Scar Island

by Dan Gemeinhart

  Jonathan didn’t have an answer. “I don’t know. But I don’t want to be in charge. I just want … I just want …”

  “What, Johnny? What do you want?”

  Jonathan blinked hard and looked at the floor.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know what I want. I don’t want anything, I think. And that’s the problem.”

  He could feel Sebastian still glaring at him, could hear his angry breathing.

  “Why did you even suggest all this? Do you like it here?”

  Jonathan shrugged and looked up into Sebastian’s face.

  “I don’t like it out there,” he replied. “I just didn’t want to go back to—all that. Here I can just be … nothing.”

  Sebastian regarded him for a moment. Then he nodded one small nod.

  “Yeah. I don’t like it out there either.”

  They stood looking at each other for a second. Then Jonathan’s eyes dropped away and Sebastian walked over to a low dresser. A basket full of the Admiral’s chocolates was on top. All around it, and spilling onto the floor, were wadded-up empty gold wrappers.

  Sebastian unwrapped a chocolate and popped it into his mouth.

  “You want one?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “They’re almost gone, you know. The chocolates, I mean. And without the damned key, I can’t get into the Admiral’s office to get any more.”

  Jonathan looked up at him. “I’m glad we can’t get in there,” he said quietly.

  Sebastian’s brow furrowed. “Why?”

  Jonathan didn’t blink or hesitate. “Because our files are in there. All the lists of the bad things we’ve done. The bad things we are.” His eyes dropped to the floor. “I like it better like this. We’re just the Scars, together. Whatever we did out there doesn’t matter.” He looked at Sebastian. “If that door opens, we just become our crimes again.”

  For a moment, there was only the sound of Sebastian’s noisy chewing. Then he asked a question, but his mouth was so full and sticky that Jonathan didn’t understand it at first.

  “What?”

  Sebastian swallowed.

  “I said, why are you so damned sad? I never seen a kid as sad-looking as you all the time.”

  Jonathan looked away, around the room, then over at the window. Through the thick glass, he could see gathering black storm clouds.

  Instead of answering, he asked a question of his own.

  “How come you never write a letter, Sebastian?”

  There was no answer for a long time. The gold wrapper fell from Sebastian’s hand and fluttered to the thick rug on the floor.

  “Shut up, Johnny,” he finally said. “Go on, get out of here.”

  Jonathan nodded and walked to the door. Sebastian followed him and stood in the doorway.

  “It’s funny,” he said, just before he closed the door in Jonathan’s face. “You wanna stay because here you get to be nothing. And I wanna stay because here I get to be something.”

  The door closed with a click, and Jonathan stood for a moment before finding his way back downstairs to join the others.

  Jonathan’s toes connected solidly with the ball, sending it bouncing across wet stone to Walter’s waiting feet. The ball—an ancient leather soccer ball that someone had found in an old storeroom—was hard enough that it actually hurt a little to kick it. Walter loved it, though, and was always pleading with the other boys to come out and play soccer. Walter passed it back and forth between his feet a few times and then launched it to Jonathan.

  It was almost dinnertime, and the sky was getting dark. The game Walter had tried to organize had been called off when the clouds started to sprinkle, and only Jonathan and Walter were left outside.

  “How you think Colin’s doing?” Walter asked.

  Jonathan kicked the ball back to him.

  “I don’t know. Fine, probably. He’s pretty smart.”

  “Pretty? That kid’s crazy smart. He ain’t, like, super tough, though, you know?”

  Jonathan sighed.

  “Yeah. I’m worried about him. He’s, uh, not exactly the Slabhenge type.”

  Walter laughed.

  “Slabhenge type? Is anybody? I mean, what’s the ‘Slabhenge type,’ man?”

  Jonathan pursed his lips thoughtfully. He thought of Miguel and his wicked grin. He thought of Tony, who always cooked up something crazy in the kitchen and tried to get other kids to try it. He thought of Jason, a kid who supposedly stole cars but tried to slip a note to his mom because he just wanted to go home. He thought of quiet David, busted and sent here for fighting back. He thought of Walter, laughing and begging kids to come outside and play. He even thought of Sebastian, who acted so tough but who had noticed Jonathan’s sadness and asked about it.

