Another scorcher. Waiting for Tereza in the small woods she’d dubbed The Island, Linda closed her eyes and pretended the pines were palms and their cones coconuts. Last year Aunt Libby airmailed a coconut from a real island and Daddy smashed it open with a hammer. Aunt Libby was a buyer for a department store in Elizabeth. She wore Tabu perfume and suits with pleated skirts. Linda could still taste the bittersweet crunchy insides that Aunt Libby claimed would make Linda’s complexion soft and creamy like hers. Mother had said it must be nice to gallivant around the world. Linda sat on the old hollowed-out log, the ridges scratchy against her bare legs under Bermuda shorts. The log stowed props she and Tereza had stashed for Swiss Family Robinson: a bent spoon, acorns, some string, the silver foil from gum wrappers. Tereza saw uses for things Linda considered trash, like cigarette butts. She stripped them and collected the loose tobacco in a Wonder Bread bag. She said they could sell it for food when they escaped from The Island.
