Page 91 of Losing Wendy

I don’t understand anymore. I don’t understand why Peter held any of it back.

It starts on the wet tip of my tongue, but it blossoms everywhere. I feel it before it even hits the back of my mouth. I trace it tingling in my cheeks, where it enters my bloodstream. It’s a kaleidoscope of colors, like the kind my father used to make for me when I was a child.

Most importantly, it’s nothing at all.

Because that’s what color is. It might seem like something, but it’s only perception. You can’t reach out and touch color. You can’t hold it in your hand. You can attach it to something else, but you can’t run your fingers through the rainbow, only ever chase it.

I don’t have to chase it anymore.

Because it’s inside me.

It is me.

I’m weightless. Must be, by the way Peter’s muscles have to tense to hold me down.

I don’t want to be held down. I want to be set free. Contentment keeps me from worrying about telling him as much.

Faintly, as if it’s happening to someone else, I sense him tuck me into the bed and pull the covers over me, but as I said, I’m weightless, and soon my body floats over the bed, my mind lost in a whirl of light.

I don’t mind. Because I’m the only one here in this clover field of blinding color.

Slowly, I feel the blanket, which is not at all weightless like me, slip off my body.

“Is she okay?” someone asks. I don’t hear the answer, but I’m not exactly listening.

Something warm wraps around me. Two warm somethings.Arms bring me to a firm chest, then lower me until my side hits the soft mattress again.

The sturdy body lands there with me, though more intentionally, anchoring me when I so wish to soar. Again, I’m too content to bother telling him as much.

“She’ll be fine,” says a voice that doesn’t sound like he believes himself. “You can go now.”

I don’t hear footsteps.

“Now,” says the voice, and there’s a hesitant shuffle before the boys leave.

Light shuffles behind me on the other side of my eyelids, but here is timeless, and I can’t tell for how long. I don’t really care to count. Eventually, the darkness of Peter’s bedroom begins to leak into the corners of my vision. I’m not upset by this. They’re just the regular sort of shadows. Not the types that whisper of murder and scream in anguish.

I can feel him next to me. The unsteady rhythm of his chest against my back tells me he’s more alert than I am.

CHAPTER 34

Iwake to the taut curve of muscular arms tethering me safely within the soft sheets, the ebbing of Peter’s chest pressed to my cheek. He’s awake. I can tell by the pattern of his breathing, even in my haze, the come-down from a high I hate to think I’ll never reach again.

My body feels worn out. A beaten rug that’s been slapped against the doorstep one too many times. Still, my sore flaccid limbs find comfort in the arms of the shadows.

“Have you slept at all?” I ask.

“Couldn’t,” Peter says, shifting me slightly so I can face him. His eyes are out of focus, and at first I wonder if he took the faerie dust, too. Perhaps he’s simply drunk on our nearness, high on the thrill of protecting me. I think I like that. “If I had, you would have simply floated away.”

“Are you being literal or figurative?” I groan.

“The poets had a tendency of being both.”

“You speak of poets like they’re an extinct species.”

Peter chuckles. “When was the last time you read a poem from this century that made you feel like this?” He trails a finger downmy spine. My skin isn’t exposed, but it might as well be for how sensitive it is to his touch.

A soft smile tugs at my lips. “I don’t think a poem’s ever made me feel like this.”

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