“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 fora 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 childdreamed 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?”
