Page 90 of The Last Lost Girl

Hudson listens quietly. His dark eyes watch me like he’s drinking it all in. Like he’ll really remember.

I don’t think he understands all of it.

But I don’t care.

“This place has a way of stealing everything good,” he tells me, picking at the fraying edge of his shorts.

“Why are you in here?” I ask him.

“Because I refuse to do what Peter says anymore.”

“How long do you have to stay?” How long will I?

“Until I free myself.” He shrugs, then stretches his left hand into the moonlight until I see a thick cuff on it. He’s chained to a thick bar in the middle of his cell.

“How are you supposed to do that?”

He reaches for something with his right hand and moonlight glints across the sharpened teeth of a handsaw.

I gasp. “He can’t really mean for you to....”

“He does.” He lowers his hand back into the shadows. “Peter always wins.” He tosses the saw away. I flinch at the sound it makes when it hits the bars of his cage. “Want to know why he threw me in here? He heard me talking to his friend – the fairy. I didn’t think he’d mind if I talked to her. Tinkerbell is her name.”

I remembered her. She seemed nice, but she’s Peter’s closest friend, so she’s probably just as bad as he is. I pick at the hem of my ruined shirt. “I didn’t know she got upset because of what I said, but I heard her yelling at him when he came back from the woods. She thought he only took kids who didn’t have homes and families.”

“Peter Pan is a liar!” Hudson snaps, tossing a rock he dug out of the dirt floor. “At least Tink knows it now. Not that I think she’ll do anything about it. No one else does. Everyone’s too afraid of him.”

We sit in silence. In the dark.

I cry.

Hudson sits quietly in the corner.

Because he’s here, I’m not as afraid. I don’t feel all alone. I don’t tell him that, though. I’m not sure if he’s really as nice as he seems.

When the morning finally chases away the long night, Hudson is still awake. He didn’t sleep a wink, so I didn’t either. He lifts the hem of his shirt and shows me what he’s done. On the side of his stomach, he’s scratched Savannah. “You’re one of us if you want to be now.”

“Us?”

“There are others like me. Those who choose to remember where we’re from. We make that place our name and refuse Peter’s.”

“Where are they?”

He shrugs. “Scattered over Neverland like raindrops. One day we’ll form a river and surge to the sea, and we’ll leave this place for good.”

They’re going to run away.

I want to ask him how, but the distant look in his eyes tells me he’s still not sure and is puzzling it all out.

“I want to go with you,” I whisper.

He nods. I just hope we both remember it.

Wraith brings me breakfast. An orange and a scrap of smoked meat. A tin cup of water to wash it down with. He doesn’t bring anything for Hudson. I refuse to talk to him, even when he asks if I’d forgotten anything yet. He offers to tell Peter if I have so I can leave the hole.

I stand and take my food from him, then flip him the middle finger.

I don’t think he knows what it means, but it makes me feel better.

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