consistent with depression.”

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“So you put an arbitrary timeline on mourning, did you?” I snap, tilting my head to one side.

I should be quiet. I should be obedient and cooperative and put on the brightest, fakest smile I’ve ever worn. But this is the most I’ve felt in weeks. Anger is better than desolation, and I wear it proudly. After all, it doesn’t matter. My time of lies is done because they will no longer be believed. As it is, I am astonished by the steadiness in my voice. I should be afraid and shaking and collapsing. But for the first time in my life, I think I know what I’m doing.

“Are you coming with us?” not-Jayne asks, taking a step toward me.

I hesitate. “I need one second first,” I say quickly.

Not-Jayne tenses when I reach into my bag, but all I pull out is a pair of flats. I unlace the pointe shoes and drop them in the duffle, slipping on the flats instead. It’s pointless, I know. I won’t be coming back to this place again, but I cannot damage those shoes. My parents paid for them. I cannot bear to disappoint them anymore than I already will be today.

But then I stand up. Maybe not-Jayne looks like she’s stealing away my last spark of free will. But actually, the rest of the choices are mine to make.

——

A black car sits on the curb, and the Paracosm staff leads me to it. I’ve never actually been in a car before. It’s not the biggest one I’ve seen, but it’s sturdy rather than sporty, I think. A hand presses up against the small of my back to urge me forward. I jump at the touch and move just to get away. I climb into the backseat after not-Jayne, putting what

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space I can between us. But that space lessens when the other staff member climbs in, squeezing me between them. I realize someone sits in the front of the car as well just as we start moving.

I adjust myself so my elbow pushes my Paracosm wristband into my side. The pain of it digging into my skin is preferable to anyone realizing I have it when it digs into their side instead. I sit as straight as I can, not moving an inch, forcing my face to remain blank. There’s no point hiding right now, but I know I cannot risk immediate action.

They may decide I’m a danger to myself and sedate me. For this plan to work, I must remain conscious. Not-Jayne places a hand on my shoulder, and it takes all the power in me not to jerk away. “There’s no reason to be scared,” she tells me.

“I’m not afraid,” I reply firmly, and for the first time, I’m not certain that’s a lie.

We drive down streets I’ve walked since childhood that now behind a windshield look unfamiliar. I try to pay attention but end up dizzy. I want to reach up and clutch my necklace until I’m grounded, but I don’t want these strangers asking questions about it.

And when staying present makes my breaths too shallow, I dance through my CBA audition in my head.

I don’t expect us to drive to the Paracosm, and we don’t. I just know that I will end up there during this process. It just needs to be before Peter runs out of time in Izzy’s

Neverland. Admittedly, my plan has enough variables to trip me up. Odds are against me.

But that’s okay. I have nothing left to lose.

Rather than driving us to the Paracosm, we’re driven to a skyscraper just outside the reach of the Paracosm’s grassy grounds. As we slow to a stop, I remind myself to

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keep my heart steady. I remind myself I am being brave, that I’m doing what Jayne could never do. That I am sick and broken but no less human and alive. I climb out of the car with my head held high and my arms firmly at my sides to hide the Paracosm wristband from sight.

I’m lead into the nondescript building with a stereotypical lobby. The normality of it has my fingers twitching, and I ball my hands into fists to hide it. Stone tile sits beneath my feet and a wall to my left has a water feature sending water tumbling down like a waterfall. The walls are black and match the reception desk. Beyond that, the small lobby’s empty. The receptionist perks up when we walk through, but then his eyes fall down again when he sees who it is, looking bored.

“What is this place?” I ask despite myself.

“A screening and treatment facility for those with mental illness,” not-Jayne responds.

She beckons me to follow her, and I do, though mostly because the other staff member stands behind me protecting the doors. I doubt every word out of this woman’s mouth. No one who is reported for suffering from depression is seen again after they’re whisked away. Classmates that were pulled from school as eleven-year-olds are still gone. A screening is as good as a sentence.

But I stay silent rather than revealing the hostility I feel. I let myself be led into an elevator, down several floors, and out again I don’t know how far below the ground. I swallow my heart when it jumps to my throat at the sight of the floor as the elevator

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doors open again. Nondescript or not, I recognize the hallway of the medical portion of the Paracosm. The two buildings must connect.

Not-Jayne leads the way, glancing back at me either to read my face or to make sure I’m following her. In case she’s analyzing me, I try to hide my shivering by locking my arms against my chest. Summer outside, but it feels worse than winter in here.

My wristband vibrates against my hip to alert me to a new message, and I adjust my elbow so that I push both the wristband and watch into my skin. I bite my lip to stop myself from squeaking from the sudden sensation. I pray the message is from Peter, letting me know he’s here. If that’s the case, I need to figure out a way to let him know where I am. I open my mouth, ready to ask if I can use the restroom, but I halt just before the words come out. Being suspect of depression means until they know otherwise, they must also consider me suicidal. There’s no way they’ll let me use the restroom alone.

I need a moment, just one brief second of mistake from the Paracosm, to get

Peter here. I can’t do this without him. Not that I have much of a plan beyond that, but I have more variables here than I know what to do with anyway. I just need to get to Izzy’s Neverland.

Not-Jayne presses her thumbprint against a biometric scanner, and a door slides open. I turn to go in, not needing any provocation from the other staff member behind me, ready to play my part in the next scene in this charade. But then

I stop dead in the doorway.

We’re at Deployment.

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I forget where I am. I forget that maybe I should try to be faking my emotions.

All I see is the capsule with the blue sensory deprivation padding in a sterile white room that looks like it belongs in a hospital. “What’s going on?” I say coldly, my eyes widening the longer I stare.

“This is the screening, Abigale,” not-Jayne says calmly. She waits for me to move, which surprises me. At this point, I expect her to shove me into the room and lock the door, so the fact that she stays still unsettles me.

“No, it’s not,” I say firmly, stiffly shaking me head. “This is the Paracosm.”

I didn’t anticipate this. I guess I should have. Eventually, I knew my mental health screening would mark me as sick, and I’d become a Conduit in the Paracosm.

But this isn’t a test. It’s assuming a certainty. I know that my sheet said I had

“potential” to be a Conduit, but I thought there’d be some sort of formality of testing.

And that’s when the words of Liam’s mother come to me: “You don’t bind this world, but it obeys you as much as it obeys the one who binds it.”

The Paracosm already has all the information they need. I have the same power as Izzy; I can be a Conduit. My depression is just the explanation why.

“This is not the Paracosm,” not-Jayne corrects me, placing a hand softly on my shoulder. I jerk away, the touch feeling more sudden than it actually is. “We simply borrow Paracosm technology for screening purposes.”

Not-Jayne reaches out for me again, and I press my back against the doorframe to try to put more distance between us. I grit my teeth and make no attempt to hide it. “I will not be a Conduit,” I snarl.

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Not-Jayne’s eyes widen, and that is all the confirmation I need. She reaches out for me one more time, and I try to duck under her arm. But not-Jayne’s fingers wrap around the upper part of my arm before I even take a step.

“PETER!” I scream, even though it’s probably useless. Even if I’m lucky enough and he’s in the Paracosm, he must be too far away. But he’s the only chance

I’ve got. So I scream his name over and over again as the woman pulls me into the room.

My screams cut off and I start choking when she pulls a small case from her pocket and pops it open to reveal a small spray bottle inside.

I stare at the bottle. I know immediately what it is, and the sight of it drops lead in the pit of my stomach. The white bottle practically glows under the too- bright lights of the room that’s part Paracosm and part hospital. “Abigale, I don’t want to do this,” not-Jayne says, “but it you don’t calm down, I will have no choice but to sedate you.”

I yank my arm away from not-Jayne and stumble a step back. She’s between the door and me, so there’s still no way out, but the distance between us steadies my breathing. “I understand,” I breathe eventually.

Me against two. Can I win if it’s me against two? Years of dance, broken bones and bleeding toes and soreness that will never go away regardless of if I ever dance again, have made me both fast and strong. But I’m not a trained fighter. And even if I was, I’m small, and even the shorter of my two enemies stands six inches taller.

I need help.

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The door just beyond not-Jayne smacks against the wall beside it. Both of us jump at the noise, and not-Jayne turns away from me to see what’s going on.

And there’s that split second.

I dive for the hand that holds the bottle. She holds it just a little away from her body, but the distance is enough that when I crash on top of her arm, it sends the case sliding across the floor without actually knocking down not-Jayne. I scramble for the bottle, and when my fingers wrap around it, the spray feels like as much of a weapon as a gun.

I don’t think; I just move. I spin around on my knees to see not-Jayne lunging toward me. So I throw myself forward and spray the contents of the bottle into her face. Not-Jayne cries out in shock, but it’s only another couple seconds before she crashes to the ground, unconscious.

I stare at her for a second longer than necessary, just to be absolutely certain that she’s down for the count. Then, remembering she wasn’t my only opponent, I spin around. But the man’s collapsed in the doorway, a bright red knot already forming on his forehead from hitting the door.

Standing over top of him is Peter.

“I heard you screaming,” he gasps.

I don’t reply right away. I just stare at him. He looks like a myth, like he can’t possibly be standing there. Like I can’t possibly be okay. After a while, I whisper, “I think they were going to make me a Conduit.”

Peter’s eyes narrow. “So what’s the plan then?”

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I straighten up, my back feeling stiffer than it probably is. I don’t feel real.

“Get to Neverland,” I say. “We’ll figure it from there.”

I force myself to move, though none of the muscles feel like my own. But I know what I want and it requires me to move. I step toward Peter, but I hesitate when I reach the middle of the room. “Wait, how are you here?” I say. “There’s security.”

Peter shrugs. His frown deepens, like he can’t possibly imagine why this matters right now. “I just told Monique I had to use the restroom. Once you get to this floor, the only security is to get into the rooms.”

“But Monique isn’t going to be okay with me just showing up to Deployment,”

I say quickly. I turn back to look at the capsule already before us. “Why couldn’t I just deploy from here?”

Even before Peter can find the words to answer, I wander over to the capsule and hop up so I sit on the edge. I slip my watch and wristband out of my leotard and tighten the Paracosm wristband around my arm. “Gale, I’m not letting you go in there without me,” Peter says, taking a single step into the room with his arms across his chest.

“I’m not suggesting that,” I say, shaking my head. And I mean it. “I just have to go in somewhere else so that we don’t raise suspicion. You’re smart, and you like this science stuff. Wouldn’t you be able to launch the Deployment?”

Peter doesn’t answer right away, and I hold my breath. It’s thin logic, and I know it. Teleportation can’t exactly be easy science, but Peter’s got a better chance

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of understanding it than anyone else I know. Not to mention it’s probably the only chance we’ve got.

We have to decide now. And when he still doesn’t answer, I ask in a small voice, “Peter, don’t you trust me?”

Peter’s shoulders fall and with them, so does my heart. But then he nods. “I just need you tell me the truth on one thing, okay?” He takes a deep breath, and his arms fall to his sides. I have never seen him look so defeated. “Are you really depressed?”

I squeeze my eyes shut. I want to wake up from this nightmare. But it’s gone on for years and at this point, I have no choice but to call it “life.” So I release a slow, shaking breath, raise my chin and open my eyes. Everything in me wants to curl into a ball and protect my heart, but that option’s gone. “I am,” I say slowly, softly. “I have been depressed for so long. And I didn’t even notice Jayne going through the same thing.”

Peter steps toward me, and I stiffen at the sight of his approach. But all he does is lay one hand on my shoulder. This close to him, I see the way his eyes glisten, but I lie and tell myself that he’s not about to cry. “I’m sorry,” he says in a cracking voice, “that I didn’t notice how much either of you were hurting.”

With that, he walks over to the terminal that Monique usually stands behind.

I push myself back in the capsule so that I can reach the cord that’s supposed to adhere to my temple. Once that’s attached, I pull the shielding with me as I go to lie down. “I can do it!” Peter calls to me so that I can just barely make out his warped

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voice. “The science of it is all behind the scenes; they made the controls intuitive.”

“Good,” I call, my voice echoing back at me.

“And Gale?” he adds. I turn my head to him, and I can just make out the colors of his form through the shield. “I’m not abandoning you; I will get to Neverland as soon as I can, and we’ll figure out what to do together.”

I quickly turn away and stare up at the ceiling. I don’t dare say a word, lest I tell him my plan. He’ll stop me. But I only have one option now.

Live in Neverland. Forever.

And then everything goes black as I’m swept in-between.

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Conduit

My back slams into the ground as the physical darkness vanishes like smoke. My hands curl into fists in the sand as I choke on the salty air. It takes me a long time to move and when I do, I roll over onto my hands and knees, gagging. After a second, I’m just left gasping.

I lean back so I sit on my knees and tilt my head back so that my face turns to the sky. But I don’t look at it. I just close my eyes against the sun and focus on nothing but breathing. My head spins, and my whole body shakes. I’m not sure whether it’s because of the sensation of being in-between or the stress of what I went through in Caesura.

When I finally open my eyes, I turn my head out to the sea. The waves shift on the water’s surface, moving with the wind, I guess. All I can see out there are the waves and the line of the horizon. It seems too quiet after the chaos.

This is new. I’ve always ended up in the woods, not on the beach. But then again,

I’ve always ended up somewhere at least near Izzy. So she must be nearby. “Izzy!” I call, but end up choking. My throat’s rubbed raw more than I thought. Air and my voice tearing through it picks at the scabs left behind.

My eyes fall on the wristband. Its screen glows with the cool-down time I have left, but the number mocks me more than reassures me. Once it gets to automatic ejection, what do I do? If I don’t let myself get ejected, I’ll die here. If I do, I’ll become a

Conduit.

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But…maybe I won’t die.

Izzy doesn’t die, and I think she’s lived in the Neverland for years. Maybe there’s a difference between being a visitor and being a Conduit, but it’s a chance I have to take.

Going back is no longer an option.

So I release the clasp of the wristband and let the band drop into the sand.

I think maybe I should crush it. That would probably work better if I were in boots instead of floral-patterned flats, but even so, I can’t bring myself to do it. The idea of absolutely destroying that option sends me shivering. I’m not brave enough.

“Izzy!” I shout again. I force myself to my feet, my knees shaking beneath me.

My eyes comb the shoreline and where it meets the tree line.

“Over here!”

I spin around. Almost at the edge of my vision where the beach turns out of sight,

Izzy stands waist deep in water, waving her hands in the air to get my attention. Despite the horrors this girl has caused, my chest fills with warmth at the sight of her. I sprint toward her, the sand slowing me down too much for my liking. When I reach her and slow to a stop just outside the reach of the water, she giggles as the head of a mermaid emerges from the surface of the ocean.

I stumble back, clutching at my necklace just to be sure it’s still there. The mermaid’s eyes narrow at the sight of me, and she dips back beneath the waves. “Wait, come back!” Izzy protests, but the mermaid does not emerge again. Izzy turns to me and pouts. “Now you scared her off.”

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“Not sure what I did to make her hate me,” I say softly. But I quickly shake off the thought. “What are you doing? I thought you couldn’t swim.”

“I can’t,” she agrees. “But I can stand in water, and she wanted to play.”

Izzy pushes against the water to get back to the beach. Her jean shorts are soaked through but she doesn’t seem to mind. She just shakes herself off like a dog and makes her way over to me, picking up her boots and slipping into them as she walks. “So whatever happened? I thought you were sick.”

I release a heavy sigh. “You have no idea,” I mutter. “And I’m not sure you want to.”

She crosses her arms against her chest and frowns. “Of course I do! No secrets. It just means that I don’t get to hear the cool stories.”

Even then, I hesitate. I stare at the girl I used to think was nothing more than a dream, who I used to think was dead, who I didn’t know was a tool of the Paracosm. And

I realize she deserves the truth more than anyone.

So I tell her what the Paracosm’s been doing and that this world is really real like the Dimension Jumpers said. And I tell her the Paracosm wants to make me what she is.

“They actually almost succeeded too,” I whisper at the end.

When I stop speaking, Izzy does nothing but stare at me without blinking. She takes so long to speak that it makes my heart ache. I want to explode so she’ll react. I’ve never seen her shocked into silence like this before. And then finally, she says,

“But…then how am I not dead? If this is real, I should be dead.”

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I shake my head. “I don’t know. Maybe…being a Conduit changed the way you age? I mean, according to official records, you should be eighteen.”

Izzy’s eyes widen. “It’s been four years? But I’m still…I’m still fourteen and I’m not dead and that doesn’t make sense. Unless…”. Her expression of confusion morphs into a grin and bright eyes that I’ve come to expect from Izzy. “Maybe being a Conduit made me immortal.”

She doesn’t look excited, for once. Her eyes shift to the ground and her smile doesn’t fade, but she looks something other than excited. She looks like she’s in awe. She pulls her hair over her shoulder and combs it out with her fingers, like she can’t believe it’s real. “I don’t have to die,” she says. “My tumor won’t kill me.”

