Gwen paced her room in an idle attempt to fend off the stir-crazy feeling beginning to settle in her. When her cell door opened, neither a lawyer, therapist, black coat, nor white coat greeted her. A dark-haired woman in a simple green dress entered. Her friendly expression seemed natural on her face—something Gwen could not say for any of the other adults who had come in to speak with her. For a moment, Gwen wondered if this woman knew where she was.
“Hello,” she announced. “You must be Gwendolyn—I'm Alison Sweet.”
Miss Sweet did not smile, yet her eyes held no negativity. Gwen could tell Alison Sweet was a happy person. She seemed a tad nervous, and stood clutching her tiny purse even as it hung securely on her shoulder.
“Call me Gwen,” she told the woman.
Miss Sweet nodded. “Call me Alison.”
Gwen looked at her a moment more—the woman hardly looked thirty, and carried herself with an air that seemed to belong to an even younger woman. “You're not one of them, are you?” Gwen asked.
Miss Sweet cracked a smile. “No—I'm not with the department.” She looked around the drab cell and explained. “They've been trying to get me on board with their shenanigans for years… I've never had any dealings with magic, though, so they couldn't twist my arm about it.”
Gwen sat down on the edge of her bed and crossed her legs. “How come you know about magic if you haven't had any dealings with it?”
Miss Sweet's smile strengthened. “Because I believe,” she answered, “A little too much, perhaps, in all the stories I'm told, and all their happy endings.”
While Gwen was wary of any adult in this secret research facility, Miss Sweet did not give her the shivers that all the other joy-sterile adults did. She could believe this woman still had ties to her childhood, and all the tiny euphorias that entailed. She did not seem like an enemy; she did not even seem like an antagonist.
“Why are you here, Alison?”
“It's a bit of a long story,” she answered. “I'm going to go tell it to Peter though, and I would like you to come with me, if you'd be willing. I have an awful lot to tell him, and I think it might help if he had a friend beside him when he heard it. They've processed everyone else and sent them home—it's just the two of you left in here now.”
“I can see Peter?” Gwen asked.
“Yes, if you come with me.”
Gwen had been pleading for over a week to see Peter, she had refused to sign their papers until she saw Peter, and all to no avail. Who was this woman, she wondered, who could waltz in and take her to him, who had never touched magic, yet all but radiated it?
She agreed to go with Alison, and saw the respect this young woman commanded of the older adults in the facility. No one objected to her leading Gwen out of her cell, and through the row of cells in the facility's basement. As they approached a cell on the far end, Gwen heard pounding and thumping, as if someone was repeatedly jumping and falling hard on the ground. Alison placed her key card in the slot, and wrenched open the heavy door as soon as it unlocked.
“Peter!” Gwen cried, rushing to him.
He sat on the floor, against the far concrete wall, with his legs hunched up until his head in his hands. Gwen had never seen him look so defeated. He lifted his head to face her as she hurried over, and she saw the tears striping his face. She dropped down beside him and pulled him into a hug. He didn't hug her back. He didn't move at all, but his head slumped down and rested against her shoulder.
“I can't do it anymore,” Peter croaked, still crying. His voice cracked as he told her, “I can't fly.”
Gwen pulled him tighter. All she could do was hold him; she had nothing to say.
Miss Sweet didn't interrupt their silence. Gwen let go of Peter just enough to look back at her. “This is Alison Sweet, Peter. I think she might be here to help.”
He looked up at the woman intruding on his misery. Only once he made eye contact with her did Miss Sweet tell him, “Hello, Peter. I've heard many wonderful stories about you. It's a pleasure to meet you, although I wish we had better circumstances for it.”
“What do you want?” he demanded, his sadness turning to frustration and anger, just as might for any little boy or young man at the mercy of undesirable adults.
“I want to make sure you get out of here and don't end up anywhere like it ever again,” she answered.
“Why do you care?” he sneered.
Miss Sweet took a few steps closer, but kept clutching her purse with a hopeful nervousness. “Because you were a very dear friend to my grandmother. Do you remember Margaret?”
“Margaret May?” Peter asked.
