Page 75 of Losing Wendy

But I don’t want to drown. I want to drink. I want this moment, this feeling, to slip down my throat and fill my empty, starving belly.

“Wendy Darling,” Peter says, leveling out as his wings send a gentle, constant breeze flapping into my face.

“Yes?” I ask, breathless.

“I’m going to ask you a question, and I’m going to need you to trust me enough to answer yes.”

“Okay.”

“Would you like me to drop you?”

My heart should plummet, and it does.

But I think I might like how it feels to fall.

“Yes,” I whisper. And it’s as if I’m parched and he’s asked me if I need fresh water. As if I’m starving and he’s offered me a plate of hot bread, freshly pulled from the oven and buttered.

“That’s what I like to hear,” he says.

Then Peter lets go.

All my lifeI’ve climbed. Higher and higher, chasing that raging numbness that would waft over my body, my limbs.

All my life, I thought it was the scaling I was grasping for.

All my life, I’ve been wrong. Sidling up to the precipice, tooafraid to grasp what my heart truly desired. I’ve been scaling, thinking the top of the mountain was what I sought.

When all I ever truly wanted to do was jump.

Fall.

Plummet.

Feel my body cut through the air in a hasty descent toward the ground. Hear nothing but my heart pounding against my ears from the inside, the wind from the outside. A steady thrum in a world of color and chaos. To see the ground coming ever closer, closing in on me.

To stare down my future and feel the thrill rather than the fear.

It lasts for a few seconds and an entirety. A moment frozen—no, separate—from time. Like the space distinct from time I’ve always searched for in my bed, not wanting to wake from my slumber.

A place where the ticking minute hand can’t get me.

Steady, warm hands catch me, and then I’m floating in Peter’s arms, my breathing labored with exhilaration as I stare into his beautiful face.

A smile breaks across it, and I imagine it’s as crazed and wild as mine.

“Again,” I gasp.

Peter shakes his head in wonder, as drunk on the high as I am.

“Whatever you say, Wendy Darling.”

The next timePeter drops me, I’m prepared. I use the descent to twirl in the air, noting how my body feels with absolutely nothing touching it other than my clothes. Nothing bearing down on me from above, no weight tethering me to the ground below. It’s like iron shackles have been weighing my weary body down for years, and now I’m free.

By the time Peter and I take a break, I’ve lost count of how many times he’s dropped me.

How many times he’s caught me.

“I should have let you do that the first time you asked,” I admit, and that only incenses the mischief in his glowing blue eyes.

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