Page 89 of The Last Lost Girl

A blanket made of mis-matched squares of fabric she sewed for me from my baby clothes used to sit on my bed.

In this cage, it’s so dark I can barely see my hand when I hold it up in front of me. I’m hot. It’s hot even at night here. I hate it.

I’m scared. Pinching my eyes closed, I cry harder, though I try to keep quiet. One of them is probably keeping watch.

I’m so scared…

I’ve seen crocodiles close to shore. And that awful Neverbird that stares and stares.

Peter says there are bears, lions, and tigers, but I’ve never seen them and I certainly haven’t heard them roar. Maybe he’s right, or maybe he’s lying.

Another sniffle.

“Are you the last Lost Girl?” someone asks from the dark.

I startle and scuttle across the floor, away from the voice, only stopping when I see the bars all around me. If I stay in the middle of the cage, he can’t reach me. He can’t hurt me.

“Who are you?” My voice is shaky.

He scoots closer to the bars that separate us, into a little beam of moonlight. I remember seeing him when I first got here, and then didn’t see him again. When I asked where he went, Peter told me he left camp to live in the caves on his own. I thought I could trust him. Everyone else seemed to.

I try to remember the boy’s name, but I can’t.

The boy’s dark hair is so long, it falls over his ears. All the other boys have short hair – Peter makes them cut it and no one argues.

They’re afraid of him.

They should be.

“Hudson,” he answers as he looks me over. “Are you hurt?”

“Not too bad,” I tell him.

“Do you still remember your name?”

I don’t want to tell him I can’t, so I don’t.

“Hudson isn’t my name. I forgot it, but then I remembered where I’m from, so I took it, instead. When Peter tried to come up with a ridiculous name to call me, I told him I’d already claimed one. He wasn’t exactly happy about it.” His lips curl into a smile.

His voice is kind, but so was Peter’s. You can’t trust kindness here. It’s a knife coated in honey. Something that should be sweet but is sharp.

He sticks his thin arm through the bars and turns it so the moonlight catches on his skin. Red and scabbed over down the inside of his forearm, he’s scratched that name. “He can’t have everything,” Hudson says of Peter Pan. “You don’t have to give him everything he wants.”

“I don’t want to scratch anything in my skin.”

He picks at the metal separating us. “Do you remember where you’re from?”

“Yes.” More tears fall down my cheeks. They splash onto my burning knees, which are drawn up to my chest.

“Will you tell me?” he asks, then waits patiently. “It’s okay if you don’t want to.”

He’s not like Peter. He doesn’t demand answers. He lets me decide. So I tell him everything I know. Just so someone hears it. So he might help me hold onto it. Even if it’s only some of it.

“I’m from Savannah, Georgia.” I tell him about the brick school I go to with its big stone columns. About Mama and our little white house. About her love and her cookies and the blanket she made me. I pluck at my shirt and tell him Mama just bought it. She took me to the store to find just the right one for school pictures.

Then, I remember my friends and my teacher. And I remember my dad, who comes home from work when it’s dark. He used to hold his arm out and let me swing on it like it was a tree branch and spin me in circles in the yard until I got dizzy and yelled for him to stop. How he’d rake leaves into piles so I could jump into them and scatter them again.

About my Halloween costume. I was going to be a fairy.

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