Never

Once, when I was with Peter (if that was his name) I asked him if he would ever hurt me. He leaned against me and whispered, Never, Never, against my skin.

Peter was always Peter (hero, friend, leader). Me? I was lots of things. I was his fairy, their Tink, Just Tink or his Tinkerbelle, when I was very, very lucky (or maybe when I really wasn’t).

The very last time Peter called me his Tinkerbelle (every time is ingrained in me) we had fallen into his bed and I woke up alone, hours later, wings blackened and one bent from where he had layed on it (crushed it).

I didn’t feel much like a fairy or a Tinkerbelle then.

Before then, the Tree House would sit dark and lost, the only light seeming to come from dust itself. Peter, self proclaimed leader of the lost boys, started calling me his little fairy about a month after I came to Neverland. Ages ago, but time gets stuck in Never here, just the same as people (same as I did).

Peter always called me his little fairy. Each and every time. Looking back I wonder if he knew my real name. Even now, I think to myself: it fits. I dealt where he went. I gave to who he said. But I was a little bug over his shoulder. A fairy without wings, just red cut scars on my back from before Neverland.

So, I was Just Tink.

That’s one good thing about Neverland, even now (even now that I hate it). Your life before Never, never happened. I kind of miss it.

It’s still called Neverland. Third block to the right and straight on until you reach Morningway health clinic. A forest of buildings is the whole of Neverland. Whoever named it must have been on the pixie dust that lines the streets.

I guess when you’re really flying high the towering buildings do start to look like trees.

Pixie dust, and its accompanying flying, was, by far, the best part of Neverland. I could lie in a gutter and fly above the world. And my world looked a whole lot less ugly from the stars (though really it never changed I just didn’t care when I was near the stars).

The dust didn’t just line the streets either. It coated my hands as I passed it around in the Tree House at the center of Neverland. Happy thoughts never did cut it though. To fly real high you needed a fifty.

Then, about a week after Peter started calling me his little fairy, pinching my pixie dust with a knowing grin and taking me flying, the lost boys started calling me Tink.

Just Tink.

I still remember when Peter brought in new boys. Telling them, showing me, that they were better off for Never. And before long they were flying high and they were so covered in dust that they glowed just like me. Suddenly Never is all they wanted and I was Tink, the wingless fairy, to someone else. But for all the lost boys, Wendy was the first (and only) girl Peter ever brought to the Tree House.

One of the lost boys, new, not flying quite so high yet, not so high that I was Tink, told me that I had a crush on Peter. A school girl crush, he slurred, half leaning back into another boy and there was a happy daze on his face.

It never occurred to me to tell him what happened when you flew high but I did wonder if a fairy, clipped and twisted as I was, could have a school girl crush when school was before Never and Just Tink had never been to school.

Wendy was different. All bright blue and shiny and stumbling into the mermaids with their tight clothes and bills tucked into their bras. She clearly didn’t have a clue about anything in Never but Peter swooped in and soon she was flying too.

Wendy was the first time I ever told Peter I wouldn’t hand over my pixie dust. Peter had laughed and called me jealous with a smooth hand around my hip as he took the dust anyways. But looking into Wendy’s clear blue eyes I wondered if I was jealous, if my school girl crush was acting up, or maybe Wendy just reminded me of before Never.

But there was nothing before Never so I must have been jealous.

Jealous would have explained the fairy wings. Soft and glittery Peter had hooked them onto my back as I was flying. I’d saved him, from pirates (Peter’s word for cops, since he wanted to think himself a hero) and who knew what else. Wendy watched from the side of the room with a smile, flying higher than ever before, and my crush must have been what stopped me from saying I’d saved him before and gotten nothing.

Or maybe I had just really liked the wings. It had felt good to not be a wingless fairy.

It had been the first time he hadn’t just called me his fairy, or his Tink- I was his Tinkerbelle.

It didn’t last long.

Flying means falling and dust never really did work very well.

Outside of Never I always tell the truth now. I don’t believe in fairies because all wings are bent and broken and all the nevers in the world don’t mean anything.

I’ll still be Tink sometimes to a lost boy or a Wendy though. Peter doesn’t look at me when I go to Never anymore because I go without a pixie glow and I take people out (I let her out).

I don’t believe in fairies because all that glows is not Never.