Read ABC Amber LIT Converter for Free Online Page B

the words wrong, which cracked Rhonda up.

    And if you tell my heart, my achy breaky heart,

    I might throw up on this man…

    Lizzy spun in a circle, then put her hands on her hips and kicked her right leg up high. The move was more karate than Rockette.

    They had just come from Lizzy’s, where she’d changed from school clothes into a leotard, leggings, and turquoise leg warmers,then showed Rhonda the metal bar her father had installed at the top of the closet doorway.

    “What’s this for?” Rhonda had asked.

    Lizzy’d jumped up, grabbed the bar, and hung.

    “It’s going to stretch me,” she’d explained. “If I hang for fifteen minutes a day, I’ll get taller. Guaranteed.”

    Rhonda figured about the only thing that was going to get stretched out was Lizzy’s arms, which would leave her looking more like an ape-girl than a Rockette, but Rhonda knew better than to say anything.

    “And look,” Lizzy had said, pulling first one leg, than the other, over the bar and letting go so that she hung upside down in the doorway. Lizzy closed her eyes and hung, focusing, no doubt, on stretching herself taller as her face grew redder and redder.

    “Easy there, Rocket.” Rhonda turned and saw Daniel standing in the doorway to Lizzy’s bedroom. “You don’t want to burst anything.”

    “It’s Rockette, Daddy,” Lizzy said, pulling herself up, then jumping down and straightening her leg warmers. “Come on, Ronnie, Peter’s waiting.”

     

    THEY FOUND PETERsitting cross-legged in the center of the stage, puffing on his homemade corncob pipe; the air sweet with the smell of the cherry-flavored tobacco he swiped from the general store. In the afternoon sun that came down over the tops of the pines into their clearing, lighting up the stage, Peter seemed to glow. He wore faded brown corduroy pants and a green chamois shirt. And a crown made from woven grapevines stuffed with an assortment of leaves. He looked, to Rhonda, like a fairy prince—something you’d come upon while lost in the woods, then you’d blink and he’d be gone. So Rhonda blinked, just to see, but Peter was still there, radiant as ever.

    Lizzy and Rhonda hurried up onto the stage, holding their breath in anticipation: maybe today Peter would tell them about the play.

    He’d been keeping to himself for weeks, locked in his room, spending afternoons at the library and coming out to the stage on warm days after school to write in his notebook. No one was allowed to disturb Peter when he was writing a play. And only when he was finished with the script and all his production notes, would he reveal anything.

    Peter got to his feet, smiling impishly at the girls. He reached out his hand to Rhonda.

    “Come away with me, Wendy,” he said.

    And Rhonda took his hand without hesitation, without any consideration of who Wendy might be or where he wanted her to go. Together, her hand tucked into his, they jumped off the stage and ran around the clearing like crazy birds, cawing and laughing, Peter yelling, “Isn’t it wonderful to fly?” Lizzy sat on the edge of the stage, clapping and laughing with them until finally, exhausted, they came back to the stage and collapsed at Lizzy’s feet. They were both on their backs, and Rhonda’s head was resting on Peter’s chest, going up and down with each breath he took. Lizzy lay down with her head on Rhonda’s belly and her legs over Peter’s, the three of them forming an imperfect triangle.

    “Have you guessed yet?” Peter asked.

    Rhonda’s mind was spinning with possibilities: a play about birds? Greek gods? Fairies maybe?

    “Peter Pan!” Peter said at last. “We’re going to doPeter Pan ! It’ll be the best play yet. I’ll play Peter. You, Ronnie, are Wendy. And Lizzy, you are the infamous Captain Hook!”

     

    THEY HAD DONEother plays, of course—plays Peter had written, and ones they’d made up as they went along. Short, predictabledramas about knights slaying dragons, cowboys killing Indians, cops shooting criminals. Last