I realize that maybe, for Izzy, being a Conduit is a blessing. Her wild energy was not built for Caesura but for these woods. She was not made to be restrained. And maybe…neither was I.

I just want to do it on my own terms.

“So we have a problem,” I explain quickly. “I can’t go back to Caesura, or they’ll make me a Conduit.”

Izzy shrugs. “Okay, so stay here.” She reaches out and takes my hands in hers.

“It’ll be fun! Way more fun than being alone all the time.”

“The problem is that I don’t know if Peter will understand,” I continue before

Izzy gets too excited. “And the other problem is I don’t know that the Paracosm’s going to let me stay.” I narrow my eyes. “Though I don’t know how they’ll stop me,” I add after a second.

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“I kind of have a third problem to offer,” Izzy says with a smirk. Then she nods over my shoulder, and I turn to see a group of three pirates emerging from the woods.

“They seem like they might want to solve our problems by killing us.”

I take a quick step back, wondering if maybe we can escape without the pirates noticing us. But that hope quickly evaporates when their eyes land on us and they start sprinting.

Izzy grabs my hand, and we spin around and dash toward the woods. After a few seconds, Izzy pulls from my hand when she realizes I’m only slowing her down. I drop back behind her to follow her path, trying to match exactly where she places her feet among the dirt and fallen branches. “I guess they’re still mad that I cut off their captain’s hand!” Izzy shouts back at me.

No need to sacrifice any oxygen to honor that comment with a response. Branches stretch out their limbs to tear at my bare shoulders. I doubt anyone has ever run through a forest of trees in a leotard, and that’s for good reason. Between the thin leotard and gauzy skirt, I have no protection against the elements.

There’s no way we’re going to be able to get away on foot. Well, Izzy might. But

I was outrun before, and I was wearing slightly more appropriate clothing then.

Good thing I can fly.

I don’t have time to feel it, to reach out to what I know with my eyes closed like last time. I just have to do it. I use my momentum from running to throw myself into the air and swing my legs out into grand écart. And I just…don’t land.

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I feel gravity pulling at my navel, but my momentum pulls my body up anyway. I spin my body around, moving my arms into first position without me thinking about it, and the spin’s enough to slow me to a stop. All the movements feel too natural to me, considering now I will never be a professional dancer. My body learned how to move as a ballerina. But if I wasn’t good enough to get into the CBA, was I ever a ballerina at all?

The pirates sprinting after us ignore the fact that one of the girls they were chasing just lifted up into the air. They keep their eyes ahead as if I never existed at all and just keep running.

My breath catches. They were never after me.

“IZZY!” I scream.

I execute a modified piqué turn to spin back around to face the direction Izzy went. And just beyond the trees, I see her standing on the edge of a cliff, the pirates not far off. I scream her name again, and she tilts her head up and sees me in the air. Her eyes brighten. “How do I do that?” she shouts up at me.

How? I barely know how. But I don’t know that I can get to her in time. “When I fly, I think about dancing. I—I guess just think about something that makes you feel like you’re flying. Like…climbing trees or something.”

“Awesome!” she says with a grin wide enough to rival Monique’s.

And, without a second of hesitation, she leaps off the edge of the cliff.

I scream, as if my voice will reach her first and catch her before she hits the water. After a second, I remember how to move and propel myself toward her like a torpedo. Wind rushes past my face, and I don’t think about the proper movements, I just

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move. The air tears at my eyes until they water, and I pretend I’m not crying. Everything has to be okay. But I can’t see Izzy over the cliff. Please don’t die, is all I can think. I can’t deal with death anymore.

And then she shoots straight up like a rocket.

I pull my shoulders back to slow to a stop. Izzy flies high enough that the sun glows as her backdrop in the sky, and I wince when I try to follow her path with my eyes.

She doesn’t slow down from there and launches right past me. She screams with laughter, leaving her voice behind as she goes. I spin around and race after her. I chase after Izzy as she spins through the sky, heading straight up toward the sun again. Her laughter echoes around us as cold air assaults my face and sends me shivering. I feel the tears on my face from before beginning to freeze against my skin the higher we climb. I can barely see Izzy. I try to watch her, but the sun glows behind her, making her little more than shadow. And then, I guess once she’s decided she’s climbed high enough, she turns back, doing a complete one-eighty to dive back toward the water.

My stomach flips as I do the same. Nothing but air surrounds me. It’s thinner up here than on the ground and harder to breathe, but I begin to giggle even without oxygen to spare. I feel more like a dancer than ever. No rules restrain me to proper form. I laugh and scream and spin and soar. I fall after Izzy, closing my eyes against the tears formed by the assault of air against them. And when I open them again, they land on Peter, standing on the shore. I spin myself around, still hurdling toward the ground, so that my feet will hit the sand first.

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I miscalculate my speed and have to run when I land to burn off the momentum, but I still manage to trip and land face-first in the sand. As I push myself up, Peter drops to his knees beside me. “Are you okay?” he exclaims.

“I’m fine,” I say, though it requires me to spit out a mouthful of sand.

As I get to my feet, Izzy lands with just as much energy as I did, though with a bit more finesse, and manages to stay upright. “That was amazing!” she shouts, jumping up and down.

“What happened?” Peter asks. He claps both of his hands over my shoulders, and the force shakes me. “Did they find you?”

I frown. “Who? The pirates?”

Peter narrows his eyes and shakes his head. “No, the Paracosm. They followed us here.”

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Satellites

I open my mouth to say something but nothing comes out. I feel the words catch in my throat, even though I’m not sure that I had any words to say in the first place.

I don’t have a plan for this. I’m starting to think maybe I had no plan at all. I expected the Paracosm to find some way to pull me out of here, or wait for me to come back to Caesura, or even that I would die after time ran out on my wristband. I didn’t know that the staff could follow us into Izzy’s Neverland. I thought this world was ours; I thought this world was safe.

“I don’t know what to do,” I whisper eventually, raking my fingers back through my hair. It flops back in my eyes. It’s far outgrown the cut from my dance performance and only further reminds me of who I no longer am. Who I can never be again.

“Well, I have an idea,” Izzy says, skipping over to us.

“Because all your plans go so well!” Peter snaps at her.

I wince and tilt my eyes up to him. His cheeks flush with his anger. But sweat beads on his forehead as well. So maybe not just anger but…desperation.

I wrap my arms around myself, wanting nothing more than to retreat. This is the side of Peter I hate. The sudden flashes of anger terrify me and send me scattering. This is why I never considered him my friend as much as Jayne’s.

But Izzy doesn’t so much as bat an eye at his anger. She ignores him and looks at me. “Don’t you remember, Gale?” she says. “The leader of the Dimension Jumpers said I

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could sever the bond between the worlds, right? Because I’m the connection between them. So if I can cut off my connection from Caesura, maybe the Paracosm won’t be able to get here anymore.”

“But we don’t know how to do that,” I say in a small voice. Still though, that plan’s the best we’ve got, except for the fact that we have to get the Dimension Jumpers to help us, since they’re probably the only ones who know how to sever the bond. And I have the feeling they still hate us since the whole…cutting off a man’s hand incident.

“No, that won’t work,” Peter says firmly, locking his arms against his chest.

“Then Gale and I would be stuck here.”

“Wait!” I say in a small voice. It pushes past my aching throat that tries to cut off my words. I push myself to my feet to try to prove to myself that I have more strength than I think. I clear my throat and say, “After everything that just happened, you still think I want to go back?”

Peter’s head snaps to me. “You can’t stay here,” he replies. But then his eyes widen, like he only now understands what I said. “You can’t be telling me your plan was to stay here?”

“What’s my other option?” I ask, swinging out my arms. But they quickly fall back to my sides. I feel too heavy. Maybe it’s because I just flew, and I’m no longer used to the pull of gravity. But either way, all my energy deflates. “Peter, I either become a

Conduit on their terms or live in Neverland on mine. There’s no third option.”

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When his eyes fall, they fall on my bare wrist, I guess just now realizing my wristband’s gone. “Are you really doing this?” he whispers. “Are you really doing what

Jayne did?”

The bottom of my stomach drops out, and the world feels a little less stable. I actually start to fall sideways and grab Izzy’s arm for support. How can he think…how does this make me like Jayne? But I don’t get a chance to ask my questions. “We have to move now!” Izzy exclaims.

She doesn’t wait for either of us; she doesn’t even wait for me to release her arm.

She pulls away from me and takes a running jump into the air so she shoots off like a rocket. Peter being there makes me hesitate to follow for a second. “We can’t lose her,” I say as my only explanation before I wrap my arms around him.

On the ground, he’s not only taller but also heavier than me. However, in the air I know gravity will command him less than I will. Peter watches me with narrowed eyes as

I brace myself, but he doesn’t protest. Grand jeté isn’t really a possibility with Peter in my arms, so I plié to build momentum for sauté and rise up into the air from the jump. As gravity loosens its hold, Peter clutches me desperately, arms squeezing my chest so tight that I struggle to breathe for a moment. And then, I just tilt my body to race after Izzy.

“There’s no way we’re going to find the Jumpers like this!” I shout up to her, hoping the wind will carry my voice her way.

She twists around in the air so she ends up flying backward in order to face me.

Her brown hair sweeps across her face with the force of the wind and obscures her expression. “At least it’s better than the Paracosm finding us,” she points out.

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“This is insane,” Peter says suddenly. His grip around my neck tightens.

“Trust me, I know,” I reply, smiling despite myself. “You’re talking to the one who’s actually flying.”

I feel his eyes on me, rather than see them, and I wonder what he’s looking for.

But I refuse to look down at him. The more I try to convince myself it’s because I’m scared Izzy will disappear on me the moment I look away from her, the more I think that

I just don’t want to know what I’ll see if I look at Peter.

We soar just above the trees, inches separating us from the scratch of leaves on the highest branches. But the cover is too thick to see through, and all I can make out are trees and beaches edging the mass of trees. A pirate ship sits on one shore, but we’re too far away for even long-range weapons to be of danger to us.

This whole world could be my home soon. But if the Paracosm staff is here, the odds of that are not in my favor.

“We need to go lower,” I shout. Izzy’s close enough to me now that I risk a glance at Peter and see how pale he’s getting. He may live in the penthouse of one of the tallest buildings in Caesura, but it seems he’s scared of heights.

“They might catch us then,” Izzy warns.

“What’s fun without a little risk?” I say, realizing a second after I say it where

I’ve heard that phrase before. Monique said it, when she explained the Paracosm could kill us.

I’ve faced the possibility of death too much lately. Jayne killed herself, then her voice called for me to follow her. And every force in this world has done their best to

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make Jayne’s call to me a reality; knives to my throat, a mermaid wrenching me underwater, Dimension Jumpers taking me prisoner, my life has been in near constant danger since I got here.

While Izzy might face a future of immortality in Neverland, I suppose a poor choice could still get her killed. She doesn’t age, but it doesn’t mean she doesn’t need a heartbeat to stay alive. And I may look forward to the same future for myself. But I’m starting to realize if there’s no possibility of death, what is the meaning of life?

I’m willing to take the risk.

Apparently, that’s all Izzy needed to hear. She flashes a grin back my way before diving down into the trees like the leaves actually build an ocean. I don’t hesitate to dive right after her. Leaves and thin branches tear at my skin, and I wince every few seconds to protect my eyes from debris while still paying attention to where I’m going.

But I misjudge the distance to the ground and almost crash into a man treading carefully through the forest.

Gravity drags at me despite the fact that I’m flying, but I just manage to pull up in time to miss the man. However, it’s not enough time to stop from crashing, and I slam into the ground, skidding through the leaves on the forest floor. They scratch at my arms, my face, everything they can get to, feeling so unlike the leaves I jumped into a week ago. I wrap my arms tighter around Peter, as if my small body will be enough to protect him.

We slow to a stop, finally halting when my back collides with a tree trunk. I cry out, and my thoughts slam to a stop. I forget how to move, forget even where I am with

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my eyes shut against the pain. My ears ring, and it takes me a second to realize Peter’s shouting my name.

I open my eyes a crack, my body starting to catch up with my brain screaming,

MOVE! Everything blurs into colors that take me a moment to decipher into shapes. I remind my body it needs to pull itself together because someone from the Paracosm staff is right there. I don’t know how far I skidded. We’re probably not out of sight. But still I cannot get my body to move any faster.

Peter grabs my arms and pulls me to my feet, but the world shifts wildly, and I fall against him. I squeeze my eyes shut, shaking my head as if I can rattle my thoughts back into their proper places. And when I open my eyes again, the world starts to solidify a bit, enough that I’m able to pull away from Peter just slightly.

The first thing I see clearly is a member of the Paracosm’s staff pointing a gun at

Peter and me. I throw my arms up in a gesture of surrender in an instant. Peter beside me is a touch slower. Obstinate as ever, he hesitates. And that’s all it takes.

The man pulls the trigger.

I scream as a pellet hits Peter’s arm, and he drops to the ground beside me. It takes all my self-control to stay where I am with my hands up. My chest heats up, and I cannot seem to gather enough oxygen. I need to look down at Peter, see how bad the wound is, see if his eyes are still open, see if Peter’s still alive, but the gun is still trained on me. “Abigale Winder,” the shooter says, “you will be coming with us.”

I open my mouth, not sure if I’m going to protest, or beg, but I don’t get to find out. I see a flash of blue fabric behind a tree just beyond the man, and in the blink of an

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eye, Liam bolts out from behind a tree and jams the hilt of a knife into the back of the shooter’s head. The man’s eyes close immediately, and he drops down like he’s nothing more than an inanimate object.

I stare at the shooter’s body for a second. Everything around me happens too fast for my still-loopy brain to handle, so I give it a moment to catch up. Just as Liam’s eyes snap to my face, I drop down beside Peter. I pluck the tiny pellet from his arm, and it leaves behind no blood. His eyes are closed, but other than the tiny pellet, I see no sign of injury. And thankfully, I can see his chest rising and falling.

Upon examination, I see a clear compartment at the center of the pellet, but it’s empty. “I don’t…understand,” I say.

Liam steps up behind me, but I can’t bring myself to stiffen or run. What Liam does do is pluck the pellet from my fingertips. I look up and watch as he holds it up to the light. “It likely just put the kid to sleep,” he explains. “He’ll be fine in a couple hours, I would guess.”

Liam drops the pellet back into my hand, but I still can’t pull my eyes away from him. “Thank you,” I say finally.

“What are people from your world doing here?” he demands in response. “And where is the wild girl you usually hang around with?”

“I don’t know where Izzy is,” I reply. I glance around now that my vision’s clear, and I don’t see her in any direction. She must have made a better turn than me when she dived and managed to avoid notice. “She’ll probably show up in a second,” I add.

“And the others that are here?” Liam says, raising an eyebrow expectantly.

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“They’re after me,” I explain, barely any voice behind my words. “But Izzy and I have a plan to get rid of them. We just need your help.”

Liam frowns, adjusting his knife in his hand I think as a threat. “And why would I help you? The both of you are dangerous, volatile creatures. You twisted this world and now you endanger it. I’ve never met two more destructive Other-worlders.”

I straighten, faking a confidence I don’t feel. Just as I open my mouth to speak, I hear someone call, “Did you have all the fun without me?”

I tilt my head up and see Izzy sitting in a branch above my head high up in a tree.

She pouts at the sight of Peter on the ground. “Doesn’t anybody know they need to wait for me before they let anything fun happen?”

She slides off the branch and I don’t know whether it’s her new ability to fly or her strange ability to land solidly that has her hit the ground feet first before straightening like the jump was no big deal. Liam instinctually raises his knife, and Izzy catches the small gesture. She immediately rolls her eyes. “We’re friends today, ‘kay? Did Gale tell you our plan yet?”

“We want to separate this Neverland from Caesura,” I explain quickly. “Your mother said it was possible to sever the bond Izzy has between the two worlds, but we don’t know how.”

Liam’s forehead creases as he frowns. “I was afraid you’d say that.”

That stops me short. “And why is that?” I say slowly.

Liam shakes his head. “My mother believes in separating the worlds by severing the bond between the Neverland and your world, but doing so binds your so-called

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Conduit and all others left behind to the Neverland in a new way. The dimension is no longer manipulated by imagination once the laws have been set by those bound to the world.” He scowls. “But then the worlds are no longer able to change, which makes them less than they once were.”

“So is that why you want to kill us?” I breathe, suddenly realizing what he means.

“Because you think then the world will be able to return to normal because the bond will be gone completely?”

“It’s a theory,” he grunts.

Izzy steps forward before I realize and can stop her, but she just stops beside me, raising her hand high like she’s in school. “I have a question!” she announces. Her hand falls and she asks, “What are we doing then?”

