Lost (A Peter Pan Story)

Chapter 1

Seventeen year old Clara pulled her sweater more tightly around her as she walked to her window and stared out into the sky. So many stars out there, but she could only see a few from her parents' apartment in the city. She had to look out for a while, simply lost in the beauty of it all, but silently disappointed the city smog that hid the rest of the stars. Her mouth turned upward at the memories that this window brought back, how she used to believe the stars were all her friends, how she wasn't alone as long as they were there to watch over her. It pained her to a degree to remember her fleeting childhood, because she was now graduated from high school, and only a month away from her eighteenth birthday. You could say the world had stolen away her childlike innocence, and had forced her to grow up to a degree, but until that eighteenth birthday came, Clara was still a child, and no one would change her mind.

As silly as it seemed, she took a deep breath and looked out into the sky, then swallowed. "Star light, star bright. First star I see tonight. I wish I may, I wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight." Clara closed her eyes and allowed a single tear to fall down her cheek. She had just finished an argument with her parents, and she was broken. They had her future planned for her already, an entire lifetime they'd pieced together over the course of nearly eighteen years, and she was so tired of disappointing them. They deserved better than her.

"I wish I could just disappear and be somewhere else where I could live my life the way I want it." She whispered. "Somewhere I would never have to grow up." She opened her eyes and swiped her hand across her cheek, collecting the lonely tear and wiping it onto her dress. Backing away from the window, she pushed the two casements shut and turned around, letting her eyes fall on her warm, inviting bed. She was too exhausted to do anything else. Even putting on pajamas seemed an impossible task, so she crossed the room in defeat and climbed into bed, pulling the comforter around her sadly as she stared out her window and out into the night, beyond the lights of the city, watching the clouds roll by and the stars twinkle out there; little tiny flickers of hope to light the vast night sky and comforting anyone who cared to see them.

Sad and lonely thoughts were soon forgotten and replaced with mindless dreams of pirate duels, and treasure hunting in a land where no grown ups could tell her what to do.

And with that, Clara was asleep.

~*~

A creak on the floor caused Clara to startle awake and clutch her covers to her chest. She sat up in her bed and looked around the room, scanning each corner. She'd forgotten to latch her window shut before she fell asleep, and it now stood nearly shut, but not entirely. Fear crept up her spine and she prayed silently that no one had gotten in through the window because of her mistake. She couldn't see anything out of the ordinary, but the wind would've had to be blowing much harder to have blown her window open. Cautiously, she slipped out of her bed and approached her lamp in the corner, then flipped it on, allowing a soft warm glow to illuminate the dark room. She felt much safer with the darkness partially driven away, but that feeling didn't last for long. As she scanned the room again, a strange shadow was cast on her wall near the window. A chill crept down her spine that wasn't caused by the cool air blowing in, and she pulled her sweater more tightly around her as if it were a piece of armor. She peered into a dark corner by her dresser, and if she blinked she would've missed a glimpse of the toe of a brown shoe.

Clara covered her mouth to try and silence any noise of surprise or fear at what she'd seen, but she braced herself to be brave and crossed the room to approach the dresser itself. How could someone in that dark corner cast a shadow on the opposite wall? She trembled and wondered if she should just call for her parents, but she chose to be her own hero and find out for herself. Just before she could see beside the dresser, a boy scrambled away from her and nearly hit his head on another lamp.