Lost Girls Read Online Free PDF Page A

windows. Green geckos wait patiently on the ceiling and walls for passing insects. The first time I saw one I thought it was a plastic toy. Jas says they have these amazing suckers on their footpads that allow them to walk up and down anything, including mirrors and glass, and upside down.
    We lie on my bed and listen to the night—the patter of small lapping waves on the beach beyond the dirt road, the shrill squeak of cicadas, the big tokay lizards calling. They usually repeat their call three or four times, but tonight one repeats the metallic song,
tokay… tokay… tokay… tokay… tokay
.
    “Did you hear that? Five times. That’s bad luck. It means death,” Jas says.
    “Yeah, death for a mouse,” I say and laugh. I’m not superstitious.
    “Who’s all coming on the trip?”
    “Well, not my mom.”
    “Yeah, shame. I like your mom.”
    “It doesn’t matter. There’s only four juniors—Jody, Natalie, Sandy, and Carly—and us seniors—Hope, Arlene, May, you, and me. Should be great.”
    “Arlene and May! Oh my God!” Jas exclaimed.
    “Yeah, I know, they’re complete airheads. But we’ll have each other.”
    “What do you think of Hope?”
    “I feel sorry for her, kind of. Her father’s an asshole.” Mom would hate me using that word.
    “And she looks like him, doesn’t she? She’s got so little going for her.”
    “We’ll be extra nice to her.”
    “Okay.”
    “Who’ll she share a tent with?” I ask.
    “Don’t look at me! I’m not going to be that nice!”
LATER, SAME DAY
.
    I must record everything right now. I need to remember it all as clearly as possible. So much is happening, and my head is spinning, and it hurts. Don’t know how I hurt it—a branch? Or did I fall and bang it on a rock? Maybe.
    The winds have let up a little but not much, though the wind doesn’t sound so awful in daylight. Sea dark and huge. No sun. Mustard tinge to low clouds. Humidly warm, as if we’re in a washing machine before the drying cycle.
    All of us have cuts and scratches—from flying debris, I suppose.
    Can’t find first-aid kit. All the seniors tried to find it, scoured the sand and the scrub behind the beach, but no luck.
    We’ve put a screen of palm fronds around Sandy’s body. The sleeping bag is practically buried by sand already. It’s so awful. An unending nightmare. I can’t think straight. My head hurts. Is this really happening?
    I just want to be home with Mom and Dad. The hardest part is… that we can’t contact anyone! We have to wait until the boat comes back before anyone knows what’s happened to us.
    Mrs. Campbell says we must dry our sleeping bags: It’s a priority. We hang them up inside out on shrubs or spread them on the big rocks, weighing them down with stones, and we light a fire nearby in a shallow pit.Matches and food supplies are safe in an airtight box in Mrs. Campbell’s kit. My poor journal is wet, but I’m trying to dry it on a rock out of the wind. Some of the pages are stuck together. But at least it’s survived.
    Natalie cut her leg when she fell on jagged rocks last night and is whimpering like a puppy. I think she needs stitches, but what do I know? Worse, she’s lost her blanket and her shoes.
    “Oh, that’s nothing to cry about,” Mrs. Campbell assures Nat. “Don’t be a baby.” She cleans the wide gash with clean water from a water bottle and gives her a Hershey bar, which the little girl eats greedily.
    Most of us went to sleep in sweatshirts and T-shirts and shorts over swimsuits. They are pretty well soaked, but even without sun the air is warm and we strip down to our swimmers and hang our wet things on a tree close to the fire.
    “Okay.” Mrs. Campbell claps her hands. “Now that you’ve got your sleeping bags drying, let’s see what we can find. The wind’s died down a little and I’m sure there’ll be food, water, and, most important, the first-aid kit there somewhere.” We stand up and brush the sand from our bodies.