I let my arms fall and turn more fully to face Liam. The knife in Liam’s hand twitches, but this time I don’t wince. I don’t know if I fear death anymore, even if I’m not ready to die. I am already living out the worst-case scenario. I’m no longer desperate for control, to get every move spot-on to impress the world. The years spent perfecting my plié and grand jeté were pointless. Being perfect, faking the smile, all that, I was never in control anyway.

I’ve already made the last choice I have control over. I decided to run away, to avoid becoming a Conduit, avoid the Paracosm’s experiment. I decided to live in a world where my imperfection would be allowed.

My heart no longer races when I tell Liam, “You can help us or you can kill us.

What’s your answer?”

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Fairy Story

“We can’t just sit around,” Izzy says, jumping on the balls of her feet.

I sit on the ground next to Peter, staring at his wristband as the time runs down.

She’s right; we have no time to waste, not if we want to survive this. Even so, I refuse to leave Peter’s side. When Izzy and I are done, there will be no way back to Caesura. But I will not trap Peter here; he gets as much choice as I do.

The face of his wristband glows, displaying that thirty minutes remain. I pull my knees into my chest and bury my face in them. I want to scream. We can’t risk sitting still for another thirty minutes. The Dimension Jumpers only promised to protect us for a short period of time before they would leave this Neverland. And the moment one of the

Paracosm staff members injure any of them in any way, I know they’re as good as gone, regardless of their promise.

“Can’t we do something?” Izzy begs. She looks about ready to rocket into the air to burn off her nervous energy. “Couldn’t you get your Shadow to distract the Paracosm people for a while?”

“I doubt it,” I mutter. The idea of bringing it here makes me shiver, and I press my back up against the tree behind me to try to hide the gesture.

“You did it before,” she whines. “And the Shadow scared the Jumpers before so it might scare the Paracosm people too. And if we’re just going to sit here because you insist that we wait for Peter, then we have to do something.”

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I squeeze my eyes shut. The thought of bringing the Shadow here sends my heart racing in a way that reverberates through the rest of my body. But Izzy’s right. “Fine,” I snap finally. “I’ll try.”

My heart tightens in my chest as I push myself to my feet. I release a heavy breath and close my eyes, pressing my back up against the bark so I feel the ridges through my leotard. I smell the salty sea not far off mixing with the green trees that smell like fire and maple. Are you there, Jayne? I think. My throat closes, even though I don’t need to speak. The wind against my skin chills me, and I feel cold even with the sun on my shoulders.

I hear nothing for a long time, save for the waves crashing over one another. And then, “Why do you only talk to me when you need something?”

I swallow. I miss hearing Jayne’s voice so much that when I hear it now, it sends a warm tremor through my veins. My arms lock against my chest to stop my hands from shaking. You’re the one who left, Jayne. You abandoned me.

Another long silence follows, and panic makes my head feel like it’s full of cotton. “You know I’m not Jayne, right?”

I choke on sobs I’ve been ignoring weeks. I wrap my arms around my stomach, feeling like a gaping hole has opened up somewhere within me. I feel a hand on my shoulder, but I don’t know if it’s someone physically beside me or the darkness haunting my head. “I know,” I whisper out loud. And I do. I hate that I know it’s not Jayne. Her voice was home, and now a stranger has stolen that voice.

“Then why should I help you? You hate me. You run away from me.”

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Because they’re invading your home, I think. Because you always save me.

I remember how Jayne walked me to the Studio when I was too old to ask my mother to take me and too young to be brave enough to go alone. She dragged me to coffee shops and on shopping trips with her and Peter because she knew if she didn’t, I may not get out of bed at all. She kept me in one piece. The Shadow stole Jayne’s voice so maybe it can save me too.

“But you won’t follow me.”

“I can’t,” I cry, as quietly as I can. “I can’t follow you. I can’t die like you did.”

I hear Izzy whisper my name, but it seems too far away to be real. “Why?” the

Shadow asks. “You want to.”

But Jayne did more than keep me in one piece; she kept me alive.

“I don’t,” I say a little louder. My own voice sends me shaking, and I switch back to silence. If you’re not Jayne, then I know what you are. You’re that stupid little voice in the back of my head that tells me I’m sick. And you’re not going to win. I’ve found my way out. I control you, and you are going to help me.

“Why?” it says again.

Jayne kept me alive. Now it’s my turn to do the same.

“Because you’re not Jayne,” I say out loud. “And even if you were, you don’t get to have power over me.” I rip the necklace from my neck and stare at it resting in my hand. I keep losing my necklace, but only in the Neverland.

And then I realize maybe it’s because I’m supposed to let Jayne go.

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Before I can question what I’m doing or tell myself to think it through, I chuck the necklace as hard as I can into the woods. I turn away before I can see where it lands so I can’t go after it.

“Now help us!” I scream.

I stand there gasping, just waiting for the Shadow to respond. No one touches me or speaks and no sound can overpower each breath I release. “Fine,” it whispers. “But you will follow me. Even if you’re strong right now.”

“So you’ll help?” I whisper.

I wait for a response, but after a full minute of silence, I let my shoulders fall. “I think that’s a yes.”

That’s the moment Peter stirs. My eyes snap to him in an instant, but already his eyes are open and they meet mine. “Gale,” he breathes. After a second, his eyes widen and he shoots up. He pushes his face into his hands and then pulls his hands back through his hair.

“You okay?” I ask slowly.

He turns to me. Tiredness wrinkles the corners of his eyes. “What happened?” he says instead of answering my question.

I feel too exposed, too vulnerable right next to him, especially after what just happened with the Shadow. I want to stand where Izzy is in relation to Peter. I want to stand on the other side of the island, really, and just scream my plan to him from there.

Peter accepts no opinion but his own, and my plan is the exact opposite of the world he

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believes in. And when I don’t answer right away, Izzy interjects, “You were shot with a sleep pellet. And now you need to go.”

I shoot a glare her way. So much for walking Peter to it. When I look back at him, he stares at me, looking suddenly far more aware, though he has just woken up from being drugged. “Gale…?” he says in a low voice.

I chew on my bottom lip, trying to take an extra second to think of the best way to present it to him. Maybe there’s a way that doesn’t end our relationship in a screaming match. “Izzy and I are going to separate Neverland from Caesura for good as soon as your cool-down time runs out,” I say finally because I can’t stay silent forever.

Peter’s eyes widen, and my stomach twists uncomfortably. “You can’t do that,” he says slowly. Not like he’s doubtful that we are physically able to do as we say. More like I cannot dare do this. Though he’s just woken up, he flushes as if he just ran several miles. My throat closes at just the look on his face. “It’s one thing, saying you’re staying here for good but to actually cut this place off from Caesura forever…Gale, you can’t do that. You’ll never be able to go home.”

“We have to start moving,” I say instead of responding.

I choose a random direction, forward, to start moving in to avoid standing still, but Peter scrambles to his feet and fiercely grabs my forearm. “Don’t ignore me, Gale,” he snaps. “You can’t do this!” And then his voice drops down to a whisper, I presume so

Izzy can’t hear. “We still don’t know for sure that this is the right thing to do.”

I yank my arm from his grip, stumbling back a step. “You still don’t believe me,”

I say numbly. And then the fury burns in my chest. After all of this, after the Paracosm

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almost made me a Conduit, after he launched my Deployment and literally witnessed my teleportation, he still clings to the idea that the government can do no wrong. Even if it means abandoning me. “Well, fine. You don’t have to,” I snap. “Think what you want to about me. Think I’m crazy. Think I’m broken. Which part of that isn’t true? But whatever you say, I’m doing this.”

“Would you really do that to your parents?” Peter exclaims, taking a step toward me. “Your sister just died. And what do you think the Paracosm’s going to tell your parents? They can’t say you died here. It’d make them look bad. They’re going to tell your parents that you killed yourself, just like Jayne did. Can you really do that to them?”

“What Jayne did is not my fault!” I shout.

The words echo around me, and I stop short. “Not my fault,” I whisper. For all the time I’ve spent blaming myself for not seeing the signs, this is the first time I’ve breathed since I found her body.

I release a slow breath and try again. “I’m ending up in the Paracosm one way or another, Peter. They already have what they need to trap me here. Whatever lie my parents are given, you can correct, but that’s the only option. You keep acting like I am making the same choice as Jayne, but I’m not. This is surviving, Peter, not dying.”

“This is not the time for speeches!” Izzy shouts, her pitch rising with each word.

“We need to get moving unless we want the Paracosm people to find us!”

I hold Peter’s gaze for an extra heartbeat. He stares at me, mouth open like he wants to say something but has no idea what. But no matter what those words may be, I

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cannot bear to hear them. I turn away and continue the direction I had been headed in the first place. I’m still not sure where I’m going.

“Would it make a difference if I told you I loved you?” he asks suddenly.

I freeze mid-step. It takes me a moment to remember that I’m still in control of my own body, and I turn to him slowly. “It would only break my heart,” I breathe. I feel the cracks already breaking across its surface, and with each pump of my heart, I feel the pieces get a little more dislodged.

It must be a trap, a trick to catch me off guard. I am far too broken to be loved.

Peter must be so desperate. He continues, “Your sister took me to see you dance once, a couple years ago. She wanted to show you off. I think you were fourteen and I can’t remember the name of what you were doing or the name of the song, because I think it was in some other language. But I do remember you. You glowed, and I could not understand how that could be Jayne’s little sister. She looked far too amazing to be real.

And I fell in love with that dancer.”

“Peter—” I start, my eyebrows drawing together. His words leave the air colder, emptier. I feel none of what he does and hearing his words sends my heart shattering.

“You had something more than the other dancers; you were more alive,” he tells me, like I never spoke at all. “I could feel your emotions in your dance.”

“Then feel what I do now!” I shout desperately. The tears choke my throat. I swing my arms out wildly to try to gesture something, but even I don’t know my intention. “This world is the only chance I have.”

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I want to jump into grand jeté and fly away from this moment. But I don’t dare. I just spin away and continue walking, moving as quietly as possible. Izzy matches my pace in order to walk in silence beside me. When Peter starts following us again, I think he must target the leaves to make as much noise as possible, hoping someone will come stop me from doing what I plan. But I say nothing more to Peter and just listen closer for movement beyond ours. After all, this is not about an escape but about staying out of sight long enough that Peter can get out safely.

I convince myself that Peter will be safe back in Caesura. I know he would refuse to stay here, but it’s not like his going back will be without consequence. The Paracosm could twist the same sort of lie for Peter as they did for me. But his father will keep him out of any real danger, I convince myself.

My parents, on the other hand, would believe the Paracosm. They would accept the explanation of why I “died.” I am no one. If I had made it into the CBA, I may have stood a chance of surviving in Caesura. But I didn’t. And this is the only chance I have left.

I hear a twig snap some distance ahead, and I immediately freeze. Izzy takes a step beyond me before she processes the noise, and Peter walks into me from behind. My stomach tenses to stop me from stumbling forward. When I straighten again, I don’t dare breathe. Izzy steps back so she stands next to me again. Her hand brushes against mine, and she pushes the pellet that hit Peter earlier into my hand. I turn to stare at her, my heart pounding so loud that I think she must hear it. “Prove to Peter you’re doing the right thing,” she whispers.

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My eyes widen. But Izzy doesn’t look wild. Or defiant. Or angry. The corners of her eyes tighten. The surface of her eyes glisten. And I realize she’s more than just desperate.

She is with me.

This could just end up getting me trapped for good, I think, staring at the pellet.

Do I really need Peter to trust me so much that I am willing to risk the rest of my life to prove to him that I’m making the right choice?

My stomach twists when I realize the answer is yes.

He lost my sister as much as I did. And now, he’s losing me. He’s more aware than ever of the way someone can disintegrate right before his eyes. He needs to know that is this not my falling but my rising.

“Get him out of here or up in a tree or something,” I whisper.

“What?” Peter says.

Izzy does as I ask. She grabs Peter much like I did when I had to get us into the air before. Before he can protest, she flies them both up into the nearest tree, branches stretching right above my head. I make a point to disrupt the leaves in order to create a small amount of noise as I drop to the ground so that I’ll lead the hunter here. I stare at the needle in my hand, and sway slightly even though I’m not standing. I’ve never considered myself to be afraid of needles, but the notion of sticking one into my skin to try to appear helpless is something else entirely.

Before I can over-think it, I suck in a heavy breath and hold it as I push the tip of my needle under my skin. I drop back on the ground so that I look up at the sky. Between

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the branches, I see both Izzy and Peter staring down at me. Here’s hoping this is not the last time I see their faces. If this backfires, my life ends here.

I hope Peter’s worth it.

I close my eyes and try to look as unconscious as I can. I hear movement, and it takes actual willpower not to hold my breath or sprint for my life or fly up into the tree with Izzy and Peter. Peter needs to see that I’m not crazy. I need him to let me go. I need to make sure I don’t do to him what Jayne did to me.

“Visual on the target.”

My heart stutters, and it’s harder than ever to stop myself from holding my breath.

“She may be injured,” the hunter continues. I recognize her voice, and I can’t stop myself from twitching. It’s not-Jayne. Even though she sounds nothing like my sister, the sound of her voice makes me want to sprint for my life. “Approaching now.”

I want to tense up; it goes against my instincts to do the opposite. Loosening muscles only makes my heart race as I make myself more vulnerable. It gets harder and harder to even my breathing the closer she gets. “Abigale Winder was hit with a sedation pellet. Who abandoned her?”

You did, I think before I catch myself. No, this is not Jayne.

The hair on the arm closest to her stands on end as she squats down beside me. I try to stop myself from shivering but fail. She plucks the used pellet from my skin.

“Don’t tell me no one shot her,” she snaps suddenly. I jump at the sound, and all I can do is pray she was not looking at me. “There is an empty pellet sticking out of her arm. You

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cannot leave a target once they’re sedated. There’s no telling how a potential Conduit might respond.”

She presses two fingers to the side of my neck. “Her heart rate is elevated,” she says after a moment. “We need to get her to intensive care.”

I just need half a phrase about their plan. I need them to say more than I’m a potential Conduit. I need her to convince Peter that I need to stay in this world. I need to scare her with something.

The Shadow.

No, no, no. I cannot bear two versions of Jayne here if neither of them is her. But it’s my only option. I remember what the Shadow said last time, about how I would follow her eventually, how I wouldn’t always be strong. It terrifies me. I said before I knew what it was. And I do. But I think it’s more complicated than that.

Unless Jayne’s voice is the clue.

Realization dawns over me. It takes too much self-restraint to stop myself from jerking up. I have to tense myself to stop, a movement the woman next to me almost definitely notices. I know what the Shadow wants because it’s the one thing I have fought all my life. It’s more than just the darkness in me.

It’s the darkness that wants me to be just like Jayne.

Depression is a dark cloud that refuses to be banished. It wraps you in fog until you cannot see forward, until that fog taints the sun that tries to break through. You cannot shed its skin. In that way, I am like Jayne. The darkness infected us both until it

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was more real that we were. But what killed Jayne was a lightning strike. I refuse to let it kill me.

“I need a wristband,” the woman says over me. “We need to get her back to

Caesura immediately or we are going to lose a Conduit.”

I need you to help me.

Jayne’s Shadow does not respond. I wait a few seconds, but I have so little time to spare. Please answer me.

Still nothing. The woman keeps her fingers on my neck, apparently keeping close track of my pulse. I don’t have a lot of time. If she realizes I’m conscious before I can get the Shadow here…then I might really end up sedated. And all of this is over.

So if it’s not going to answer me, I’m going to dream it here.

I think about Jayne. I remember her laughing at me when I first showed her what I was learning at dance when I was three. And then, after she stopped laughing, she got up and stood beside me so she could learn to do a plié as good as any dancer. I remember coming home exhausted after three hours of dance when I was six, and Jayne would make me read to her since my mom failed to get me interested. She picked all the books, so I ended up alternately reading about ghosts and pirates because Jayne liked any sort of adventure that could take her away from here.

When she was twelve, and my dance lessons started taking over weekends as well, I remember the first time she came over with Peter at her side. He seemed to speak in unending monologue, and at first, I didn’t understand how Jayne stood there beside him. But one night, she came home crying, and she wouldn’t tell me why. What she did

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do was call Peter and talk to him for hours, even after I turned out the light in our bedroom to go to sleep.

The Shadow does not answer me, so I keep dreaming. I remember the edges of my world darkening and the skies looking cloudier than they were. I remember never seeing Jayne because when she was home, I was at the Studio and when I was home, she volunteered until she came home and collapsed in bed fully clothed and covered in soil or paint. I remember when she asked me every day what my plans were for the future and never shared hers with me.

I remember coming home and finding her dead.

The Shadow is silent. All I want to do is scream. My chest aches as I hold myself back. I dream of Jayne, but still her Shadow won’t come to me.

But then…it’s not her Shadow. It’s mine.