  “I don’t know,” he answered. Then he grinned and looked toward the dining room. “Roger and Gregory, I guess,” he said in a low voice. “And Benny. Benny’s definitely the Slabhenge type.”

  Walter returned the grin.

  “Oh, yeah. He fits right in here with the rats, don’t he?”

  The ball tumbled back and forth between them.

  “You know, you’ve never asked me,” Walter said.

  “Asked you what?”

  “You’ve never asked what we all ask. Why we’re here. Don’t you wanna know what I did?”

  Jonathan rubbed at his nose with his sleeve. He looked up at the clouds, black like coal smoke.

  “I don’t know,” he answered. “It’s not my business.” The words came out sounding ruder and harsher than Jonathan had meant.

  There was a low rumble of thunder. That and the muffled thuds of their feet kicking leather were the only sounds.

  “Okay,” Jonathan finally said. “Why are you here?”

  Walter smiled, his teeth shining whitely in the growing gloom.

  “I thought you’d never ask!” He slapped his hands together. “Mother’s Day, man.”

  “Mother’s Day?”

  “Yeah. Check this out. Around the corner from our place is this shop that sells all this little fancy stuff. You know, gloves and watches and hats and stuff. It’s my mama’s favorite store. She’s in there, like, every day. And she’s always going on about this purse that’s in the window, right? One of a kind, it says, custom-made. This big ugly pink thing. And I know Mother’s Day is coming up. I don’t got any money, but I wanna get my mama something nice, you know? Now, there’s no chance of me affording it. And no chance of me just sticking it under my shirt, either, ’cause Mrs. Swanson who owns the place always has her stink eye glued to me whenever I’m in there. So the night before Mother’s Day, I break in.”

  Jonathan stopped the ball with his foot and held it.

  “Seriously?”

  “Seriously. There’s this high window in the alley, way at the back of the store, and I get on a garbage can and crawl up through it. Soon as I hit the floor, though, this alarm goes off. Crazy loud. And I freak out. But I run up to the front and I grab that purse and run to the back door, but I hear voices outside. So I go back to the window I came in through, right? And I manage to jump up and start to climb through, but then I freeze, halfway out.”

  “Why?”

  “Cops, man. I see their flashing lights at the end of the alley. Then I hear ’em. Behind me. In the store. And I’m sitting there, half out the window, with my rear end hanging in the store, and this ugly pink purse in my hands.”

  “Oh, man! Did they handcuff you and everything?”

  Walter’s smile stretched across his whole face.

  “Nope. ’Cause they didn’t even catch me, man!”

  “What? You ran away?”

  “Uh-uh.” Walter shook his head. “I just hung there. And those cops walked all around that store with their flashlights. All they had to do was look up and they’d-a seen my scared butt dangling there in the air. But they never looked up, man. And nothing was broken. And the doors weren’t busted or nothing. And the cash register was just sitting there, full.
So they thought it was a false alarm. I hung there in that window for half an hour and then they left.”

  “No way.”

  “Yeah, man. That’s the truth.”

  “Then … why are you here?”

  Walter shrugged and his smile faded.

  “I guess it wasn’t, like, a super-smart crime. Seeing as how it was a one-of-a-kind purse from my mama’s favorite store and everything. Next time she went in, she was showing it off, bragging about how I’d saved up all my allowances to buy it for her. Of course, Mrs. Swanson knew I’d never bought it. So that was that. And here I am.” Walter shook his head, a small smile on his lips. “You shoulda seen her, though. The morning I gave it to her? You shoulda seen how happy and proud she was, man.”

  Jonathan kicked the ball to him.

  “So that’s my story, man. What’s yours? Why you here?”

  Above them, a bolt of lightning stabbed across the sky. A sharp crack of thunder rattled the windows to the dining room. They both looked up.

  “Come on,” Jonathan said. “Let’s go grab dinner.”

