“It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.”

It’s raining outside. All anyone wants to do is go out into the courtyard and watch the thunderclouds roll in with the darkness and the lightning split open the sky. But we can’t. Because we’re stuck in here until we finish. What we’re trying to accomplish isn’t precisely clear. I know we’re trying to keep the teachers from coming back. And we’re trying to find the portal to Neverland. Because then, even if the teachers (or the government, for that matter) gain access to the school again, we’ll be gone.

It all started about a month ago, in English class. We started to read Peter Pan. Now, let me explain that this is the tenth grade, and no one is exactly thrilled about novels anymore, particularly ones that we have to analyze to death. It ruins books that could otherwise be quite enjoyable. We’ve already had Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn massacred for us. Peter Pan was a childhood hero to every kid I’ve ever met. Peter Pan shouldn’t be killed. But we all grumbled and groaned, and then did absolutely nothing about it, figuring the sooner it was over, the better. We got our copies of the book – the old, peeling school editions that smell horrible, which are always so worn out and used when you get them that there’s no room to write your name inside the front cover. Then we spent about a week doing research on James Barry and twentieth century England before we could even blow the dust off the covers. Finally, we started to actually read the book.

We discussed the parallels to other books we’ve read, we wrote essays, we took pop quizzes. In short, we did all the normal stuff that we always to with books that makes them almost unbearable to look at anymore, let alone re-read. But Peter Pan is different. Peter Pan symbolizes every kid’s (and most teenager’s) ideals. We couldn’t simply dismiss Peter Pan as another book to be pulled apart in English class. We began to live inside the novel. We began to talk more like the characters and less like American teenagers. And then there were the heated discussions over whether Neverland was a real place somewhere. We were doubtful until Zack raised his hand and out came a spew of all the reasons Neverland must exist: Adults didn’t believe in it. Check. It was detailed, almost too detailed to be a figment of the author’s imagination. So many people had written about it, but almost every theory seemed to follow the same lines, except for the really outlandish ones that couldn’t be real. By the end of the third week of work, the entire class – the entire grade – was convinced that Peter Pan was a real person, and if we could follow the directions clearly enough (Second star to the right and straight on ‘till morning), we’d get to Neverland eventually.

The teachers laughed. I think that they’d somehow convinced themselves that it was all one big joke, that we didn’t really believe this. I’m sure they were thinking that fifteen and sixteen year olds couldn’t possibly still believe in fairy tales. They were wrong.

They’d forgotten, in being with us, and kids like us, for so long, that we were different. The school is for mentally unstable children, kids who’ve had rough childhoods, or were born with some kind of defect, even kids who were bullied a lot. We’re all kids who have a reason to want to get back at the world, which is why they put us here, at a boarding school in the middle of the countryside, with no houses for miles and miles around.

Another thing I should mention is that people like us are sort of supernaturally hypersensitive. We can see things other people can’t. For instance, there is a resident ghost at our school. None of the teachers have any idea what’s going on when he floats through the door in the middle of a lesson and everyone makes a big commotion. Of course, after the first few weeks back at school, we all get used to it and the excitement dies down. The teachers think that the ghost is a running joke, too, and that someday, one grade will forget to let the incoming freshmen in on it, and then the issue will dissolve. Not true. But that’s another story entirely.

Another thing that happens when you’ve got a bunch of “troubled” kids locked up in one building is that their powers develop. Most of us are telekinetic. That’s how we got the teachers out. Again, another story. One I will actually tell later, however.

Anyway, after a while, the faculty got sick of hearing about Neverland. Months had gone by, but we wouldn’t stop talking about it. It had spread to the other grades by then, and it was all anyone could think about. During math, lunch, in the hallways, after curfew, when we should be asleep in our dorms. Neverland and Peter. We had to find a way.

We were all so busy thinking and talking and speculating, however, that we neglected our normal schoolwork. Math and science had been completely dismissed, on the grounds that they we’re important enough to have made it into Neverland. You didn’t see Peter Pan sitting down to do his Algebra homework, did you? Of course not. No one had cared about Gym to begin with. Social Studies was neglected until we got to England’s history. Art classes were taken up with drawing the Jolly Roger and Captain Hook’s crew.