So I let my walls fall and think of every terrible thing I have spent my whole life hiding. I remember the smiles I faked to Lena and Nate, pretending to listen to a conversation I didn’t even hear. Jayne used to have to literally drag me out of bed some mornings because my body felt too heavy to move. I stopped talking to anyone and tailed

Jayne only when she asked me to go somewhere with her. It’s why Peter thought of me as a friend of his, I think. He saw me with Jayne and assumed I was listening, not sleepwalking.

I remember coming home and finding Jayne dead and feeling absolutely empty not because she was gone but because she had abandoned me in a world I could not handle. I remember the conversations I avoided with my parents and with Peter so I could

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hide just a little longer. But there’s no longer any point in hiding. I’ve been found out.

Everything I was ever scared of—my depression, my being trapped because of it—stands before me as near-inevitable future. I let the walls crash down. It doesn’t matter how dark this world is, or how the clouds fill and muddle my mind. The darkness is mine.

And I will survive it.

The woman gasps wordlessly beside me, but I keep my eyes pressed closed.

Here’s hoping it’s not a pirate that scares her. Only when she pulls her fingers away from my neck do my eyes flash open. I roll away and scramble to my feet before she can catch what’s happening. I spin around to look at her. The woman’s eyes flash to me before returning to the Shadow in the clearing. It stands still, and for some reason, I think it’s staring at me. “You’re mine,” I hear Jayne say.

No, I think. You are mine.

“What are you doing, Abigale?” she exclaims, backing away. “You’re sick; we can help you.”

“By making me another Conduit? No, thanks,” I say, spitting at the ground. “I’ve seen what you did to Izzy, and I’m not letting you touch her or me again.”

She winces at my words, glancing at the Shadow before her eyes return to me.

She releases a slow breath. “Abigale, do you think any of this is real? You’re in the

Paracosm, sweetheart. We just want you to wake up.”

My jaw drops, and I cannot remember how to close it. My hands shake at my sides. “Don’t lie to me,” I say in a low voice, but it doesn’t matter. My voice shakes anyway. Tears burn in my eyes, and with all my walls collapsed, I cannot stop them from

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spilling over. This cannot be happening. The Shadow stands still between us, staring at me, almost as if asking permission to do something. “It’s not a dream,” I say. All or reality collapsed for me in Caesura; this place must be solid.

“Abigale, I do not want to sedate you,” she says as evenly as she can. “I don’t think it’s healthy for you. But if it is the only option, don’t think I won’t do it. We will bring you back to the Paracosm one way or another.”

And with that, she shows her hand. I narrow my eyes. “No, you won’t,” I say my voice steadier than before.

It’s in the smallest way, and maybe I’m just grasping at straws, but she did just say I was not at the Paracosm. Which means I am physically here. Is that enough for

Peter? Witnessing me teleport wasn’t enough, but the government’s admittance of doing such a thing? He might believe that more than his own eyes. “You will have to kill me first,” I add.

Not-Jayne’s eyes widen. “Do you even hear yourself, Abigale? Why would we want to kill you? Why do you want to die?”

I wish she would stop calling me ‘Abigale.’ It sounds wrong to hear something other than ‘Gale’ coming out of the mouth of someone who looks so much like Jayne. I know she does it to try to talk me down and seem like my friend, but all she does is build the distance between us. “I don’t want to die,” I snap. “Don’t you dare put words in my mouth. The question is whether you’re willing to kill me.”

“Of course not!”

“Then why did you kill Isabelle Pan?”

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The Shadow steps forward. Slowly during our conversation, its head has turned to the woman and now the Shadow moves toward her. The movement throws her off enough so that she cries, “She’s a Conduit now! Her mortality ended when she linked our world to this one!”

“And that’s all you want to make me!” I scream. The Shadow moves steadily toward the woman now, but she only stumbles back without running off. “No one else claims my worth, you got it? Not my sister or the CBA or the Shadow or the Paracosm. I may have the potential, but I will never be a Conduit!”

“You don’t get that choice,” the woman shouts across at me. “You became property of the Paracosm when you signed our contract. You will be a Conduit to another world if that’s what we choose to make you. You are nothing but a broken child.”

I place my hands on my hips, much like Izzy once did up in a tree to mock a pirate. “You jealous?”

The woman snatches the small gun hanging from her hip and points it straight at me in a hand that’s far too steady, given the circumstances. “Call off that…thing, that figure, or I will shoot you.”

“Put down the gun, or I will kill you!” shouts Izzy from a tree branch above my head.

I jump at the sound of Izzy’s voice, but when not-Jayne startles, she points her gun up at Izzy and Peter.

My world slows until I almost can’t believe it still moves at all. If she shoots one of them down from there, they will fall. It doesn’t matter if the pellet will just put them to

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sleep; the fall will kill them. “Wait, wait, WAIT!” I scream, taking a couple dashing steps forward. The Shadow stops where it stands. “Look! I stopped the Shadow, all right? I’m the potential Conduit. You don’t have to touch them.”

When she moves her eyes to me again, she does not lower the gun. “Just…just tell me the truth,” I pant. I need to distract her long enough for Izzy to think clearly enough to get them both out of sight. Unfortunately with Izzy, there’s no telling how long that could take. “Just tell me why you need sick kids to be Conduits, okay? Tell me that, and I’ll make the Shadow go away and you can lower the gun.”

Not-Jayne remains silent for a long time, just staring at me. But then, she says,

“The imagination of a child is unique and adventurous, sick children especially.

Imaginations sustain them. But children like you, children with mental illness, they create the strongest connections.”

“But why do you want to do that?” I say slowly, trying so hard to keep my voice even. But my heart thunders in my ears, and I have no idea how well I’m doing.

She frowns, like she doesn’t understand what I’m saying. “You’re an imaginative young woman; I thought you would understand. The answer is, of course, because if we master teleportation, what can’t we do?”

I take a quick step back. Wait…are they really doing this just because they can?

They’re manipulating the mentality of the people of Caesura, convincing them that mental illness is something that must remain hidden, because they want to see just how far they can twist reality? To them, children are not really people.

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My sister’s dead because they wanted to build a sandcastle just to see if the sea would knock it down.

Before I can make any choice, before I can send the Shadow on this woman— though I have no idea what sort of damage it could do to someone who’s not me—I see the sun glint off Izzy’s knife as it cuts through the air. I blink, and the knife lodges into not-Jayne’s shoulder.

The woman shrieks, dropping the gun at her feet. I dash forward and grab it before backing away with the gun in my arms. Izzy drops to the ground right in front of me, and I question whether she flew down or simply jumped form the tree branch to land solidly. She steps forward purposefully, quietly, and yanks the knife from the woman’s shoulder. The woman screams again, clutching at her shoulder with her opposite hand.

Blood flows freely from beneath her fingers, and she drops to her knees.

I can’t drag my eyes away. She looks too much like Jayne. My brain flicks between the scene before me and finding my sister dead in our bedroom. I imagine Jayne screaming like the woman in front of me, but Jayne only ever screamed inside. She died silently, drugging herself into oblivion.

Izzy adjusts the knife in her hand, first staring at the blade, then at the woman on the ground in front of her. Izzy raises the knife above her head.

And that’s when I hear Jayne say, “You cannot blame yourself for death anymore.”

I don’t think it’s the Shadow that says it.

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“STOP!” I scream. I drop the gun and dash forward to stand between Izzy and the

Paracosm woman. Izzy’s eyes widen in shock at my intrusion, but she does not lower the knife. “We are not doing this!” I tell her. “No one else dies because of us!”

“Else?” she protests. “We haven’t killed anyone yet!”

I turn to not-Jayne rather than responding to Izzy. “Tell your people to leave here unless they want to live in a Neverland controlled by Izzy and me forever. Peter, what cool-down time do you have?”

Peter hesitates in answering. I hear branches rustle as he struggles down the tree.

“Uh…ten minutes,” he calls after a second.

I narrow my eyes, reading on not-Jayne’s watch that she has a cool-down time of twenty minutes left. And as much as I don’t want to wait, I’d rather not create a world that traps this woman in it with me. “I’ll give your people twenty-five, because I’m nice.

You’re lucky I’m here; Izzy might not be so generous.”

“Agreed,” Izzy says shrugging.

Not-Jayne’s eyes do not leave my face as she breathes through her teeth, probably just to stop herself from screaming with pain. To her, I am just a plaything. Anything broken is less than human. Only when her own life is threatened does she get what mortality means. “My sister’s dead because of you,” I spit.

And I walk away.

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Neverland

A decent-sized hill stands in the middle of the woods, and Izzy leads us there. It surprises me that I’ve never seen this place before; I feel like I have lived years in Izzy’s

Neverland, like this world is the most real of all.

A boulder sits at the top of the hill, and Izzy, in true Izzy-fashion, scrambles to climb to the top of it, despite the fact that she could literally fly to the top if she wanted.

She stands on the boulder, placing her fists on her hips, and announces, “I am King of the island of Neverland!” She laughs at herself, not even looking at Peter or me.

Peter stays close to my side as we climb up the hill after Izzy. He’s been silent the whole time, but I haven’t tried to talk to him since what happened, mostly because I have no idea what to say. The first thing I say to him since the scene that just played out is,

“How much time do they have left?”

“Less than two minutes,” he mutters, not even glancing at his wrist.

I hesitate before continuing. The silence is filled with tension, but I prefer it to yelling. I’m tired, so tired. Not in any physical way, but my heart aches and sits heavy in my chest. I miss feeling light. I have heard it said that talking about your problems is the only way to let them go. But I disagree. When I open the floodgates, I drown.

“You’re not going to stop me, are you?” I ask.

“It’s not like I can,” he mutters.

“But you do believe me now?” I ask in a small voice.

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Peter doesn’t respond right away. Eventually, his silence stretches out longer than makes me comfortable, and I look over at him. He looks more pale than normal, and the skin underneath his eyes draws tight. “I do,” he says finally. “I just don’t want to.”

I don’t ask him why; I don’t have to. His world’s collapsing all over again. He’s grown up in a political world only to find out the government’s been lying the whole time. And he’s about to lose the second friend of his in a month.

“Please don’t go, Gale,” he adds suddenly.

I slow to a stop, fixing my eyes on the ground rather than Peter’s face. I brace myself with a breath, and after a second, I lift my head and try to meet his eyes. But they pierce me so that I feel like pins and needles skitter across the surface of my skin, and I have to turn away again. “I have to,” I murmur. “I don’t want to be like my dad, working all day just to do my art at night and never let anyone see. I don’t want to be like Jayne, keeping myself busy until I can’t just survive anymore. I want to live. On my terms.”

“I’ll miss you,” he replies softly.

“I know,” I whisper. I squeeze my eyes shut. “You can stay, you know.”

But Peter just shakes his head. “Maybe…maybe I can fix this mess. Save people like you and Jayne, tell your parents the truth about what happened to you. I have to go back to do that.”

I keep my eyes shut. If I open them—if I look at Peter for even an instant—I will dissolve. But then Peter brushes his thumb across my cheek, and I feel it spread a tear across my skin, so I guess closing my eyes isn’t enough.

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“Just one last thing.” His hand slips from my face, and he places a hand on each of my shoulders. I open my eyes to see his face. “Just one more thing you need to know.”

And now a tear slides down his face, but he acts like he doesn’t notice it. “You’re an extraordinary dancer,” he whispers. I think if he spoke any louder, he would reveal just how much his voice shakes. “But more than that, you are an extraordinary person.”

Now I feel the tears slipping from the corners of my eyes. “Thank you,” I whisper.

Peter wraps his arms around me, and I bury my face into his chest. I feel smaller there, but not in any bad way. Just younger. Like I don’t have to carry all the weight on my shoulders alone. The weight of Jayne, the weight of my depression, it all lightens ever so slightly in his arms. Even if he is leaving me. “Bye, Peter,” I breathe.

I pull away, wrapping my own arms around my shoulders in the absence of Peter to trap the warmth that he leaves behind. Peter smiles at me as he types his code into his wristband without looking at it. I blink.

And he’s gone.

I stand there staring at the empty space for…a while. It feels like no time passes, like I am frozen in a moment. The empty space is different than the one left by Jayne and it hurts in a different way, but it’s just as empty and it hurts just as much.

“Are we going to do this, or are you just going to stare at empty air for a couple hours?” Izzy asks suddenly.

I wrench my eyes away from where Peter stood, and it feels more like a final goodbye than the actual goodbye. I trek the rest of the way up the hill to where Izzy sits

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on the boulder, just swinging her legs so they bounce off the rock. “No, I’m ready,” I say.

I lift myself up on the boulder and sit there beside her.

She snatches up my hand in hers. As her fingers lock with mine, I once again see my sister. I remember her holding my hand on my first day of school or finding my hand beneath my blankets when I awoke from a nightmare. And with Izzy there, I feel a little more whole again. “We can make this Neverland whatever we want,” she says, a grin brightening her face.

“You guide this, remember?” I remind her. “You’re the Conduit so you get the final say on what this Neverland becomes. Well, probably.” It wasn’t like this was an exact science. We were just sort of supposed to dream ourselves free. But Liam had no idea what effect my powerful imagination would have on this thing.

I close my eyes, not releasing Izzy’s hand. It’s not that I have to hold on; I just refuse to let go. We don’t know what could change when we do this. I’ve had first-hand experience learning my imagination goes where it wants to go, not always where I want it to go. “Gale,” Izzy replies, “what do you want Neverland to be like?”

“I…don’t know,” I reply haltingly. As long as it’s not Caesura, as long as it’s something new, I really don’t care. I’m not even sure what I’m dreaming about. “You’re the one who made it so you should decide,” I tell her eventually.

“I want it to be just like this,” she tells me. I can hear the smile in her words. “It’s fun. I like the pirates and adventure and all of it. I mean, if it remains like this, we’ll be able to die then, if they kill us, but we won’t age or anything. And what’s fun without a little danger?”

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I decide not to protest. Because honestly, I do want to die. Someday. If there is a chance I can see Jayne again, I want to take it. Complete immortality makes life mean less. I remember when not-Jayne pointed the gun at Peter and Izzy, how I jumped between them. Mortality reveals what’s important.

“Hey, Gale,” Izzy whispers again, “who do you want to be now?”

I open my eyes at her comment and look at her, though her eyes remained closed.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“We can change the whole world into whatever we want. We might as well become who we want. So who do you want to be?” Even with her eyes closed, Izzy looks less than serene. She furrows her brow, like she takes this very seriously.

I hesitate, thinking about that. I thought, growing up, I knew exactly who I wanted to be. But now all the dreams I had lay in a shattered mess at my feet. Everything I assumed about my future—dancing, spending days with Jayne—no longer exists. There’s no point clinging to the person that I was anymore. At the same time, I still want to be that person. I want to be recognizable for all I have fought here in Neverland. “I don’t know,” I whisper finally. “Something new.”

“I want to be just like this,” Izzy replies, “but cooler.”

I smirk, despite myself. “Um…I’m not sure that’s how this works,” I say after a second.

“First of all, that’s totally how it works,” Izzy retorts. She opens her eyes and grins at me. “Second of all, we could be, like, superheroes or something. I’d be me and you’d be whatever you want to be, and we’d save the world and stuff.”

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I laugh, just shaking my head. “Do what you want.”

“You don’t want to do this.”

My laughter cuts off immediately, and Izzy’s eyes widen at the sudden stop.

“Why?” I call out into the woods. My voice echoes back at me in the silence.

“Why…what?” Izzy asks.

“You are choosing me over everyone else. You are abandoning all the people who love you to stay with me.”

“I’m not!” I snap.

“Are you talking to your Shadow?” Izzy asks.

“You are leaving the people you love to cling to a girl who is already dead.”

The hand that rests in Izzy’s squeezes until I think I’ll break her bones. “I don’t want to follow you or her or anyone else,” I say. “I follow me.”

“You are selfish, choosing yourself above others.”

I choke. It’s right. I want to pretend this is a selfless act, that I’m doing this so I don’t abandon Izzy. But I am selfish. I abandon Peter and my parents with this choice, abandon them right after my sister did.

But my act is so different than hers. This is my only chance to survive in a life while still resembling myself. Here, I may still be a dancer, a dreamer, even a sister. It’s selfish, but it’s necessary.

This isn’t me recognizing I’m so great; it’s me realizing I’m something very, very small. And that’s enough.

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“You have no power over me.” Though the tears running down my face say otherwise, the Shadow doesn’t need to know that.

“I will always have power over you.”

“You won’t,” I say, my voice shaking.

“I’m more than your Shadow, Gale. I live in you. You know that; you know what I am.”

I shake. The sensation of fear and awareness rolls over me like a wave. I do know what the Shadow is. It is more than physical thing that wanders the Neverland; it lives in me. So it doesn’t matter where I exist; it’ll always be there. “I can change this world,” I shout, not able to mask the wavering in my voice. “You can be exactly where I want you to be.”

“Gale, put the Shadow in me.”

