Lily and the Lost Boy Read Online Free PDF

lay before them. A few yards out from the beach was the dark blot of an islet with scrub pine along its back. It huddled in the water like an animal at a water hole. She had swum out to it many times.
    Jack broke into a run, stood for a second at the edge of the water, then ran in. “Come on!” he called back as he started to swim.
    A dog barked once. It was not a sound you often heard in the village. As Lily had observed to Paul, it was hard for a dog to make a living in Limena. She knew that the lawyer who owned the dog (whose name was Rosa) lived around here in a house set back in the pines. Rosa wandered freely around the village and into tavernas, paid respectful attention by people because she belonged to an educated man.
    â€œHe walked right in with his clothes on,” Paul said admiringly.
    â€œMaybe he doesn’t know the difference between water and air,” Lily said.
    â€œIf you’re going to be mean, why don’t you go on home?” Paul asked her in a hard voice.
    Jack stood up in the water, a dark shape except for his pale face. “It’s a good way to wash your clothes,” he called to them. Everything he does is good, he thinks, Lily told herself.
    When Jack joined them, she saw the bandage was gone. There was a painful-looking gash on his hand. For a moment Jack stared at it, touched it with a finger, then shook his head as though to put it out of mind. He looks after himself, Lily thought, and he does what he wants to. But he’s alone.
    â€œThe water is great,” Jack said. “There’re sharks, you know. A woman was torn to bits near Kavalla last week. Let’s go look at that so-called restaurant.”
    â€œNobody calls it a so-called restaurant,” Lily muttered.
    Rosa barked again. “I had a dog up in Panagia. But something got it in the night.”
    â€œWhat?” Paul asked.
    â€œThere are things it’s best not to know,” Jack said dramatically. Lily wondered if his father had said that. She tagged behind them as they walked up to the shack.
    The woman closed up her shack at sunset. Lily had seen her put out the fire beneath the big pot and scatter the coals in the tile trench over which she fried fish and eggs. She would be home now, sleeping after her hard day’s work.
    â€œCan’t we do something else?” Lily asked. They didn’t answer her. She wished Rosa would come and chase them all away, but Rosa was such a mild creature she never chased anything. She was probably wagging her tail now, even as she barked, anticipating a social call.
    Jack sat down at a table. “Service, here!” he called in a haughty voice. Paul laughed. She wouldn’t be able to stop them from doing anything Jack thought up, Lily knew. She felt so troubled, thinking of the sleeping woman and feeling her own helplessness, that she almost wished she were home in Williamstown.
    She stayed outside beneath the arbor while Jack and Paul went into the kitchen. On the chair where Jack had sat a puddle of water glimmered faintly in the starlight; she thought she heard his shoes squishing as he moved about the shack. Why had she tagged along with the two of them? Watery Jack and her brother made silly by him. There was a thud as though something had been knocked over.
    â€œWhat a joint,” Jack said, coming out. He turned to Paul, a step behind him. “We have to do something that will let her know someone has been here. Night customers.”
    â€œWhy?” asked Lily.
    â€œTo show her,” he replied indifferently, looking out at the sea.
    â€œShow her what!” Lily demanded.
    â€œOh, Lily!” Paul burst out.
    â€œLily!” exclaimed Jack. “What a name!”
    â€œI’m going home,” Lily said.
    â€œWe’ll turn the tables and chairs upside down—and take that pot into the woods—and why don’t you go home?”
    But Paul, to Lily’s relief, said, “No. She goes