“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
In The 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?” Christopher asked.
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.
“Hold on, baby,” Lucy told Christopher. “Just…need a minute here.” She was trying to sound okay, put together, but she was falling apart trying to understand how she’d come so close and still lost.
“Thank you all for playing,” Ms. Hyde said. She turned and gave Jack a pointed look. “It seems we do not have a winner.”
“I’m so sorry, kids,” Jack said. “I really hoped one of you would win.”
He reached into the pocket of his rumpled navy-blue trousers and pulled out a key. “The book is in a bank safe-deposit box,” Jack told Ms. Hyde, laying it in her hand. “I’ll get you the information, but that is the key to the box.”
She wrapped her fingers tight around the small silver key. “On behalf of the publisher, thank you, Jack.” She looked at the contestants and was decent enough to look almost apologetic. “I know you all wanted to win this contest very much, so I’m certain you’re all feeling some disappointment. Each of you will receive signed first edition copies of the book for your own collections. Thank you for being a part of one of the better accidental marketing campaigns in the history of children’s literature.”
“Again,” Jack said, “I wish it could have been otherwise. I will do my best to make it up to you.”
Andre was the first to smile. “No hard feelings, Jack.” He walked over and held out his hand. “It was just so damn good to see you again. I’ll be telling this story for years.”
Jack hugged Andre, who had already ended his call.
“Lucy?” Christopher said. “What’s going on?”
“Sorry, sweetheart,” Lucy said, moving her hand away from the phone speaker. “They were talking to us about something.”
“Did you win? Did you get the prize?”
“Um…well, it was—” Lucy began. She thought she might throw up she was shaking so hard.
Hugo held out his hand. “Let me talk to him.”
“What?” Lucy said.
“Please?”
With a trembling voice, Lucy said, “Christopher, someone here wants to talk to you. His name is Hugo Reese, and he does all those cool paintings in the Clock Island books.”
“Really?” Christopher said. “Like the map and the puzzle and the train?”
“He did all those. And he wants to say hi. So here he is. Hugo?”
She gave the phone to Hugo, who put it to his ear.
“Christopher? This is Hugo. I’m a friend of Lucy’s.”