I turn so quick to look at Izzy that I hear my neck click. Izzy stares at me solemnly, more steady than I have ever seen her. The wild child suddenly looks years older than me. And technically, she is, even if she doesn’t age. She knows more about this world, more about life, than I do. “What?” I say.

“It’s a shadow,” Izzy explains. “Even if it’s technically different by being this physical thing, it’s still a shadow. So let’s dream a world where it’s mine. Like, my normal shadow. I’ll protect you from the darkness by taking it as my own. Just like you spend all that time protecting me from mine. You stop me before I do things I’ll regret and you call me out when I say stupid things. My brain tumor and your depression. Let’s carry each other’s darkness, okay?”

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My mouth falls open. My depression, my darkness…I never mentioned it to Izzy.

But somehow, she knew. And she knew so well, she never asked me to confirm it, like

Peter did.

The Paracosm was right on one thing: our minds, our imaginations are powerful.

Maybe it’s her brain tumor twisting her thoughts, maybe it’s the empty hours she spent sick in bed. Maybe for me it’s the years telling stories in dance, pouring every ounce of emotion that overwhelmed my body into every movement. Either way, our imaginations have flourished and created this world. And we deserve to exist in a place where we can actually live.

I adjust my grip on Izzy’s hand so our fingers interlock. And I know exactly the sort of Neverland I want to live in.

Let’s see if my imagination has the same ideas.

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Stories

I collapse into a sitting position, letting my wings go more limp than I usually allow. Izzy usually makes me work as hard as she does to fly, claiming it should come

“naturally” to me since I have wings. And then she laughs for a solid ten minutes and completely forgets what we were talking about in the first place. But today she gives me a break. My heart sits too heavily in my chest for my wings to lift me. Icy wind crashes up against us anyway, and I doubt my wings would be able to hold up against the force.

At this point, I have no idea where we are. Stars surround us on all sides, and the ground is too far below us to make out anything but lights, so it looks like the stars dance beneath us as well. The thought makes me wonder how far we are from Neverland, how many of the stars above us are real and how many are satellites.

Izzy follows the stars and the satellites to Caesura. I once asked how she figured out her way, but she told me she did not remember. Part of me suspects that she learned from the Dimension Jumpers that got trapped in our reinvented world. I’m just thankful being frozen in time means the tumor in her head has not grown. It worries me at times that she may be getting worse, but she just as quickly switches back into the person I recognize.

“Are you sure you’re okay to do this?” Izzy asks me over the sound of the wind rushing past. “We can stop somewhere else, if you want.”

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I shake my head and scowl at her, angry that she would suggest such a thing. She laughs at the gesture when she glances down where I sit in her hand. “Okay, I get it. The fairy gets what she wants.”

I stare at her until she rolls her eyes. “Okay. ‘For once.’ Happy?”

I nod and turn to look forward again. Izzy falls silent for a while before she gets bored again. “You know…this is going to be really hard. He might not recognize you. He might not recognize me either, but…it’s going to be worse for you, I think.”

I make a point of staring straight ahead rather than looking back at her. It hurts less to make her think I’m angry or determined than it would be to let her know that my heart’s shattered inside my chest and I haven’t even seen him yet. I keep trying to go through the math to figure out how much time has passed but Neverland has twisted time into something that cannot be understood. Particularly since no one ages there.

It’s not Izzy’s first time back to Caesura, but it is mine. The distance between

Neverland and Caesura is nearly impossible for me to comprehend, despite what Izzy has to say about my wings, because I’m so small that I fit in Izzy’s hand. And that is besides the fact that I do not know the way.

Izzy, however, visits constantly. She gets bored with the flick of a light switch and she will disappear from Neverland without a word to fly to Caesura to play, whatever she means by that. Knowing her, “playing” could mean anything from flying between buildings to starting a war. She claims she has never visited Peter, that she wanted me to go with her when she did, but now I might find out if that’s true.

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At the first glimpse of Caesura, my breath catches in my throat. I lean forward, though that pulls my center of gravity into my chest so that I feel like I’m about to topple over the edge of Izzy’s hand. But I ignore the anxiety building in my chest so that I can stare at the city that was once the only world I knew.

The skyscrapers soar higher than I remember. They pierce the skyline, disturbing the natural flow of air in a way that I never realized bothered me until now. The pinpricks of light below us glow with the intensity of the sun and blot out the stars. The man-made drowns out everything natural, and I don’t understand why it never suffocated me while I existed here.

Izzy dives between two of the tallest skyscrapers, and I scramble to wrap my arms around her thumb before turbulence sends me flying the wrong way. She laughs so loud, but in a place with so much sound pollution, I doubt the people below even hear her as a whisper. And then, just as quickly, she shoots up again. My wings whip back behind me, the force of air tearing at them with more power than I can handle. I cry out in pain, and only then does Izzy slow down. “You okay?” she asks.

I look back at my wings and then up at her face as explanation. Izzy shrugs.

“Sorry, I just thought it would be fun.”

Yeah, but it’s only fun if you’re not palm-sized.

Izzy slows down until she halts in front of a closed window. I think the glass must be security glass or something because I cannot see inside. I flick my wings a couple times before lifting myself up into the air to touch back down on Izzy’s shoulder, moving just in case Izzy needs both her hands. She ignores the movement, just staring at the

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window instead. I think she might be trying to move it with her mind, and I wonder momentarily if I should tell her most of our magic does not work outside of Neverland, besides the flying and the being immortal and the me-existing parts. But then she just slides the window open and steps inside. While the room was dark without a light lit, light burns through my body and bleeds out into the room, making up in brightness what it lacks in size.

Izzy has given us entry to a bedroom. A couple heavy wooden dressers and matching wardrobes line the walls, but my eyes are drawn to the bed at the head of the room. The four-poster bed matches the dressers. The overwhelming amount of wood tells me this is either Peter’s home or the home of someone equally rich. A patterned comforter covers the occupant of the bed, and all I see is the bulges beneath the blanket.

Izzy lands softly on the carpeted floor and pads over to the bed. Even next to the bed, the blankets cover the head of who sleeps there and we can’t see much of anything.

Izzy reaches out with two fingers, and I hold my breath as she draws the blanket back a few inches, revealing not Peter but a middle-aged woman.

Izzy jumps back, making no noise as she lands again. I feel her alarm crash through me, and it takes me a second to catch my breath. I stare at the woman lying there.

Her blonde hair spreads out against her white sheets so that it looks like her hair glows gold. Pulling the blanket away from her face has done nothing to disturb her sleep, and she breathes deep, patient breaths. As I stare at her, my head slowly tilts to one side. She looks nothing like Jayne or me. The thought makes my heart ache in a way I don’t understand.

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But Izzy’s patience only lasts so long. She crosses the room and slips out past the door. “I’m sure Peter’s here somewhere,” she assures me once we stand in the hallway.

She moves slowly through the hallway, letting my light illuminate every surface as well as sunlight would. When we come across another door, she pushes it open to reveal another bedroom. Just as she goes to turn around, I pull on her hair to get her to stop. She turns to look at me, carefully, since moving her head too fast would probably end up knocking me off her shoulder. I point at the tiny bed off in the corner, draped in a thin white canopy.

So Izzy crosses over to the bed, making little more than a whisper of noise. And lying there, cocooned in a mess of blankets, is a little girl. All that we can really see of her is her light hair, though darker than the other woman’s, but Izzy doesn’t push the blankets any more back and I don’t ask her to. I don’t even leave Izzy’s shoulder.

Staring’s enough. My stomach fills with warmth but my shoulders are draped in a chill.

When Izzy glances at me, I’m unsure what expression I offer her. I don’t know how I feel. My chest aches, and my thoughts stop as I watch the little girl. I just know that I feel something.

After another moment, Izzy turns away to walk out of the room and this time, I don’t object. As Izzy continues through the apartment, all I can wonder is just how much time has passed since I was last in Caesura.

Izzy opens one more door and gives us entry to a study. One wall of the room is made up completely of bookshelves filled with books so old I fear my touch would make them disintegrate and so large that if I even tried to touch one book and it fell, it would

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probably crush me. Other than that, the room is mostly empty, despite its size. A large glass table stands off to one side with nothing but a large computer tablet sitting on top.

Well, that and the head of someone sleeping.

I glance up at Izzy, but she’s not looking at me. She cocks her head to one side, as if confused by the sight. I want to see recognition in her eyes, but I should have known better than to expect anything from her. I step off Izzy’s shoulder and flitter over to land on top of the table. I circle the person’s blonde head, hair thinning enough that I can see through it to his scalp, until I reach his face. And my already jumping heart races faster.

Lines trail away from eyes hidden behind eyelids and the skin in his cheeks hangs looser from his bones than I remember, but those are the only differences I see in Peter’s face.

I want to reach out and touch his face. I want to reassure myself that he is real, that he is warm and alive. Instead, I stumble back a step, pulling both my hands in toward my chest. Despite years of knowing him, I feel like I trespass now. I am not who I was then, and it makes me wonder if there is anything left of Gale at all.

Peter groans, and I jump. It takes me a second to remember I have wings and that

I can fly away. But that second’s all it takes for the glow pushing up against Peter’s eyelids to waken him. I stiffen as his green eyes stare at me for a long moment in silence.

I see myself reflected there, and it makes no sense that I look like a fairy tale in a world that is so resolutely real. As much as I know what I look like, I doubt even my existence when I see myself with wings in front of Peter’s eyes. He must think he’s still dreaming.

That is, until Izzy interjects, “Good morning, sleepyhead.”

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He jerks up. The wind he creates in the movement rips my wings back, and it takes a decent amount of strength just to keep from falling. But I am so focused on his face that I don’t care. He narrows his eyes at Izzy across the room. “Izzy?” he says slowly.

Izzy sighs, shaking her head. “You weren’t already expecting us? I’m disappointed. Where are your manners?”

Peter raises his eyebrows, and in the expression, I see him at seventeen. “You’re here?”

“You better believe it,” she says with a smirk.

He wipes his arm across his eyes as though trying to rub the sleep away. “I’m dreaming, right?” he says with a laugh. “You can’t really be here.”

“It’s like the Paracosm part two. Even after all this time, he won’t believe this is real,” I mutter, but it comes out as the sound of a twinkling bell.

Peter’s eyes snap to me in an instant. I hear Izzy say, “No kidding,” but I keep my eyes fixed on Peter.

He’s silent for a long time, and I wish I could melt away so I didn’t have to see the look on his face. He just keeps blinking, like he’s willing himself to wake up. And then he whispers, “Gale?”

I smile, though my face heats up and probably turns bright red. And since I’m the thing glowing, there’s really no chance for the shadow to hide my blush. Izzy rolls her eyes. Peter’s eyebrows draw together in confusion. “Why do you sound like that?

Like…like a bell?”

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“I can translate,” Izzy announces.

“But why does she sound like that? And why’s she a fairy?” he asks, looking between us like he’s not really sure whether he’s talking to me or Izzy.

“Let me explain,” I say quickly. “Can you translate?”

Izzy looks at me. “She wants to explain.”

I stare up at Peter as he turns his eyes back to me. I can tell he’s older, but I have no idea by how much. It must have been his wife and daughter we saw before, so he’s old enough to be both a husband and a father. It makes my stomach squirm. But I ignore it.

“Neverland is a different place now,” I explain. It sounds like a bell to me as well as everyone else, but Izzy understands my voice. I have half a dozen theories why, but after all this time, I’ve settled on one: it allows me to hide. I can say what I mean and there’s only one person in the world that will hear me, and I trust that person.

To a point.

I hesitate for a second while Izzy translates, then say, “When we separated it from the Paracosm, we imagined it into something else, imagined ourselves into something new.”

Peter narrows his eyes, and I’m afraid he’s going to say something. I pause, giving him the chance to speak up if he wants, but he stays silent and lets his chance go.

“Our imaginations changed us in ways we don’t understand, but it’s still us, sort of.” I roll my eyes as I gesture to my petite form, and Izzy laughs as she translates. “But I wanted to be something new. And apparently, Neverland decided this was me. I think it

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might have decided that since I was a dancer and since I could fly, that I was a fairy. So now…that’s what I am.”

Peter furrows his brow as Izzy finishes translating, then she adds, “And it’s not my fault!”

I laugh at Izzy, feeling more like a wind chime than anything else. Being a fairy, being palm-sized, it doesn’t bother me. It gives me a way to hide when I need it. The rest of the world doesn’t need to see me if I know who I am.

“You are…happy, though, right?” he asks slowly.

I nod with a smile. That needs no translation. His shoulders fall, but not in any disappointed sort of way. It’s like all the tension leaves him, like he’s been holding it for years. “I had no idea if you were okay,” he says softly, his voice little more than a whisper. “I’ve been worried for so long that we were wrong and that I had lost you.”

He shakes his head, wiping sleep from his eyes again. The shadows circling the bottom of Peter’s eyes makes me wonder if he normally allows himself to sleep at all. “I thought about you everyday, you know. When I became a councilman, I started doing everything I could to slow down the Paracosm’s activities, to reveal them as illegal.

They’re not gone but…”

He sighs and in it, he releases a palpable weight. I feel it settle on my shoulders.

“I just think about you,” he continues, “about how you spent so much time suffering from the darkness in your head, how it killed Jayne, and how the Paracosm caused all that. I just hope the little I’ve done helps someone. And now…I just…I can’t believe you’re

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here. I can’t believe you’re okay. Honestly, I’m having trouble believing this isn’t a dream.”

Izzy laughs. “If you think you’ve spent so much of your life asleep, maybe you should wake up from that coma you’re in.”

“Decent point,” he says, nodding in her direction. “At a certain point, you have to stop ignoring the fantastic.” He sighs, leaning back in his chair. He pulls his fingers back through blonde hair now thinning. A part of me wants to ask him how old he is and how much time has passed. But exact numbers don’t matter when I know what I need to: enough. Enough time has passed that Peter’s hair thins and lines trace his eyes. He’s young enough that he still connects to us and old enough that he believes us when we say we are real. His children now probably remind him of us. Or perhaps we remind him of them. There’s a difference. Either way, I feel the thin wall between us.

It makes me think of my parents, how old they must be now. I wonder if they’re still alive. My wings ache at the thought of them. Jayne and I abandoned them. I want to ask Peter what happened to them, but I’m not brave enough; my throat closes up at the thought.

“What about Jayne?” Peter whispers suddenly.

My eyes widen, and I try not to shiver in response. I instinctually look back at

Izzy’s shadow lying on the ground at her feet. Izzy catches my glance and says, “The

Shadow is now my shadow.”

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Never mind that sometimes I hear it whisper to me when Izzy’s sleeping. And even if Izzy’s trapped the physical manifestation of the darkness inside me, that doesn’t mean the darkness is actually gone.

“And what about the real Jayne?” he asks.

I release a slow breath, blowing up my bangs as I do so. Her name makes my heart ache. Unfortunately, Izzy can’t cover for me on this one.

Then again, maybe she can.

I look at her. “Lie for me. Translate this wrong.”

She raises an eyebrow, and I ball my hands into fists at my sides. “I want Peter to think I’m okay. I need to hear the truth from me, but he doesn’t.”

Izzy frowns but after a second, she erases it with a smirk and a nod. So I look back at him. “It will never be okay,” I whisper, watching the corners of Peter’s mouth turn upward as Izzy tells him the opposite. “I will always blame myself for her death, even if it’s only in a small way. She shouldn’t have had to be sick alone anymore that I should have.” My chest burns as Izzy lies for me, and I’m not sure whether the widening smile on Peter’s face gives me life or suffocates me.

As she finishes translating, I say, “You can tell him the truth from here out.”

It hurts to look at Peter, but I do it. Because I forget how time passes when I’m in

Neverland, even if I come back what I think is tomorrow, it may be years later. I may never see him again.

“I can’t fix most of what I messed up. I can’t save everyone, but I’m trying. If we find a sick kid that could be taken by the Paracosm, we invite them to Neverland so

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they’ll be safe, but so that they can always go back home if they want. We give them the adventures they should not take alone. Only kids, though; no adults are allowed to come in. No member of the Paracosm can hurt those in Neverland.

“Izzy and I…we’re both really broken. And since we’re kind of frozen in time, that’s not going to change. But we’re making a difference; we’re alive. And it’s more than we should be.”

“Gale,” he breathes. His eyes glisten, and I truly think he’s going to cry.

I flitter up so I hang in the air in front of his face. His eyes widen as he sees me fly, apparently astonished that the wings actually work. I reach out and press one hand against his face like he did for me when he was still young. Unlike then, it would take my whole arm to wipe away a tear, whereas he wiped mine away with his thumb.

“We’ve got to get going,” Izzy says suddenly. “The pirates are going to find the crocodile I planted on their ship soon, and I do not want to miss the looks on their faces.”

I ball my hand into a fist, still pressing it against Peter’s face. He reaches out and lets me land in his hand, since I’m too small for him to do much else. “Am I ever going to see you again?” he asks.

