Lost in the Desert Wild

In this first-person short story, an unnamed girl follows a clown she meets, the night before her high school graduation. He promises to take her to a world, much like Neverland and Wonderland, to retain her innocence and her childhood, before she's cast into the real world, as an "adult". However, she learns that not everything is as it seems, and that once you're on the verge of growing up, you can never go back.