According to the timer Ms. Hyde was rapping her fingernails on, over three minutes had already slipped away.Tick-tock.
“Christopher, Christopher,” Lucy said. Her hands were shaking. “Listen. Could you do me a huge, huge favor? If you’re at home, could you run back to your room and getThe Secret of Clock Islandoff your shelf, okay? We’re playing a game, and I need to know what’s written on page 129. Okay? Can you do that? Can you? Good. Just don’t hang up.”
“One minute,” Ms. Hyde said.
The next few seconds of silence were agony. She was close to hyperventilating. She could hear Christopher knocking books off the shelves.
Christopher yelled into the phone. “Found it!”
“Page 129, Christopher. One-twenty-nine. Just get to that page and read me what it says. Got it?”
“Fifteen seconds,” Ms. Hyde said. Then, “Ten seconds.”
“Did you find it?” Lucy asked. She looked around. Andre was talking to someone, but he didn’t look hopeful. Melanie was standing, pacing with her phone still plastered to her ear.
“Got it!”
Ms. Hyde counted down, “Five, four, three, two—”
Christopher gave Lucy the answer.
“I win!” Lucy shouted. “It says, ‘I win!’”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
InThe Secret of Clock Island,a girl named Molly runs away from an orphanage to Clock Island. When the Mastermind asks her what her wish is, she tells him she wants to stay there with him. That’s her only wish. He tries to scare her away, but she says there’s nothing he can do or say that’s scarier than what went on at the orphanage. He gives her impossible riddles to answer, and instead of answering, she pelts him with a barrage of questions—
Why do you always stay in that shadow? How does that shadow follow you everywhere you go? Is it like a hat? Can I wear your shadow hat? Do you have a weird face? Is that why you always wear a shadow? Can I see your weird face? Is my face weird? What’s so wrong with a weird face after all? Why is this place called Clock Island? Is the island a clock, or is the clock an island? Why is your house so big when you live alone? Is that a saber-toothed ferret? Do you have kids? Do you want kids? Do you want me to be your kid? Can I stay here with you and be your kid?
And he tries to make her face her fears, but she only laughs and tells him she already did that ages ago after her parents died and she was taken to that orphanage. If he really wants to scare her, he’ll have to drive her back there, but unless he grabs her, throws her in a bag, and carries that bag over his shoulder all the way to the orphanage, there’s no way she’s going back. No sir. She’ll just stay. She’ll sleep in the ferret’s room.
Finally, he says he’ll let her stay if she plays a game with him—the hardest game for any child to win. She must play the staring contest game, and it isn’t easy, she knows, to win a staring contest against a shadow.
But Molly knows how to stare. Her mom taught her how before she died in that accident.
Molly agrees though she’s scared. If she wins, she gets to stay on Clock Island. If she loses, she has to go back to the orphanage. She has to win.
They play the game.
Molly tries not to cry as she thinks of her mother teaching her to stare. It’s hard to play through her tears, but she does it because she likes this Mastermind guy. He seems sort of scary, but really, all he does is stand in shadows—weird—and grant wishes to kids. And it is a big house for one person. Well, one person and Jolene, the saber-toothed ferret. If the guy goes around granting kids’ wishes, he must like kids. He’s not going around locking them in the washing machine and turning it on the spin cycle, right?
She makes herself focus on the game and play even though it feels like her mom is standing right behind her, and if she looks over her shoulder, she’ll see her mom. She wants to see her mom again, but if she looks back, she’ll lose the game. She can’t look back. She has to look forward. If she keeps her eyes on the Mastermind—well, on the shadow that’s staring at her—she might get to have a family again. A new family. A different family. But a good family—just her and the Mastermind and Jolene.
Finally, the shadow blinks. She didn’t know shadows could blink, but this one did.
On page 129, Molly shouts, “I win!”
On page 130, it says this and only this:
The Mastermind had let Molly win.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“Did we win?” Christopherasked.
No. They hadn’t won.
Lucy’s heart was on the floor. She didn’t know what to say. Ms. Hyde’s timer had stopped less than one second before Lucy had shouted the answer. They’d lost the chance to be together over one single second.