I frown, my shoulders falling. Izzy says, “Who knows? Your kids interested in going to Neverland?” She laughs.

“Don’t get them killed,” Peter says evenly, but then he smiles. “But I bet Wendy would.”

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He looks at me as he says it. And after a second, I remember what Izzy said the first time I entered Neverland. She asked if she could call me “Windy” due to my name being Gale. Peter must have though the same thing.

He named his daughter for me.

My tears spill over, and I hug his thumb, since it’s the biggest part of him I can get my arms around. I don’t want to say bye to him again; I don’t want this to be the end.

But there’s no way I’m flying back to Neverland on my own. So I flitter across the room and land in the hand Izzy stretches out for me. Though I’m so much smaller, I feel so much larger than I was the last time I was in Caesura. The difference is that this time I feel like I matter.

Izzy climbs up on to the windowsill, but then she stops and looks back at him.

“It’s too bad you had to grow up, Peter. We liked having you on adventures.”

Peter scoffs. “That’s because you liked laughing at me.”

I grin at him. I feel like I should say something, just in case I never have the chance to see him again. Just in case we lose track of time and come back in a hundred years and everything is different. But a thank you feels as wrong as a goodbye. So I just smile at him and hope it says enough.

Izzy pushes us out the window and soars into the sky. Higher and higher we ascend until the light pollution is so far below us that we can see the stars that guide us home.

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Introduction: Analyzing Stars and Satellites

J.M. Barrie writes, “All children, except one, grow up.” (1) And most of those children—and the adults who were once children—know the story of Peter Pan. His story has been shared in so many ways and in so many forms of media that the world knows his name. A vast field of study about Peter Pan exists, as well as endless retellings of and sequels to his story, making Peter Pan the perfect argument for the value of young adult literature.

Given the recent rise of the young adult genre due to the commercial success of books such as the Harry Potter and The Hunger Games series, it is easy to reject the genre as something less than literary. As Crowe points out, “[…][C]omplaints have varied over the years, but most objections generally fall into one of two categories: YA books are bad because 1. They aren’t the Classics. 2. They corrupt the young” (146).

With every new success in the genre, another article is written about why adults should be ashamed for enjoying these books and why YA literature lacks literary value. Graham goes so far as to say, “But crucially, YA books present the teenage perspective in a fundamentally uncritical way. […] [YA readers] are asked to abandon the mature insights into that perspective that they (supposedly) have acquired as adults.” In some instances, this rejection also seems to be partially due to the fact that YA fiction is known for its primarily female protagonists. According to Brinkley, “People both within and outside

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the publishing world […] dismiss […] YA and those writing it as simplistic because its primary market is teen girls, its primary authors women.”

In writing the YA alternate universe Peter Pan origin story Stars and Satellites, I use Peter Pan as a vehicle to argue for the literary value of young adult literature and the often-female protagonists that populate it. Peter Pan is very much a piece of literature about the transition from childhood to adulthood, so it makes sense to adapt the story to a new universe in YA fiction.

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Young Adult Literature

Young adult literature, as a genre, is difficult to describe, since it can only be defined by the age group for which it is primarily intended. Cart states, “As it now stands, the term—at least as applied to literature—includes books for readers as young as ten

[…] and as old as twenty-five” (Young Adult Literature 120). The reason that this genre can only be defined by its intended audience is because the genre is wide open to interpretation and subgenres. Searching the young adult department of a bookstore or the public library will result in finding science fiction next to realistic fiction next to romance novels next to a book that rolls all these genres into one.

Because of the demographic the genre serves, the argument may be raised that the books written for young adults are not as challenging as respected adult novels before them. However, young adult novels show great literary merit. According to Cart,

Never before has this field been so creatively risk taking, so artistically

rich, so intellectually stimulating or so protean in re-defining its audience

as it pushes back the previous boundaries that had limited its readership to

young people aged twelve to eighteen. (“A Place of Energy” 113)

The genre continues to expand and redefine itself as it becomes more creatively complex.

If Cart was able to make this statement about YA literature in 2003, before the publication of impressive YA books such as Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher and

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Paper Towns by John Green, it almost unfathomable what growth the genre has undergone since then.

BEING IN-BETWEEN

Young adulthood is understood, quite simply, as being the period of life between childhood and adulthood, but in practice, it is often considered as being closer to the former than the latter. However, “[…]the adolescent is both a child and an adult, and his tastes in reading, as in everything else, reflect this fact” (Holland 34). This thought unfortunately leads to the belief that young adulthood is nothing more than a transition, when it is, in fact, a state of being. This point of view is also taken toward literature.

“[Karen Coats] decries the tendency of various camps to think of YA as a transitional rather than a destination literature, a place to which one might go intentionally and not as a way to work up to something else.” (Cadden 304) This ultimately results in the idea that adult literature is a goal reached by outgrowing young adult literature.

Viewing young adult literature in this way leads to the idea that young adult readers are “less” because they have not yet reached the goal of reading adult literature.

Young adults are left with the idea that they will matter “someday,” when really much of what they ultimately become is being determined presently. In the end, YA literature assists in easing this stress of development into adulthood. According to Coats, “The burden of adolescent literature has always been to achieve synchronicity with the concerns of an audience that is defined by its state of flux and impermanence” (“Young

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Adult Literature” 325). YA literature serves to reflect the state of an impermanent young adulthood recalled by adults.

Stars and Satellites illustrates this idea of impermanence through the state of flux in which Gale exists. When Jayne commits suicide, Gale freezes. Her life alters in its entirety, and yet Gale struggles to see any sort of future beyond the present day. Like the adolescent audience of young adult literature, she exists in a state of change. However, she also exists in a singular moment of despair, not as a transition but as a destination.

She does not grow out of it but learns to exist in this moment.

Certainly, adults can enjoy and respect young adult literature. After all, adults read and study some children’s literature in the same way they read and study adult literature. “That is, just as children’s literature is viewed as both an entrée into more sophisticated reading for its intended audience and a viable area of academic study in and of itself, so literature aimed at young adults should be afforded the same dual valuation.”

(Coats, “Young Adult Literature” 317) As the genre of young adult literature is still relatively new, compared to children’s and adult literature, it’s understandable that this field of study is still developing, but in the meantime, adults should not be so quick to reject the genre. As Wiggins explains:

In defending his love of writing—and reading—fairy tale and fantasy,

C.S. Lewis argues not only that there is a comfort in the fundamental

truths of traditional literature and fantasy, but that those truths are not the

exclusive property of children since an adult understanding elicits even

more meaning[…]. (80)

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The themes of young adult literature can be examined at any age and respected in the same way as is adult literature. In fact, it is worth noting that in 2012, 55% of YA books were purchased by adults and that 78% of the time, adults were purchasing those books for themselves (“New Study”). It cannot be ignored that adults are also engaging with the genre.

Gale’s struggle with loss, guilt, and depression may be a part of a young adult novel, but adults can appreciate this struggle as well. Gale is young and because of that, she is still learning what impact emotional hardships will have on her life. An adult may just as easily wrestle with the same feelings, even if those feelings are no longer new. By reading Stars and Satellites, an adult can find just as much meaning in Gale’s experience as a young adult could, especially as they recognize a new way of interpreting their struggles as they witness Gale discovering her difficulties for the first time.

The genre may be written for young adults, but all adults once experienced the age of young adulthood and can glean meaning from the literature in light of not only their once young adulthood but their present adulthood as well.

THEMES OF YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE

Despite the constant redefining of the genre, young adult literature features several themes for which it is known. One purpose young adult literature serves is to offer hope. As Green puts it, “I believe that fiction can help, that made-up stories can matter by helping us to feel unalone, by connecting us to others, and by giving shape to the world as we find it—a world that is broken and unjust and horrifying and not without

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hope” (19). Readers reach out to characters like and unlike them to feel less alone in a moment of struggle in order to believe the world is hopeful.

However, YA literature is not a genre of stereotypical happy endings. Young adults want their books to speak honestly as much they want them to offer hope.

“[…][N]ovels for adolescents do not offer […] shelter from the world as it is. Because of their honesty, such books cannot ignore the grimmer aspects of life any more than they can ignore aspects some adults consider shocking. The young do not want shelter.”

(Engdahl 45) While young adults want to feel a connection to another person, and in that feel less alone, they do not want a sugarcoated story. Happy endings are not demanded.

Bittersweet and even unhappy endings are accepted as long as they reveal the truth.

The conclusion of Stars and Satellites offers a bit of both hope and struggle.

While Gale is able to reinvent herself as Tinker Bell and discover a new direction for her life, she must leave Peter Datton behind to do so. In addition, her reinvention does not rid her of depression or of guilt regarding Jayne’s death. The novel offers honesty regarding

Gale’s negative emotions while still providing a spark of hope for her future.

Young adult literature is often considered a subset of fiction for children, and therefore less complex literature. But young adult fiction actually differentiates itself from children’s literature in the subjects it emphasizes. Pulliman discusses this differentiation by citing a point made by Roberta Seelinger Trites. In her book Disturbing the Universe: Power and Repression in Adolescent Literature, Tites discusses how young adult literature considers “the relationship between the society and the individual” (qtd. in

Pulliam 172). Books in this genre consider how a person relates to society, a theme that is

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often lacking in children’s literature but can be seen in much of adult literature. The only difference is that in young adult literature, it may be a teenager’s first time considering this concept. According to Green-Barteet, “Claiming one’s subjectivity is a major theme in YA literature” (36). Protagonists of these novels no longer allow the outside world to determine their opinions, instead taking the time to differentiate themselves from society.

This claiming of subjectivity can be seen in Stars and Satellites. Gale breaks off all connections she has to her society in the Paracosm’s push to control the city-state of

Caesura. Caesura established a society that attaches such a stigma to mental illness that mental illness must be hidden, so Gale, in choosing to recognize her depression and therefore claiming her own subjectivity, must run away from her society to Izzy’s

Neverland.

The themes of young adult literature are not less mature than those of adult literature. Rather, these themes present the struggles a person faces in becoming an adult.

These challenges faced as young adults determine who we become as adults and are constantly reconsidered through adult literature. This leads young adult literature to feature the first experiences that later become common experiences in adult literature.

YOUNG ADULT FICTION AS LITERATURE

This all leads to one single point: does young adult fiction deserve to be called

“literature?” As Lenz and Mahood say, “[…] young adult literature is still evolving and showing increasing literary worth” (“Toward Self-Worth” 3). “Literature” is a term with a constantly changing definition. Really, what is valued in literature is determined by

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what is valued by society. Coats explains, “The major difference seems to rest in the assignation of cultural value to certain texts and genres and not others, and the development of a critical literature that keeps texts and ideas circulating in academic contexts” (“Young Adult Literature” 317). So as long as young adult literature addresses ideas of value in academic contexts, the only thing potentially holding the genre back from being considered authentic literature would be arbitrarily assigned value to different genres.

Ultimately, young adult literature is more than its commercial success, and this can be proven by looking at the books that have won the Printz for young adult literature.

Cart states, “No matter how diverse and disparate they are, what all the [Printz] winning titles have in common is richness of character, an attribute that, more than any other, separates literary from popular fiction, in which character often takes a backseat to plot”

(Young Adult Literature 78). Certainly, this richness of character is evident in Stars and

Satellites, in which determining the motives of the Paracosm take a backseat to Gale’s investigation of her emotions in regard to her sister’s suicide and what it means for her depression. The focus is on the character with a plot as a backdrop and a vehicle to her discovery.

Perhaps young adult literature has seen a great deal of commercial success, but that does not mean it lacks literary value. At this point, the only thing holding the genre back from respect is the value assigned to it by society and by academia. If perceptions change, young adult literature is ready to be considered literary.

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Women in Young Adult Dystopia

Young adult fiction carries a number of stereotypes and one that is true is regarding the genre’s readership. “[YA literature is] [t]he only genre that portrays and is consumed by a young and primarily female readership.” (Younger 1) Unfortunately, a female readership is often treated as a negative of the genre. Because works are written for a primarily female audience, some believe the stories lack the universal appeal that make books “literature.”

Considering the topics typically addressed in young adult fiction, it makes sense that young women would be drawn to the genre. “As psychologist Maly Pipher documents in her 1994 book Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls, girls take a nosedive in self-esteem when they hit puberty. Pipher blames media, social and family pressures and consumerist culture for straitjacketing girls into narrow ideals of femininity.” (Stiles) Young women end up looking for a positive role model of behavior and characters to which they can relate. A lack of self-esteem can result in a struggle to establish oneself without reassurance. YA literature, a genre that takes a close look at character and emotion, allows young women to find a role model for behavior other than the narrow personality established by media.

Young adult literature has recognized this need for books for and about young women. “[…] [S]ocial control of femininity […] is only beginning to be discussed in the context of young adult literature and adolescent coming of age stories.” (Montz 108) At

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such a young age, a girl may struggle to take control of her own identity in the face of a society that defines it. However, young adult fiction offers alternatives to this definition of “feminine,” which can be very powerful. Day, Green-Barteet, and Montz suggest, “By presenting young women as agents of change, novels […] draw on the seemingly contradictory impulses of turn-of-the-century Western culture to understand young women as both strong and vulnerable, both passive citizens and potential leaders” (7).

These novels ultimately lead young women to the understanding that there is more than one way to be a girl. In a society that yearns to create a strict definition, this idea can be revolutionary.

The concept is presented in both the characters of Gale and Izzy. Gale presents herself as both a strong and vulnerable character. As a young woman struggling with depression, she builds up walls to hide her sadness. However, that same sadness makes her sensitive and vulnerable. She uses this vulnerability to fuel her strength, and that strength drives her to rebel against Caesura and escape into Izzy’s Neverland. Izzy is a very different young woman, scaling trees with ease rather than dancing in a complex ballet. She hides the vulnerability exposed by her illness behind a careless and wild personality. Though very different young women, both are strong and present themselves as drivers of change.

This emphasis on empowering young women unfortunately leads to a very negative view of young adult fiction. This is due to a long-held idea of society that boys will not read books about girls and, therefore, young adult fiction that stars a female

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protagonist cannot serve universal appeal. Shannon Hale, an author of young adult literature speaks on this issue:

In our culture, there are widespread assumptions: 1. Boys aren’t going to

like a book that stars a girl. […]. 2. Men’s stories are universal; women’s

stories are only for girls. But the truth is none of that is truth. In my

position, not only have I witnessed hundreds [of] examples of adults

teaching boys to be ashamed of and avoid girls’ stories, I’ve also

witnessed that boys can and do love stories about girls just as much as

about boys, if we let them.

Society has a tight hold on its definitions of femininity and masculinity, claiming that girls’ stories do not fit the mold of universal appeal because they are “girly” and therefore something no boy could possibly read. Boys are taught that girls’ stories are of no use to them, and girls are taught that their stories have less value than the “universal” stories written about boys. It leads to an unfounded mistreatment of young adult literature.

In literature as well as society, there are “[…] ongoing constructions that align maleness with reason and femaleness with nature and, as a result, establish maleness as superior to femaleness” (Day 78). These prejudices prevent our society from considering the fact that a brilliant book about a female protagonist could have universal appeal.

This prejudice in particular is specifically addressed in Stars and Satellites. Peter

Datton, as a character who looks to logic and reason, is interested in the science of the

Paracosm, evident in his interest in the Paracosm’s capsules and his ability to launch

Gale’s Deployment, as well as part of a “political dynasty.” Meanwhile, the female

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characters of Gale and Izzy choose to remain in Izzy’s forest-filled Neverland. Their connection to nature does not make them inferior. In reality, they see and believe the truth about the Paracosm long before Peter, who clings to the lies told to him. While certainly maleness does not need to always align with reason and femaleness with nature

(one only need to look at the male character of Liam, who exists as the natural world’s native), associating characters as such in my novel allows me to deconstruct the stereotype, thereby allowing me to challenge the idea that maleness is inherently superior.

Female protagonists serve young adult fiction well, in both realistic stories that occur in modern day and in futuristic societies in science fiction. Dystopian fiction has been popular in recent young adult literature and much of it stars a young, female protagonist not only recognizing the society in which she lives is dystopian but also rising up to lead a revolt. Dystopian fiction, according to Cart, is “a literary form that imagines—sometimes satirically, sometimes somberly—a future world made even worse than the present one by the logical extension of current or threatened societal ills” (Young

Adult Literature 103). In these dark worlds, a young woman gains more agency than perhaps she would have in her society to change the world in which she lives.

Novels such as The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, Divergent by Veronica

Roth, and Across the Universe by Beth Revis are particularly poignant due to young adult literature’s primarily female audience. Day, Green-Barteet, and Montz explain, “Most important to this study, however, is the explicit exploration of the rebellious girl protagonist, a figure who directly contradicts the common perception that girls are too young or too powerless to question the limitations placed upon them, much less to rebel

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and, in turn, fuel larger rebellion” (4). Young adult dystopian fiction recognizes the restrictions put on young women by society as it tries to define the femininity of a young woman and, often, her worth. Novels that create a dystopia put power back in the hands of young women both in the story and out in the world at large.

