Lucy didn’t bother replying to any of them. She went to Google and typed in “Jack Masterson contest wish Clock Island.” Christopher looked over her shoulder while she clicked on a Twitter link. She knew she probably shouldn’t be doing this with him watching. Grown-up social media was not for little eyes, but she was too excited to stop herself.
The tweet was from a popular CNN reporter who wrote, I want to play the game! Where’s my Hogwarts letter, Jack? A link to a news article announcing Jack Masterson’s sudden return to the literary world followed.
“Hogwarts letter?” Christopher asked.
“People must be getting actual paper invitations to Clock Island or something. I wonder…”
“What?”
“Can you keep a secret?” she said.
“Yeah.”
“I mean it. This is a big one. You can’t tell anyone else.”
Lucy hated asking a child to keep a secret. It was too much pressure, and she knew it. Yet she truly did not want this story to get out. Parents would be out for her hide.
“I won’t tell anybody, I swear.” Christopher was exasperated with her already.
“Okay,” she said. “Here’s the thing…I’ve been to Clock Island.”
Christopher’s reaction was everything she could have hoped for. His eyes widened. His jaw dropped. “You’ve been there?”
“I’ve been there.”
Christopher screamed.
“Shh!” she said, batting her hand against the air. This really was the best part about working with kids. She became a child herself again for a few hours a day. Instead of a tired adult, scared about money and work and bills, she was just a kid, scared of getting in trouble for being too loud.
“Everything okay?” Mr. Gross asked.
“Fine,” Lucy said. “When you gotta scream, you gotta scream.”
“I’m about to start myself,” Mr. Gross said and punched the printer.
“Shh! Calm down,” she told Christopher. “You’re scaring Mr. Gross.”
Christopher didn’t seem to hear her.
“You went to Clock Island! You went to Clock Island!” He was panting, shaking his hands. Lucy grabbed him gently by the wrists before he knocked a computer off the table.
“Yes, all that is true,” she said. “I know because I just told you.”
“You lied!” Christopher said. Damn kid was too smart for his own good. “You told me you met him, and he signed your book.”
“I didn’t lie. No. Never. I wouldn’t—well, yes, I would lie. I have absolutely lied. But in this case, I just didn’t tell you the whole story. I told you I met Jack Masterson, and he signed my book. All true. I just didn’t tell you I met him on Clock Island.”
Christopher glared at her. “You lied.”
Lucy stared him down. “You told me Superman was your neighbor.”
“I thought he was! I swear! He looked just like him!” Christopher scrunched up his face. “Sorta.”
“Do you want to hear the story, or do you want to send me to jail for slightly misrepresenting past events?”
“Lying.”
“Fine. I lied.”
“What was it like? Did you meet the Mastermind? Did you see the train?” Christopher asked a thousand questions.
“It was amazing. I didn’t see any men hiding in shadows,” she said, “or trains, but I was in the house.”
“How did you get there?”
And this is where the secret part of the story came in.
“When I was thirteen,” she said, “I ran away from home.”
Christopher’s mouth fell open. To a child, running away from home was the ultimate kid caper, the pinnacle of kid crime. Every child dreamed of it, talked about it, threatened it, and almost no child ever did it, and the ones who did rarely returned to tell the tale.
He looked at her with new respect, almost awe.
“Why?” he breathed.
“Because,” she said, “my parents didn’t love me as much as they loved my sister. I wanted to get their attention.”
“But you’re so nice,” he said, sounding heartbreakingly confused. “Why?”
“Are you sure you want to hear this story? It’s a little sad,” she said.
“It’s okay,” Christopher said. “I’m used to being sad.”
Lucy looked at him, her heart breaking for the second time that day. It was true, though. Christopher wasn’t lying. He was used to being sad. Well, so was she.
“Okay,” she said. “Here’s the story. It is sad. But don’t worry. It has a happy ending.”
* * *
—
Christopher listened intently while Lucy told him the story she’d never told him before—the story of Angie, her sister.
Angie was sick all the time. They called her a PIDD kid, which basically meant Angie didn’t have much of an immune system. Lucy’s parents threw themselves into doing everything they could do for Angie. Lucy, their younger daughter, was healthy and didn’t need their attention, so she didn’t get any of it. And she didn’t get much of their love either.
“That’s sad,” Christopher interjected.
“I told you so.” Lucy kissed his forehead. He let her. She kept talking.
Young Lucy might have been destroyed by the lack of caring and tenderness she experienced in her family if it hadn’t been for Jack Masterson and his Clock Island books.
“I won’t tell you the whole long story about how I found the books,” Lucy said. “But let’s just say, they found me at the right time. Eight was a tough year for me. When I started reading those books, it got a lot better.”
Lucy had been in the waiting room at the children’s hospital, stuck there while her parents spent hours with her sister. She’d wanted to go back and see Angie, but she was too young. A sign on the ward said, No children under the age of 12 are allowed to visit the pediatrics ward. Lucy wasn’t even looking for a book to read. She’d been digging through a basket of used-up coloring books when she’d found it.
A thin paperback. On the back it listed the age range as nine to twelve. This wasn’t a book for babies. There weren’t pictures on every single page, just on some of them. And it didn’t look like a book just for boys either. No fire-breathing robots or pirates with swords. This book cover had a boy, but he was standing next to a girl. The boy and the girl looked about her age or a little older, maybe nine, maybe ten, and they both carried flashlights. They appeared to be creeping down a long shadowy hallway in a strange, spooky old house. The title of the book was The House on Clock Island. Lucy liked it immediately because the girl on the cover was leading with determination, and the boy was behind her, looking terrified. In other books, it was usually the opposite.
Curious, Lucy opened the book to a random page and read:
Astrid didn’t like the rules. When her parents told her she had to wait an hour after eating to swim, she always jumped in after twenty minutes. And when she saw a sign that said No kids allowed! That means you, kid!, she walked right past it.
Lucy was hooked. A girl who broke the rules? A girl with a cool name like Astrid instead of a dumb old lady name like Lucy? If Astrid had been at the hospital, she would have found a way to sneak in and see her sister.