Jack sat back in his industrial green swivel chair. The ancient wheels squeaked, sending Thurl flapping back to his perch.
“What’s the best gift anyone ever gave you?” Jack asked. “And don’t tell me something you think I want to hear like a teacher encouraged you and that was the best gift. I mean toys. Drum set. Bow and arrow. Something Santa brought or a maiden aunt with money and a grudge against your mother.”
“Batmobile,” Hugo said. He almost blushed to admit it, but he’d loved that thing too much to deny it. “Mum somehow scraped up the cash to buy me a radio-controlled Batmobile. It was used, I think. Maybe Mum found it in a charity shop, but it was still in the box, and it worked like a dream.”
“Did you play with it?”
“Course. I, uh…God…” Hugo chuckled at the memory of his younger self. “I played with it until the engine burned up and the wheels came off.”
“How do you think your mother would have felt if you’d never taken it out of the box? Just set it on a shelf and admired it from afar?”
Hugo remembered his mother laughing until she wheezed as the little black car careened off the table, around their flat, around her ankles, even while they were eating breakfast. She pretended to be cross about it, but her eyes were always laughing. He’d even heard her bragging about it to their neighbor Carol, how she’d found a toy for Hugo, and he hadn’t stopped playing with it for weeks.
“Would’ve broken her heart.”
“There,” Jack said as if he’d proven his point. What point?
“What’s there?”
“God—or whoever is in charge of this planet—got drunk on the job one day and decided to give me the gift of writing. The way I see it, I have two choices. I can set that gift on a high shelf so it won’t get dinged up and nobody can make fun of me for playing with it.” He smiled until the crinkles at the corners of his eyes were deep enough to hide state secrets. “Or I can have fun with it and play with the gift I was given until the engine burns out and the wheels come off. I decided to play. I suggest you do the same, young man. Go paint or draw or collage or whatever you want to do. Come back when there’s smoke coming off the canvas. And for God’s sake, go have some fun. Please?”
Then Jack waved his hand, dismissing Hugo. And what was he going to do? He went out and he had fun, if only to prove Jack wrong. Except he didn’t prove Jack wrong. Three days later he’d painted a cover for The Ghost Machine, Clock Island Book Eleven. There weren’t any owl pirates, but there was a crescent moon grinning, two stars for eyes, and a boy about ten years old climbing an impossible Escher-esque staircase toward the night sky, and behind him on the steps was a smoke-colored ghost in the shape of the boy it followed. A shadow in the window of the house on Clock Island revealed the silhouette of the Mastermind, watching the boy and his ghost race each other to the moon.
It was weird and it was good, and Hugo had fun painting it.
He remembered showing it to Jack, feeling shy and scared and proud and stupid all at once. Like a kid waiting for a pat on the back.
Jack stared and studied, looked closely, stood back, came forward again, and hovered a fingertip over the strange painted staircase that went everywhere and nowhere.
Then softly he mumbled, “‘Yesterday, upon the stair, I met a man who wasn’t there. He wasn’t there again today. I wish, I wish he’d go away…’” Then softly Jack said, “Hughes Mearns.”
Right, right. Always cite your sources.
Was that the moment Hugo had seen the real Jack Masterson? When he witnessed the smile fade and the veil slip? But which one was the real Jack? The watching moon? The haunted boy running toward the light?
Or the lonely Mastermind, trapped behind the glass, unable to intervene in a world where even children were haunted?
“You like it?” Hugo finally asked. He couldn’t bear to wait another second for Jack’s answer.
“It’s perfect,” Jack said, not smiling but somehow exuding a deeper sort of joy. He lightly elbowed Hugo in the side. “One down. Thirty-nine to go.”
By the end of the second week, Hugo had learned to paint with a raven sitting on his easel. By the end of the month, he’d finished five covers, and they were better than anything he ever thought he could have done. And by Christmas, Hugo had finished the job and was hired for Clock Island Book Forty-One through infinity.
On Christmas morning, two days before Hugo would fly back to London, back to Davey, he opened a wrapped box to find a vintage, mint condition radio-controlled Batmobile toy. Hugo gave it to Davey, who played with it until the wheels came off.
Now he saw the last boat of the day chugging away from the dock. Probably safe for Hugo to return downstairs. But first, he turned around, taking another good long look at the island. Hard to believe he’d be leaving here soon, moving away, getting on with his life like he should have years ago whether he wanted to or not.
With the sun gone, Hugo went down into the house. Everything was in place, more or less. Tomorrow the first contestants would arrive. Hugo planned to stay until the contest was over to make sure nothing else got broken. Including Jack.
Especially Jack.
Chapter Eight
Hope for a miracle.
So said Mrs. Costa. So said Theresa. Lucy hadn’t believed them then. Now…maybe she was starting to believe.
Today was Monday. The day Lucy was leaving for Clock Island.
At four in the morning, she woke up and made herself eat some cereal. After a shower, makeup, hair, and getting dressed, she checked her bags, making certain she hadn’t forgotten anything.
After college, she’d sworn she’d never go back to Maine, and she went about forgetting how much she missed the cold and wild Atlantic Ocean, missed the whipping winds, the loons and the puffins, the blueberries and the lobster rolls and the popovers—those insanely delicious pastries she cursed herself for never learning how to make. And she pretended she didn’t miss sweater weather nine months out of the year either. Even when she was honest with herself about missing home, she still had no regrets about coming to California. It had saved her life, the long sunny days pulling her out from the deep, dark place she’d been afraid she’d never escape. And meeting Christopher had made it all worth it.
Thank God she hadn’t told Christopher she would never be his mother. After two years of scrimping and saving and sacrificing and getting almost nowhere anyway, finally she had a chance to make it happen. The game rules said that she could do anything with the book if she won it, including selling it to any publisher. That was her plan. Win it. Read it. Sell it. A new Clock Island book would probably go for a lot. At the very least, she’d have money for a car and an apartment. She had to win. For Christopher. For her. She wasn’t going to get a second chance like this ever again.
A car horn gave a little honk-honk.