Scar Island(10)

“No, Benny,” Sebastian’s voice said from behind him. “No breakfast for the new kid. He didn’t do a thing to help clean up.”

Jonathan spun around. “I’m starving, please—”

“Keep talking.” Sebastian cut him off, leaning in close. “And it’ll be no lunch, either.”

Tears sprang to Jonathan’s eyes. If there’d been anything in his stomach, he would have thrown it up.

He felt a gentle hand grab his elbow.

“Come on,” Colin’s voice whispered. “It’th all right.”

Jonathan turned and let Colin lead him out to the tables, his heart and stomach as empty as his bowl. He sat down on the hard wooden bench between Walter and Colin. The other boys were all gulping and swallowing their oatmeal, not bothering to let it cool down. Jonathan closed his eyes and tried not to pass out.

Colin’s elbow nudged him in the side. He opened his eyes. Colin had slid his bowl full of oatmeal in front of Jonathan and put Jonathan’s empty bowl in front of himself. He grinned a secret little grin at Jonathan and darted his eyes around.

“Hurry and eat it,” he whispered. “Morning Muthter ith in a few minuth.”

“But … you need to eat, too!” Jonathan hissed.

Colin shook his head and his smile stretched. He almost showed his teeth.

“It’th okay. I dethpithe oatmeal.”

“Aren’t you hungry?”

Colin nodded, his eyes shining. He pointed with his eyes down to his lap, and Jonathan looked down to where Colin was hiding his hands under the table. In one hand he held a biscuit slathered with jam. In the other, a glistening sausage link.

“How did you—” Jonathan started to ask.

Colin winked and took a quick bite of the biscuit.

“I’m a thneaky thief, remember?”





It was Morning Muster time. The boys were marched outside into the drizzly gray courtyard. A light rain was falling, and bunched-up piles of clouds blackened the sky. Thunder rumbled in the not too far distance.

The boys trudged over to a line of small stone blocks on the ground, each about the size of a brick and spaced a few steps apart from one another. Without a word, each boy stepped up and squeezed his feet onto one, found his balance, and then stood at shaky attention. Jonathan took a breath and did the same.

The block was just wide enough for both his feet to fit on it, pressed tight together. The tips of his toes and the backs of his heels hung over the front and back. He wobbled and steadied himself and then looked up.

The courtyard was the size of a basketball court. He’d walked through it briefly his first day, following Mr. Vander in his handcuffs, but he’d been too tired and scared then to look close or notice much. He could see, to his right, the steep arched doorway, closed and locked, that led to the watery stairs he’d come in on. There were doorways on each wall that he could see, all closed.

The floor and walls of the courtyard were made of the same big gray blocks of stone that the rest of the building was made of. Green moss grew between the cracks in places. The walls stretched high above them, thirty or forty feet, blocking out most of the sky and a good deal of the light. The part of the sky that was visible was getting darker and more ominous by the second. There was a flash of lightning.

The courtyard’s stone block ground was flat and covered with so many big puddles that it was nearly one shallow lake. The surface of the puddles were pocked and pecked by more falling rain. Shifting snaps of wind whistled around the courtyard, chilling the boys and blowing Jonathan’s hair into and out of his eyes.

The door to their left swung open, and the whole group of men from breakfast slumped out with the Admiral at the front. The ridiculous wide hat, roughly triangular, sat on his head, and the sword still swung at his side. The last two men in line came out sideways, grunting and holding the Sinner’s Sorrow between them. They plocked it down with a wet thud on the stones before the boys. Jonathan looked at the kneeler’s sharp, hard edge and winced.

The men formed a line facing the boys. They stood in an oily black puddle with their boots and shoulders touching. Jonathan counted them—eight adults. The Admiral stood in the center of the line, his arms at his sides and his chin held regally high.

Mr. Warwick, standing on one end of the line, held the wooden handle of a big brass bell in his hand. When the two men who’d carried the Sinner’s Sorrow joined the line, he rang the bell. The dull metal clanging bounced around the grim gray walls and up to the storm-choked sky.

“Morning Muster, November the fifth!” Mr. Warwick hollered. The man on the other end of the line pulled some papers out of his coat pocket and held them with both hands in the wet wind.

“James Amherst!” he shouted.

“Here, sir. Content and well cared for, sir!” a boy Jonathan hadn’t met yet shouted back.

“David Okada!”

“Here, sir. Content and well cared for, sir!”

“Benedict Fellows!”

“Here, sir,” the kid called Benny answered. His voice sounded greasy even when he was shouting through a rainstorm. “Content and well cared for, sir!”

“Jonathan Grisby!”

Jonathan gulped and looked around. He almost stumbled off the block but caught himself.

“Here, sir,” he called. His voice sounded thin and meek and was nearly lost in the windblown rain. “Content and well cared for, sir!”