Chapter One | Betty |

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We're all familiar with the ending of Peter Pan-Peter losing Wendy, but what everyone omits to say is that it wasn't as inevitable as people say

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We're all familiar with the ending of Peter Pan-Peter losing Wendy, but what everyone omits to say is that it wasn't as inevitable as people say. Your English teacher may have told you that Peter had no choice but to remain a boy while Wendy was meant to grow up, turn into a woman: no longer a little girl.

Well, he was wrong.

And I say he, because I'm sure your favourite English professor was a man, he made you feel seen when he mentioned the books you had already read before anyone else in your class, he validated that passion for stories others had deemed a passing fancy. You strived for his approval.

Men have the power to acknowledge girls, and there lies the problem.

Peter chose not to grow up, he chose boyhood above all. Wendy didn't have that possibility, girls were rarely afforded girlhood for we were forced into womanhood almost instantly.

I want to say that Elías was the first man to ever break my heart and yet I couldn't, my father had earned that badge way before my first boyfriend came into the picture.

A part of me-the part that knew he would miss me and come back once the thrill he experienced with the other girl expired-wants to forgive him, make him promise me that he will never look at another girl but me.

He came back. He came back to me.

But we should go back to a time where I remembered him leaving like my father.

My mom used to say that in order to be a star you had to burn from within. Elías would constantly say that I shined too brightly.

Betty Dalton was all about Elías Santamarina-James.

And he was all about me, for a short time.

I kicked my feet in the pool, water barely splashing and my gaze fixated on the skimmer as the smell of chlorine entered my nostrils.

I was bored out of my mind but Elías refused to go inside to dance with me-he didn't really want to come but I had forced him on the basis that it was the first party of our last summer before college. He ended up budging and I was already regretting it.

As the social outcast he had designated himself to be, he chose to ditch interacting with anyone I actually liked so he and his friends picked a site near the pool where they could chat away from the big crowd inside.

Elías was nursing a plastic cup of his favourite foul concoction-beer with Jägermeister, all while I remained rooted to my spot a couple of meters away.

I hated his friends.

Tyler Ito and Anders Nilsson were the typical boys who tried to be too deep with their philosophical talks about the meaning of life, their underground bands and musicians that they could only understand and their devotion for movies that were directed by more than one questionable man. They would roll a blunt as they explained to you about the not so well-known singer-that was actually mainstream-they assumed you didn't quite understand because how could a girl really appreciate Mac DeMarco's lyricism?

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