Chasing Neverland

Willow was ready to grow up. She was ready to leave her controlling mother and belligerently drunk father. She was more than ready to be on her own, to be her own person. There was just one problem: She didn't know where she was heading – nor who she was becoming.

And there was also the haunting fact that ever since a night nearly seven years ago, she'd been dreaming of a far away land, of a boy whose name she didn't have the heart to utter. She dreamed of him so vividly that sometimes she had to pinch the sensitive skin on the inside of her elbow, just to remind herself that it wasn't real. That a dream was just that – a dream.

Sometimes, it didn't work. She'd go about her day, light on her toes and smiling. That is, until her mother would catch her happy aura and ask her what she was grinning about. And when Willow refused to tell her mother of the silly fantasies swirling around her mind, her mother would scream at her and throw things like empty bottles. It didn't break Willow's heart; she was used to it, but boy, was it embarrassing. She couldn't even have friends over for fear that her mother would lose her temper and yell nasty things and tell her she'd never amount to anything.

But, like all shattered homes, her biggest fear wasn't her mother's temper.

It was her father's demeanor when he drank. He's always been hot-headed, which is probably part of the reason why he married her mother in the first place. Things always escalated when he drank, though. And the scariest part in Willow's eyes was that her father jumped immediately to physical abuse. Sometimes she'd hear her father smack her mother around when he came home late at night and she was standing by the door, waiting to confront him. Sometimes, he'd hit Willow.

The next morning, he'd always apologize and promise he'd never do it again, and promise that he would go get help from counselors – or even stop drinking.

But at seventeen, Willow was wise enough to know that would never happen.

From time to time, she'd wonder why her mother was so hateful and why her father drank until he was blinded by anger. She would wonder why two angry people would even consider bringing a child into this world, and then she wonders if maybe she'd been born a boy as they'd planned, that her father wouldn't be so testy all the time, that her mother would be more blissful.

It was only painful to dwell on things she had no control over, but sometimes Willow couldn't help but wonder what it would be like. Would they miss her?

Would they search for her?

Would she miss them?

No, she decided, she wouldn't.