Page 11 of The Last Lost Girl

Ring.

“Then I’ll go with you,” I tell her. I’m ready to go with her to the ends of the earth, straight into hell if that’s what she needs.

Ring.

“You can never step foot on the soil of Neverland. Never!” she snaps, receding into the corner where book spine after book spine meets.

“Why not?” I ask.

“Chatham County Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?” a gruff voice asks.

“You’d never survive it. It’s a horrible place. A prison.”

“I’m glad you have so much faith in me, Belle,” I deadpan.

“Nine-one-one,” the voice tries again. “We have your location. I’m sending help. Can you speak? What’s your name?”

The dispatcher pauses.

“I have you at the Brook Building on Beaumont. Is that right? What apartment are you in? Are you in danger? Are you injured?”

As he’s speaking, I gasp. Because Belle has been transformed and I don’t understand what I’m seeing.

Her hair is lustrous gold. The points at the tops of her ears are no longer delicate, and shadow sharpens every hollow place that had been carved into her. “Belle?”

She turns to face me, wariness in her eyes. Has she been keeping her true self from me all this time? I’ve never seen her like this. Ethereal and honed, like an alluring weapon.

Her skin emits the faintest light, illuminating the books nearest to her and making the gilded words on some of the books’ spines gleam like she does.

I hit the red button and hang up the phone, then slacken my hand.

My phone clatters to the floor. I reach for a thicker edition of Peter Pan, one I know is illustrated.

Belle begins to sob as I flip through the pages, but now that I see it – see her as she is now – I have to know.

The first illustrated edition I find doesn’t have what I want, so I pull another one from the shelf. This one has character art. I flip the pages until I find…

The woman in the image looks so much like my sister that it steals my breath. The artist perfectly captured her golden hair when it was long and healthy. They memorialized the gentle curves of the tops of her ears and nose. The freckles lining its bridge. Her smile – a genuine one.

My finger rakes down the page as tears build in my eyes. “Tinkerbell?” I croak.

She lifts her chin.

“How is this real?” My eyes flick to the books entombing us.

“Don’t believe those lies,” she growls. “Lies are all that pour from his lips.”

“Tell me the truth, then,” I beg, slowly making my way to her. “Tell me everything.”

The oily shadow claws out to reach me and Belle somehow shrinks further into the corner.

Clutched against my chest is the illustration. One where Belle is flying with gossamer wings, dressed in a dress made of leaves and flowers with a crown fashioned from twigs and vines.

I remember the sorrow in her song when she sang about flying, of how she kept saying she believed she still could.

“Did you have wings?” I ask. My mind is already reeling, considering a thousand ways to prove that my sister isn’t the Tinkerbell.

“I lost them.” The pain in her voice is acute, as if she has recently left her wings and the island behind and hasn’t been without them for years. “But if given the chance, I would do it again. I gained something far more precious.”

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