“And then I started again. Small ones. In wastebaskets. At night, when everyone was sleeping. Sophia caught me. She was so mad. She was afraid I was gonna get in trouble again. She made me promise not to do it ever again. She … she even took the matches I had.” Jonathan’s voice got smaller and smaller as he spoke. He wanted to walk away, to slam the door, to retreat to the shadows with his raging. But Colin still stood there with his listening eyes before the storm-darkened window, and Jonathan’s words stumbled on.
“And then. That night. It was … like a nightmare. The smoke. The flames climbing up the walls. So much smoke. I wanted to run. And then I heard her. Downstairs. Screaming my name. And the fire was just so hot. Growing so fast.” He looked up through burning, blurry eyes. “It was like a monster, Colin. It was roaring.” His voice was cut off by a choking sob. “I could hear her. But I couldn’t save her. And she died in the fire. Screaming for me to save her.”
Colin swallowed, his own eyes full, his fingers tugging at the skin of his neck.
“That’th why. Why you were on the Thinner’th Thorrow. You think it’th your fault.”
“It is my fault!” Jonathan shouted, his voice hoarse and raw. “I killed my sister! I let her die!”
Colin took a step closer.
“Jonathan,” he said. “It wath an acthident. Jutht a terrible acthident.”
Jonathan shook his head angrily and wiped the tears out of his eyes with his wrist.
“My parents say the same thing. That it was an accident. That it wasn’t my fault. How much they love me.” He looked up into Colin’s eyes. “But I can still hear her screaming, Colin. Screaming for me. It shouldn’t be me at home with them. It should be Sophia.” He took a shaky, broken breath. “I’m probably the only one of all of us that actually deserves to be here.”
There was a moment of nothing but wind and the smell of rain and, somewhere out on the darkness of the sea, a low rumble of thunder.
Then Colin’s thoughtful eyes narrowed.
“But … how did you get the thcars?” he asked.
Jonathan sniffed and cleared his throat and took a step away.
“I better go. Sebastian’ll be getting suspicious. And you need to stay out of the way, Colin. Don’t let him catch you.”
Colin squinted and bit his lip. He seemed about to say something, then stopped. He nodded, once. Then he asked, “Are you going to be okay?”
“I’ll be fine.”
Jonathan opened the door and put his foot on the top step.
“Don’t you think they mith you?”
Jonathan stopped. He didn’t have to ask who Colin was talking about.
“You’re the only one who geth a letter every thingle day. Don’t you think they mith you? Don’t you think lothing one of their children wath enough?”
Jonathan’s eyebrows frowned. He chewed on his lip.
“Don’t you mith them? Don’t you mith home?”
Jonathan didn’t turn around. When he answered, his voice echoed down the winding staircase.
“I do,” he said, incredibly softly. Like a secret he was keeping from himself. “I do.” He focused his eyes on the flame clutched in his hand.
“I went every day to Sophia’s grave and put a flower on it. Every single day. She loved flowers. My parents promised that they’d do it for me while I was gone.”
He closed his eyes, then opened them and looked back at Colin. His eyes took in the stone floor, the stone walls, the puddle and the shadows.
“There’s no flowers here.”
When the door closed on the round room, Colin was still standing pinching his neck, a thoughtful frown on his face.
When Jonathan returned to the dining room, they were just starting their nightly letter home. No one spoke to him. The dining room was again awash in candlelight and the whispers of pens on paper. Jonathan’s letter was short. But he was the last one done. Benny read it and rolled his eyes and said, “Fine. Night-night, Johnny.” Jonathan didn’t reply, or even look Benny in the face. He supposed that he should have glared at him. Stared him down. He supposed that he should hate Benny. But Jonathan didn’t have any hate left. He’d already used it all on himself.
When Jonathan went to his mattress to go to sleep, he found that the ring of seven mattresses had shrunk to three. Most of the other boys had dragged theirs away into a different corner. Away from him. Only Walter and David had stayed.
The two boys looked at him from around the slowly dancing candle flame between them.
Jonathan put his head down and closed his eyes.
“Aren’t you gonna read, man?” Walter asked.
“You still want me to?”
“Yeah. Don’t you have another book?”
“Um-hmm.” Jonathan rolled over and fished Treasure Island out from where he’d stowed it under his pillow. He looked up at the faces of Walter and David, waiting in the yellow glow of the candles.
“You sure?” he asked. They both nodded.
He cleared his throat.
“Chapter One,” he began, his voice still a wounded whisper. It gained strength as he read. “The Old Sea Dog at the Admiral Benbow.”
In the morning, when he awoke, there was a new piece of paper lying on the pillow beside his head. It was not a crane.
The paper on his pillow was folded into the shape of a perfect flower. The flower had a shiny gold center.
A dark brown square of chocolate sat beside it.