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Authors: Ann Kelley

Tags: #Historical, #Mystery, #Adventure, #Contemporary, #Young Adult

Lost Girls (2 page)

BOOK: Lost Girls
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Another wave surfs us in to land safely on a steeply sloping beach. As quickly as we can, we lift the little girls over the side and help Mrs. Campbell unload the tents and bags and boxes of provisions. She gives me her guitar to carry. “Take care of it, Bonnie; it’s very precious to me.”

“Sure will, Mrs. Campbell.” My heart leaps. She has chosen me to be responsible for her beloved instrument. This is going to be so great.

“Oh, solid land!” Arlene sinks to her knees and kisses the sand. Then she splutters and spits. I notice that she hangs back while the rest of us get on with organizing things. Probably doesn’t want to ruin her nails!

Jas, Hope, and I run back and forth, carrying the backpacks and provisions. The water swirls around us and the boat twists in the restless waters.

For some reason the boatman won’t set foot on the island. Mrs. Campbell tries to get him to help unload the crates of bottled water, but he shakes his head, yelling, “
Yaksha! Yaksha! Koh Tabu!
” and keeps pointing back to the mainland.

It takes all our strength to pull the crates ashore. Mrs. Campbell gets the others to help shove the boat off the beach, and the boatman doesn’t even wave as he turns back toward the sea. He gives up trying to get the outboard going and sails now for the mainland, after a difficult launch over the surf. We won’t see him again until he picks us up in three days.

“What was he saying, Mrs. Campbell?”

“Nothing, Bonnie. A silly taboo. The locals don’t come here if they can help it.”

“Why don’t they?”

“He didn’t say. It’s only superstition, whatever it is.”

“What’s
Yaksha
?”

“I think it’s something to do with Hindu gods, isn’t it? A temple guardian?” says Jas.

“Giant. A mythical giant,” murmurs Mrs. Campbell.

I feel as if we are still rising and plunging on the waves and eventually have to sit down while my head settles.

“I’m going to explore,” May announces.

“No, not yet, May. We need to set up camp first. Then you can search for wood for a campfire.” Mrs. Campbell slaps May’s bottom with the flat of her hand and May shrieks, laughing. Everyone smiles, relieved to be together and safe.

It’s paradise, no adults to spoil things. I don’t count the Duchess as an adult. She’s fun. I look around, making mental notes for my journal. There are wispy casuarinas and tall coconut palms at the top of the beach, and green jungle rising steeply in a backdrop. The pale strip of beach is nearly covered by water, and there’s all sorts of flotsam and jetsam on the tide line. Treasures to take home and to write about in my journal.

Most of us want to pitch camp under a banyan tree, beneath its spreading branches. But Jas insists it is bad luck to sleep under a banyan—something about ghosts and demons living in the branches. So we end up choosing a clear space near the tree, above the high-tide mark.

It’s hard work pitching our tent, but great fun. The wind keeps whipping it away from us, and Jas and I laugh hysterically, almost wetting ourselves. I’m glad Jas is with me and also pleased Mom didn’t come now. She would have complained about the primitive sleeping arrangements and refused to use the toilet, which we seniors have dug well away from the camp.

We drape nets over our sleeping bags, though it must be too windy for mosquitoes. I can save my mosquito coil for another night. I love the way the burnt embers look like a dead, dried out, curled-up snake in the morning.

The Duchess unpacks our Thai cooker—a simple barbecue with a lid on it—places the charcoal inside, and lights it now so it will be good and hot for cooking our supper.

“Now you can look for firewood, but don’t stray far from the beach, please, and keep an eye on the wee girls.”

She means the juniors. In Amelia Earhart Cadets we have seniors (fourteen to seventeen years old) and junior members (between nine and thirteen years old). You can become a chief cadet if you pass ten tests with credit. I have passed only five so far: First Aid; Knots; Woodwork; Swimming; and Navigation. I haven’t been a cadet for very long. The only chief cadet among us is Jas, who, like me, is fourteen. She’s good at everything, but you
can’t be jealous or cross about it because she’s so sweet. She’s the sort of girl who would give you her last piece of chocolate, she doesn’t gossip, and she can keep a secret. That’s rare.

We all walk along the narrow strip of white sand, gathering shells and driftwood. There are striped tiger cowries and fragments of oyster, cone shells, and pink tellins, like a baby’s fingernails. We don’t get these on the beach at Amnuythip. There’s nothing on the sand there apart from filter tips and prawn shells.

The wind drives fine grains of sand into our eyes and forces the waves far up the beach, sending spume flying like soapsuds through the air. Still, I find so many lovely shells I can’t carry them all. And there’s plenty of driftwood, and huge chunks of chestnut-colored kelp dragged up from the deep. We end up with quite a pile of wood to keep the fire going and Mrs. Campbell is delighted.

“We’ve brought plenty of charcoal,” she says, “but there’s nothing quite like a wood fire.”

She says we should map the island while we’re here and invent names for the beaches and landmarks. That’s our only task apart from keeping a journal, which I do anyway. I write all sorts of things in my journal—like love poems to Lan Kua, which I’ve never shown him, of course. Lan Kua says I am Pee Prai—a beautiful woman
spirit who entices men to fall in love with her. He’s such a charmer, and I am not a flirt. He’s sixteen and drop-dead gorgeous—a typical Thai youth, with short, glossy black hair. And he’s got a great body—slim and muscled, no taller than I am. I also sketch in my journal, and stick found things into it, like interesting matchbox covers, leaves and flowers, Thai labels, feathers and photographs, stuff from magazines that I don’t want to lose, and other poems that I write that are fit to be seen by the general public—unlike the love poems.

