The Fort

“It’s an OCD thing. Dr. Breckinridge says it’s my way of controlling part of my life to make up for the fact that I can’t control the important things.”

While Mitchell is talking about the reason for his obsessive-compulsive behavior, he is also voicing an issue that affects all the boys in the book. None of them has any control over the major events they must face. Whether it be physical abuse, a messy divorce, or abandonment, parents call the shots, and their children can do little more than react.

“Evan and his buddies have made it pretty clear that I’m about as welcome in this group as a bad stomach flu. And if this metal plate turns out to be something interesting—or even valuable—then those guys won’t be able to make me feel so useless.”

The group has closed ranks against Ricky, so he is hopeful that finding something important will make him fit in better. Without the chance discovery of a metal plate that turns out to be the hatch door of an underground bunker, it’s highly unlikely that Evan’s clique would associate with him at all. This one small discovery is about to change the course of his life.

“Everything has changed somehow. I started the day as the unwelcome new kid from a magnet school. Now I’m twenty percent owner of a fort.”

The discovery of the bunker constitutes a momentous change for Ricky. To their credit, none of the other boys tries to exclude him from ownership since they would have no secret hideout at all if not for Ricky. At multiple points in the story, he proves his value, but it takes the rest of the boys a long time to acknowledge his contributions.

“My friends all think I’m weird because I’m not his biggest fan. To them, Marcus is the coolest, nicest guy in the world. And he is—ninety percent of the time. It’s the other ten percent you have to worry about.”

C.J. is isolated because he knows his stepfather’s true nature while everyone else holds a different opinion. He is doubly isolated because he refuses to contradict what his friends think. He believes that he’s protecting his mother by keeping silent. He fails to realize that keeping this particular secret puts his mother and himself in even greater danger.

“‘I wish I could stay here forever,’ he sighs in contentment. We all know exactly what he means. Your own place. No parents. No teachers. No rules.”

C.J. has just expressed his desire to stay at the fort forever. He will soon get that wish and eventually wish that he was somewhere else. Jason has just heard his satisfied comment and elaborates on the reason why all the boys are attracted to the fort. They want to escape the strictures that adults place on them in the real world. For at least a few hours every day, they can pretend they are free.

“I never thought things could get worse for our family than when Mom and Dad walked away from us and we had to move in with Grandma and Grandpa. At least back then, it was Luke and me against the world.”

Evan is thinking about Jaeger’s poisonous influence over Luke. Initially, Evan could look to his older sibling for support since they had been through the same trauma. Now, Luke has rejected him in favor of a superficially stronger ally. It’s as if Evan has been rejected by his family all over again.

“Maybe that’s the real difference between Ricky and the rest of us. We all could have researched those things. He’s the only one who did.”

Ricky has just succeeded in raising the pawnbroker’s offer on the group’s initial sale of a piece of silverware. He managed to do so by researching the value of solid silver. Evan is overjoyed by the result, but he is also the first member of the core group to find value in Ricky’s intelligence. The other boys are primarily resentful or jealous and fail to see how often Ricky uses his brain to benefit them all.

“‘Marcus is a great guy. You’re lucky!’ I don’t answer, because the last thing I want to do is drag my friends into a giant mess that they wouldn’t be able to help with anyway. It’s my problem, not theirs.”

C.J. has just heard another round of praise for his abusive stepfather from his friends. While this quote echoes the disgust of his earlier statement, it also reveals C.J.’s motivation for keeping silent. He doesn’t want to involve his friends because he fears exposing them to harm. His statement also contains a note of fatalism since C.J. doesn’t believe a group of 13-year-olds can solve his problem. He is wrong on both counts.

“I’ve got to tell the guys that Luke and Jaeger are watching us. I may be an outsider in every other way. But in defending the fort, I’m one hundred percent in.”

Given how often Ricky has found himself rebuffed by the others, he doesn’t react with anger or try to get even. Instead, he finds new ways to help the group. He does so not simply to win his way into the good graces of the others but because helping the group is the right thing to do. In one sense, he is a member of the group. They all own the fort together, and nobody contradicts Ricky’s right to be there.

“That’s the worst part about Luke being friends with Jaeger. Not that the guy’s a jerk, but that he seems to be dragging my brother down the same awful path as our parents.”

Evan never forgets the adage that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Given his parents’ criminal tendencies, he fears that his brother might follow suit. A thug like Jaeger makes going down the wrong path all too easy. However, Evan has no insight into Luke’s motivation for aligning himself with Jaeger. Luke fears appearing vulnerable and refuses to share his fears with his little brother, but his secrets need to be told.

“Marcus crying and apologizing and calling himself every kind of monster in the book, and my mother telling him he’s wrong and what a fine person he is. I never know what I hate worse—wild-man Marcus or Marcus blubbering apologies; Mom under attack or Mom consoling her attacker; me getting smacked around or me keeping my mouth shut because that’s the way Mom wants it.”

C.J. makes this comment as the family drives home from the hockey game. Marcus once again lost his temper and now feels apologetic. C.J. is a silent witness to the dynamic between the two adults in the car. He can clearly see how impossible the situation is while his so-called guardians cannot.

“‘Jaeger Devlin,’ Jason supplies. ‘He creeps everybody out.’ ‘Are they hassling you?’ she asks. ‘Do you want me to mention something to my dad?’ ‘We can handle ourselves,’ Jason replies bravely.”

Mitchell is eating breakfast with Janelle and Jason at the fake fort when Jaeger and Luke show up to intimidate him. Again, in this quote, Jason chooses to keep a secret that is better revealed. Like the rest of the boys, he thinks private problems should remain private. This isn’t bravery; it’s folly. If he had allowed Janelle to alert her father, the crisis at the bunker might have been completely averted.

