Jonathan walked straight over to the standing file behind the desk where he’d seen the Admiral tuck his folder. He pulled it open. Inside were neatly ordered, identical manila folders, each stuffed with papers. He didn’t have to count to know there were sixteen files. On the tab of the first folder was scrawled his own name. His eyes scanned the rest. Colin Kerrigan. Sebastian Mortimer. And thirteen more.
He set the lantern down and grabbed half of the folders, then handed them to Sebastian. He tucked the other half under his arm and picked up the lantern.
“This should be enough,” he said, and they darted back out into the hallway. The water was even higher now. Jonathan winced and dodged a dead rat being washed down the hallway. Another one bobbed by, paws stuck out stiff into the air.
At the top of the lighthouse, the other boys and Patrick had half the wood piled in the big metal bowl with the ravaged remains of the Sinner’s Sorrow. They stood waiting on the raised platform around it, looking out at the world gone mad. Jonathan glanced quickly and counted the towers. Another had fallen. Only two were still standing. And the lighthouse. Another of the courtyard’s walls was mostly gone.
Jonathan looked at the name on the top file in his hands. Walter Holcomb. He handed the folder to Walter. Reginald Miller the next one said, and he gave it to Reggie. Sebastian started to do the same.
Eventually, Jonathan was left with one folder in his hands. Jonathan Grisby, it said. He opened it and words from the top page jumped out at him. Guilty. Criminal. Arson. He ground his teeth together and crumpled the paper into a ball. He stepped forward and shoved it under the waiting pile of wood.
He looked at the second sheet. More words swam up through the darkness and lightning. Death. Sophia. Injuries. Grief. Guilt. Tears scalded his eyes. His lungs shivered as they breathed.
He wadded the paper up into a tight ball. As tight as his fists could manage. And he added it to the unlit fire.
Around him, other boys started to do the same. Amidst the roar of wind and storm came the sound of ripping paper, of crumpling files. And all around the circle, fuel was added to the lighthouse fire.
Eventually, they all stood, hands clean and empty. Beneath the ready logs was tucked a white mound of twisted paper. A crumpled pile of crimes. A bonfire’s worth of guilt and punishment and dark history.
Sebastian took a candle from another boy’s hand. He leaned forward. But he stopped, the candle’s flame inches from the paper.
He frowned. He leaned back. He looked at Jonathan. Lightning flickered, showing his flooded eyes.
“I don’t want to go,” he said.
Jonathan blinked and didn’t answer.
“You wanna know why I never wrote letters?” Sebastian asked. “Because there was no one to send them to. I got no parents. I got no family. I’ve spent my whole life in places like this. Or orphanages. Group homes. Foster homes.” He looked out at the storm that was pressed in all around them, screaming and pounding the windows. “I don’t have anyone to read my letters. No one cares. I got no one to write to.”
Jonathan swallowed and took a step closer to Sebastian.
“You can write to me,” he said.
Sebastian’s eyebrows furrowed. His mouth opened, but he didn’t say anything.
“You can write to me,” Gerald said.
“You can write to me, man,” Walter called out.
“You can write to me, Thebathtian,” Colin said, just loud enough to be heard.
Sebastian sniffed. He nodded, looking around, then rubbed his eyes with his sleeve.
“Light the fire,” Jonathan said. Sebastian nodded again, one more small nod, then stretched the candle out and touched it to the nearest paper. Other boys stepped forward then with their own candles, holding the flames to the papers closest to themselves.
Climbing fingers of flames crept up through the crisscrossed wood. The papers flared and burned into bright flashes of yellow. The boys stepped back and covered their eyes.
There was a crackle and a snap as a piece of wood caught fire. A couple of wisping sparks rose up and flickered out.
The sound of the fire grew louder, the light brighter, the flames higher, the heat hotter. The boys stepped down from the platform and back to the lower floor. The room grew warm. Their soaking clothes steamed in the heat.
With a final flurry of crackling, the whole pile caught fire. Flames arced and danced six feet high. The round room, hemmed in on all sides by the stormy world’s fury, grew brighter than daylight. Jonathan stepped to the metal hand crank and muscled it into motion. With a shuddering, squeaking creak the gears and wheels attached to the mirror sprang to reluctant life. The mirror began to slowly rotate around the towering flames of their signal fire, magnifying and reflecting the light out into the clouds, the storm, the world.
Sebastian joined him at the crank and they worked together. The mirror moved faster, sending its spear of light out into the darkness.
After a while, Jonathan let go and stepped back, sweating and gasping. Another boy took his place.
