Rebel Island Read Online Free Page B

alone. But as I passed the lighthouse, I remembered my dad’s stern warning that the place was much too dangerous. I should never go in there.
    What angry twelve-year-old boy could resist a challenge like that?
    I ran to the door and was surprised that it creaked open easily. Inside, the air was cool and damp. I shut the door and put my back against it.
    I tried to steady my breathing. I wanted to forget the scene I’d just witnessed in our hotel room. I probably would’ve started sobbing, but a faint noise from above made me freeze.
    Scrape. Scrape. Scrape,
like an animal clawing at wood—a
large
animal.
    At the top of the stairs, in a crescent of daylight, a shadow rippled, as if someone or something was up there.
    My instincts told me to leave, but then I heard my father’s voice outside.
    “Tres!” he yelled. “Come on, now. I’m sorry, goddamn it! Where are you?”
    He sounded as if he was coming toward the door. I decided to take my chances with the giant animal upstairs.
    I took the metal steps as quietly as I could, but my own heartbeat sounded like a bass drum. The limestone blocks were carved with graffiti. One said,
W. Dawes, 1898.
    I smelled sweet, acrid smoke and the scent of fresh-cut wood. I didn’t realize the scratching sounds had stopped until I reached the top of the stairs and found a knife pointed at my nose.
    A seventeen-year-old Alex Huff glared at me. “What the hell are you doing here, runt?”
    I was too scared to speak. I was already terrified of Alex, a delinquent who hung out with Garrett every time we came to Rebel Island. I knew that Alex lived on the island. He made amazing fireworks displays every Fourth of July. I was vaguely aware that his dad worked for the owner, though I’d rarely seen his dad. I knew Alex hated me for some inexplicable reason, and Garrett treated me worse whenever Alex was around.
    Behind him, the floor of the lantern gallery was covered in wood shavings. There was a two-foot-tall figurine standing on a stool, a half-carved woman. A hand-rolled cigarette was smoldering in an ashtray on the windowsill.
    “You’re smoking pot,” I said stupidly.
    Alex sneered. “Yeah, and if you tell anyone, I’ll gut you. Now what are you—” He tensed as if he’d heard something.
    Somewhere below us, outside the tower, my father’s voice, heavy with anger and remorse, rang out: “Tres! Tres, goddamn it!”
    Alex and I waited, still as death. My father called again, but this time he sounded farther away.
    Alex locked eyes with me. “You’re hiding from him?”
    I nodded. I was determined not to let Alex see me cry.
    Alex didn’t speak for a full minute. He studied me, as if deciding how to kill me.
    “You can’t hide on this island, runt.” He said it bitterly. “Come on. The boathouse is out back.”
    “Where are we going?” The last time Alex and Garrett had taken me out on a boat, Alex had threatened to pour cement in my shoes and drop me overboard.
    But for once, Alex’s expression didn’t look mean. His eyes were filled with something else—pity, perhaps?
    “We’re going fishing,” he said, as if fishing were something grim, possibly fatal. “Trust me.”

    Now, twenty-five years later, Alex and I climbed back up those steps together. The tower groaned in the storm. In the yellow beam of Alex’s flashlight, the limestone walls glistened with moisture.
    At last we reached the lantern room—a circular platform surrounding the huge golden chrysalis that was the Fresnel lens. There were no wood shavings on the floor this time, nothing but a couple of crushed beer cans. The gallery’s outer walls were storm-proof glass, but I could see nothing through them. With the rain slamming against them, they looked more like marble.
    The radio sat on the table in front of us.
    I knew almost nothing about shortwave radios, but I did know how to tell when one had been smashed to pieces. This one had been.

    I started to say, “Don’t touch—”
    But Alex