LOTF: Before and After

Phase 2: Chapter 6

The night of Simon's death was a difficult night. As Jack sat awake, burdened by the gruesome thoughts that kept him up, he realized he wasn't the only one thinking them. The younger boys tossed and turned on the ground, some of them experiencing nightmares, some of them not sleeping at all. The only person, Jack noticed, who slept through the night without stirring was Roger.

"Sir?" one of the 2nd graders whispered as he crawled over to Jack hours after they'd gone to bed.

"What?" Jack asked flatly, staring into the night sky, unwilling to even look at the child.

"Is the monster dead?" he asked genuinely.

Jack didn't respond because he didn't have a response. He sat with his thoughts for a moment as he felt the little one's piercing gaze on him.

"Go to bed" Jack finally said.

"But—"

"I said go to bed" Jack repeated more sternly, shooting the boy an intolerant glare.

This time, the little one obeyed without a word.

On the opposite end of the beachfront from where the incident had occurred, the boys in Ralph's camp didn't sleep much either. Piggy managed to drift off periodically throughout the night. Sleeping was one way he knew how to escape reality. The little ones who had been part of Ralph's camp before the feast were spending their first night in Jack's camp that night.

Nobody was up early the next morning. The hunters weren't up before dawn as they usually were to begin their pig searching expedition of the day. Piggy didn't rise with the sun either, nor did Ralph. The reason Ralph didn't get up early is because he never slept at all. He wasn't sure he knew how to anymore.

By the late afternoon, Piggy had already tried repeatedly to snap Ralph out of the traumatized trance he was in. He barely moved a muscle all day. He sat with his knees to his chest, staring out into the water. There wasn't anything anyone could say that would've made a difference to him.

Piggy returned to the camp and sat next to Ralph for the third time that day.

"Piggy, what are we gonna do?" he cried his first words of the day, 15 minutes after Piggy had sat down. Ralph's voice was groggy as he cried.

Piggy turned to look at his friend, and could see the heartbreak all over his face, and in his body language. Even considering the way Jack and the others had been acting lately, nothing had prepared Ralph for something to go this wrong.

"That was Simon" Ralph built up the strength and the courage to finally say aloud.

"What good are you doing talking about it?" Piggy responded.

What good are we doing staying silent? Ralph thought to himself, but lacked the strength to say it.

"It was dark, we were scared" Piggy defended.

"I wasn't scared" Ralph countered.

"You were scared" his friend insisted. "Anything could've happened.... it wasn't our fault."

"It was!" Ralph pushed through the tears, "we were there and we didn't do anything about it."

"There was nothing we could do, there was too many of them" Piggy concluded.

"That's not the point."

"It was an accident" Piggy continued to argue, "a terrible accident."

Ralph didn't know exactly what it was, but he was sure that it wasn't an accident. This was preventable. They were supposed to be looking out for each other. Ralph should've been looking out for Simon.