Read Online Lighthouse Island by Paulette Jiles - Free Book Online

her ID number. She had never committed a felony. Having an affair with her oversupervisor’s husband was a criminal offense of some kind but not a felony. They had taken her ID for recalibration, they said.
    At lunchtime a group of the young men sat in front of the office television to watch soccer; Nadia came to the door to see the advertisement for Lighthouse Island. A clean sea booming against rocks, drifting rain, the Slavic fantasy house with its steep roof, the lighthouse sending out beams of light into the fog, into the unpeopled waste of ocean. Tourists were shown gazing out of the lighthouse tower windows and feeding seagulls. There was a spinning sail of wind art on top of a very tall tree trunk. No televisions, no crowds, no trash. Cool air, rain. Save up your credits and go! Close to the graveyard, where the daughter of Oceanus watches over the bottomless sea.
    N adia sat at the preformed concrete table with the note. It was written on the back of a tin can label that depicted an oyster in a sailor hat. The note said, pls send felt liners sox p’nut butter mittens pensil paper pls help send to Annalee Villanueva Girls Contemporary Dance Camp Dorm 600 Tundra Blues Ger. 22 by D. Vail he will come 2 U pls. help pls Annalee.
    Nadia raised her head to see her roommate Josie standing in the doorway to their Youth Housing apartment with that tossy-hair gesture and her nose elevated as if she were deeply offended, Josie’s only line of defense.
    You went and ratted on her, didn’t you? Nadia stood up in her striped blanket bathrobe and bare feet like an outraged indigenous person. You thought up something.
    Oh, you’re always so dramatic, said Josie. Why do you always have to go overboard?
    But you did! She’s in detention. You wanted more room. Josie, you’re a criminal. Nadia clutched the table edge. They were all sort of socially bigger than she was, not having lost their parents until they were preteens on that awful night at Riverdale Apartments and therefore had better food as children but Nadia was an orphan born and raised. So they seemed more important than herself but she was at present furious. You’re a rodent, said Nadia.
    Josie kept on with the hair tossing and took up a box of matches. I don’t want to be friends with you anymore, she said in a punishing voice. She lifted her cool moon face with the tiny compressed features right in the middle and lit a cigarette rolled in dark brown paper. She pounced to the window where the dust from a building site drifted in. Josie said, She shouldn’t have been dating that pirate radio guy. They would have come and got all of us. She thought she was going to be some kind of underground celebrity, and we would have embarrassed her in front of all her new friends, her daring new friends.
    Nadia started to say I would like to set you on fire, but then she might be next on Josie’s list. All the years Nadia had known her, Josie had made herself at least briefly important by being offended by nearly anything and extracting apologies from people, but they had all grown wise to the apology scam and now Josie had found a new way to be important. And Nadia had to live with her. There was no place else to go in all the endless city but the housing you were assigned, unless it were alleyways or abandoned skyscrapers slated for demolition. She sat down again and put her head in her hands.
    Widdy dashed in from the bathroom down the hall with a saucepan and put it on the stove, in the midst of making some kind of cosmetic. Nadia looked up and then held out the greasy label.
    We’ve got to help her, she said. Widdy, do you hear me?
    Widdy slowly turned her face to Nadia while she dropped in red food coloring one drop after another like a slow bleed.
    Leave it alone, Nadia, Widdy said. They’ll be monitoring this apartment, okay? It probably wasn’t Josie. Hey? No, it wasn’t Josie’s fault, come on, come on.
    Widdy wiped