  Over dinner the boys hardly spoke. Their letters were written in silence. Even Benny kept his snorting and gloating to a quiet minimum. Jonathan wrote his letter with a fast hand.

  In bed, under the shifting light of the candles, he held the newest letter from his parents, the one that had arrived that morning on the supply boat. He breathed slow, even breaths, and read it again. When the other boys were ready, he opened Robinson Crusoe and began to read. He read to the very end, looking up from time to time into the ring of faces listening around the flames.

  When he closed the finished book and blew out the candles, he went to sleep, with his parents’ letter lying open on the pillow beside his head.

  When he blinked his eyes awake in the morning, the letter was still lying by his head.

  But it was folded into a perfect, delicate crane.

  With Robinson Crusoe tucked under one arm, Jonathan made his way quickly toward the library. His scrambled egg lunch sat uneasily in his stomach.

  He knew his way well now. He didn’t have to slow down or try to remember which way to go, and he could walk fast with the lantern held out in front of him. He saw more rats this time, probably because he could move so much faster. They didn’t have a chance to get out of the way. They were very big. And he was sure he saw at least a couple, scrabbling and squeaking away, that didn’t have tails.

  He kept expecting to turn a corner and see Colin, but besides the rats, the way before him was vacant and still. Soon he was knocking on the door of the library, and the librarian was letting him in.

  “Finished Crusoe. I see,” the librarian said as the door closed.

  “Yeah. Thanks.” He handed the book over.

  “Did you enjoy the book? Very much?”

  Jonathan shrugged.

  “Sure. We thought it was pretty cool, I guess. Boring in places. Big words.”

  “Yes. And you’re here. For another book.”

  “Well, we still have Treasure Island. We’ll start that tonight.”

  “Excellent. But you can’t leave a library.”

  “Without a book,” Jonathan finished. “I know.”

  The librarian looked at him with one twinkling eye and smiled.

  “Yes. My thoughts. Exactly. Let me find a book. That you’ll like.”

  Jonathan wandered off among the shelves, browsing through the books, casually reading the titles embossed on the spines. He almost cried out when he was surprised by Ninety-Nine, curled up on a folded blanket between two stacks of books on a shelf. The gigantic rodent yawned a toothy yawn and sniffed his long, whiskered nose up at Jonathan.

  “You can pick him up. If you want to,” the librarian said, peering over the shelf behind him.

  “Oh. No, thanks.” Jonathan moved farther along the shelves, leaving the rat to return to his nap. He stopped by one of the windows, mostly blocked by neatly lined books. The storm outside was growing fiercer by the hour, rattling the glass with rainy gusts of wind.

  “Last time I was here, you said something,” Jonathan began. “About—running a lighthouse, or something. What did you mean?”

  “Just what I said.” The librarian’s voice was distracted, his eyes still scanning the shelves to find a book for Jonathan. “I used to run the lighthouse. Years ago.”

  “What lighthouse?”

  “Ours. Slabhenge’s. The island was first a lighthouse. Even before the asylum. Going way back. Hundreds of years. That is its true identity, really. Before all the tragedy. It still has the lighthouse. Unused, of course. For years and years, unused.”

  “Where is it?”

  “At the top. Of the middle tower. The one above the warden’s quarters. The Admiral’s now, of course. Keep going up the stairs. And you’ll find it. Dusty and in disrepair. I’m sure.”

  “And you were in charge of it?”

  The librarian sighed.

  “Oh, for a while. Not much to it. Wash the windows. Check the wood. Polish the mirrors.” The librarian’s voice quickened and smoothed out, just as it had when he’d been talking on Jonathan’s previous visit. “It’s very outdated. Not electric. A place for a fire. Giant mirrors to magnify and reflect the light. The mirrors spin by hand crank. Had to make sure those were oiled and ready. I only had to light it a couple of times, during big storms. Don’t know if I ever saved any ships or not.” He coughed a scratchy, jagged cough and then chuckled. “Probably still a stack of wood in the bin up there. Rotten, I’m sure, and dusty, like everything else on this island.”

  “Oh.”

