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“Jack Merridew?”
“—Jack, just Jack,” the boy bites out, mop of red hair flashing as he jerks his head sharply to the side. The rest of his words go unspoken; not just Jack, but Jack, Chief of the Hunters. Jack, misshapen island-boy lost between concrete monsters. Jack, wild-eyed and twelve and as old as death.
“Okay.” The officer across from him meets his gaze briefly, turns back to the pad of paper on the desk. “So, Jack, what exactly transpired on that island?”
Jack shifts in his seat, hands tucked into the crooks of his knees as he turns the question over in his head like a shiny new thing he's dug out of the dirt. A thousand potential answers bubble to the surface, oxygen trapped in little spheres of half-truth— we hunted for pigs, we made sandcastles fall, we let a little boy with a funny birthmark burn out like a birthday candle— but after a moment of dry-throated silence he clenches his jaw further and says nothing.
Despite everything, Jack Merridew is still only twelve years old, and twelve year-old boys are not equipped to deal with the aftermaths of tragedy.
“I don't know,” he whispers.
The officer taps her pen against the table absentmindedly, eyebrows beginning to furrow. “Surely you must know at least something. There were two more boys with you at first, yes? Your friends Ralph and Roger have confirmed this with us.”
Silence.
“Who was directly responsible for their disappearances?”
“...no one. Roger. Maurice. Ralph. Me. All of us.” The words come fast and furious from Jack’s mouth, each bumping clumsily into the next. The names are children rushing out of the classroom to the playground. They don't know what to do with themselves.
“Roger, you said?” The officer repeats Jack’s words with mild interest as she scratches something onto the paper.
“I didn't say anything,” Jack mumbles, but by then she's already waved her hand and had him dismissed.
-
“You sold me out,” Roger remarks a few days later in the waiting room, when Jack settles down on the wooden bench next to him. He's holding a metal baton with a ball tip at one end, rolling the slim stem between his fingers as he talks.
Jack’s stomach twists into something unpleasant, but he forces it back and shucks out an indignant reply. “I told the truth.”
“Ralph told ‘em the same thing,” Roger says dully.
Today he’s wearing a striped white-and-blue shirt tucked into large denim overalls, and the newsboy cap on his head hangs low over neat, newly-trimmed bangs. The exposed skin on his face, arms, and hands is cleaner now, scrubbed to a pristine shine with soap and chemicals, but there are shadows under his eyes and in the hunch of his shoulders. When Jack lets his eyes go unfocused they look a little bit like ghosts. Specters hiding under the brim of his cap, dancing in the hollows of his cheekbones, laughter ringing in his ears.
Sighing, Jack leans his back against the brick wall. “Ralph probably hates our guts, s’all.”
“Why?”
“You sharpened a stick on both ends.”
“We were savages. You said I could do whatever I wanted.” Roger frowns down at his shoelaces.
"You murdered Piggy," Jack says.
Roger half-squints at him, and the other boy almost recoils at the dense sea of trees he glimpses momentarily in his shadow-crowded eyes.
“We were savages,” Roger repeats, as if that is all the explanation that is needed.
Flinching visibly, Jack scrambles to find a reply that fully encompasses the strange mix of horror and disgust that has settled into his gut and comes up empty. Recently he's been finding it harder and harder to string words together into sentences that convey meaning, and presently Jack is too tired to try again.
A few minutes later, the door swings open and a littlun small boy with his head bowed shuffles out. A dry voice snakes out of the room inside. “Mr. Roger Goldman, Mr. Roger Goldman, please come in.”
The boy passes by the two of them soundlessly as Roger rises to his feet and heads for the door, the metal baton slipping out of his grasp and landing with a faint thunk on the floor. He doesn't turn around to pick it up.
-
Roger has been sent to a correctional facility for troubled youth. Jack loses sleep like years shaved off his life. Roger sits in an empty room with brick walls for breathing space and answers questions about cats, murder, the weather. Jack wears insomnia like a second skin, bruise-deep and clinging to every square inch of him.
It's not your fault, he insists to himself late at night, under the safety of cotton blankets and darkness. The grown-ups are the ones who took his words and twisted them into something ugly. They alone hold the weight of guilt in their big, too-big hands. Roger is his friend.
Roger is a murderer. Roger is a friend. Roger sharpened a stick on both ends. Roger was wrong.