“Maybe she thinks that, since I’m four years older, I can take it like a man. Well, I couldn’t at first. But I can now—thanks to Jaeger. Jaeger’s tough, and he’s teaching me to be tough. I need that. The world is a rotten place, and a guy has to protect himself. If you don’t, you get trampled.”

This passage from Luke’s chapter reveals his fears and doubts. As is true of all the boys in the story, he believes that silence is the answer. Rather than confiding his insecurities to his grandmother or Evan, he suppresses them. He settles for the substitute of a tough-guy exterior that Jaeger projects rather than admit he’s afraid.

“It comes to me in a sudden rush of understanding: This is how she copes with the nightmare our house has become. This is how she gets through the hours of the day, the days of the week, the weeks of the month, the months of the year. By telling herself that it’s getting better.”

C.J. makes this observation about his mother and the way she copes with Marcus’s outbursts. Just like the boys, she suppresses the truth. However, she’s keeping secrets from herself. Because Evelyn is in denial and says that Marcus is improving, she is stuck in a holding pattern. Nothing can change for the better until she admits that a problem exists.

“How can I tell the guys that Luke and Jaeger are blackmailing me? I don’t want to drag my friends into this mess!”

Yet again, we hear the same desire to keep private problems private. This time, Mitchell wants to avoid telling the other boys about Jaeger’s threats. His solution is to lock himself in his house. He doesn’t go to school or to the fort. As with Evelyn and C.J., Mitchell isolates himself from those who could help him. His motives may be altruistic, but his reasoning is faulty.

“On top of everything else he might be going through, he must feel completely alone. That’s when I realize that C.J. has a backup family—his friends. He’s part of a group so tight that I’m still on the outside even after weeks of trying to fit in. They’ll support him. I’m positive.”

Ricky has this epiphany long before any of the insiders reach the same conclusion. Perhaps his outsider status is an asset. He can see what’s really happening and draw rational conclusions while everyone else is stuck in self-defeating behavior patterns they’ve learned over a lifetime. Ricky also articulates the real problem that has plagued each of the secret keepers: their silence isolates them.

“It took Ricky to put the pieces together. And now that it’s out there—as much as we don’t want to believe it—we know it’s true. We failed our friend, but not anymore. We’ve got to rescue him, whether he wants to be rescued or not.”

Evan is C.J.’s closest friend, but he failed to recognize what was happening in the Sciutto home. To some degree, his comment contains a grain of denial. None of the boys wants to believe something bad about Marcus or that C.J. has been lying to them. Just as Evelyn wants to deny her husband’s bad behavior to preserve the status quo, Evan would like to do the same. Luckily, Evan gets over his hesitation quickly and forms a plan of action to change things.

“It takes Mitchell’s ranting for me to clue in. The guys can’t fix my life, but they’re here. I’ve still got my problems, but I’m not alone with them anymore.”

C.J. tries to deny the truth even in the face of his friends’ intervention. However, he is finally forced to trust them with his dark secret. Doing so breaks him out of the self-destructive pattern he has followed for years. He keys in on his isolation and the fact that his friends offer support so that he doesn’t have to face his struggle alone.

“We always considered Luke to be fifty percent of the enemy. But this is a new view of his partnership with Jaeger. Luke’s in, and he doesn’t know how to get himself out. He’s afraid of the guy. And if Luke’s afraid, how are we supposed to feel?”

This comment comes from C.J. rather than Evan. Again, it takes an outsider to observe the truth about a situation. Evan assumes that Luke is with Jaeger by choice. C.J. recognizes that he isn’t. At the same time, C.J.’s observation demonstrates how active Luke’s fear still is. The boys are defeated by their own sense of weakness before they even try to resist their persecutor.

“Just like the fort started out as our escape from our regular lives, now I wish I had a second fort to get away from the first. Or maybe it’s the regular life that I long to get back to—a real one, where I don’t have to be afraid all the time.”

In an early quote, C.J. expresses his pleasure in escaping his normal life. However, his home life was never normal. Further, C.J. has isolated himself at the fort by staying there when nobody else is around. The defensive barriers he creates to guard his secret have cut him off from the very people who might be able to help him. If he confided in them, he wouldn’t have to be afraid all the time.

“It takes pretty amazing friends to risk the greatest thing they’ve ever had to help you when you need it. It’s something I’ll never forget.”

C.J.’s friends have just consented to allow Evelyn to take refuge at the fort. They are aware that letting an adult into their sanctuary might change it in unforeseeable ways. However, they value C.J. enough to take the risk. As this quote demonstrates, he is aware of their sacrifice and grateful for it. He also seems amazed that other people would help him in his hour of need. They were there all along; all he had to do was tell them the truth.

“Having your deepest secret ripped open for the whole world to see is awful, but now I’m kind of glad it happened. Once you get over the horror and embarrassment, it’s a huge relief. Keeping something like that quiet is agony.”

This quote articulates C.J.’s horror of exposure. Although he feared his stepfather’s physical abuse, he feared humiliation and disgrace even more. While unpleasant, exposing an embarrassing secret is over in an instant. Not doing so cuts off all hope of change or improvement in the situation. As these words prove, the truth is liberating.

“We’re all pretty bummed, but Ricky’s magnet-school philosophy is the one that brings us a small amount of comfort: ‘They took it away from us, but that doesn’t change the fact that we had it for a while. And when we did, it was awesome.’”

As always, Ricky maintains an upbeat attitude. Even when he was being treated rudely by the other boys, he always anticipated a better future and looked forward to group acceptance one day. He is equally upbeat about the loss of the fort. It was great while it lasted. Now, it’s time to move on to the next adventure.