So the school introduced a new rule: No more Peter Pan. It was to be taken out of the tenth grade curriculum, and anyone caught talking, drawing, listening to Peter Pan was to be expelled. They said that it was the only way we’d get our work done anymore. We were forbidden to even talk about it in the dorms or during break. Apparently, that would spawn speculation, which would eventually creep back into class time.

The first week was torture. We’d spent months eating, sleeping and breathing Peter Pan. To be suddenly told that it was no longer to be an aspect of everyday life was like cutting off our air supply. We were gasping and collapsing by the end of the day, tired from the strain it had on our brains. The second week was no better. They told us it would get easier with time. It did not. By the third week, we started to get angry. By the fourth, the rebellion began.

It started out small: the girls wore their Tinkerbell t-shirts (almost every girl has one, somewhere). An entire English class was put in detention for pulling out Peter Pan books when the teacher asked them to take out their copies of Oliver Twist. They couldn’t very well expel an entire class, of thirty students. When we discovered that weakness, we took advantage of it, just as Peter would have. We posted signs about the school: ‘Save Neverland’ and ‘I DO believe in Fairies.’

Someone managed to sneak in a copy of the Disney movie soundtrack and locked themselves in the PA room, blasting it over the loudspeakers on repeat all day.

We all did our part. But none of it helped. Although no one was expelled (or even very severely punished), the school system remained firm: No more Peter Pan.

We remained firm too. We were going to get our beloved lost boys back, no matter what it took. There were riots, protests, picket signs and all. Someone remarked that it felt like being in Dumbledore’s Army, straight out of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which they were right about on the cusp of banning, too, along with the rest of the series.

They said we were a problem, but I don’t see us as being the problem. I think it was them. I know that sounds like a normal teenage reaction, but it was true. They were all so hypocritical. If you teach kids about things, sometimes they will actually want to learn. All in that year, we read Catcher in the Rye, Matilda, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, To Kill a Mockingbird, and then Peter Pan, the protagonists of which all had strong opinions and strong ideas about rebellion and conforming. They were the ones who introduced (or re-introduced) us to these characters. They showed us Peter; we only took him to heart. After all, what kid wants to grow up?

Eventually, the nonsense became tedious. I don’t think it was a conscious decision on any of our parts to kick the teachers out. It just happened. It was after a big assembly, in which more books were banned, in hopes that we would shut up for fear of even more punishment. Rooms were raided and all of the offending texts were confiscated. We seethed silently, while we thought of ways to get back at them.

At precisely 11:11PM that very evening, every single person over the age of eighteen that resided in the school had the inexplicable and overpowering urge to get out of bed, or up from their desk, and leave the building. Once they were safely out of doors, every entrance, windows, doors, cracks in the wall, sealed themselves off from the inside. We were in. They were out. We were free.

Oh, sure, they tried to get back in, but it was unconscious physic energy that had forced them out and locked the doors. Once you actually focus that energy, the results are amazing and concrete until you undo them yourself. They threw rocks at the windows in futile attempts to break them, but if we concentrated hard enough on the windows, we could make the glass repel those rocks. It was for this reason that every entrance to the school was being guarded. We posted lookouts everywhere. There was enough food in the kitchens to keep us happy for at least two months, and after that, we were convinced that we would have already found Neverland. That was the new goal: Find Neverland. Escape from the teachers before they could come with reinforcements and force their way into the school, having waited us out. We knew that was their goal, so we were going to counter it.

In the beginning, it was fun. We searched through the books, the Internet, everything. The research wasn’t tedious, because it was interesting. But it started to bore us pretty quickly. We knew hat we couldn’t get there by traditional means, because who knew exactly what had happened to Peter? He wasn’t about to come find us and sprinkle us with pixie dust. As such, we had no means of flying and so had to find our own way of getting there, without flying. There must be a way.

We read all the fantasy stories in the library, and came up with the conclusion that Neverland must be a bit like Narnia: you simply step into it one day, in a careless sort of way. We didn’t have time to be careless.

So now we’re searching the school, every nook and cranny, trying to find the magic broom cupboard with no back wall, the abandoned classroom that’s not really a classroom.

We are determined to find Neverland; no matter how long it takes, no matter what we have to do to survive or who we have to keep out of the school. We will not grow up. Neverland is always just around the corner, slightly out of reach and straight on ‘till morning. Everyone dreams about reaching it, but no one has ever succeeded, and we are going to change that. We will find Neverland.