I had to take the bus to the medical park, because it was pretty far from the house. I had been there twice before, both times with older guys, when I was still in middle school. It looked different when I was by myself, but I found the way.
The first part is—getting past the security booth that is by the main road. To do that, you walk about two hundred feet down along the fence, and there is a spot where there just isn’t any fence. The fence has broken and you can walk through. Why they don’t fix it—I don’t know. So, you go through there, and there is a path that leads to the internal road. While going along the internal road, you have to keep an eye out for the guard, but since he goes around in a truck with lights, there is always enough time to jump in the bushes. Eventually, you get to some woods, and you go through the woods. There isn’t really a path. For some reason no plants grow there, so you can walk where you want. Eventually you get to the island. If you go the wrong way, there is a swampy part and your shoes will get wrecked.
The island can be reached by climbing along a branch that goes about four feet above the water for something like twenty feet. At the end it goes into the water, but there are stones you can jump on. It sounds difficult, but it is pretty easy, especially if you are at all agile. To be honest, the island shares almost nothing with Alcatraz. Kids have been calling it that for a decade at least, though.
From the shore, I could see that there were some people out there. I went along the branch, jumped to the rocks, jumped to the bank. There I was. A kid came up—it was Stephan. He had on an insulated flannel shirt so I didn’t recognize him. He must have been waiting for me.
We’re over here.
He pointed to the right a ways. Once I was there, I could see there were a few groups of kids sitting on rocks. We went up to the crest of the hill and there was a pretty big tree next to a broken-down shack. The shack had writing on it. I couldn’t see it this time, but I knew from before. The writing (I don’t know if it is still there) said, Joan fecks goats. When I saw that, my first thought was that a Scottish person had written it, but I looked closer, and the e is just a screwed-up u. I’m not even sure Scottish people say fecks.
By the tree and the shack, in the darkness, there were a bunch of people, maybe ten. Stephan introduced me to them, but he did it the way you do when you don’t even know the people—essentially when you yourself need to be introduced, but there’s no one to do it for you, so you introduce someone else. It is a shitty way to behave.
This is Lucia.
One of them asked me in a sarcastic voice if I liked fire. I thought it was pretty hokey to do it, but I was holding my dad’s zippo in my hand and I flipped it open real quick and lit it. I did it real quick, I must say. It was some legerdemain.
A few of the kids clapped. One said, yeah, that’s it. You’ll do fine. Someone else asked Stephan if I was his girlfriend, and we both said no.
One of the guys wanted to see the zippo, so I let him. He fumbled with it a bit and gave it back.
I sat down by the tree, and Stephan sat too. The lights of the drive that wound through the medical park marched through the trees in a winding pattern. Beyond that were more lights—the city, the highway, more lights and more.
This terrible little island we were on was a nice mote of darkness. I could hear the water.
I couldn’t see the other people too well—it was pretty dark, but they looked mostly older, maybe seniors. One of the guys on the other side of Stephan asked him when he was going to qualify. Qualify? I figured that meant setting the fire that would make him an official member. Stephan didn’t say anything. I wondered how many members there were.
Noise from the other side of the island filtered through the trees. Some people were shouting—another group had just arrived. Someone set off some fireworks—or it was a gun, I don’t know.
The same guy was talking again to Stephan. I leaned in to hear. He said, you have a month to set a fire, and if you don’t you’re out.
He saw me looking at him. Same goes for you.
I met his eyes and nodded like it was nothing.
He told Stephan to move so he could sit next to me, and Stephan did.
PREDICTION
Well, I saw Stephan that Monday in front of the school. He was standing by himself kicking a stone against a wall. The ground there was all mashed flat and dusty and nothing was growing. He kicked the stone back and forth. It was kind of mesmerizing. I asked him if the meetings were always in the same place.
He said he’d never been to Alcatraz before. He had been to two other meetings—at a guy’s house. Real members have meetings with prospective members, and then the real members have their own meetings. I asked him how he had found out about it. He said it was through his brother, who was overseas in the army.
He said: I went to Stuart Rebos’s place about a month ago. Two other guys were there. We talked about setting fires. Neither one of them had done a big fire yet. Then, Jan showed up—the guy you met. He told us about some techniques and gave us a pamphlet that someone else had given him.
I asked him how old Jan was. He said he thought he was about twenty-four. Definitely he had gone away to college. Stephan said Jan had been his brother’s friend, but that they had for the most part lost touch.
First period that day was a study hall for me, so I sat and wrote in my prediction book.
Jan will try to sleep with me if I am alone with him. Don’t be alone with him.
I wrote also,
Stephan isn’t as smart as I thought he was,
which isn’t a prediction.
OWNING THINGS
About owning things. If you try to own things, but you don’t have very many things, then you can get in trouble. Because you might have to trade in some of the things that you have in order to get the money to get part of something new, but then when you run out of things that you have to trade to get money to give to finish getting the thing that is something new, then you have no money to finish getting that thing—the new thing, and then someone comes and takes the new thing, and then somehow, you have nothing, even though you did start with a bunch of things (however shitty they may have been—they still were yours).
Maybe it will make more sense if I give an example. My aunt got a car, but she only has money for food (someone she knows lets us live in this garage, so she doesn’t pay rent). She doesn’t really have money to pay for the car. I think she got it in order to take me around to where I need to go and such things. I remember her saying something like that. Maybe she thought that because she is old we couldn’t go around together without a car. Anyway—she had to sell her jewelry from when she had a husband a hundred years ago (he died when she was still nineteen, a year after they got married). She had to sell her clarinet and her piano. It was not a nice piano—just a tuneless little upright, but she played it all the time.