Island of Lost Girls - Jennifer McMahon [41]
And that was that.
They climbed down from the tree, as the OSheas dumped water on the still smoldering cot, and they went back to rehearsing. Peter told Greta she had to make her own costume and she agreed, seemed eager even. She practiced being the crocodile, crawling around on her belly, circling the stage.
I was thinking that maybe you hide in here, Peter explained, showing her the trap door, and Greta Clark practiced crawling up through the trap door. She snapped her jaws at Lizzy, who sneered her best Captain Hook sneer, but Rhonda thought Lizzy couldnt help looking a little afraid.
Another thing, explained Peter. The crocodile swallowed a clock and so when we see you, you have to call out Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock.
Greta nodded and from then on, she practiced all day. In fact, she seemed to take her role quite seriously.
Tick tock! she called out when she left to go home for lunch.
Tick tock! she hollered an hour later, as she walked back through the woods, snapping her arms like jaws, like she was warning of her approach. Like maybe, Rhonda thought, you always needed to be on guard for Greta Clark, for the tick and tock, and she was giving you a fair chance.
JUNE 15, 2006
THE STORY WENTsomething like this: There was once a woman named Queenie Benette, who gave her sweetheart, George Dixon, a twenty-dollar gold piece for luck. George Dixon would one day become captain of theHunley . Before that, on April 6, 1862, he was shot in the leg at the Battle of Shiloh. He happened to have the gold piece in his pocket, and the bullet struck the coin, saving his leg (and possiblyso the story goeshis life). The bullet left its impression in the gold. Lieutenant Dixon carried that gold piece with him for the rest of the war, a good luck charm. If the story was true, Dixon had the coin in his pocket the day his luck ran out, and theHunley went down.
Clem had always loved this story and even now, as he told it to Rhonda for what was easily the hundredth time, there was a glint in his eye. Justine sat beside Rhonda on the couch, absorbed in her crossword puzzle. Clem was pacing around the living room, gesturing with his coffee cup as he spoke. The bagels Rhonda brought over were on the kitchen table along with cream cheese, jam, and peanut butter.
Everyone has something like that gold coin, some little piece of protection, some tiny thing with the potential to save them, whether they know about it or not, Clem said.
Rhonda sat, sipping coffee, half-listening, gazing down at the framedHunley pictures shed done for him years ago, in a whole other lifetime. What Rhonda was most interested in, what she had driven all the way to her parents for, was to reacquaint herself with the mechanics of the submarine: how the cranks worked to turn the propeller, how water was taken in, then expelled to make the craft rise and fall. She needed these details to work into her new drawing. She wanted to make sure the rabbit had all the right switches and gears.
It felt good to have something to focus on other than Ernies kidnapping. Tock had been right: it wasnt Rhondas job to go poking around in other peoples lives like some stout, bumbling version of Nancy Drew. She was a witness, that was allin the wrong place at the wrong time. Or maybe the right place at the right timedespite what Trudy said, without Rhonda, no one would even know about the rabbit taking Ernie.
So Rhonda decided to take Warrens advice and spend the day working on a drawing of a scene from her dreampoking into nothing but her own subconscious. She was excited at the thought of drawing again. It had been her great love throughout childhood, and as she grew older, she let it go, using her skills only when they were required, like for the biology classes. Shed been so busy with school and her work study job as a lab assistant (which was really little more than a glorified cleaning job) that she had time for little else. Drawing for the sake of drawing felt indulgent, and to give herself a whole day for itdecadent.
Gazing down,