Jennifer McMahon - Island of Lost Girls

Prologue
June 24, 2006

D IVE, DIVE, DIVE! shouted Suzy as she clutched the old Chevys cracked red-and-white steering wheel, jerking it back and forth in her hands, yanking hard on the turn signal lever to bring the ship down.

She knew it was air that made submarines rise and fall, just as she knew what she would see underwater: the octopus, the coral reef, the toothy smiles of sharks as they came in for the attack. Shed been a thousand times, and it was just like in the song her mother sang, about the octopuss garden in the shade. But on her way to the garden, there were sharks to run from, enemy subs trying to torpedo her. She knew what it was like to go down into blackness.

Suzy had these spells, like thunderstorms inside her headthats how her parents explained itwhere shed black out, thrash around, and wake up confused. Seizures. Storms in her brain. Thunder and lightning. She wore a silver bracelet with her name and a weird red picture of a twisted-up snake on one side, the word EPILEPSY on the other. She took medicine, tiny pills each day.

Suzy was not supposed to play near the old car or the pile of rotten boards out behind her grandmas house. She knew that once people rode around in the Impala with its white stripe along the side; once the bumpers had sparkled and shown reflections of the open road. The radio had worked then too. The engine had hummed. They had pulled the white top up when it rained, some kind of fancy umbrella.

Now, her parents warned her not to play there: Its dangerous, her parents told her. You could get hurt. Dont play there . But that old car called her, the octopus called her, the mice that lived in the hole in the seat called her. The little mouse babies, pink and blind, that squeaked and lived in a nest of straw between the rusted springs, called out to her, a chorus of high-pitched voices singing through nubs of tiny orange teeth. Shed pulled back the torn red-and-white seat cover and seen them wriggle like the tips of fingers. She brought snacks for the mama mouse: pieces of American cheese, peanut butter crackers, birdseed stolen from Nana Laura Lees bird feeder.

Suzy knew what mice liked. And this was not just any mouse. This was the secret-underwater-periscope-up-first-officer mama mouse who was friends with the octopus, who told her how to outwit the sharks, who had pushed seven wormy babies out from inside her. The baby mice squeaked louder as they dove deeper into the sea, the water dark as ink around them.

Suzy pushed back her thick blond curls, the heavy ringlets, and squinted through the cracked windshield, out the side portholes. Nana Laura Lee, her moms mama, called Suzy Shirley Temple and spent hours fussing with the girls hair. She bought her ribbons and bows, sweet little dresses that Suzy promptly got caught on prickers and barbed wire, ripping them until they were only good enough for doll bandages or Indian headbands.

But this afternoons game was dive down and have tea in the octopuss garden before her daddy came looking for her. So down she dove, running from sharks the whole way.

HELLO THERE!

Suzys shoulders jerked when she heard the voice. It was the voice of a tired man, a man stuck on land, a man who clearly didnt know she was miles underwater now and wouldnt be able to hear him. Suzy wasnt supposed to talk to strangers. She knew what could happen if you did. You could end up like Ernestine Florucci, who had been in the second grade with Suzy and now might be gone forever. Even though they lived in Vermontwhere, Suzy now realized, listening to the grown-ups, things like that werent supposed to happen. Like living in Vermont was a vaccine against bad things.

She pulled the dive lever on the sub and sank further, thought about something shed seen on the news last week, something about Ernestine, but her daddy had jumped up and turned the TV off before Suzy could hear. The news man in the blue suit was saying something about a confession, which Suzy knew was when you went into a little room with a priest with a white collar. Then the TV snapped off and her parents talked in hushed voices. They had all gone out for creemeesSuzy got a chocolate-maple twist with extra chocolate sprinkles.

Whatchya doing there? the man asked Suzy, his voice friendly. He was right beside her now, his hands resting on the chipped red door. He was wearing a green jacket with a badge pinned to the front and carrying a walkie-talkie. This man was a police officer. He had a gun and everything.

She squinted up at him, the light from the midday sun beyond the trees behind him giving him a kind of glow like an angel, like the way the world sometimes looked just before a seizure, like everything had this halo, everything holy.

Suzy heard the sound of dogs barking, coming nearer, men talking, their footsteps cracking twigs, the cold squawk of staticky voices on walkie-talkies. They were coming up the pine needlecovered path that led down to the lake. Was she being arrested? Had her parents sent the police to see if she was playing where she was not supposed to?

Whats your name? asked the man. He had short dark hair, a little dimple in his chin. You live near here?

She was allowed to talk to police officers. She was pretty sure. Suzy blinked.

My names Joe, he said, extending his hand. She stuck out hers to shake. His hand was soft and warm, smooth as the skin of a baseball glove. She gave in and told him her name.

Thats a real pretty name for a real pretty girl.

She hated this talkthis pretty-girl-pretty-name-pretty-hair-pretty-ribbon, you look just like a little angel talk adults gave. She hated the winks, the nods, the little pats on her head, testing the bounce of her curls.

The dogs were there then and men in uniforms, men in wide-brimmed hats kicking at leaves, looking at the ground, letting the dogs pull them around. Big German shepherd dogs, police dogs, dogs that could bite, could crush your hand. Suzy had seen a program on TV about a man who couldnt see and needed a dog to help him. A special dog who helped him cross streets, get on buses, do his shopping. Smart dogs, German shepherds.

These police dogs were over at the pile of rotten wood, the boards with nails that could give you lockjaw, and they were whining, barking, digging at the ground like there was hamburger underneath, some sweet dog treat. Or maybe it was drugs. Dogs could sniff drugs, she knew this from school, from Officer Friendly, who brought his trusty dog Sam, the drug sniffer, with him. Sam wore a leather harness like the blind mans dog, like maybe Officer Friendly was blind, blind to drugs, to danger even, without Sam. Dogs could smell hundreds of times better than humans. Dogs could smell things miles away. Dogs were faithful and friendly and loyal. Dogs drooled. Their feet smelled like Fritos. Their breath could smell rotten like something got caught in their throat and died.

The men in uniforms were pulling at the boards, someone was taking pictures, someone had a video camera. Maybe they were all in a movie, a movie like her Nana Laura Lee had been in. They were all movie stars.

So where do you live, Suzy? asked Joe. She told him. She told him her grandmas house was on the other side of the trees there, but that her grandma didnt really live there, she lived far away in a hotel for people who took medicine for their heads. Her daddy was fixing screens on the windows because they were selling the house. She told him that when Daddy was done, they would visit Nana Laura Lee, who lived down by the lake in a faded pink trailer with a hundred bird feeders outside. Nana Laura Lee loved birds. Laura Lee had a white submarine in her yard that was actually a propane gas tank, but ever since Suzy was small, she believed it was a special private submarine for exploring the bottom of the lake. Laura Lee was a little crazy, thats what Suzys daddy said, but Suzys mom explained that everyone was really a little crazy once you knew them.