Lost Boy

by Christina Henry

Was this, I wondered, what it felt like to be a grown-up? Did you always feel the weight of things on you, your cares pressing you down like a burden you could never shake? No wonder Peter could fly. He had no worries to weight him to the earth.

I let Peter lie to them and promise them things that could never be. All children grow up, or they die, or both. All children, except one.

Peter didn’t care about obstacles, even if they were shaped like people. They were only things to be jumped over, to be knocked down.

“He knows no one will ever love him the way we all loved you.”

Was this, too, part of growing up? Was it facing the bad things you’d done as well as the good, and knowing all your mistakes had consequences?

I should have cried, but all my tears had been wrung from me already. My grief couldn’t overwhelm me anymore because it was a part of me forever, all the names and all the faces and all the boys that I hadn’t protected from Peter.

If I am a villain, it’s because Peter made me one, because Peter needs to be the shining sun that all the world turns around. Peter needed to be a hero, so somebody needed to be a villain.