“Sorry if I held things up. Long flight from California.” Lucy found the coffee on a sideboard, poured a cup for herself. Her stomach growled. She hadn’t eaten real food since breakfast.
“Thought you were from around here,” Dustin said, head cocked to the side as if he were weighing her in his mind.
She hadn’t expected these people to know her life story, but if they saw her as the competition, she guessed it made sense. She’d watched them on TV and googled their life stories. They’d been watching and googling her too.
“I was, yeah,” she said. “Then I moved out to California. Tired of being cold all the time.” That was her stock answer, and it usually warded off follow-up questions.
Dustin started to say something else when the door opened again. Jack?
But no, it was Hugo. He walked into the library and stood in front of the fireplace.
“Against my will and my better judgment…hello,” Hugo said.
He looked simultaneously miserable and handsome. Lucy laughed at him behind her coffee cup.
He might have looked different to her eyes than he had years ago, but Hugo Reese was exactly as she remembered him—crotchety as an old man yelling at kids to get off his lawn. They were the kids, and Clock Island was his lawn.
The contestants all responded with a wary hello.
“I have a message from Jack. My apologies in advance. The message is, ‘The game will begin at six o’clock.’”
“Wait, at six?” Melanie said. “It’s already almost eight. Six in the morning, then?”
Hugo sighed as if in physical pain. “Name? Hugo Thomas Reese. Rank? Underemployed artist. Serial number…I don’t know what that means. And Jack’s message is, ‘The game will begin at six o’clock.’ That’s what he said, and it’s all I can say.”
Andre snapped his fingers so loudly that Melanie jumped a little.
“Game begins at six o’clock?” Andre said to Hugo. “That’s the message?”
“That’s the message.”
Andre pumped his fist, then pointed at Hugo. “I got you. Come on. We’re going.” He waved his hands, indicating everyone needed to stand up.
“Wait. What’s happening?” Melanie said as she picked up her purse.
“We’re on Clock Island,” Andre said. “It’s not six o’clock, the time. It’s Six O’Clock, the place. Right? I’m right, right?”
Hugo gave a golf clap.
“Knew it. I remember Dad teaching me to drive, saying, ‘Hands at ten and two, always ten and two.’”
Lucy was annoyed at herself for not guessing that immediately. She’d seen the clock in the sitting room with her own eyes but couldn’t remember what was at the six. Time to stop acting like a fangirl and focus.
“Follow the smell of smoke,” Hugo said. “And don’t trip and break your legs in the dark.”
Andre, clearly ecstatic over his first victory, ushered everyone out of the library with the brisk efficiency of a school principal. He led them out of the house to the front porch. “Let me get my bearings,” he said, glancing around.
Lucy smelled the smoke first. Delicious smoke. A bonfire.
“This way,” she said and started down a path. Her stomach rumbled and she caught herself hoping there would be hot dogs and s’mores waiting for them.
There was little conversation as the four of them made their careful way on the worn wooden planks toward the scent of smoke. Small solar lights in the ground illuminated their way, but it was still eerie walking under the bright and wild stars. It had been a long time since Lucy had lived anywhere without light pollution. Out here on Clock Island, the stars seemed so close she could imagine lifting her hand to the sky and running her fingertips through them like a slow-flowing river.
The path led them to a sandy patch of beach. Benches and seats made from a tree trunk ringed a firepit. A woman in a white apron pointed them toward a picnic table laden with food and drinks. There were, in fact, s’mores. S’mores galore. And hot dogs and chips. And bottled water and Gatorade. No beer or wine, Lucy noticed, as if they were all still children in Jack’s mind.
The night was cool, but the wind had died down at last, and the fire was bright and warm inside the ring of benches. Ten minutes passed. Fifteen. Everyone was comfortably chatting with one another. Melanie was telling Lucy about her children’s bookstore in New Brunswick. Dustin seemed to be trying to shock Andre with horror stories from the ER.
The woman in the apron snuck away down the path as if following a secret summons. Just the four of them now. The four of them and a shadow. A shadow of a man outside the ring of benches where the light from the fire couldn’t quite reach.
Lucy gasped and covered her mouth with her hands.
“Lucy?” Melanie said. “What’s wrong?”
Lucy pointed at the figure in the darkness.
“He’s here,” she whispered.
The four of them went silent and turned and waited…
From the darkness, a voice—solemn yet laughing, stern yet playful, old but young—spoke and said:
“What has hands but cannot hold? What has a face but cannot smile?”
And Lucy answered, “A clock!”
Out of the shadows stepped Jack Masterson.
* * *
—
To Lucy, Jack Masterson looked now just as he had back then—he smiled benevolently, like a kindly king. An old and courteous king in a brown cable-knit sweater and corduroy trousers. Lucy had last seen him in person thirteen years ago when his hair had still been mostly brown. Now it was all white, his beard too.
“Tick-tock,” he said. “Welcome to the Clock. Or should I say, Welcome back to the Clock?”
They were all silent, all of them, as the man who’d changed their lives spoke.
“I’m not the Mastermind, just his creator,” Jack Masterson began, “but I do share one of his powers—I can read minds. I know you are all asking yourselves this one question: Why have I brought you all here?” He went on, “I’ll tell you why you’re here. Once upon a time, I wrote a book called The House on Clock Island. And once upon a time, you read a book called The House on Clock Island. Writing that book changed my life. Reading it changed yours. And all of us, I think, are hoping one of my books will change our lives again. The stories write us, you see. We read something that moves us, touches us, speaks to us and it…it changes us.”
He waved his hand, gesturing at each of them. “You kids are proof of that. Four kids came here because they read a book that inspired them to be brave enough to ask for help. There is nothing braver than a child asking for help. And bravery like that deserves rewarding.”
One by one he looked them in their eyes.
He pointed at Andre. “I remember Andre, who wanted to be like my character Daniel, who came to Clock Island to prove his school bullies wrong. I remember Melanie”—he waved his hand at smiling Melanie—“who adored Rowan, the girl who came to Clock Island hoping to stop her parents’ divorce. And Dustin, dear boy, wanted to be just like young Will, who ran away to Clock Island, fleeing a cruel father. And Lucy…” He grinned at her and Lucy smiled back. “She wanted to be my Astrid, my original heroine. Wanted to be her so much she dressed like her for Halloween. Did you know, Lucy, Astrid lives here? And Rowan? And Will? And Daniel? They’re all here if you look hard enough. I’m looking. I can see them now.”