These dystopian novels give young women power not only to lead, but to truly change the worlds in which they live. “Further, and perhaps most significantly, these young women also attempt to recreate the worlds in which they live, making their societies more egalitarian, more progressive, and, ultimately, more free.” (Day, Green-

Barteet, and Montz 3) Certainly, the idea of a young person being able to change the world is a powerful notion to the adolescents reading these novels.

In Stars and Satellites, Gale and Izzy very much recreate their world at the conclusion of the novel, actually transforming it and themselves into something very different. Though not able to change Caesura directly, they create a more free world in which they may challenge the beliefs of their original home. They fight the stigma of mental illness by protecting those in Caesura who might otherwise be forced into becoming Conduits in the Paracosm. That action is certainly progressive and can create a powerful, if gradual, change.

Dystopian fiction’s recent popularity for young adults must be considered in light of young adult fiction’s primarily female readership. When considered in this way, the popularity is of greater significance. Clearly, young women search not only for agency but also for recognition of their value. They are no less than young men, and their stories may be just as universal.

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Peter Pan as Young Adult Literature

Because of the openness in the definition of the genre of young adult literature, there are many retellings of older literature. Cinder by Marissa Meyer reimagines

Cinderella with a cyborg, and Dorothy Must Die by Danielle Paige expands the world of

The Wizard of Oz, and those are only two books among many. Retellings allow authors to create something more easily grasped in the modern day or update a story with modern sensibilities. However, some young readers just want more from those stories. They recognize unexplained backstories or reasoning that is a little too “neat” to be believed.

By retelling older stories, young adults are able to more thoroughly understand a previously underdeveloped story.

Peter Pan’s story seems to beg adaptation in alternative forms of media and reimagining in modified versions of the tale. What was originally a play became a novel as well as a musical. Today, writers continue to interpret J. M. Barrie’s story from a number of different angles. Some, like Disney’s animated adaptation or the 2003 film, retell the story in new ways with modern media unimaginable at the time the play was originally written. Peter Pan in Scarlet by Geraldine McCaughrean serves as Peter Pan’s authorized sequel. Meanwhile, the children’s novel Peter and the Starcatchers by Dave

Barry and Ridley Pearson and the 2015 film Pan attempt origin stories. And there are many more besides. As Martin and Taylor suggest, “Because of the probable prior knowledge of the text Peter Pan, some players are comfortable reading new versions

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[…]” (173). So many versions of Peter Pan’s story exist that many people know the story in some form.

Peter Pan exists as a story about a girl who does not want to grow up and a boy who never will. “[…] [I]t is about adults’ desire for a fantasy of childhood: Peter Pan is a front—a cover not as concealer but as vehicle—for what is most unsettling and uncertain about the relationship between adult and child.” (Holmes 135) While usually considered a children’s story, Peter Pan is as much meant for adults in their desire to return to childhood, and therefore the story ends up “in-between,” making it perfect for the young adults who exist in that space. By being both adult and child, young adults recognize

Wendy’s struggle with being a child about to be a woman. The original story fits into

“[…] a tradition that in the guise of children’s literature explores such adult themes as death, sexuality, and the duplicity of existence” (Wiggins 79). These mature themes are discussed just as frequently in YA literature in which they are experienced for the first time. Because Peter Pan directly addresses this gap between childhood and adulthood as well as mature themes, it is made to be adapted for today’s young adults.

Peter Pan is written as a story that transcends age. It seems to be a story for children, but by addressing more complex issues, it is able to appeal to more people. Like

Peter Pan, Stars and Satellites considers the adult theme of death, as well as the guilt and coping that goes along with it. It considers the lies people tell to hide themselves so they might be accepted. However, as a young adult novel, the story better considers the age group that Peter Pan serves while attempting to address just as significant themes as adult literature.

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Peter Pan is written in such a way that is accessible and expandable. Most importantly, it is respected. Besides the number of adaptations the story has gone through, there is also a great deal of academic research on the tale. In taking a well- respected tale and adapting it for young adults, as it was clearly made to be, it argues for the legitimacy of young adult literature.

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Reimagining Peter Pan

In determining how to tell the story of Stars and Satellites, I found that simply reading the original story of Peter Pan and explaining the origins of each character was not enough. By researching the original story from an academic perspective, I hoped to incorporate the spirit of Peter Pan as well as the facts in my origin story.

DARKNESS IN NEVERLAND

The story of Peter Pan carries a certain darkness. “As many readers come to realize, and as Barrie himself tells us, Peter Pan is a tragic tale.” (White and Tarr xxi) In the end, Peter chooses abandonment, not only by Wendy but also by the lost boys, rather than being forced to grow up. Even earlier in the novel, he nearly ends up dead. Barrie makes no attempt to hide the truth of mortality from children. The story makes no effort to sugarcoat the truth; it reveals more so why the story is also of interest to older readers:

…it speaks nostalgically about our wishes to keep children young, while

reminding us mercilessly about how cruel childhood can really be.

Neverland is never innocent, nor is it heaven or hell, nor reward or

punishment, but rather an imaginary place individual to each child,

reeking with desires for safety and home as strong as those that lured each

child away from home in the first place. (White and Tarr vii-viii)

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The story recognizes childhood as less than perfect and much more human. More than that, it recognizes the needs of children. Children are far from carefree. In some cases, they are very much afraid, looking for belonging.

I looked to consider the darkness of Neverland in Stars and Satellites. Gale’s fear of her depression and that people will recognize that depression in her are manifested in

Neverland. The Shadow that follows her through the world serves as this physical manifestation of her depression. Yet, despite the very clear darkness that haunts her steps,

Gale still returns to this place. It feels more home to her than Caesura, regardless of whether each is good or evil.

NEVERLAND’S EXISTENCE

Not only is Neverland dark but also its existence is beyond normal understanding.

After all, Peter’s directions to Neverland are, “Second to the right, and straight on til morning” (Barrie 40). Whether or not those directions are to be believed, it’s clear right away that Neverland is an unusual place. Each of the Darling children has a different understanding of what Neverland is before they ever arrive. As Kavey suggests,

“Neverland is the place that all children share, and it exists in multiple dimensions” (“I do believe” 94). This concept was established in Stars and Satellites by creating the

Neverlands, a series of malleable pocket universes. The Neverlands in the novel are altered by powerful imaginations, much like how children in the original novel each have a different idea of what Neverland looks like.

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Another important detail to remember is the significance of Neverland to children specifically. “The fact-based knowledge systems used by adults are too linear to chart the multidimensional fabric of Neverland and they crumble in the face of the determinedly nonlinear and highly varied quality of children’s thoughts.” (Kavey, “I do believe” 95)

The existence of Neverland does not follow normal adult logic, but children are more willing to believe in the fantastic, the existence of fairies and forests equally reasonable to their open minds. In Stars and Satellites, the creativity of a child’s mind is why the

Paracosm uses children and young adults as the Conduits that bridge Caesura to the

Neverlands. Their imaginations are far more flexible and therefore more able to manipulate the dimensions into interesting places.

Those children, however, are also often ill. That is due to a perception of Peter

Pan established by the story and developed in culture. “Peter’s consistent association with sick children suggests that illness, because of its high frequency in childhood and the long periods of rest and isolation with which it is correlated, is one of the most frequent causes of children spending more time than usual in Neverland.” (Kavey, “I do believe”

103) The existence of a child’s active imagination is what establishes and grows

Neverland. If a child is sick and bored in bed, he or she finds more time to imagine another world. While in Stars and Satellites, the Paracosm’s use of sick kids is partially to hide activities, since sick kids can be hospitalized and later pronounced dead, it also allows children the time in bed (in some cases) to build creative worlds and stories in a way that is consistent with the Peter Pan myth.

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Finally, the name “Neverland” evokes a certain quality about the world. “The true paradox of the ‘never’ in Neverland is in its double meaning of stark denial—on the one hand, the refusal of the self to conceive of its own end and, on the other, the absolute reality of death.” (Gilead 286) Peter Pan may be the boy who never grows up, but he is also the boy who says, “To die will be an awfully big adventure” (Barrie 101). Life and death dance in tandem in the impossible place. This paradox exists in the character of

Izzy, which is fitting because she is the character who ultimately becomes Peter Pan. She recognizes that she has always been terminal, expecting that she was in a coma waiting to eventually die. However, she refuses to admit it out loud for a long time to any character in the novel.

Neverland’s existence seems to be impossible. However, in a YA science fiction novel, it needed to make sense. Stars and Satellites took the original elements of

Neverland in Peter Pan and established them in a new way that made it work as both science fiction and as a novel for young adults.

WOMEN IN PETER PAN

The story of Peter Pan treats young men and women very differently, as is very clear right away. Even before the lack of “lost girls” is mentioned, when speaking of

John’s birth in a game being played by Wendy and John Darling, one line reads, “Then

John was born, with the extra pomp that he conceived due to the birth of a male[…]”

(Barrie 15). Certainly, this is consistent with the treatment of males and females during the time in which the story was written, but even Peter perpetuates this mentality. While

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Michael and John become lost boys, Wendy is not offered that same opportunity and instead becomes the mother of the lost boys. “[Peter Pan] represents a patriarchal system in Neverland that fails to recognize her importance as a female with opinions and ideas rivaling his.” (Clark 309) Peter carefully manipulates Wendy in the nursery so she will return with Peter to Neverland, claiming authority over her in the process.

However, she is not the only female character in the novel, and the women’s journeys differ greatly. “Together, the various girl figures create a paradoxical construction of femininity: corrupted and corrupting, victims of vicious attack and agents of degenerative (and violent) adulthood.” (Roth 58) In my novel, I consider multi-faceted female characters, though in a much different way than in the original story. In doing so,

I defend the importance of three-dimensional female characters and their equality with male characters.

Tinker Bell Tinker Bell, while one of the most well-known and striking characters of

Peter Pan, is not thoroughly developed. Therefore, it was fitting to make Tinker Bell a central figure in Stars and Satellites. Gale ultimately becomes the fairy that accompanies

Peter Pan through many adventures in Neverland.

Tinker Bell has a very distinctive personality. “It appears that, like Peter Pan, fairies are fragmented, so they are highly volatile and tense.” (McGavock 204) Tinker

Bell is a very passionate character who, at times, does not always make the best choices in the Peter Pan novel. She has Wendy shot out of jealously but also saves Peter’s life by drinking the poison Hook left for him.

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Gale is a relatable, modern human being who encompasses Tinker Bell’s personality. While for most of the story she is a human, she is ruled by her emotions in the same way as Tinker Bell. Often, her emotions are dictated by her depression in its many layers. It overwhelms her in the same way an emotion can overwhelm Peter Pan’s

Tinker Bell. In this way, Gale reflects the same emotional state of Tinker Bell while maintaining a believable human presence in Stars and Satellites.

Tinker Bell, on top of being a very emotional character, is also presented as a very feminine character. One description of her by Barrie reads, “It was a girl called Tinker

Bell exquisitely gowned in a skeleton leaf, cut low and square, through which her figure could be seen to the best advantage. She was slightly inclined to embonpoint” (23-24).

She is the type of girl who wears a dress, very comfortable in her own body and femininity. However, she is also the type of girl to say, quite rudely, what she thinks.

Peter translates Tinker Bell’s words for Wendy, saying, “She is not very polite. She says you are a great ugly girl, and that she is my fairy” (Barrie 30). So while very feminine,

Tinker Bell does not let society’s stereotypical definition of the word restrict her.

“Therefore, Barrie notes to the reader that Tinker Bell successfully balances her stereotypical femininity, alluded to in her clothing and reactions to Wendy, with her refusal to adhere to restrictive human standards for middle-class women[…].” (Clark

309) Tinker Bell is brave enough to be herself. She does not allow herself to be “one- note.” In addition, “Barrie tries to provide fact-based evidence for the existence of fairies in Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens based on their favorite activity; dancing” (Kavey, “I

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do believe” 90). Though Tinker Bell is not noted as a dancer in Peter Pan, fairies in the universe are considered to be.

Gale very much reflects this complex femininity in her character. Women are more than their femininity, but Gale also embraces her feminine qualities. As with Tinker

Bell, Gale’s femininity is embraced as one part of a multi-faceted personality, and it in no way makes her less. Gale is a ballerina and treats that as a very central part of her personality. Dancing is often considered a feminine activity, but it also requires a great deal of strength and skill. Gale runs faster and climbs more skillfully than Peter Datton, despite Peter’s being a male character. Femininity and masculinity do not determine their skills. Gale also becomes angry and defensive at first when Peter Datton questions her truthfulness regarding the Paracosm’s activities, but she also worries about his well being when he’s injured. Like Tinker Bell, she embraces her femininity while still being a complex character.

Stars and Satellites employs Gale as both its main character and Peter Pan’s

Tinker Bell. Therefore, Gale acts as a very poignant character, emotional and feminine and powerful, though less powerful than Peter Pan. While she may not hold all the power in the story, Gale serves as a great agent of change that helps develop Izzy, in the same way that Tinker Bell supports and rescues Peter Pan.

The Duality of Wendy Darling While one might assume Peter Pan focuses on the character whose name is the title of the work, the story actually puts Wendy in a more central role. However, because Stars and Satellites is more of an origin novel, Wendy is

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not particularly present. Her spirit, on the other hand, still exists because it is the spirit that carries Peter Pan. That spirit exists in the characters of both Gale and Peter Datton.

When Wendy travels with Peter Pan to Neverland, it is partially to escape adulthood. However, Neverland ends up doing the opposite. Her “transition to adulthood is accelerated instead of suspended in her sojourn in Neverland[…]” (Hsiao 165). Peter

Pan makes Wendy the mother of the lost boys and eventually, Wendy just wants to return home to her family and eventual adulthood. Such is the case with Peter Datton in Stars and Satellites. Though Peter Datton does not so much want to escape adulthood, he does want to assist Gale in being distracted from the current reality of Jayne’s death and so brings her to the Paracosm. The adventure turns into much more when Gale makes the decision to remain in Izzy’s Neverland forever. In less than a month, Peter Datton loses two friends after finding out both hid their depression. It ages him and, out of all the major characters of the novel, he is the only one who ultimately grows up.

Unlike the boys in Neverland, Wendy is not allowed to be a child. Peter Pan makes her be the mother to all the children. The other women in the novel face a similar dilemma. “The two opposing poles of each girl’s duality cannot appear simultaneously; she is always either daughter or mother, never both and never neither.” (Roth 55) At home, Wendy is Mrs. Darling’s daughter, and in Neverland, she is mother to the lost boys. She is allowed no other choice. A similar complex duality exists in Peter. Gale continually comments that he is the son of a councilman, and it becomes a significant part of his personality. He defends the government of Caesura and serves the government of his school because of who is father is. The only other state Peter Datton is seen in is at the

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end of the novel when Izzy and Gale return to Caesura to visit him, at which point he is a father.

In contrast, Izzy and Gale do not follow the formula set forth by Wendy. Izzy never acts as a mother and never mentions her family in any significant way that makes her being a daughter part of her personality. Meanwhile, Gale goes through the spectrum of options in an unusual way. She often comments that she is the last living daughter of her parents while acting as a protector (and a sort of mother) to Izzy. Eventually, she decides to become a permanent part of Izzy’s Neverland, giving up her daughter status.

Even then she is not always a mother to Izzy but more of a partner in crime. By the end of the novel, because Gale is a tiny fairy, Izzy spends time protecting her instead.

The significant female characters of Stars and Satellites do not follow the conventions of women, namely Wendy, in Peter Pan, but Peter Datton does. This is in order to emphasize the point that female characters are versatile, three-dimensional characters as much as any male character. Maleness and femaleness do not necessarily determine a person’s entire role. The duality of daughter and mother or son and father can exist regardless of gender. So while the original novel may show this duality based on gender, Stars and Satellites presents it based on character. In doing so, it makes the novel

YA fiction.

Mrs. Darling as Creator Although Mrs. Darling never travels to Neverland, she may have one of the greatest impacts on the novel itself. “When Barrie constructs his story on several levels, it is useful at this point to consider the possibility that the journey of the

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children to Neverland (and, in fact, the remainder of the novel) does not occur within the reality of the Darling home but transpires within the dream-world of Mrs. Darling’s unconscious.” (Morse 294-295) Mrs. Darling very well might be the person who creates

Neverland.

Peter Datton in Stars and Satellites is the eventual parent of Wendy, which ultimately makes him Mrs. Darling. While he does not create Neverland—that job is completed mostly by Izzy and Gale—Peter Datton is the one who first suggests the trip to the Paracosm. It is through his intercession that Neverland ultimately becomes what it is.

PETER PAN

Perhaps the most bewildering character of the novel is one who shares its name.