Sleep evades him these days the way the pigs used to back on the island. Barreling through the dense undergrowth like cars spitting fumes and hot air, leaving railway tracks for the boys to sniff up and follow. Only at the end of this dream he never finds his sow, never shoves her head on a stick, doesn’t stare in horror awe at her glistening, colorful innards with the ocean roaring in his ears.
And now the sounds of the city have turned hostile; every car horn a heralding caw from a firebird, every scatter of footsteps the approaching thuds of a monster, every carefree burst of laughter too much like Percival’s high-pitched giggling. Jack’s ghosts are everywhere.
His parents pat him gently on the head and tell him it's okay and do you want a bedtime story? I kept your favorite book, the one about the boy that goes on an adventure and fights the dragon, but don't they understand that storybooks aren't just ink and paper and words anymore? Jack has lived an adventure big enough to sate a tall, tall teenager’s curiosity. Jack has lived an adventure so big his twelve-year-old brain blew up and now the inside of his skull is all wrong. It’s been weeks, but the grown-ups still haven't realized.
They think he is still Jack Merridew, head choir boy, quick to anger sometimes but always eager to please. They don't see the dirty blood on his hands, cocktail concoction of human’s and pig’s, don't see the creepers and tendrils under his fingernails that smell like sweat and fear, can’t see the ghoulish, surreal image of his face covered in red and white paint.
Grown-ups aren't that amazing after all, Jack thinks bitterly.
He hopes they treat Roger all right.
-
The next time he stumbles across Roger, a few months later, it's six p.m. on a chilly fall evening. He'd just been sent out to buy eggs (a dozen, no more, no less) by his father, had been glowering at the pavement as he walked without regard for his surroundings, when something in his periphery had caught his eye.
Jack would recognize that profile anywhere.
It's Roger, sporting a thick, soft-looking coat and a bright red beanie pulled down over his ears. His wardrobe must consist only of rows upon rows of absurd hats, Jack thinks with a little laugh.
However, he's not alone— to his left a short, stout lady with diamond-cut eyes hurries on alongside him— presumably his mother. She's speaking in a rather cross manner, eyebrows twitching and hands waving animatedly as she gestures in front of Roger, who nods along as best as he can and hefts the paper bags higher up in his arms.
He looks better. Healthier, brighter, the glow in his cheeks no longer from overexertion and humid air but warm fireplaces and good food. As they walk unknowingly closer wisps of their conversation are buoyed along by the wind and whisked along into Jack’s ears.
“...no matter what it is you must admit that Mr. Clearwater’s tomatoes taste the best!” The lady presses. Her earrings tinkle and jingle and catch the light from the setting sun.
Roger groans. “They all taste the same when boiled in soup, mother. I really don't see a difference.”
“Absolutely terrible!” She scoffs, jostling Roger’s shoulder and making him jump. “You're just like your sister— no appreciation for food whatsoever.”
—they’re gradually getting closer, closer,
“Your apple pie still tastes delicious, though,” Roger flashes a sheepish smile.
“Oh—”
And now they are too close.
Roger’s mother is frozen solid, positively rooted to the ground. The warmth in her expression evaporates, replaced immediately by something more judgmental, more distant.
Naturally, when she stops walking Roger does too, confusion clouding his face until he thinks to follow her line of sight. There he is, the pot at the end of the rainbow. There he is. It's Jack.
Jack, Jack, Jack Merridew.
Roger’s mouth falls open, his lips moving to form small, uncertain shapes. He looks like he wants to say something more.
But then his mother tugs on his shirtsleeve, wraps an arm protectively around his shoulder, and begins to steer him away from Jack, who for the last three minutes has only been staring at them with empty, unseeing eyes, more statue than breathing boy.
Jack stumbles. Almost-falls. Picks himself up and clenches his jaw.
Heart hammering fiercely in his ribcage, he dives into the throng of strangers. He ignores the ribbon-twist of his stomach and tip-toes to scan the crowd better, skimming past unfamiliar face after unfamiliar face until he spies a bright red beanie bobbing along in the near-distance.
This time, when he catches up to the pair, neither tries to slip away.
Still trembling a little, but feeling braver than he’s ever felt since beasties and monsters prowled around him, he extends an hand to Roger’s mother. She takes it, reluctantly.
Jack forces air into his lungs, holds it there, and counts to three. He opens his mouth.
“Good evening, Mrs. Goldman. I'm Jack Merridew, Roger’s friend.”