Island of Lost Girls - Jennifer McMahon [56]
And you smell like Tocks snatch, matey, Lizzy said back in her pirate voice.
What the hell is wrong with you? Peter asked. He looked like hed been slapped. He got up and moved down the beach, ordering Tock to come with him. Tock stayed where she was, next to Lizzy, who did reek of old pee and sweat. Rhonda was on the other side of Lizzy. A mosquito landed on her arm and Rhonda let it drink. She watched it get so fat with her blood that it could barely take off again.
I think you smell good, Tock said to Lizzy.
Christ! Peter yelled. Are you going out with me or my sister?
Asshole, Tock muttered, but she got up and went to him, lying down next to him in the sand.
The evening had started out so well. Everyone was getting along. Clem and Daniel had grilled steaks, Aggie and Justine made potato salad, corn on the cob, coleslaw. Then, there was Peters birthday cake, Aggies creation: a rectangle decorated in red, white, and blue, to look like the flag. And in the center, a ring of fourteen silver sparklers, not candles. They flashed and sizzled, leaving their ashes scattered on the frosting. The whole cake tasted like discharged ammunition.
Rhonda lay on the beach, thinking about the painted rocks out in the middle of the lake. Each winter, when the lake was still covered in clusters of ice fishing shackstiny villages of men with propane heaters and flasks of whiskey, watching for a tug on their lineswhen snowmobilers raced from one side to the other, the Pikes Crossing Volunteer Fire Department would tow a big rock spray-painted in Day-Glo colors, with the year marked on top, right out to the middle of the lake. Everyone paid a dollar to guess the date the rock would fall through in the spring. There was a different prize for the Ice Out contest each year: a month of free coffee and doughnuts from Pats Mini Mart, a dinner for four at the Lakeside Diner, a fly rod from B&D Sports.
Rhonda thought of all those luridly painted boulders at the bottom of the lake, each carrying the weight of a whole year, the numbers sprayed across them. 1982, the year she was born. Below it, 1978, the year her father married Aggie. On top of them all was this year, 1993, the year ofPeter Pan . A pile of years sunk in the sand and muck, covered with algae, a playground for fish and snapping turtles.
THE FIREWORKS SEEMEDto end only minutes after they began. Toward the end (which Rhonda thought must be the middle), she took her eyes off the sky and turned to her left to see Peter and Tock kissing, their faces flashing green, blue, and red. Then she turned to her right, to see Lizzy counting the silver dollars from her little treasure bag and humming to herself, not even looking at the fireworks, which, by the time Rhonda looked back up, were over. It was hard to make out in the dark, but it seemed like Lizzy had more coins than last time, and shed stacked them into two piles.
Whatare you singing? Rhonda asked.
Lizzy raised her voice and sang so Rhonda could hear: Im too sexy for my shirt, too sexy for my shirt, so sexy ithurts
Rhonda looked at her friend in her piss-scented rumpled pirate clothes. Right, she said. Peter and Tock were already on their bikes.
Are you guys coming, or what? Peter asked.
They rode home in a pack, Tock making the turn to the trailer, saying Tick tock! back to them when they called out their good-nights. Lizzy pulled ahead, racing down the street, her pirate shirt billowing out behind her. She kept singing about how sexy she was, in her Captain Hook voice, laughing between verses. Soon, she was so far ahead of them that all they could see was a speck of white, like the tail of a deer, then nothing.
Rhonda was supposed to spend the night at Lizzys and now she was dreading it. Who really wanted to spend the night with a