ABC Amber LIT Converter by Island of Lost Girls Page B

at it upside down, and only seeing it from this unfamiliar perspective did she recognize Rabbit Island for what it was.

    “The beer’s going to have to wait,” Rhonda said. “Come on, we’re going for a ride.”

    JUNE 12, 1993

    PETER HAD HISscripts printed and everyone was ready to go. He decided they would start at the beginning: with Peter Pan arriving in the nursery and taking the children away. Little Jamie O’Shea was playing Michael, and his brother Malcolm played John. The O’Sheas were quiet, red-haired boys from the end of the street, who had to be coached constantly to say their lines louder.

    “What?” Peter yelled after one of them had spoken. “Speak up, John! Speak up, Michael! Or I’ll feed you to the crocodile!”

    But the problem was, they had no crocodile. Not yet. The lost boys, Indians, and pirates were all younger kids, summer kids whose folks owned cottages on the lake. They came back year after year, making their way to the woods to shyly ask Peter if they could try out for the play. Anyone who tried out got a part, even if it meant having to write in a new character.

    The summer kids couldn’t make it to every rehearsal, becausetheir families took them swimming, boating, and fishing. None of these kids wanted the role of the crocodile. All the girls wanted Tiger Lily or Tinker Bell, but some were made pirates, others lost boys and Indians. The littlest girl of all, Natalie, played Tinker Bell in her pink bathing suit with wire wings draped in gauze.

    Peter was perched in the window of the nursery, about to make his entrance, when, suddenly, Jamie O’Shea screamed.

    “What is it now?” Peter demanded.

    “A bee stung me!” Jamie yelled. “Ow! It got me again!”

    Then Malcolm joined in: “OW!” And grabbed his butt.

    Peter jumped down from the window into the nursery and looked around. “I don’t see any bees.”

    Rhonda got up from the cot she was lying on and looked around, agreeing. There were no bees. Not so much as a mosquito or a blackfly.

    “None of the stinging buggers here, matey,” called Lizzy, watching from the deck of her pirate ship that was actually the hood of Clem’s old car. A couple of the younger pirates sat in the backseat, sharing a bag of chocolate-covered peanuts. There were half a dozen other kids milling around, dressed as Indians and lost boys, waiting for Peter and the Darling children to fly off to Neverland so they could do the next scene. Panic sets in quickly among the bored.

    Jamie slapped frantically at his neck, screaming, “Bees!” as he ran in circles around the stage.

    “There must be a nest,” Malcolm cried to the group of kids assembled. “Everyone run!”

    And before Peter could stop them, there went his entire cast, with the exception of Rhonda and Lizzy, running wildly through the woods, screaming about killer bees.

    Then came the laugh from the top of the trees. They looked up and there was Greta Clark, BB gun in hand, legs wrapped around the top of a white pine.

    “Greta!” Peter shouted. “You could have put someone’s eye out with that thing!”

    “Buzz, buzz, buzz!” she shouted back.

    Greta lived in a trailer near the lake with her kooky mother, Laura Lee Clark, who claimed to have been in just about every movie made in the seventies. There was never any confirmation of what might have happened to Greta’s father, who might or might not have been Warren Beatty, according to Laura Lee.

    Greta Clark was twelve and carried a homemade bow and arrows and a BB gun that she used to shoot squirrels. She wore a red felt cowboy hat meant for a kid much smaller than her, and it just perched on the very top of her head, the chin strap pulled tight to keep it in place.

    Greta fought mean and dirty. She would challenge a kid to a bicycle race, and halfway through, his front wheel would come loose or his tire would go flat because of a tiny pebble jammed up inside the valve. During a fistfight (of which there had been many over the years), she would throw