He leaned back against a low wall beneath the windows. His arms were burning, the good burning of muscles put to good use. The room was filled with the vital heat of the fire he had built and lit, the fire that would save them all. A good heat, the kind that calms shivers and warms the chill from wet and tired bones. The fire felt good.
He closed his eyes and didn’t try to stop the tears that seeped out between his eyelids, running in warm paths down his face. They ran down his cheeks and over his lips, which opened into a wide smile, tasting their saltiness. He laughed as the tears poured from his eyes.
Colin walked over and stood beside him. The giant rat still sat on his shoulder, sniffing at the smoky air.
“Why are you laughing like that?” he asked.
Jonathan laughed and sobbed and looked at the beautiful fire through the blur of his tears.
“Because I want to go home,” he answered.
“Then why are you crying?”
Jonathan didn’t wipe at the tears. He let them burn in his eyes until they were full and flooded out.
“Because I want to go home,” he said. “Because I want to go home.”
Did you miss Dan Gemeinhart’s previous adventure? Read on for a taste of Some Kind of Courage!
I reckoned it was the coldest, darkest hour of the night. That still hour just before dawn. Mama always called it the “angels and devils hour,” on account of how only angels or demons would have any work worth doing at a time like that. I didn’t know if I was doing the Lord’s work or the Devil’s, but I knew that it had to be done and the time had sure enough come to do it.
I’d been lying too many sleepless hours in my sorry straw-stuffed bed, waiting for the old man to finally fall dead asleep. My plan had been burning all night in my mind like the last glowing embers in the fireplace, keeping my heart awake. Truth be told, my hands were a bit shaky as I finally crept, as quiet as could be, across the cabin’s dirt floor toward where he lay snoring. And it weren’t just the cold making ’em shake, neither. But my heart was as steady as a true horse, heading toward home.
My leather bag was already thrown over my shoulder. I’d slipped it on without him seeing, before I’d curled up under my blanket. And my boots were still on my feet. He’d been too drunk to notice me not taking ’em off.
All I needed was the money. And the gun. And then to hit the trail running.
The money was piled on a shelf up on the wall by his bed. I licked my lips and crept closer, my feet finding a path in the barely lit darkness. I could see the barrel of the pistol, gleaming in the dim red light of the coals, on the crate beneath the shelf. It was right within reach of the arm the old man had thrown across his face.
Barely breathing, I took the last few steps and reached up with my left hand. My fingers closed around the crumpled stack of dirty greenbacks, and with a smooth and silent motion I slipped them off the shelf. It ain’t stealing, I told myself. This money belongs to
me, by all rights. I ain’t sure I convinced myself, and doubt chewed on my insides. But there weren’t no choice.
I crouched and turned toward the pistol, but as I did my foot kicked an empty booze bottle. It spun in the shadows and rattled against another one with a loud clink that shattered the quiet of the cabin.
The old man’s snoring stopped in mid-breath with a snort. His arm jerked up from his face, and two red eyes glared at me, confused but already angry. They narrowed when they saw the money clutched in my hand, and his top lip pulled back in a snarl.
“What’re you doing, boy?” he asked in his high, piercing whine of a voice. Lord, how I had learned to hate that voice of his.
I froze, too scared to answer.
He blinked, his drunken brain no doubt starting to make sense of what was happening. He started to sit up, then stopped. We both looked at the gun at the same time. There was one tight, breathless moment when we both knew what we were gonna do.
Our bodies lunged and our hands struck like snakes. He was closer, but I was quicker, and when I stumbled back two steps the gun was gripped tight in my right hand.
It was his turn to freeze, and he did.
“What’re you doing, boy?” he asked again, but now his voice had a sure enough nervous tremble in it.
“You had no right to sell her,” I said. I was ashamed of how my voice quivered, not at all like a man’s. Not at all like my papa’s.
The old man grimaced like he’d just taken a suck on a fresh lemon.
“ ’Course I did, boy. She was mine. And I need the money to pay for all the food you eat.”
My underfed belly rumbled the truth to his lie, and I shook my head.
“No, sir. I work for my keep, and I work hard. And that horse was mine. You got this money by selling my horse, so it’s my money. And I’m gonna use it to get her back.” And you wouldn’t be using this money for food, neither, but for more bottles of Dutch John’s brandy, I wanted to say. But my mama had taught me better manners than that, and I held my tongue.
He slid his feet out of bed and sat up. I took another step back.
“Give me my money and git back in bed,” he said. “You ain’t never gonna shoot me.”
