Lucy shows the signs.
Her mother hovers. “Lucy? Lucy? Are you listening to me?”
She raises a vague gaze to her mom. Lately, Lucy holds most things that make their way to her (homework assignment, detention slip, boyfriend) in a similarly vague fashion—lightly, poised to let them go. Finding them in her possession, she murmurs in mild surprise, “What?” before turning away.
The relinquishing, she realizes, feels good. She closes her hands like lilies that fold in at night.
People get exasperated with her. They start lowering their expectations. Her boyfriend breaks up with her. She doesn’t seem to notice. She’s so…inattentive. Unambitious. Out of reach. One morning, she gets off the bus only to wander down the road. The principal watches her pick the asters alongside the ditch. He hears her humming. “I give up,” he says.
Finally, people leave her alone.
Lucy’s relieved. She enjoys not giving a shit. If anyone needs her, oh well. She’s unavailable.
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Jasmine’s been paying attention.
There are found girls everywhere. They dress just so and grip their phones the way Jasmine’s grandma holds her rosary beads. Influencers teach them how to stay found. It’s not easy, Jasmine realizes. Success rides on their losing weight, helping others, applying makeup, being a good listener, furthering fashion trends, developing talents, securing friendships, all while straddling sweet seductiveness and bitchless sass. They do sex right. They excel academically. A bad test score, come to find out, might be as high as a B. Found girls wonder if their teachers will offer retests. In time, the minus after an A bothers them. Still, they smile. They join clubs. They exercise. They know how many calories lurk in a cookie. They interpret the intricacies of a boy’s gaze, when to meet it, ignore it, fear it, feed it. They do important things with their hair.
They’re found, all right, but Jasmine can tell they’re unhappy. Unhappiness surrounds them, as obvious as the perfume they dab on their wrists.
Jasmine decides discovery isn’t so great.
One morning, she gazes in the mirror. Her hair is flattened on one side and stands in frizzy puffs on the other. A good look for getting lost. She leaves it.
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Sutton reads regularly, fantasies mostly, writes poetry, eats heartily. She ignores social media. Her favorite pastime is sitting and thinking. When the mood strikes her, she gets out her watercolors and paints portraits of her dog Zucchini. Sometimes she dabbles in spells. She has lived lost for a while now. Not in Neverland, of course. This is Neverland; that’s obvious enough: this world ruled by male unruliness, by boys who refuse the limits of found, play war with pirates, and, in truth, need the war, endless war, to justify their power and exclusive brotherhood and gleeful whatever-the-hell-they-want.
Girls in Neverland? Jealous pixies, sexy sirens, oblivious virgins, cute caretakers, all found. In Neverland, a girl’s either found or invisible, and those aren’t even her options. They’re designations. There is no choice.
Sutton was briefly found. She didn’t like it. But invisibility, she learned quickly, was a punishment. So she built a third way of being and turned inward. This is how she managed to leave Neverland. These days, she keeps her mind unmapped. That’s the secret to being lost. So long as she does that, she stays free.
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Melissa Ostrom is a teacher and ceramicist and the author of The Beloved Wild (Feiwel & Friends, 2018), a Junior Library Guild book and an Amelia Bloomer Award selection, and Unleaving (Feiwel & Friends, 2019). Her stories have appeared in many journals and best-of anthologies. She lives with her husband, children, and dog Mocha in Western New York. Learn more at www.melissaostrom.com or find her on Twitter or Bluesky @melostrom.