Island of Lost Girls - Jennifer McMahon [85]
Im going to tell a story and you are not allowed to interrupt. You have to listen carefully to everything I say. You dont have to believe it. Right now, Im just asking you to listen.
Rhonda nodded, her throat tightening a little.
Lizzy clasped Rhondas hand tightly and let out a breath. Are you ready? she asked.
Rhonda nodded. Together, they stepped into the forest.
SEPTEMBER 4, 1993
RHONDA STOOD WATCHINGuntil Peter crawled into his tent with the gun. A few minutes later, she saw Tock cross the yard, open the canvas flap, and join him.
Rhonda left the window and got into bed beside Lizzy. Lizzys back was to her. Rhonda put her arm around Lizzys stomach, curled her knees up into Lizzys, their bodies making one giant question mark under the sheet.
Remember the story our moms used to tell all the time? Rhonda asked, not sure if Lizzy was asleep. How we once had our own language? We were the only ones who understood each other.
Rhonda felt Lizzys body stiffen then relax. Then she felt the quiet motion of Lizzy starting to cry.
I wish, said Rhonda, that I could remember some of those words now.
But she couldnt. So she just held Lizzy as tight as she could, rocking her gently, until they were both fast asleep.
JUNE 25, 2006
ONCE UPON Atime, Lizzy began, there were two little girls who told everyone they were sisters. And they were, for all intents and purposes. They looked alike, talked alike and had this weird way of finishing each others thoughts and sentences. They loved each other very much.
So far, this story, their story, sounded like the beginning of a fairy tale. Hansel and Gretel. Two innocent children who were somehow doomed from the start.
The trail beside Tock and Peters house took them through the woods that had been logged several years before Peter and Tock bought the land. All around them was evidence of the forest reclaiming itself: paper birch, pin cherry, and poplars mixed in with some old sugar maples that had been left alone during the logging. The path took them down to the stream that fronted the property. It felt like a good ten degrees cooler by the water. The banks were covered in ferns. Around them grew birch and sassafras with the funny lobed leaves that reminded Rhonda of mittens. When they were kids, theyd broken off sassafras twigs and chewed them, pretended they were root beerflavored cigarettes.
Lizzy lay down in the bed of ferns on her stomach and Rhonda joined her, gazing down at the quietly burbling stream, which was clear as a magnifying glass. Water striders skated at the edge. A green frog hopped from a nearby rock and Rhonda watched it glide underwater. She thought of frogs shed dissected. The drawing in her living room. Then, she thought of metamorphosis. Change. What did the frog remember, Rhonda wondered, from its life as a tadpole?
The thing is, Lizzy continued, one of the sisters had a terrible secret. Something she was afraid to tell the other. Are you paying attention, Ronnie? Cause heres where things get tricky.
Rhonda nodded, studying Lizzys face, noticing the tiny lines around her eyes and lips.
Does the frog trust its own memories? Does it think nothing of them? And what, Rhonda wondered, of the frogs who are kissed and turn into princes? What do they remember? What do they know?
Rhonda suddenly felt seized with panic. She didnt want Lizzy to tell this story, whatever it was. Shed been searching for the truth for weeks, but now that she was on the cusp of finally understanding everything, she wanted to go back. But it was too late.
When Lizzy spoke again, she was direct, no more fairy tale musings.
When I was ten years old, my father began coming to my room at night. Hed say hed come to tuck me in. Maybe it actually began before then. When I look back, I remember him visiting me in the bathroom for years. Washing me all over in the tub,