1. 6:30 am. Wake up. Take a shower. Shave, brush teeth. Do fifty push-ups to get your biceps pumped. Get dressed, nothing fancy, just dress like you normally dress, they said. Check yourself in the mirror, three four five times. Wonder what the fuck you are doing. Check your arms. 

2. 7:00 am. Sit on the couch, kill time. Watch t.v. but don't pay attention. Skip breakfast, just to be on the safe side. Try to read a magazine, but don't pay attention. 

3. 7:15 am. Decide maybe you should eat some yogurt or something. Don't finish the bowl. Brush teeth again. Check hair. Check arms. Do another fifty push-ups.

4. 7:30 am. Lock the front door, walk to the car. Drive to a warehouse in the Valley. Arrive early and sit in the car for twenty minutes, staring at your reflection in the rear view mirror, at the entrance to the warehouse. Take a drink from the bottle of whiskey in the glove compartment. Check your wallet. Check your arms. Take off your sunglasses and look yourself in the eye in the mirror. Tell yourself you are handsome, you are going to do this. Roll up your sleeves so your biceps show.

5. 8:05 am. Walk into the warehouse and ask for the office. Smile at the receptionist and don't look down her shirt. Fill out the most rudimentary application you have ever seen: your real name, the name you want to be known by, your age, your address. Surrender your ID to be copied and returned to you. Have a seat. Wait.

6. 8:40 am. Meet the Boss. Be friendly. Shake hands, smile, maintain eye contact. Stand up straight. Look confident. Look baller. Look like you have done this before.

7. 9:15 am. Go the bathroom. Drink water from the tap. Check yourself in the mirror. Check your arms.

8. 9:20 am. Meet your Co-worker. You are not famous, you are a dumb kid. She is not famous but she has done this before. Be friendly, don't look down her shirt either. Shake hands, say it is good to be working with you. Smile. Forget you are eighteen.

9. 9:30 am-1:00 pm. Decline the pills. Do the work. Fuck the girls. Ignore the men.

10. 1:10 pm-2:30 pm. Lunch. Get a Snickers bar from a vending machine. Sit in the car and eat it. Finish the whiskey.

11. 2:40 pm-6:45 pm. Decline the pills. Do the work. Fuck the girls. Ignore the men.

12. 7:00 pm. Take a shower. Say thanks to everyone who says, Great work today, kid or some variation, Smile sheepishly, good-naturedly when the men call you donkey. Shrug. Make some bland comment about luck.

13. 7:15 pm. Say goodnight to the Boss, to the Co-worker, Drive to the liquor store near your apartment. Buy three bottles of whiskey with the cash you earned today. Buy heroin from the kid in the next apartment.

14. 8:00 pm. Shoot up. Go to sleep. 

Every time he pushes the needle into his vein, Peter sees Tinkerbell's last moments. Not that he needs the drug for that; all he really has to do is close his eyes and he's back there. Nothing has felt right since that day, and of course now that she's dead, he's stuck here.

Here. Here is London. It's pouring rain, and Peter is huddled in the alley beside the Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital, getting soaked. It's late evening, and people are rushing past the alley mouth under umbrellas, hurrying home or to the tram stop. Peter hunches over, rain pelting the back of his neck. He wears a wool stocking cap all the time here; pointed ears draw too much attention, lead to too many brawls with other street boys.

Sometimes, in the afternoons, he is able to slip inside the Hospital and wander around and just curl up in a corner of the lobby for a few hours, before the watchman notices him and rousts him out again. From there, he always comes here, to the alley, from the mouth of which he can watch the front of the Hospital building and see who comes and goes.

Whenever he goes into the alley, he reaches into his pocket for the school chalk he stole from the parish school near Haymarket and makes a mark on the bricks of the alley mouth, above his own head, but eye level on a grown man. Peter, as ever, looks like fourteen-year-old boy.

The little needle trembles in his hand. He's running out of veins; he's blown the ones in his arms and ankles. He had to hide behind a stack of broken crates and garbage just now and use the vein in his dick. The drug slithers into him like a burrowing worm and he leans against the wet brick wall, growing oblivious to the cold, oblivious to the London sealing him off from Neverland.

Peter forces his eyes to stay open, even though his lids feel made of solid iron. He tries to watch the comings and goings at the Hospital, but it is no use. His long-lashed eyes, bright green - the most beautiful eyes a boy ever had, a man once told him - fluttered shut and there was Tinkerbell. 

Hook had torn her open from the neck, well, downward. Hook was a syphilitic maniac; Peter had been too busy binding up Smee to help, he thought she'd be able to fly away, tinkling her laugh as he swooped just out of Hook's reach. But Peter had been, for the first time, too late, and Hook too insane. 

How long ago now was that? He had an idea, but didn't want to think too much about it. Slumped against the wall, Peter waited, muttering to himself. He missed the Lost Boys, when he was coming down. He'd like to do this drug with them, he'd thought many times.

Peter hears a man's footsteps, a man's walking cane tapping at the mouth of the alley. Adrenaline suddenly pours into him, waking him, jangling his nerves. He pushes off the wall and faces the man.

It is Michael Darling. Thank god it is Michael Darling. He is older now, maybe twenty. They've met, many times. Michael looks over his shoulder, then quickly darts into the alley. 

"Hello, Peter," he says, his voice like a silk scarf. Peter just nods. Michael's look bores into him. Peter nods again and turns to face the wall. Michael moves behind him. The night air is cold on his ass, and the hot pain of Michael makes Peter feel frozen and burning alive at once. As always, Michael makes Peter tell him about Tink as he goes into him.

After, Michael Darling drops three ampules into Peter's outstretched hand and leaves without a word. Peter tucks them securely down the front of his pants. He retreats deeper into the alley, again behind the pile of crates and garbage. A fire escape overheard offers a small shelter from the rain.

Peter slides into sleep, into deeper oblivion. There she is, of course, waiting. How do I get back home, he asks her in his dream. He hears tinkling, like glass bells far away, and in his head it sounds like she is saying goodbye.

Veils we have donned as we tread through life,

woven from shadow,

fading us into the backlight.

Cloaked, shields up, lips sealed,

Ghosts in the flesh,

Observing without observation.

Here is comfort,

here is sanctuary,

A defense against the nature of humanity.

But human nature knows no deception,

It is indestructible,

permanent,

inscribed in the essence of our being,

So as the walls of our protection encircle us, promising escape,

The deep ache of longing betrays us.

We crave that which causes pain,

The warmth, the love, the connection

We fear it,

choose to conceal ourselves from it,

But there is no escape from the hollow that fills us,

the emptiness that floods our veins,

The only remedy being,

that which terrifies us.

Forever suspended in purgatory, Caught between the cravings of human nature,

and the prisons of our own making.