Peter Pan, the boy who will never grow up, catches the imagination of readers. He’s impossible, nearly fearless, and overwhelmingly wild. However, he is anything but innocent and certainly not a character readers should wish to be. “His unending childhood, like his lack of selfhood, is a hollow triumph.” (Wiggins 91) Peter does not understand who he is; he’s too young to understand. Because of that, he does not change or learn. “Peter Pan exists in suspended animation and therefore his life is on hold, to the extent that nothing can be fully resolved.” (McGavock 198) His inability to change makes him a difficult character to get along with.

Izzy is the character in Stars and Satellites who ultimately becomes Peter Pan. As the Conduit between the Paracosm and her Neverland, she is essentially made immortal by the fact that she no longer ages, thereby giving her Peter Pan’s endless childhood. She

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also struggles to cooperate with others. While she does occasionally show a great deal of compassion, such as when she offers to take Gale’s Shadow as her own, she primarily concentrates on what sounds fun at the time, such as when she pushes Gale into the ocean.

Not only is Peter Pan ageless and trapped in time, but also, “Peter Pan is able to exist somewhere between life and death without being affected by either” (Roth 58). This is something beyond simply never growing up. Rather, Peter Pan has a somewhat different state of being that makes him more of a fairy tale. Izzy too possesses this detail about her character. In a world where the natives of Neverland (the Dimension Jumpers) and Other-worlders (those from Caesura) come to conflict, Izzy bridges the divide as not quite either. While technically an Other-worlder, her existence is tied powerfully to the

Neverland. When that bond is severed, however, it traps her in the Neverland, not

Caesura. She is an Other-worlder who belongs in the Neverland and that makes her a being all her own.

However, she applies to this statement in a much different way as well. The

Paracosm’s Conduits to the Neverlands are all sick children, in one way or another, and

Izzy is no exception. She has a brain tumor and, as she states herself, has never been anything but terminal. Now in her Neverland, she cannot die, and her living is twisted by her immortality. Initially, she thought the world was only a dream she was having while in a coma. Like Peter Pan, she exists in a state of being that is more “story” than “alive.”

As Peter Pan is a child, so are those invited to Neverland. Not all inhabitants of the island are necessarily children, but those who associate with or are invited to

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Neverland by Peter are. “Peter is eternally a child and no longer of this world, so he lives through the fantasies of children who need him—and Neverland.” (Kavey, Introduction

9) Peter Pan exists in Neverland as well as in the stories of children. Wendy, Michael, and John all imagine Peter Pan before he visits them and takes them all to Neverland.

However, when Wendy grows up, he then refuses to bring her to Neverland, taking her daughter instead. Though adults may also exist in Neverland, it is the children that Peter brings to his world.

In Stars and Satellites, Izzy is visibly more excited by Gale than by Peter Datton arriving in Neverland. Gale is more adventurous, creative, athletic, and younger than

Peter Datton. Her creativity fuels Izzy’s Neverland and alters it into something much more exciting than before. Peter Datton has a much more practical mind and does not intrigue Izzy so much. As time goes on, it is Gale that Izzy is happy to see and associate with. Peter Datton is just Gale’s awkward companion. He is still young, and Izzy is interested in him up to a point, but his practicality makes her less excited.

Neverland is not only associated with Peter Pan; it belongs to him. “It is obvious in Barrie’s descriptions of the island that the entirety of its life thrills to the aesthetic will of Peter….” (Fox 28) When Peter Pan returns to Neverland, it springs to life. When he’s away, nothing happens there. Neverland exists because of and for Peter Pan. Such is the case with Izzy and all children who serve as a Conduit to the Neverlands.

The Neverlands technically exist before a Conduit bridges the Paracosm to them, but they’re more like blank slates. Izzy’s arrival creates a forest in her Neverland. When

Gale arrives, a child in much the same situation as Izzy as far as being a potential

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Conduit, the world grows wider into something Izzy enjoys only more. Together, their imaginations separate Izzy’s Neverland from Caesura, but Gale only helps guide Izzy’s wild imagination. Because Izzy is the Conduit, she determines what her Neverland becomes. Like Peter Pan, Neverland exists and changes for her enjoyment.

Peter Pan is wild and fun, but that wild nature often leads to disaster. “Barrie requires his readers to remain alert when in the company of Peter Pan since nothing is ever certain and darkness lurks in his adventures, in his personality, and on every page.”

(McGavock 198) Peter Pan is twisted and dangerous. He acts like a thrilling adventure, but his adventures have real consequences. Because he is very conscious of the fact that he will never grow up, death only seems to thrill him as yet another adventure. If it led

Peter Pan to take risks on only his own behalf, that might be acceptable, but it also causes him to forget about the lives of others. “Peter’s carelessness with regard to human life might make him seem oddly innocent if it stopped at confusion between real and pretend murders or lives taken in combat, but it does not.” (Coats, “Child-Hating” 15) As Peter is young and unchanging, it might make sense that he would be uncertain of death’s meaning, but he recognizes death and danger for what it is. When he fights pirates, he intends to kill them. He breathes faster just to kill grown-ups. Peter recognizes death and is unafraid to wish it upon others.

At multiple moments, Izzy very clearly disregards human life. When the pirate version of Councilman Datton threatens Gale’s life, using Gale as bait for Izzy, she brushes off the threat. She tells the pirate that he can kill Gale if that is what he wants.

Later, when Gale shouts at Izzy for this action, Izzy just tells her she was testing the

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pirate’s limits, not so much acknowledging that Gale’s life had been at risk. Later in the story, when Izzy actually cuts off the hand of the pirate captain, it barely throws her off.

Her hand remains steady as blood drips from her knife. She fails to recognize the viciousness of her act, though she certainly recognizes the act itself. In fact, she explains that what she did was acceptable because, “Good guys win, bad guys lose” (140). It thrills her instead of terrifies her and because of that, it makes her dangerous.

Izzy carries the spirit of Peter Pan in her choices, her attitude toward other people, and the circumstances she ends up in. As an eternal child, she exists somewhere between life and death in a state that is unable to grow. But also like Peter Pan, she is an exciting thrill-seeker, interesting to say the least. With her unique personality, I believe she is worthy of being the character that evolves into Peter Pan.

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Thematic Choices

Stars and Satellites, while an origin story for Peter Pan, also serves as a novel that can stand on its own. The themes, symbolism, and topics addressed through this novel attempt to carry the spirit of Peter Pan, the interest of young adults, and a valuable story.

The title of Stars and Satellites was chosen both as a nod to the original story of

Peter Pan as well as a symbol to be focused on through the story. It reflects the original story in a small way, referencing the directions to Neverland, “Second to the right, and straight on til morning” (Barrie 40). Stars have some meaning in Peter Pan without being the most prevalent concept. So while Stars and Satellites references the story, it does so in such a small way that it manages to remain distinct.

The title of the story is actually referenced by Izzy in a comment to Gale when she looks up at the stars and wonders if they are real. She says, “Whether or not they’re real, I don’t care if they’re stars or satellites; I just want to know” (161). In this line, Izzy references a theme of Stars and Satellites, which is the search for meaning and understanding. Gale is unsettled, having just experienced the loss of her apparently cheerful sister to suicide. Jayne’s death shakes Gale’s world and makes everything doubtable. The story goes so far as to use chapter titles without chapter numbers to show that Gale is clinging to some structured meaning but that structure is falling apart. This

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lack of solidity drives her to Neverland, which ultimately gives her a sense of control and agency in her own life.

The title is also meant to symbolize the dichotomy between nature and what is manufactured. Neverland is filled with trees, an ocean, wide sky, and magic, whereas the city-state of Caesura is filled with buildings that stretch so high that they block out the sky and pavement so overwhelming it chokes out everything but weeds and a few spindly trees. Gale references this near the end of the novel, saying:

[The skyscrapers] pierce the skyline, disturbing the natural flow of air in a

way that I never realized bothered me until now. The pinpricks of light

below us glow with the intensity of the sun and blot out the stars. The

man-made drowns out everything natural, and I don’t understand why it

never suffocated me while I existed here. (249)

The manufactured, structured life stifles Gale, but Neverland allows her a place to slow down and breathe.

The naming of major characters was intentionally done with Peter Pan in mind.

In some ways, these names are obvious. Gale, short for Abigale, is referenced to by Izzy as meaning “windy,” which Peter Datton later names his daughter (as Wendy). Peter

Datton was named with Peter Pan in mind. Izzy, or Isabelle, was named with Tinker Bell in mind. However, none of the characters become as they are named. Despite their names, they exhibit traits more consistent with the characters they ultimately become.

This was done with the intention of subverting expectations. Readers would believe Gale,

Peter Datton, and Izzy would become Wendy, Peter Pan, and Tinker Bell respectively.

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What is also considered here is the relevance of gender. I wanted readers to reconsider gender in reading Stars and Satellites. A female becomes Peter Pan, whereas a male becomes Mrs. Darling. And yes, Gale, a female character, becomes Peter Pan’s female

Tinker Bell. These choices were made so that readers would recognize that people should be interpreted more on their character and personality than on their gender.

Gale’s necklace, given to her by Jayne at a young age, is a symbol that appears time and time again through Stars and Satellites and serves several different purposes through the novel. The necklace takes on a new meaning for Gale after Jayne commits suicide. Gale sees it as the one thing left of her sister. It is so valuable to her that she risks diving back into the ocean with a murderous mermaid to reclaim it; even wild Izzy calls her crazy for the stunt. After she loses the necklace a second time, she describes it as carrying even heavier meaning:

That necklace is the real Jayne, not the haunted Jayne that stalks me

through these woods as a Shadow, or the memory of Jayne that speaks to

me out in the real world though the real Jayne is long gone. That necklace

is her smile, her love for me, whispering under her comforter after one in

the morning because that was the only time our schedules matched. That

necklace is every dance recital with her in the audience. Without the

necklace, no world is real. (145)

As Gale sees Jayne as the Shadow and hears Jayne as a voice in her head, recognizing both as fake versions of her sister, Gale recognizes this inanimate object as being the closest thing to the sister she remembers. To some extent, this belief is accurate. Seeing

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Jayne as the Shadow and hearing Jayne call to “follow her” are actually manifestations of

Gale’s depression rather than Jayne herself. However, Gale’s belief that the necklace represents the real Jayne is also incorrect. The necklace hides the real Jayne from Gale. It romanticizes Jayne into a memory of support, rather than the very real broken girl hiding behind a smile.

Gale loses the necklace not once but twice while in Izzy’s Neverland, which is not a coincidence. She never loses it in Caesura, but loses it in a place where reality can be manipulated. Gale’s dreams cause her to lose the necklace. Subconsciously, she realizes that no memory of Jayne she has is fully accurate. With her depression calling her to complete the same act as her sister, Gale desires to separate from that inaccurate memory.

She wants to recognize the true version of her sister while not allowing that truth to manipulate her into a person neither she nor her sister would want her to be. When Gale tosses her necklace away, she takes control of her depression while recognizing Jayne was not the perfect, happy girl Gale thought.

Clearly, mental health is a topic addressed in multiple ways through Stars and

Satellites. It is a fairly common topic of YA literature as well. “There are several reasons for the fact that the YA shelves are suddenly filled with books about suicide and mental illness, and the biggest one may be a growing acknowledgement that talking about mental illness and depression is a lot healthier than not talking about it.” (Corbett 22) Some books, such as My Heart and Other Black Holes by Jasmine Warga, consider mental illness as a central plot point, where others, such as This is Not a Test by Courtney

Summers, consider it in terms of a larger conflict (in that case, a zombie apocalypse). It is

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a relevant topic for YA literature, and I felt it of value to consider the topic in my own novel. However, the subject of mental illness is not discussed in Peter Pan and is unique to my work, further expanding the world I reimagined in my thesis.

Gale and Jayne both suffer from depression, but they handle this struggle in very different ways. While Jayne does act as a foil for Gale throughout the novel, their experiences with depression are very different and meant to be that way. As Gale observes, Jayne hid her depression well. She smiled and acted both helpfully and cheerfully to those around her. She volunteered on service projects until all she could do when she arrived home exhausted was instantly fall asleep. She kept notes from school just in case she needed them in the future and spent more time on others than herself. Her suicide comes as a shock to Gale. But depression is subtle and able to be hidden. Jayne distracted herself by being over-booked so she did not have to face her struggle. But in an instant, she no longer could handle it and chose suicide.

Gale’s depression differs from Jayne’s. Gale hides her depression, though not so well as her sister. She carries it heavily. Like Jayne, Gale wears herself down with distraction by being involved in dance. Unlike Jayne, Gale builds a concrete plan for her future, whereas Jayne keeps quiet on her plans. In addition, while depression hangs around Gale and sends thoughts of suicide through her mind, she very consciously chooses otherwise. During the novel, she tries to put into words her feelings by explaining how Peter would not understand them:

He would think I want to do what Jayne did. He wouldn’t understand how

different that wish is from Jayne’s act. How it only means I’m tired and I

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want to exist in a different place or just not exist for a little while. […]

That I don’t actually want to…I don’t want to die. I just want to escape. I

want to be brave enough to run away and be someone else. (185)

Gale handles her depression in a very different way from Jayne. She recognizes her tiredness and her sadness, but she yearns for something “after.”

Both Gale’s and Jayne’s ways of handling depression are realistic. Many stories, in handling depression, focus on the “suicidal” aspect. While that is legitimate and is addressed in Jayne’s circumstances, depression is a much more complex concept. Just because Gale is not suicidal does not mean she does not suffer from depression.

However, this struggle with depression can also lead to great things, as demonstrated in Gale’s story. She has a powerful imagination because her depression pushes her to distract herself by dreaming of better things. It enables her to better understand Izzy’s rather unstable personality. Mental illness is complex and Stars and

Satellites sets out to demonstrate such.

Stars and Satellites proposes a question throughout, though Izzy only puts it into words in the second-last chapter: “Who do you want to be now?” (243) It focuses on the future, on what happens next. Gale is falling apart and now a future seems impossible.

But time keeps pressing on. She finds out she did not make the Caesura Ballet Academy.

She runs out of time hiding her depression. Ultimately, Gale has to figure out what her future looks like. And what she determines is that she wants to be someone new.

All her life, Gale defines herself by her dancing. So when she fails to make the

Caesura Ballet Academy, what happens next seems unimaginable. Just before Peter

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leaves Izzy’s Neverland, however, he tells Gale, “You’re an extraordinary dancer. […]

But more than that, you are an extraordinary person.” (241) It enables Gale to see being a dancer as a part of her personality, not her entire state of being. So when Izzy asks what she wants to be, she thinks:

I thought, growing up, I knew exactly who I wanted to be. But now all the

dreams I had lay in a shattered mess at my feet. Everything I assumed

about my future—dancing, spending days with Jayne—no longer exists.

There’s no point clinging to the person that I was anymore. At the same

time, I still want to be that person. I want to be recognizable for all I have

fought here in Neverland. “I don’t know,” I whisper finally. “Something

new.” (243)

Gale sees a future and herself in it. Though she does not know what that future looks like, it stabilizes for her, and at the very least, she recognizes that a future exists.

This is a particularly poignant theme for a young adult novel. Young adults stand at a transitionary point in their lives. They face the end of high school with an unknown future ahead. The theme of uncertainty in Stars and Satellites in consistent with this mindset, while offering some amount of hope in the fact that, regardless of what that future is, there is a future.

As an origin story of Peter Pan, Stars and Satellites works to both be faithful to the novel it preludes while remaining a relevant standalone story. Through complex symbolism, subject matter, and themes, the novel attempts to create a believable story that elevates the classic children’s tale.

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Conclusion

The influence of young adult fiction grows and changes every day, reaching wider markets and experimenting with genre and storytelling. However, it is not always considered in the same league as “literary” fiction. The reasons for that vary. Young adult fiction is usually fairly accessible, intended for a slightly younger audience, though that does not mean works of the genre consider less complex ideas. Some believe that because

YA literature caters to young women, it is not universal literature, not considering that boys may enjoy a female protagonist if given the opportunity.

In writing Stars and Satellites, I sought to legitimize the genre of young adult literature. Peter Pan, as respected literature, served as a catalyst to defend this idea. In my young adult novel, I reflected the spirit of Peter Pan that is considered in a multitude of literary criticism. I analyzed both the characters of the story and the themes that fuel the narrative. I also considered gender roles in light of the story.

More than that, I set out to create a novel that dealt with complex ideas. Peter Pan gave me a vehicle in which to prove this, but Stars and Satellites stands on its own as a novel to be interpreted.

Young adult literature is a genre that should be considered in the same league as literature written for adults. It considers topics that are as just as thoughtful and complicated. The fact that they are written for a younger audience does not make them

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“less.” It merely makes the books accessible to a wider audience and, therefore, allows for more interesting discussion and ideas spread through a larger portion of society.

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