We explore the beach, which I have named Landing Place. At one point there’s no sand, only jagged rocks that rise to a peak about fifty feet high, so we have to clamber over those at sea level. I’ve named that Dragon Point, because that’s what it looks like, the tail pointing into the sea, the large head facing inland. Hope points out a shallow cave looking over the tail. She has to shout above the noise of the wind. We cover only a tiny part of the island’s circumference, but we’ll do more tomorrow. It’s much bigger than the island we were supposed to have camped on. But this one is definitely more interesting. And, I wonder, if it has freshwater, why isn’t it inhabited? That’s the kind of thing my dad would think about if he were here.

“This island’s so beautiful. Why do you think no one lives here?” I ask Jas.

“It’s probably just superstition. The ‘forbidden island,’ the boatman said.”

“I suppose.” We head back toward the camp.

The little kids are paddling, darting in and out of the swooshing waves as they run up the steep beach. I sit down to watch the tiny bubble crabs organize grains of sand into balls. I could watch them forever. Ghost crabs run toward the sea and get swept back by waves. Seabirds scream and whirl in the wind.

Sandy calls in a high-pitched voice, “Hi, Bonnie, aren’t you coming in?” She looks like lots of white-skinned kids who live in the tropics—pale, with dark bags under her eyes. There’s no sun, just low gray clouds, so she won’t burn anyway. Mom says I’m lucky. My skin tans easily, and I love the heat and sun.

“Don’t swim here, guys, it looks like there’s a rip.” I have learned to read the sea from my grandfather in Scotland. He’s a good fisherman. I’m not much good, but he says he’s going to teach me one day, when we go back to live nearby.

“A rip?” shouts Arlene. “What’s that?”

“It’s a very dangerous current. It’ll sweep you out to sea. Don’t go too far,” I call. But they are too scared to come to harm, which is good.

They screech with excitement as each wave threatens to grab them by the ankles and carry them off.

“You are such a know-it-all, Bonnie MacDonald.” Arlene sticks out her tongue. I ignore her. I know what I’m talking about.

“And you are such a know-nothing, Arlene Spider-eyes,” shouts May. Arlene hurls herself at May, who shrieks, splashing and laughing.

Huge dark clouds growl, and for a moment the sea looks as if it will engulf us all. Colors are somehow brighter, more vivid, held in by the strange thick ceiling of green-gray. It’s wonderful sitting here, watching; I feel so alive. Here we are on our very own desert island: nine of us, and Layla Campbell. It’s like the best adventure we could possibly have.

May, Arlene, and Hope go fishing in a large rocky pool near the shore with a fishing net taped on the end of a bamboo pole and a handheld fishing line. Or rather, Hope fishes and the Glossies sit and watch and make stupid comments. Hope falls in up to her shoulders, which means the water is pretty deep given how tall she is, and loses a flip-flop and her glasses. They spend more time fishing for her glasses than for anything edible but bring back some little silver fish, which we’ll cook later.

The juniors have claimed their own private playground
under the banyan. The hundreds of roots growing down from branches act as props and form arches and passageways, and the girls run in and out of them and swing from them. They’re having the time of their lives.

Jas says banyans are sacred to Hindus and Buddhists and represent eternal life.

“I thought you said there are bad spirits in them,” I say to her.

Jas shrugs. “There are good and bad spirits everywhere.” She’s very knowledgeable about Thailand. Her mother runs a “Get to Know the Locals” group and she invites people to come talk to them about Hindu and Buddhist customs. I get all my local knowledge from Lan Kua, who has made it his job to educate me. He teaches me how to curse in Thai, and when I do he screams with laughter and does handstands on the balcony rails of our house. He’s good fun. Dad doesn’t approve of him.

Mrs. Campbell has been working hard and as the light fades we eat hamburgers with buns, and Hope’s delicious little fish. Then we toast marshmallows and sing songs around our campfire, red sparks flying into the black sky like fireflies. Mrs. Campbell pulls out her guitar and plucks the strings. She looks every bit the Duchess and Jas and I smile at each other, knowing we’re both thinking the same thing.

“What’s that tune?”

Don’t care if it rains or freezes,

long as I got my plastic Jesus…

“Oh, yeah,
Cool Hand Luke
. I lurv Paul Newman.”

“Yeah, those gorgeous blue eyes.” May flutters her eyelashes.

The Duchess carries on with a song Paul Newman played on the banjo in the movie when he heard his mother had died.

“Time to turn in now, you young ones,” she says as she ends the song, but we’re all having too much fun and Jody, Sandy, Natalie, and Carly ignore her, getting up and running down to the sea to whoop and screech, jumping away from the rushing waves. Even scaredy-cat Natalie is joining in, though she’s taken her blankie with her.

“What we have here is a failure to communicate,” quotes Jas, speaking in a nasal drawl like the prison boss in
Cool Hand Luke
, and I laugh.

“Sing that song you made up, Bonz,” Jas urges me.

“You write songs?” Mrs. Campbell’s eyes light up and she smiles at me.

“No, not really. Poems.”

“Poems? I love poetry. You must read me your poems sometime.”

I’m glad it’s dark because I can feel my cheeks start to flush.

Then the Duchess strums and sings sweetly:

Where have all the flowers gone,

Long time passing?

“It’s a beautifully sad song,” I say.

“It’s an antiwar song, Bonnie. Did you know that?” she asks.

“You’re not antiwar, are you, Mrs. Campbell?”

“A rather unorthodox and dangerous thing to be if you live on a U.S. military base in wartime, don’t you think?”

“I guess.” She didn’t answer my question. The Duchess sings again.

“You have a lovely voice, Mrs. Campbell,” says Jas.

BOOK: Lost Girls
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