Treasure Island!!!

CHAPTER 1
     
    I n the aftermath of my adventure, I decided to write down the whole thing, starting with my discovery of
Treasure Island
and keeping nothing back, not even the names of the friends and family members whose problems plagued me; and so even though I’d
love
to go into the other room and stab someone with a kitchen knife, I take up my pen—a nifty micro-ball which had been incorrectly capped and would have dried out had I not, at the crucial moment, found it and restored its seal.
     
    The Pen

    Before
I Put My Hand To It
After
a Good Shake, A Lick of the Nib, and Recapping
     
    Though even with pencil, I could tell this story pretty well.
     
    My sister said it was an adventure book and that the trouble with adventure books was “all action and no feeling.” She said that the book had the moral complexity of a baseball game and that her hand would force no nine-year-old girl to read it. She said a few more self-righteous, priggish things and then off she went, leaving
Treasure Island
on my futon, along with
Palomino Pal
and
Ride on the Unicorn’s Back
, though what was wrong with those books—I mean, according to her—I don’t know. For a third-grade teacher my sister is pretty careless. Later she called and said, “Would you return the books I left at your place to the library?”
    “Why didn’t you like this one called
Treasure Island
?” I said.
    “Don’t tell me you’re reading it,” Adrianna said. “I
hate
a book with no girls in it.”
    Does such a knee-jerk sensibility deserve to be recorded? But I am writing in a very nice unlined Muji notebook and I can always go back and cross out her insufferable parts later.
    “Don’t tell me you’re reading it,” she said, as if I were doing something to the book, whereas in fact the book was doing something to me. I’m twenty-five years old and this happened on a Monday when I didn’t have to work at The Pet Library and had no plans except to sleep and maybe wash my bras in the sink, and that was a big maybe. Birds chirped, shadows fell on the linoleum, in the distance a weed trimmer whined. When I got to the part where Long John Silver’s gang captures Jim Hawkins in the deserted stockade, Lars, my boyfriend, left a message on my voicemail, saying did I want to go out for a burrito.
    Here is my life, I thought.
    And
there
is the adventurous life kicking out the covers of Stevenson’s novel.
    When had I ever dreamed a scheme? When had I ever done a foolish, over-bold act? When had I ever, like Jim Hawkins, broke from my friends, raced for the beach, stolen a boat, killed a man, or eliminated an obstacle that stood in the way of my getting a hunk of gold? I, a person unable to decide what to do with my broken mini-blinds, let alone with the rest of my life, lay on my bed, while in the book’s open air, people chased assholes out of pubs and trampled blind beggars with their horses. You needn’t have a violent nature to be impressed with animal energy. If life were a sea adventure, I knew: I wouldn’t be sailor, pirate, or cabin boy but more likely a barnacle clinging to the side of the boat. Why not rise, I thought. Why not spring up that very moment, in the spirit of Jim, and create my own adventure?
    “That’s how I felt when I saw
He’s Just Not That Into You
on Oprah,” Rena said. “That book explained everything, everything, about me and Dougie Thomas.”
    Personally, I think the fact that he called himself ‘Dougie’ explained everything about Rena and Dougie Thomas. That and the fact that they’d met at a Christmas caroling party he single-handedly organized; but I never tell friends their boyfriends are probably gay, so I let the matter drop. Rena is a close friend; she knows firsthand my history of low-paying jobs and hapless boyfriends. This was the following day, when she and I were sitting in our favorite coffee shop eating Gratuitous Pancakes, her name for the meal taken when she has recently eaten lunch and I have recently woken up. That day, I’d slept late only because I’d been up all night finishing
Treasure Island
, and I was thrilled to tell Rena my discovery. But as we talked, I felt I was leading a clumsy tourist through the jungle of my thoughts.
    Rena lagged, slapped at mosquitoes, tripped on roots, missed the waterfall. A painful truth I’d learn later: you may be ready to grow, but you can’t fertilize friends and grow them with you. I must have been the tiniest of boats rocking on the sea of