He started to stand up but stopped when I cocked the hammer of the gun back with a click that rang clear as a church bell on Sunday.
“I will,” I said. “I sure enough will, Mr. Grissom. I ain’t never shot a man, sir, and I hope I never do. But I’m gonna get my horse back. And if you try to stop me, I swear I will put a bullet in you.” My voice still had that scared-boy shake in it, but underneath the shake was a hardness that I know we both heard. An iron hardness that sounded an awful lot like the truth.
His eyes squinted uncertainly at me.
“Your pa left you in my care, boy, along with your horse and—”
“My papa didn’t have a choice. And I know he’d want me to go after her, no matter what.” I swallowed and hoped it was true. It was so hard to know.
“But that’s my gun! You can’t take my gun!” The high whine came back into his voice.
I shook my head again.
“No, sir. This was my papa’s gun. He taught me to shoot with it. He—” My voice caught in my throat, and I had to stop to swallow down the sadness that was always there, ready to rise up and choke me. “He’d want it to be mine. If something needs shooting, you’ve still got your rifle.”
I stuffed the money into my bag and backed up to the plank door. I opened it with my free hand, the gun still raised between us.
“You can’t take all that money, boy! It’s all I’ve got! I’ll starve!”
I knew it wasn’t true, but I paused there in that doorway. It’s sure enough hard sometimes to tell right from wrong. He’d gotten the money from selling my horse, and I knew I’d need it to buy her back. And I knew the money was more likely to go to liquor than biscuits. But I could feel my mama’s eyes on me, watching. And my papa’s. I wanted to do ’em proud, but right and wrong were lost in the dark of the cabin. I clenched my teeth. A man’s only as good as he treats his enemies, Papa had said.
My hand slid back into my bag and found the eight ten-dollar bills. I pulled one out and set it on the handle of the ax leaning by the door.
“There you go, sir. I’ll be going now. You won’t be seeing me again.”
I was mostly out the door when he whined his parting words.
“He’s long gone, you know! He’s at least twelve hours ahead, with you on foot and him riding. You’ll never catch him, boy.”
My teeth ground hard against each other. I lowered the gun and looked him straight in his stubbly face.
“I will, sir,” I said. “I will get her back.”
I let the door close behind me and without a look back I walked off as quick as I could through the darkness. The sky beyond the hills was just beginning to grow pale with the coming day. The angels and the devils could all go to sleep now. But I sure enough hoped that one angel would stay up and keep by my side.
The grass and the stones and the dirt ruts of the road were covered in an icy white blanket of morning frost, and my boots crunched with each step.
I’m coming for you, sweet Sarah girl, I thought to myself. I would find her, and I would get her back. I knew I would. Or I’d sure enough die trying.
As always, there are far too many people to thank and recognize. I feel so grateful and lucky to be surrounded, both professionally and personally, by so many many people who support, help, encourage, and inspire me.
My family, who cheers me on more than they probably ought to. Karen, Eva, Ella, Claire, Mom, Dad, Erin, Justin, Grandma, Noni, Bops, Brian, Linda, Michelle, and Michael. Love you all.
My friends, who lift me up but keep me grounded. Jabez, James, Carver, Andy, Tim, Kat, Jen, Pat, and Aubrey.
My agent, Pam Howell, and Bob DiForio, who always have my back.
My amazing editor, Nick, whose judgment and wisdom make all my stories better, and to all the tremendous folks at Scholastic: Jeffrey, David, Emily, Lizette, Reedy, Sheila Marie, and all the rest. I’m so over-the-top lucky to be with such an amazing team. And a special shout-out to Nina Goffi, the cover designer who has given my stories such beautiful faces to show to the world.
To the wonderful educators I’m so lucky to work with at Mission View Elementary and the Wenatchee School District. There are too many of you to name, but you are an inspiration and a force of incredible good in the world and I’m blessed to know you.
To all the fellow writers I’ve been fortunate to meet and connect with over the past couple years; it’s been a thrill to get to know you, and the world is richer for having your stories. Your dedication to storytelling has inspired and strengthened my own.
To all the good folks at NaNoWriMo … Scar Island began as my first NaNo project several years ago, and look at it now! Thanks for supporting writers and writing, dreamers and dreaming, and a mad month of marvelous imaginings.
Copyright © 2017 by Dan Gemeinhart
All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Press, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC, SCHOLASTIC PRESS, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available
Cover art & design by Nina Goffi
First edition, January 2017
e-ISBN 978-1-338-05386-9
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineere
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