****If you'd like the published work as a whole, please visit my website (www.denisegroverswank.com) for purchase links.**** Sixteen year old Julia Phillips buries herself in guilt after killing her best friend Monica in a car accident. Julia awoke in the hospital with a broken leg, a new talent for drawing and false memories of the accident, in which she dies and Monica lives. The doctors attribute this to her head injury, but no one can explain how a bracelet engraved with her name ended up at the scene of the accident. A bracelet no one has ever seen before. Classmate Evan Whittaker paid Julia no attention before the accident, let alone after. Now suddenly he’s volunteering to tutor her and offering to drive her home. She can't ignore that his new obsession started after his two-day disappearance last week and that he wears a pendant she’s been drawing for months. When the police show up one night looking for Evan, he begs Julia to run with him, convincing her that Monica is still alive. Julia agrees to go, never guessing where he’s really from.

"I don't want to exist, I want to live. I want even the darkest pieces inside her. I want to kiss the sorrow off her skin. Isn't that what love is? Isn't that what this beautifully constructed torture feels like? But I want the same from her. The power-hungry part of me wants something in return. I want her to love even the most monstrous parts of me. I want her to love me for the madman I am."

"Because you've forgotten what it's like to actually feel something." I whispered. Peter's expression softened and the only sounds between us were the steady unsynchronized breaths falling from our lips. He swallowed, the closeness of our bodies making my heart beat faster and adrenaline course through me. The feeling was neither pleasant nor unpleasant as I looked into his forest green eyes. "How can you make me feel so belittled with only words?" his troubled voice fell into a whisper and he gripped my shoulders. "Is it your goal to stand before me and pull me apart until I am nothing?"

"There could not have been a lovelier sight; but there was none to see it except a little boy who was staring in at the window. He had ecstasies innumerable that other children can never know; but he was looking through the window at the one joy from which he must be for ever barred." J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan cover art by @navigate