The Only Ones Read Free

people he constantly talked about.
    “You have any other books?” Martin asked George.
    “I don’t read much, but my parents have tons,” George said. The next night he gave Martin another.
    It became an addiction. At first, he took one book a night from George, but after a couple of weeks, he was demanding three or four. All day he would sit on the rock outcropping and read about pirates and doctors and magicians and lots of people who kissed and lots of people who killed and lots of people whose lives changed in an instant. As far as Martin was concerned, all the books were classics, because they were all full of such surprises. They distracted him from life.
    The meetings with George became less about friendship than they were about exchanging books. By the end of the summer, George didn’t even bother leaving his yard. He would simply place an old wooden lobster pot full of books next to the flagpole, and Martin would grab what he wanted and return what he had finished.
    It didn’t even occur to Martin that this arrangement might bother George. After all, George had his own family and his own life full of stories, and if those things bored him, then he could always pull a book off the shelf. Martin had taught him everything he could about the island. What more was in it for George?
    One night, Martin got his answer to that question. When he opened the lobster pot in search of books, he found just an envelope with his name written on it. Inside, there was a single sheet of paper. On the paper was an address.
    It meant nothing to him, so he quietly made his way to George’s window and gave it a tap. Almost immediately, George’s face appeared. He had been waiting.
    “It’s his home,” George said.
    “Whose home?” Martin asked.
    “Your dad’s. Before he came here.”
    Martin stared at the address. It was a simple string of numbers and the names of a street and a town. He assumed it was the farmhouse where he and his father had lived when Martin was a baby. It was impossible to picture a place, though. It was impossible to imagine them anywhere but on the island.
    “I told you about the Internet, right?” George went on. “You can find all sorts of things with it.”
    “Thank you … I guess,” Martin said.
    “He left, didn’t he?”
    “How do you know that?”
    “You taught me the island,” George said. “How to watch people. Some of us don’t sit around all day reading books, you know.”
    “Oh.”
    “I haven’t told anyone,” George assured him. “People try to ignore you and your dad.”
    “I know.”
    “Is that why you try to ignore us?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “I was your friend, Martin. Your only friend.”
    “You still are.”
    “We’re going home tomorrow. I know it’s been a while, but I’m gonna miss telling you stories. Helping you out.”
    “I’m gonna miss—”
    George stopped him right there. “Do you wanna come with us?”
    This was the question Martin had dreamt about being asked. Now that he was being asked, it was also the most frightening thing he could imagine. The world he had read about was so big and so strange and so unlike the island he didn’t know if he could handle it. Besides, his eleventh birthday hadn’t come. His father had promised to be back by then. Together, they would finish the machine.
    “No,” he told George. “No thank you. But can you do me a favor?”
    “Maybe.”
    “Go to the address,” Martin said. “Tell me what you see there.”
    “It’s on the other side of the country,” George explained.
    “Is that far?”
    Then George looked at Martin as if this were the first time he had ever laid eyes on him, and asked, “You gonna be okay here, all by yourself?”
    “Of course,” Martin said, less than convincingly. “I’ve already done it for months. Besides, my father will be back and everything will be fine.”
    “I’ll be back too,” George assured him. “Next summer. Count on it.”
    On a morning in early