“No, Margaret Sweet,” she answered. “She used to come to Neverland every year, just around this time, for spring cleaning. Do you remember?”
“No.”
“She told you, the last time, that her family was leaving London to go to America. That's why you came here, isn't it? You've been looking for Margaret, haven't you?”
“I don't remember,” Peter insisted.
“You don't remember Margaret at all?”
“No.”
“Do you remember her mother, Jane?”
“No.”
“What about Jane's mother?” Miss Sweet asked. “Do you remember Wendy?”
Peter grew quiet. He looked at the floor. In a quiet voice, he replied, “I remember Wendy.”
Miss Sweet came a few steps forward, tilting her head as she tried to get a look at Peter's down-turned face. “The way the adults around here see it,” she continued, “I have more claim to being your mother than anyone else and, if you were willing, it would probably be best if you came home with me.”
Peter's eyes narrowed with a critical look. He squinted at her as he retorted, “Why would you want to take me home?”
Miss Sweet smiled—something she hadn't yet dared to do, out of reverence for Peter's sorrow. “Because all my life, I believed my grandmother's stories and hoped you would come take me away to be your mother someday. It seems now you need a mother to take you away, and I would be happy to do it.”
His sour expression didn't improve. “You don't look like a mother.”
She nodded, acknowledging this. “Well, I've never had any children. I haven't been a grown-up very long.”
This seemed to improve Peter's opinion of her, but he still had issues with the idea. “You don't want me,” he told her. “There's nowhere to go. There's no Neverland left. I—I'm not magical anymore.”
“Oh no, Peter,” Miss Sweet walked over and keeled down in front of Peter so she could be eye-level with him as he sat on the floor. “You're the sort of person who would fly off to Neverland all on his own and then bring everyone he could with him to share in the excitement. Just because you don't have Neverland doesn't mean anything inside of you has changed, and I don't want you to end up anywhere with people that tell you otherwise.”
Her words coaxed the disdain off Peter's face, but no positivity replaced it. “But if I went home with you—I'd have to go to school, and have a bedtime, and eat greens for dinner, wouldn't I?”
“We would figure it out together,” Miss Sweet promised. “You've never been a son and I've never been a mother. We might be very bad at this. We might not do it at all how we're supposed to.”
Peter considered this, and then asked, “What about Gwenny?”
“She has parents of her own who love her very much and will be very happy to see her, I'm sure,” Miss Sweet assured him. “But I've heard a rumor she's not going to go home to see them until you get out of here.”
He looked to Gwen, some strange mix of baffled and pleased, and saw that she had pulled the acorn out of her pocket. She had not let go of the tiny token, and she would not let go of him.
“I know this isn't ideal,” Miss Sweet told him, “but if you both come home, you'll be able to have some adventures together still. Gwen is welcome over anytime. I think that sounds better than staying in a research facility.”
The future started to take shape in front of them. For Peter, the idea of a home in suburbia was a foreign and abstract thing, but Miss Sweet made it sound like it might not be as unpleasant as he always regarded it. For Gwen, the idea merely meant resuming something she had put on hold many months ago. She could envision her days at school and her afternoons with Peter, hiking around Lake Agana or driving out to the coast. She could see herself eating dinner at Miss Sweet's house, everyone picking around their greens together. She could imagine taking Peter to football games, to the arcade, and to pizza parlors. For him, it would all be new and novel. In this way, maybe she could repay some small part of the debt she owed him for showing her all the splendor of Neverland.
They would grow up, that was true, but summer was coming and summer days were always as long and free as the sky was blue. Growing up did not have to happen quickly, and they could work together to make sure neither of them grew up too fast.
“What do you think, Gwenny?” Peter asked her.
She smiled. “I think it sounds like a good idea, Peter.” He seemed confused, but not as much as Gwen would have expected. As she looked at him, she marveled at how his unbridled spirit seeped out of his eyes, even as he sat with her in the facility's dull cell. “What do you think?” she asked him, taking hold of his hand.
“I think,” Peter began, “so long as you are there, too,” he added, squeezing her hand, “to grow up will be an awfully big adventure.”