Neverland [ ✓ ]

Day 4

Entry:
3:12 AM

I was six years old.

My mother met a guy. Not the first she met and brought home, of course, but he was the first she kept around for a while. His name was Derek; a towering, burly man with a mixture of biker and lumberjack style. He had to duck to get through doorways, he'd do it automatically- I figure it was from finally learning to duck after years of slamming his head into door frames like an oaf. He looked funny, I thought. Not because someone could easily confuse him for a Sasquatch, it was because he had so many red dots all over his forearms. 

Infected looking little pinpricks.  

Entry:
7:22 AM

I made no friends in the first few grades of school. No, not a single one- maybe a girl would talk to me for a minute, but it wouldn't take long for anyone to realize how different I was from the rest of them. I would get made fun of for how dirty I looked and how funny I spoke to the point that it got to me and poisoned my young mind, eventually. At the time, I didn't see their point, but it was nothing a little active self improvement couldn't fix. I remember making lengthy efforts to clean myself up and I willingly went into a speech therapy program offered at the school. The taunting did not subside until I managed to somewhat normalize myself midway through the year after tireless efforts.

Still, though, I was never truly acceptable however normal I made myself look and sound as a kid. As a result, I would sleep through class to evade their attention. I knew what they thought, never the better if not worse; children, yes, but also vultures. 

However, my grades were somehow good, as surprising as it may be. I wasn't a stupid kid, teenager, nor am I a stupid woman. But anyone who didn't actively monitor my written grades didn't think so highly. My silence and inattentiveness was mistaken for ignorance quite often. Apparently, silence means you're too stupid to answer, and that may be true for some. But me? I always knew the answers, even when no one else did; I was only scared. It took me my youngest years to rack up the courage to start flaunting intelligence instead of repressing it behind anxious lips. 

Every day Derek would pick me up from school to take me home. Commuting back and forth became much easier than it had been before. Typically, I had to take a bus, get dropped off, then walk a mile and a half to the cabin. Derek had a van, though, so things got easier in a way. 

The back of his van was roomy and empty, so I had trouble holding on; I also had trouble holding my stomach. The vehicle smelled like chemicals everywhere. It was immensely sickening until I got used to it. 

Entry:
8:18 PM

Finally, one day I received a bed better than my crib; a hand-me-down twin bed frame with an old mattress. Really, it was oversize for me, but still an immense upgrade from being cramped in a crib at my age. I was grateful. 

That bed is the same bed I'd have until I fled the town at seventeen, and it is the same bed that has remained, the same I sit on as I write. By the time the bed got brought in, I'd almost forgotten about what the mist had written on the wall behind my crib when I was five. I was only reminded as I sat on the bed for the first time one night, forcing me to acknowledge the carved word from across the room.

"Peter," I said to myself quietly, sounding it out, testing it. "Peter, Peter."

As if summoned, the mist came when it was called; him, when Peter was called. I saw him, just a trace outline of a shadow in my closet, a shadow that didn't belong to me. I knew. No more scared of it than I'd been two years, months, or days ago, I waved at him with a smile. I was used to seeing him, hell, I missed him when he was gone regardless of our lacking contact. Peter's trace was weak, but I could still see him if I looked closely, tipping my head at the right angle.

"You're Peter," I said, fearless of this strange unknown. "Huh?"

He didn't say anything. He never spoke and never had I heard him, but something told me that he must be listening. He'd come when I said his name, hadn't he? So I spoke to him. Even though he never spoke back, I told him about my day and about school, eager to have a friend. 

He sat in my floor and listened.