  Jonathan read a few more book titles. Some of them were so worn with age that they were unreadable. Some weren’t even in English.

  “Can I ask you something?” Jonathan asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Not to be … rude or anything, but … how come you talk so much easier when you talk about stuff from a long time ago?”

  The librarian straightened up to look over the shelf at Jonathan.

  “Do I?”

  “Yeah. You normally talk kind of … slow. Like it’s hard. But when you talk about, like, the old days, you smooth right out.”

  “Hmm.” The librarian cocked his head even more sideways than usual. It was almost all the way to the side. His neck looked painfully twisted. “I don’t know. I wasn’t aware. That I did.” His mouth screwed into a tight, thoughtful frown. “Well, the past is easier. It’s done. It’s there for me. To look at. I can live there. And know where I am.”

  His eyes drifted away from Jonathan, up toward the ceiling. As he spoke, they shifted slowly around the room and down to the floor at his feet. His voice got a little quieter with each limping sentence.

  “It’s the present. That is so hard. Working at it. Finding your way. Forward. Picking your path. Having to leave the past. Behind.” His voice was barely a hoarse whisper. “It’s so hard. Easier, I think, to stay in the past.”

  “What about the … future?”

  The old man shrugged.

  “I don’t need a future. I have a past. Instead. You can really only have one. Or the other. I think. And I like my island.”

  “But it’s a prison.”

  The librarian smiled. “It’s a home.”

  Goose bumps broke out on Jonathan’s neck. He tugged nervously at his sleeves.

  The librarian’s head slowly untwisted until it sat at a more natural angle. His voice rose back above a whisper.

  “Here you go,” he said, handing a book over the shelf to Jonathan. “This one. Is perfect. I think. One of our newest books.”

  Jonathan took the green-and-black book from the librarian’s trembling hand.

  “One of your newest ones?” he asked. The book looked like an antique.

  “Yes. We got it. Just before the asylum closed. For good.”

  Jonathan traced the letters of the title on the cover.

  “Lord of the Flies?”

  “Mmm. Quite modern.
That one. Also has an island. As a matter of fact. And a group. Of abandoned boys.”

  “Abandoned?”

  “Mmm. Left to fend. For themselves.”

  Jonathan gulped and looked up at the librarian, then quickly away.

  “Really.”

  “Yes. Doesn’t go very well. I’m afraid.”

  Jonathan squeezed the book into the crook of his arm and picked up his lantern.

  “Off?” asked the librarian. “So soon?”

  “Yeah. They’ll be wondering.”

  “Yes. I imagine.”

  Jonathan opened the door and stepped a foot into the corridor. He turned in the doorway and spoke one last question to the man’s curved back.

  “What’s your name?”

  “My name?”

  “Yes. What’s your name?”

  The librarian turned with shuffling steps to face him. Ninety-Nine was nestled in the crook of his arm, leaning into the old man’s scratching fingers. The old man blinked once, then twice. He closed one eye and reached up from the rat to scratch his own nose. His gray tongue licked his chapped, powdery lips, and then his hand dropped back to pet the rat once more.

  “My name.” The scratching slowed, and then stopped. “Why, I’m not sure.” His voice was tinged with wonder, but not worry. He seemed only mildly curious. “It’s been so long since anyone has called me anything at all. I used to be a son. Then an assistant. An employee. A lighthouse keeper. A librarian. But now … well, I suppose I’m—nothing.” He smiled, an unsteady, slightly troubled smile. “Ninety-Nine has a name. But it isn’t really his. I suppose. He’s just borrowing it. I guess you could call me that. Ninety-Nine. If you wanted.”

  Jonathan pursed his lips and held the book tighter to his body.

  “No, thanks,” he said. “I’ll just call you sir, if that’s all right.”

  The librarian smiled. The smile was as crooked as his hunched shoulders. “Of course. It is. Come back. Soon.”

  Jonathan hurried through the lightless hallways, the lantern swinging from his leading hand. He didn’t slow to look down other halls for Colin. He was ready to be back to normal voices, to daylight and people.