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tomorrow. Maybe another big wave will toss her back on the beach, maybe right into her own castle! On her own couch!
    AMY: Been eaten by a fish, maybe, or ... well ... something Monstrous did grab her!
    CLARISSA: O-o-oh! The Monstrous thing you were talking about?
    AMY: Yes! The Monstrous wave was that thing! I should'a hung on to her and backed away sooner and faster.
    CLARISSA: Yes! That's it! It was that very same Monstrous that grabbed her up and swirled her away! I'm glad Pee-Wee didn't get grabbed by Monstrous! She's my only doll.
    AMY: But Little Lydia is my only Little Lydia! So cute. With that frizzy golden hair they put on her head, not a wig, but as though it had grown there naturally. And those blue eyes, electric blue, I'd call them. Did you ever notice that, Clarissa?
    CLARISSA: No, Amy. But now I think of it, I think you are right. But could we go in, Amy? I'm shivering. Are my lips blue?
    AMY: Blue, yes. We'll go in. But first I have to write something in my
Who's Who Book.
(Amy took her book out of her beach-coat pocket.)
    CLARISSA: How are you going to write something out here without a pencil?
    AMY: I keep a pencil in this crack between these two boards. There it is. My blue pencil. (And Amy wrote something in her book.)
    CLARISSA: What did you write, Amy, in your book that I'm in and also out of, and Pee-Wee, and...
    AMY: Next to "Lydia, Little: a teeny, tiny doll with bright blue eyes, a do-nothing doll. Can't walk, can't talk, can't say 'Mama.' Has bristly, curly, long golden hair. Named after Lydia, Big," I added, "Lost in the ocean. Captured by a Monstrous wave!"
    CLARISSA: That makes it real, to put it in the book like that! Now you'll never find her.
    AMY: Wait! I have added something else: "But I hope she will be rescued by a Hero!"
    CLARISSA: You did say in your
Who's Who Book
under McGee, Jimmy, "HERO." So maybe he will be the one who will rescue her. It's funny about that book. Maybe it is magic. Once you thought you wouldn't find it, but then you did ... even after leaving it out all night!
    AMY: Someone found it, probably read it, then put it back, an honest person, not like some crooks. Just didn't wash his hands. Smudges still here. (Two tears were finding their way down Amy's cheek.)
    CLARISSA (taking Amy's hand in hers): I bet we'll find her tomorrow when the tide comes in ... all the way in. She may roll in with it. So don't be sad...
    AMY: I hope so. Oh-h, I hope so. She's like a little princess. I'll put Bear at the foot of the hammock in the front yard, looking out to sea, like the captain of a ship, the
S.S. Bizzy Bee.
On the lookout for lost Little Lydia. Oh! And remember! She is made of rubber, and rubber floats. She may be having a good time.
    In this way Amy tried to cheer herself up, and that was the end of the conversation. Amy and Clarissa, arms around each other's shoulders, went into The Bizzy Bee.
    And Jimmy McGee went back inside his headquarters. He pondered about all that he had overheard. Especially, he pondered Amy's latest entry in her book. He'd have to bring his scroll copy up to date. "But I hope she will be rescued by a Hero!"
    There was that word again ... hero. Under his name and now also under Lydia, Little. He lay down in his bombazine hammock to think about this. Hero? Him?

5. The Rescue
    Sitting in the doorway of his headquarters, Jimmy McGee mulled over all that he had overheard Amy and Clarissa say. This time Amy had not left anything like the book behind her. But she had left words that echoed and echoed in Jimmy McGee's mind.
    "Lydia, Little ... a do-nothing doll.... Lost in the ocean. Captured by a Monstrous wave! But I hope she will be rescued by a Hero!"
    There was that word again, always that problem, hero! In Amy's
Who
's
Who Book
he, Jimmy McGee, was labeled a hero. Now the word hero was on Little Lydia's line in the book, the line right before his. Was there a connection? There might be!
    Jimmy McGee went to his library and took his bebop code copy