I nod in the direction of the lost boy whose life I took just a few minutes ago. John glances over his shoulder and takes a step back in fear. I don’t give either of them another thought as I continue to climb down the rocks to the beach below.

He’s wrong. I turned to the darkness a long time ago in order to escape the hell I knew back home before I ever even came to Neverland. The only difference is, now, I’m finally embracing it.

PETER | THIRTEEN YEARS OLD

“I feel sorry for the boy, honestly,” I hear one of the officers say. “His parents were never around. Neighbors say when they were, they were always getting high.”

“When were they found? Have they determined the reason for the overdose yet?”

I glance over my shoulder, to the three men huddled in a circle in our entryway. I say our loosely because there is no ours anymore. They give me a sad, pity filled glance and huddle closer together, whispering amongst themselves so I can’t hear them.

Or so they think.

“Most likely, heroine,” the taller one says. “If you look at the boy’s arms, he might have been high a time or two himself. He’s got tracks there.”

I raise my shirt sleeves and shrug. Bitterness fills my mouth and travels south to my stomach. I haven’t eaten in days. Almost a week if my math is right. But the men behind me are wrong.

I’ve never done drugs.

Never needed to.

I could always escape into my mind, to a world of make-believe that took me away from the hell that tried to suffocate me. The one I was forced to live in, until my parent’s passing.

Now, does that mean that my parents didn’t hold me down and practice sticking needles into my arms? No, it fucking doesn’t. They’ve been doing that for as far back as I can remember. Always practicing until they got it right. They were sick pieces of shit, that I am glad to not have to walk another day through life with.

Against my wishes, my eyes tear up at the memory and my nose starts to run. Sniffling, I raise my arm and wipe my shirt across my nose.

“It’ll be hard to get any orphanage to take him when he looks like that.”

Orphanage?

“Agreed, but the kid has no family. No living relatives. If the state won’t take him, who will?”

My hands shake as I grip the arms of the chair I’m sitting in, and I stare off into the distance. At nothing. That is exactly what I am now. Nothing.