Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians

things, that doesn’t make you a Dark Oculator. Anything you’ve done, you can fix. You can change.”
    It’s not that easy, I thought. Will Sing be that forgiving when I accidentally break something precious to him? His books perhaps? What will Sing Smedry do when he finds all that he loves broken and mangled, discarded at the feet of the disaster known as Alcatraz Smedry?
    Sing smiled, removing his hand from my shoulder, apparently thinking that the problem was resolved. But it wasn’t, not for me. I sat down on the stones, arms around my knees. What’s wrong with me lately? Sing seems determined to like me. Why am I so concerned with making certain he knows what I’ve done?
    I turned away from Sing and, for some reason, found myself thinking about days long past.
    I have trouble remembering the first things I broke. They were valuable, though – I remember that. Expensive crystal things, collected by my first foster mother. It seemed that I could barely walk by her room without one of them shattering.
    That wasn’t all either. Any room they locked me in I could escape without even really trying. Anything they bought or brought into the home, the curious young Alcatraz would study and inspect.
    And break.
    So, they got rid of me. They hadn’t been cruel people – I’d just been too much for them. I saw them once, on the street a few months later, walking with a little girl. My replacement. A girl who didn’t break everything she touched, a girl who fit better into what they had imagined for their lives.
    I shivered, sitting with my back to the glass bars of my prison cell. Sometimes I tried – I tried so hard – not to break anything. But it was like the Talent welled up inside of me when I did that. And then, when it burst free, it was even more powerful.
    A tear rolled down my cheek. After moving from family to family enough times, I’d realized that they would all leave me eventually. After that, I hadn’t worried as much about what I broke. In fact… I’d begun to break things more often – important things. The valuable cars of a father who collected vehicles. The trophies won by a father who played sports in college. The kitchen of a mother who was a renowned chef.
    I’d told myself that these things were simply accidents. But now I saw a pattern in my life.
    I broke things early, quickly. The most valuable, important things. That way, they’d know. They’d know what I was.
    And they’d send me away. Before I could come to care for them. And get hurt again.
    It felt safer to act that way. But what had it done to me? In breaking so many objects, had I broken myself? I shivered again. Sitting in that cold Librarian dungeon – faced by my first (but certainly not last) failure as a leader – I finally admitted something to myself.
    I don’t just break, I thought. I destroy.

Chapter 12
    At this point, perhaps you feel sorry for me. Or perhaps you feel that my suffering was deserved, considering what I’d done to all those families who tried to take me in.
    I’d like to tell you that all of this soul-searching was good for me. And perhaps it did help in the short term. However, before you get your hopes up, let me promise you here and now that the Alcatraz Smedry you think you know is a farce. You may see some promising things developing in my young self, but in the end, none of these things were able to save those I love.
    If I could go back, I’d drive Sing and the others away for good. Unfortunately, at that point in my life, I still had some small hope that I’d find acceptance with them. I should have realized that attachment would only lead to pain. Especially when I failed to protect them.
    Still, it was probably good for me to realize that I was driving people away on purpose, for it let me understand just how bad a person I am. Perhaps more young boys should be captured by evil Librarians, forced to sit in cold dungeons, contemplating their faults as they wait for their doom. Perhaps I’ll start a summer camp based on that theme.
    The weirdest part about this all, I thought, is that nobody yet has made a joke about a pair of kids named Alcatraz and Bastille getting locked in a prison.
    Of course, we weren’t in a very jokey mood at that moment. I couldn’t know for certain, since the hourglass – along with my jacket – had been taken from me, but I figured that our remaining half hour had passed, and then some. I tried very hard not to look at the latrine bucket, in