How to Return to Neverland Before Turning Twenty By Luna Vallejo

Bob CC


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How to Return to Neverland Before Turning Twenty

When you hear the soft sound of tapping against your bedroom window, don’t panic. Instead, crack your bird-bone fingers once before you swing your spindly limbs out of bed faster than you learned how to count to three. It does you well to remember why you’re letting him in, after all. Plus, you already know how insufferable he can be if he’s left waiting for too long.

Open the window and watch the way he soars through the room like Icarus, infinite, illuminated, innocent in the way only children can be as they bounce back and forth in beds, backseats, and restaurant booths. Always awaiting their next adventure. Listen to his laughter, sweeter than the cotton candy comet dust circling through the cosmos and accept that tonight, you might finally take him up on his offer. Tonight, Neverland no longer seems like a honey-drenched dream destined to dissipate as soon as the clock strikes twelve. No, tonight it is tangible, like slipping your foot into the glistening glass slipper, a fit once thought impossible, now made true.

When Peter suddenly stops his endless spinning and extends his hand towards you, contemplate your options the way your mother always taught you to do. Think of brushing him off and returning back to your routine of reciting the periodic table of elements before you go to sleep to avoid thinking about how the promises carved into your father’s palms crinkle more as each day passes, about your mother’s more salt than pepper black curls, about spending your days caressing creased photographs and wishing you were still ten and not almost twenty. Think of intertwining your bony fingers with his and feeling featherlight for just a second, minutes, hours, your brittle body brimming with all of the possibilities and promises you once carried in your pockets like coins until you grew older and tossed them into the fountain to forget that they were never yours to keep. Stare straight into his sea-glass green eyes, at the cedar-colored freckles dusting his ruby-red cheeks, at his charmingly crooked grin and make your choice.

Tangle your fingers together. Relish the lightness of your limbs, the long-forgotten taste of butterscotch candy that floods your tongue, the look Peter gives you that whispers you are no longer a disappointment but a dreamer, doer, don’t you dare look back. Take his advice and slip out of your room without stopping to check if you put away the thousand-year-old photographs of you with your parents scattered all over your bed, the kind where everything was picture-perfect and your mother’s hair was still midnight-black and your father still looked at you with love and not loathing.

Let go of his hand as soon as you feel the wind caressing your snow-pellet soft skin. Embrace it like the homecoming it is. Watch as the rusty roofs and chipped sidewalks grow smaller while the constellations grow closer with every breath you take. Fly until you catch sight of Neverland. Stare at the branches and the brambles and think of the sweet scent of blueberry pie that clung onto your clothes the summer when you were seven and spent all of your time learning how to bake with your mother. Think of building blanket forts in the backyard with your father, the way he’d utter all of the things that you could be with wonder as your five-year-old limbs swayed to playground hymns only you could hear. Think of everything you could have been and never were. When Peter gently squeezes your wiry wrist, silently asking are you sure about this, squeeze back. Your father always taught you to be decisive, after all.

Follow him as he floats past the chipped sidewalks you and your mother used to make beautiful with chalk illustrations, past the movie theater you’d visit every weekend with your father, past the rollerskating rink and the splashing sprinklers and all of the places where you were once happy and holy. And when you stand in front of your childhood home under the pinwheeled sky of open-lettered stars, with your mother’s onyx hair and your father’s crescent moon mouth curled up into a million-watt smile bathed in the porch’s warm golden light, close your eyes. Breathe in the scent of stardust and turn back the sands of your hourglass hips. Let yourself be six and eight and ten and twelve, all twinkle-toed with rainbow loom bracelets wrapped around both of your wrists. Open your eyes when you feel your parents embrace your spindly-limbed eleven-year-old self. Watch as they twine their wing-thin fingers with yours. And when they start to walk you inside as they tell you all about the seat they saved for you at the kitchen table, turn around and look at Peter, at the boy who dances with the dandelion fibers, who spins the stars on his fingernails, who brought you back to life:

Nod and finally accept his offer.



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Luna Vallejo is a twenty-year-old writer hailing from New York who enjoys incorporating alliteration in her work, listening to music, and reading. She is currently double-majoring in communications and history and serves as the Creative Writing Team Manager for The Incandescent Review. You can find Luna's work published in Kalopsia Lit and Moonflake Press.